Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly

stood still!

I was bewildered beyond description. I did not doubt his word; I could

not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness

of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my

thoughts into hopeless confusion. I saw the conductor looking at me.

I said, “Who is that man?”

“He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in

a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death. He got

so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of

something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three

months afterward. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when

he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole

car-load of people he talks about. He would have finished the crowd by

this time, only he had to get out here. He has got their names as pat as

A B C. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: ‘Then

the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived; and there

being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no

objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here.'”

I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to

the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a

bloodthirsty cannibal.

THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR “LOCALIZED” –[Written about 1865.]

Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the

Roman “Daily Evening Fasces,” of the date of that tremendous occurrence.

Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as

gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing

them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He takes a living delight in

this labor of love–for such it is to him, especially if he knows that

all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one

that will contain the dreadful intelligence. A feeling of regret has

often come over me that I was not reporting in Rome when Caesar was

killed–reporting on an evening paper, and the only one in the city, and

getting at least twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this

most magnificent “item” that ever fell to the lot of the craft. Other

events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed so

peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite “item” of the present

day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high rank, fame, and

social and political standing of the actors in it.

However, as I was not permitted to report Caesar’s assassination in the

regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to translate

the following able account of it from the original Latin of the Roman

Daily Evening Fasces of that date–second edition:

Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild excitement

yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody affrays which sicken

the heart and fill the soul with fear, while they inspire all thinking

men with forebodings for the future of a city where human life is held so

cheaply and the gravest laws are so openly set at defiance. As the

result of that affray, it is our painful duty, as public journalists, to

record the death of one of our most esteemed citizens–a man whose name

is known wherever this paper circulates, and where fame it has been our

pleasure and our privilege to extend, and also to protect from the tongue

of slander and falsehood, to the best of our poor ability. We refer to

Mr. J. Caesar, the Emperor-elect.

The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could determine them

from the conflicting statements of eye-witnesses, were about as follows:-

The affair was an election row, of course. Nine-tenths of the ghastly

butcheries that disgrace the city nowadays grow out of the bickerings and

jealousies and animosities engendered by these accursed elections. Rome

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