312 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



discomfort " riling " the deeps of my happiness, and that was — the having- to 

 hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people. 

 I grew more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. 

 Her answer came quick and sharp. She said — 



" You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of — not one. Look at the 

 newspapers — look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, 

 and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with 

 them." 



It was my very thought ! I did not sleep a single moment that night. But 

 after all I could not recede. I was fully committed, and must go on with the 

 fight. As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across 

 this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before. 



" Perjury. — Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Gov- 

 ernor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four wit-» 

 nesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of Vfhich perjury being to rob a poor native 

 widow and her helpless family of a meagre plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their 

 bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose 

 suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it ? " 



I thought I should burst with amazement ! Such a cruel, heartless charge. I 

 never had seen Cochin China ! I never had heard of Wakawak ! I didn't 

 know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo ! I did not know what to do. I was 

 crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at all. 

 The next morning the same paper had this — nothing more : — 



" Significant. — Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin China 

 perjury." 



\Mem. — During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in 

 any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."] 

 Next came the Gazette, with this : — 



" Wanted to Know. — Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of his 

 fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him !) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in 

 Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably 

 found on Mr. Twain's person or in his ' trunk ' (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled 

 to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered him, and rode him 

 on a i;ail, and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in 

 the camp. Will he do this ?" 



Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that 1 For I never was 

 ' in Montana in my life. 



