Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0150/01507.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 8KB | 137 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01507}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
Mr. Bloke's Item}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{accident
item
distressing
get
read
upon

}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        Mr. Bloke's Item
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

Mr. Bloke's Item

     Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked
into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with an
expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance, and
sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk, and walked
slowly out again.  He paused a moment at the door, and seemed struggling to
command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak, and then, nodding
his head towards his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken voice, "Friend of mine
- oh!  how sad!" and burst into tears.  We were so moved at his distress that
we did not think to call him back and endeavor to comfort him until he was
gone, and it was too late.  The paper had already gone to press, but knowing
that our friend would consider the publication of this item important, and
cherishing the hope that to print it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to
his sorrowing heart, we stopped the press at once and inserted it in our
columns: -

     Distressing Accident. - Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr. William
Schuyler,an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his
residence to go down town, as has been his usual custom for many years with
the exception only of a short interval in the spring of 1850, during which he
was confined to his bed by injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway
horse by thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake and throwing up
his hands and shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner,
must have inevitably frightened the animal still more instead of checking its
speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and rendered more
melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who
was there and saw the sad occurence, notwithstanding it is at least likely,
though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitering in another
direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a
general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to have stated,
who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious resurrection, upwards
of three years ago, aged eighty-six, being a Christian woman and without
guile, as it were, or property, in consequence of the fire of 1849, which
destroyed every single thing she had in the world.  But such is life.  Let us
all take warning by this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct
ourselves that when we come to die we can do it.  Let us place our hands upon
our heart, and say with earnestness and sincerity that from this day forth we
will beware of the intoxicating bowl. - First Edition of the Californian.

     The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his
hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pick-pocket. He
says every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an hour, I get
imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes along. And he
says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing but a lot of
distressing bosh, and has no point to it, and no sense in it, and no
information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for stopping the
press to publish it.

     Now all this comes of being good-hearted.  If I had been as
unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told Mr. Bloke
that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour; but no, his
snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the chance of doing
something to modify his misery.  I never read his item to see whether there
was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded
it, and sent it to the printers.  And what has my kindness done for me?  It
has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental
blasphemy.

     Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for
all this fuss.  And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me.

     * * * * * *

     I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a
first glance.  However, I will peruse it once more.

     * * * * * *

     I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more mixed than
ever.

     * * * * * *

     I have read over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it, I
wish I may get my just deserts.  It won't bear analysis.  There are things
about it which I cannot understand at all.  It don't say whatever became of
William Schuyler.  It just says enough about him to get one interested in his
career, and then drops him.  Who is William Schuyler, anyhow, and what part of
South Park did he live in, and if he started down town at six o'clock, did he
ever get there, and if he did, did anything happen to him? Is he the
individual that met with the "distressing accident?" Considering the elaborate
circumstantiality of detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it
ought to contain more information than it does.  On the contrary, it is
obscure - and not only obscure, but utterly incomprehensible.  Was the
breaking of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the "distressing accident"
that plunged Mr. Bloke into unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here
at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the
circumstance?  Or did the "distressing accident" consist in the destruction of
Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times?  Or did it consist in the
death of that person herself three years ago?  (albeit it does not appear that
she died by accident.) In a word, what did that "distressing accident" consist
in?  What did that drivelling ass of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway
horse for, with his shouting and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him?  And
how the mischief could he get run over by a horse that had already passed
beyond him?  And what are we to take "warning" by?  And how is this
extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson" to us?
And, above all, what has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do with it, anyhow?
It is not stated that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that his
mother-in- law drank, or that the horse drank - wherefore, then, the reference
to the intoxicating bowl?  It does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the
intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much trouble
about this exasperating imaginary accident.  I have read this absurd item over
and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head swims;
but I can make neither head nor tail of it.  There certainly seems to have
been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine what
the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by it.  I do not like to do it,
but I feel compelled to request that the next time anything happens to one of
Mr. Bloke's friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of
it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it
happened to.  I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be
driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of
another such production as the above.