WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

MERCENARY, one who feels for another.

PARASITE, a kind of umbrella.

PARASITE, the murder of an infant.

PUBLICAN, a man who does his prayers in public.

TENACIOUS, ten acres of land.

Here is one where the phrase “publicans and sinners” has got

mixed up in the child’s mind with politics, and the result is a

definition which takes one in a sudden and unexpected way:

REPUBLICAN, a sinner mentioned in the Bible.

Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where

the mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact:

PLAGIARIST, a writer of plays.

DEMAGOGUE, a vessel containing beer and other liquids.

I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in

the following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound

of the word, nor the look of it in print:

ASPHYXIA, a grumbling, fussy temper.

QUARTERNIONS, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in

New Zealand.

QUARTERNIONS, the name given to a style of art practiced by

the Phoenicians.

QUARTERNIONS, a religious convention held every hundred

years.

SIBILANT, the state of being idiotic.

CROSIER, a staff carried by the Deity.

In the following sentences the pupil’s ear has been

deceiving him again:

The marriage was illegible.

He was totally dismasted with the whole performance.

He enjoys riding on a philosopher.

She was very quick at repertoire.

He prayed for the waters to subsidize.

The leopard is watching his sheep.

They had a strawberry vestibule.

Here is one which–well, now, how often we do slam right

into the truth without ever suspecting it:

The men employed by the Gas Company go around and

speculate the meter.

Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many’s

the time you will notice it in the gas bill. In the following

sentences the little people have some information to convey,

every time; but in my case they fail to connect: the light

always went out on the keystone word:

The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses.

Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side.

He preached to an egregious congregation.

The captain eliminated a bullet through the man’s heart.

You should take caution and be precarious.

The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the

perennial time came.

The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to

know what it means, and yet he knows all the time that he

doesn’t. Here is an odd (but entirely proper) use of a word, and

a most sudden descent from a lofty philosophical altitude to a

very practical and homely illustration:

We should endeavor to avoid extremes–like those of wasps and bees.

And here–with “zoological” and “geological” in his mind,

but not ready to his tongue–the small scholar has innocently

gone and let out a couple of secrets which ought never to have

been divulged in any circumstances:

There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens.

Some of the best fossils are found in theological gardens.

Under the head of “Grammar” the little scholars furnish the

following information:

Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex.

A verb is something to eat.

Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs.

Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar.

“Caterpillar” is well enough, but capital letter would have

been stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a solution,

but it failed to liquify:

When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they

say the poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the

introduction of the prose or poetry.

The chapter on “Mathematics” is full of fruit. From it I

take a few samples–mainly in an unripe state:

A straight line is any distance between two places.

Parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together.

A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.

Things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else.

To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the

room by the number of the feet. The product is the result.

Right you are. In the matter of geography this little book

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *