286 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



table, with determined impressiveness wrought upon his every feature, and fingers 

 prepared to keep tally of each point as enumerated ; and I, leaning forward with 

 painful interest, resolved to comprehend or perish.] "You know the vein, the 

 ledge, the thing that contains the metal, whereby it constitutes the medium between 

 all other forces, whether of present or remote agencies, so brought to bear in favor 

 of the former against the latter, or the latter against the former or all, or both, or 

 compromising the relative differences existing within the radius whence culminate 

 the several degrees of similarity to which " 



I said — " Oh, hang my wooden head, it ain't any use ! — it ain't any use to try — 

 I can't understand anything. The plainer you get it the more I can't get the hang 

 of it." 



I heard a suspicious noise behind me, and turned in time to see Kingston 

 dodging behind a newspaper, and quaking with a gentle ecstasy of laughter. I 

 looked at Ward again, and he had thrown off his dread solemnity and was laughing 

 also. Then I saw that I had been sold — that I had been made the victim of a 

 swindle in the way of a string of plausibly worded sentences that didn't mean any- 

 thing under the sun. Artemus Ward was one of the best fellows in the world, and 

 one of the most companionable. It has been said that he was not fluent in conver- 

 sation, but, with the above experience in my mind, I differ. 



