276 



MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages. 

 His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for 

 the emulation of boys for ever — boys who might otherwise have been happy. 

 It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for 

 no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything 

 might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers. 

 With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day, 

 and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a 



smouldering f i r e , 

 boys might have 

 else have Benjamin 

 up to them. Not 

 proceedings, he 

 living wholly on 

 and studying 

 t i m e — a thing 

 affliction to mil- 

 whose fathers had 

 pernicious biogra- 

 His maxims 

 mosity towards 

 a boy cannot fol- 

 natural instinct 

 over some of those 

 risms and hearing 



so that all other 

 to' do that also, or 

 Franklin thrown 

 satisfied with these 

 had a fashion of 

 bread and water, 

 astronomy at meal 

 ■ which has brought 

 lions of boys since, 

 read Franklin's 

 phy. 



were full of ani- 

 boys. Nowadays 

 low out a single 

 without tumbling 

 everlasting apho- 

 from Franklin on 



the spot. If he buys two cents' worth of peanuts; his father says, " Remember 

 what Franklin* has said, my son — ' A groat a day's a penny a year ;'" and the 

 comfort is all gone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he 

 has done work, his father quotes, " Procrastination is the thief of time." If 

 he does a virtuous action, he never gets any thing for it, because " Virtue is 

 its own reward." And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural 

 rest, because Franklin said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity — 



