Moments with Mark Twain

Moments with Mark Twain

By Mark Twain
Michael Caine
Listen with Sir Michael Caine™ and 1,000+ voices
Length6h 35m

About this audiobook

Excerpt: ""Moral Statistician."—I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc. You never see more than one side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke, and drink 2coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use of accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare 3to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unloveable as you are yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"? Now I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove."

Audiobook details

GenreHumor, General Fiction
Length6 hrs 35 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJul 24, 2020
LanguageEnglish

Table of contents

1FOREWORD
64FROM “A TRAMP ABROAD” (1878–9)
2FROM “SKETCHES NEW AND OLD” (1865–67): How I Edited an Agricultural Paper
65Midnight Entertainment
3FROM “THE INNOCENTS ABROAD” (1867–68)
66Foreign Quotations
4The “Quaker City” in a Storm
67Reflections on the Ant
5The Beautiful Stranger
68Foreign Quotations Again
Show all chapters
6Tangier
69The Jungfrau
7American Beauties
70Climbing the Gemmi Pass
8An Early Memory
71Descent of Gemmi Pass
9At the Ambrosian Library
72Alp Climbing
10Our Need of Repose
73The Old Masters
11Venice
74FROM “LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI” (1874–5)
12At Pisa
75First Lessons in Piloting
13Christian Persuasion
76Perplexing Lessons
14Taking It Out of the Guides
77A Test of Courage
15A Surfeit of Art
78FROM “THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER” (1877–80)
16At Pompeii
79The Canty Home
17Fame
80London Bridge
18Athens from the Acropolis
81Tom Canty, King
19Constantinople
82The Little King in Prison
20Turkish Journalism
83Tom Canty the First
21The Camel
84Tom Is Recognized
22At Noah’s Tomb
85FROM “THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN” (1876–83): The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud[4]
23Damascus
86FROM “A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT” (1886–7)
24At Banias
87The Stranger’s History
25A Healer in Palestine
88The Round Table[7]
26The Bible
89The Yankee Reflects
27Galilee at Night
90Perfect Government
28Distance in the East
91Maids in Distress
29A Pleasant Incident
92A Knight’s Average
30Sacred Marvels
93Sixth Century Kingdoms
31At Adam’s Grave
94Nature
32The Wandering Jew
95Conscience
33Bedouins
96The German Tongue[8]
34A Smitten Land
97Government by the People
35The Sphinx
98Prophecy
36Memories of the Pilgrimage
99Hard Work
37FROM “ROUGHING IT”
100Still Hope
38George Bemis and “The Allen”
101The Human Race
39The Overland Stage
102The King in Slavery[9]
40Morning on the Plains
103FROM “RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION” (1877)
41The Cayote
104FROM “PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S CALENDAR” (1892–3)
42The Pony Rider
105FROM “THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED” (1885)
43Indian Country
106FROM “THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC”
44At the Summit of the Rockies
107The Fairy Tree
45Incidents by the Way
108L’Arbre Fée de Bourlemont.
46Mormon Beauties
109Joan Before Rheims
47The Alkali Desert
110Joan’s Reward
48Arrival in Carson City
111FROM “SAINT JOAN OF ARC” (1899)
49Lake Tahoe
112FROM “FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR” Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar (1896–7): Italian Cigars
50Selling Out a Mine
113FROM “CONCERNING THE JEWS” (1898): The Immortal Race
51Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral
114FROM “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” (1898)
52An Abandoned Town
115FROM “ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER” (1903): The Charm of Uncertainty
53A Hawaiian Temple
116FROM “EVE’S DIARY” (1905)
54A Hawaiian Statesman
117At Eve’s Grave
55Hawaiian Religion
118William Dean Howells (1905)
56The Crater of Haleakala
119MISCELLANEOUS (1905–9)
57FROM “THE GILDED AGE” (1873): Colonel Sellers Lets Himself Out
120The Fatality of Sequence
58FROM “ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER” (1874–5)
121Life’s Turning Point
59Tom Falls in Love
122Close of Seventieth Birthday Speech
60Huck
123The Future Life
61The Pirates’ Island
124Religion
62Tom Learns to Smoke
125FROM “THE DEATH OF JEAN” (1909)
63FROM “THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT” (1878)
126FROM “ONE OF HIS LATEST MEMORANDA” (1909)

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