Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to

bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour balm upon my

wounded heart. (I don’t know what balm is, but I believe it is the

correct expression to use in this connection–never having seen any

balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young

gentlemen of the —– Society? I did at any rate. During the afternoon

of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred

to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to

have grown permanently bereft of all emotion. And with tears in his

eyes, this young man said, “Oh, if I could only see him laugh once more!

Oh, if I could only see him weep!” I was touched. I could never

withstand distress.

I said: “Bring him to my lecture. I’ll start him for you.”

“Oh, if you could but do it! If you could but do it, all our family

would bless you for evermore–for he is so very dear to us. Oh, my

benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those

parched orbs?”

I was profoundly moved. I said: “My son, bring the old party round.

I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there

is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that

will make him cry or kill him, one or the other.” Then the young man

blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him

in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on

him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him

with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes

into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed

up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and

behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and

sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once–I never started

a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of

moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one

despairing shriek–with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of

supernatural atrocity full at him!

Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.

The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water,

and said: “What made you carry on so toward the last?”

I said: “I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the

second row.”

And he said: “Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and

dumb, and as blind as a badger!”

Now, was that any way for that old man’s nephew to impose on a stranger

and orphan like me? I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way

for him to do?

THE OFFICE BORE –[Written about 1869]

He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning.

And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his

work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the “Sanctum” door

and let him in. He lights one of the office pipes–not reflecting,

perhaps, that the editor may be one of those “stuck-up” people who would

as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem. Then he

begins to loll–for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life

away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight.

He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half

length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad,

and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the

floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the

arm of the chair. But it is still observable that with all his changes