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This etext was produced by David Widger
A Burlesque Autobiography
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS:
MARK TWAIN'S (BURLESQUE) AUTO-BIOGRAPHY
FIRST ROMANCE.
1871
BURLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would
write an autobiography they would read it, when they got leisure, I
yield at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my
history:
Ours is a noble old house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.
The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the
family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when
our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is
that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when
one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert
foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever
felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we
leave it alone. All the old families do that way.
Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note a solicitor on the
highway in William Rufus' time. At about the age of thirty he went to
one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see
about something, and never returned again. While there he died
suddenly.
Augustus Twain, seems to have made something of a stir about -the
year 1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old
sabre and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,
and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was a
born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first time he
was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one
end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it
could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any
situation so much or stuck to it so long.
Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession
of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle
singing; right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right
ahead of it.
This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that our
family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at
right angles, and bore fruit winter, and summer.
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OUR FAMILY TREE
Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the
Scholar." He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate
anybody's hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh
his head off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and
by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the
work spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the
stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some
forty-two years. In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years
he gave such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a
week till government gave him another. He was a perfect pet. And he
was always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous
member of their benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang. He
always wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and
died lamented by the government. He was a sore loss to his country.
For he was so regular.
Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came
over to this country with Columbus in 1492, as a passenger. He appears
to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of
the food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore
unless there was a change. He wanted fresh shad. Hardly a day passed
over his head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in
the air, sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe
Columbus knew where he was going to or had ever been there before.
The memorable cry
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