Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

shapely stone, with this inscription:

“In 1847, in the spring, the river overflowed its banks and covered

the whole township. The depth was from two to six feet. More than

900 head of cattle were lost, and many homes destroyed. The Mayor

ordered this memorial to be erected to perpetuate the event. God

spare us the repetition of it!”

With infinite trouble, Professor Woodlouse succeeded in making a

translation of this inscription, which was sent home, and straightway an

enormous excitement was created about it. It confirmed, in a remarkable

way, certain treasured traditions of the ancients. The translation was

slightly marred by one or two untranslatable words, but these did not

impair the general clearness of the meaning. It is here presented:

“One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven years ago, the (fires?)

descended and consumed the whole city. Only some nine hundred souls

were saved, all others destroyed. The (king?) commanded this stone

to be set up to . . . (untranslatable) . . . prevent the

repetition of it.”

This was the first successful and satisfactory translation that had been

made of the mysterious character let behind him by extinct man, and it

gave Professor Woodlouse such reputation that at once every seat of

learning in his native land conferred a degree of the most illustrious

grade upon him, and it was believed that if he had been a soldier and had

turned his splendid talents to the extermination of a remote tribe of

reptiles, the king would have ennobled him and made him rich. And this,

too, was the origin of that school of scientists called Manologists,

whose specialty is the deciphering of the ancient records of the extinct

bird termed Man. [For it is now decided that Man was a bird and not a

reptile.] But Professor Woodlouse began and remained chief of these, for

it was granted that no translations were ever so free from error as his.

Others made mistakes he seemed incapable of it. Many a memorial of the

lost race was afterward found, but none ever attained to the renown and

veneration achieved by the “Mayoritish Stone”it being so called from the

word “Mayor” in it, which, being translated “King,” “Mayoritish Stone”

was but another way of saying “King Stone.”

Another time the expedition made a great “find.” It was a vast round

flattish mass, ten frog-spans in diameter and five or six high.

Professor Snail put on his spectacles and examined it all around, and

then climbed up and inspected the top. He said:

“The result of my perlustration and perscontation of this isoperimetrical

protuberance is a belief at it is one of those rare and wonderful

creation left by the Mound Builders. The fact that this one is

lamellibranchiate in its formation, simply adds to its interest as being

possibly of a different kind from any we read of in the records of

science, but yet in no manner marring its authenticity. Let the

megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory

and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made

and learning gather new treasures.”

Not a Tumble-Bug could be found on duty, so the Mound was excavated by a

working party of Ants. Nothing was discovered. This would have been a

great disappointment, had not the venerable Longlegs explained the

matter. He said:

“It is now plain to me that the mysterious and forgotten race of Mound

Builders did not always erect these edifices as mausoleums, else in this

case, as in all previous cases, their skeletons would be found here,

along with the rude implements which the creatures used in life. Is not

this manifest?”

“True! true!” from everybody.

“Then we have made a discovery of peculiar value here; a discovery which

greatly extends our knowledge of this creature in place of diminishing

it; a discovery which will add luster to the achievements of this

expedition and win for us the commendations of scholars everywhere.

For the absence of the customary relics here means nothing less than

this: The Mound Builder, instead of being the ignorant, savage reptile we

have been taught to consider him, was a creature of cultivation and high

intelligence, capable of not only appreciating worthy achievements of the

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