A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

up and sighed, and says, ‘Confound it, I don’t seem

to understand this thing, no way; however, I’ll tackle

her again.’ He fetched another acorn, and done his level

best to see what become of it, but he couldn’t. He says,

‘Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before;

I’m of the opinion it’s a totally new kind of a hole.’

Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell,

walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking

his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got

the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose

and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird

take on so about a little thing. When he got through he

walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute;

then he says, ‘Well, you’re a long hole, and a deep hole,

and a mighty singular hole altogether–but I’ve started

in to fill you, and I’m damned if I DON’T fill you, if it

takes a hundred years!’

“And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work

so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger,

and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about

two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and

astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped

to take a look anymore–he just hove ’em in and went

for more. Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings,

he was so tuckered out. He comes a-dropping down, once more,

sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says,

‘NOW I guess I’ve got the bulge on you by this time!’

So he bent down for a look. If you’ll believe me,

when his head come up again he was just pale with rage.

He says, ‘I’ve shoveled acorns enough in there to keep

the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one

of ’em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full

of sawdust in two minutes!’

“He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the

comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he

collected his impressions and begun to free his mind.

I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity

in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say.

“Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions,

and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him

the whole circumstance, and says, ‘Now yonder’s the hole,

and if you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself.’

So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says,

“How many did you say you put in there?’ ‘Not any less

than two tons,’ says the sufferer. The other jay went

and looked again. He couldn’t seem to make it out, so he

raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all examined

the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again,

then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed

opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could

have done.

“They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty

soon this whole region ‘peared to have a blue flush about it.

There must have been five thousand of them; and such

another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing,

you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his

eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed

opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there

before him. They examined the house all over, too.

The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay

happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course,

that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second.

There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor..

He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. ‘Come here!’

he says, ‘Come here, everybody; hang’d if this fool hasn’t

been trying to fill up a house with acorns!’ They all came

a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow