文摘

"I was sitting here," said the judge, "in this old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman.

I seem sixty and married, but these effects are due to my condition and sufferings, for I am a bachelor, and only forty-one.

Let me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly a hundred years ago the crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and sailed southward.

In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said:

Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature of Mark Twain:

The origin of this distressful thing was this--and I assert here that every fact in the following resume can be amply proved by the official records of the General Government.