304 



MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



death agony. It froze the marrow in my bones, and stopped the beating of my 

 heart. I thought my time had come. 



Young Wilson said the circumstance reminded him of an anecdote about a 

 negro who was being baptized, and who slipped from the parson's grasp, and 

 came near being drowned. He floundered around, though, and finally rose up 

 out of the water considerably strangled, and furiously angry, and started ashore 

 at once, spouting water like a whale, and remarking, with great asperity, that 

 " one o' dese days some genTman's nigger gwyne to get killed wid jis' such 



dam foolishness as 

 Never take a 

 Next to meeting a 

 who, for reasons 

 self, don't see you 

 you, and don't 

 she does see you, 

 comfortable thing 

 But, as I was 

 sheet-bath failed 

 a lady friend rec- 

 plication of a mus- 

 breast. I believe 

 cured me effectual- 

 been for young 



dis!" 



sheet-bath — never, 

 lady acquaintance, 

 best known to her- 

 when she looks at 

 know you when 

 it is the most un- 

 in the world, 

 saying, when the 

 to cure my cough, 

 ommended the ap- 

 tard plaster to my 

 that would have 

 ly, if it had not 

 Wilson. When I 

 my mustard plas- 



went to bed, I put 



ter — which was a very gorgeous one, eighteen inches square — where I could 

 reach it when I was ready for it. But young Wilson got hungry in the night, 

 and — here is food for the imagination. 



After sojourning a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and 

 beside the steam baths, I took a lot of the vilest medicines that were ever con- 

 cocted. They would have cured me, but I had to go back to Virginia City, 

 where, notwithstanding the variety of new remedies I absorbed every day, I 

 managed to aggravate my disease by carelessness and undue exposure. 



