Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

and that he used to think there were several wealthy men in the city, but

when they came to trade with him he discovered that they barely had

enough to live on; and that, in truth, it had been such a weary, weary

age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked to him, and

touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing

me–in fact, would esteem it a great favor if I would let him embrace me.

This so pleased me that I did not try to resist, but allowed this simple-

hearted stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few tranquilizing

tears down the back of my neck. Then he went his way.

As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement. I studied it

attentively for four minutes. I then called up the cook, and said:

“Hold me while I faint! Let Marie turn the griddle-cakes.”

By and by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum-mill on the corner and

hired an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and

give me a lift occasionally in the daytime when I came to a hard place.

Ah, what a miscreant he was! His “advertisement was nothing in the

world. but a wicked tax-return–a string of impertinent questions about

my private affairs, occupying the best part of four fools-cap pages of

fine print-questions, I may remark, gotten up with such marvelous

ingenuity that the oldest man in the world couldn’t understand what the

most of them were driving at–questions, too, that were calculated to

make a man report about four times his actual income to keep from

swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loophole, but there did not

appear to be any. Inquiry No. 1 covered my case as generously and as

amply as an umbrella could cover an ant-hill:

What were your profits, during the past year, from any trade,

business, or vocation, wherever carried on?

And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching

nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had

committed any burglary or highway robbery, or, by any arson or other

secret source of emolument had acquired property which was not enumerated

in my statement of income as set opposite to inquiry No. 1.

It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself.

It was very, very plain; and so I went out and hired another artist.

By working on my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an

income of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. By law, one

thousand dollars of this was exempt from income tax–the only relief I

could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per

cent., I must pay to the government the sum of ten thousand six hundred

and fifty dollars, income tax!

[I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.]

I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose

table is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income,

as I have often noticed by the revenue returns; and to him I went for

advice in my distress. He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he

put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto!–I was a pauper! It was

the neatest thing that ever was. He did it simply by deftly manipulating

the bill of “DEDUCTIONS.” He set down my “State, national, and municipal

taxes” at so much; my “losses by shipwreck; fire, etc.,” at so much; my

“losses on sales of real estate”–on “live stock sold”–on “payments for

rent of homestead”–on “repairs, improvements, interest”–on “previously

taxed salary as an officer of the United States army, navy, revenue

service,” and other things. He got astonishing “deductions” out of each

and every one of these matters–each and every one of them. And when he

was done he handed me the paper, and I saw at a glance that during the

year my income, in the way of profits, had been one thousand two hundred

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