A Burlesque Autobiography | Page 3

was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the
restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he
was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of
him.
PAH-GO-TO-WAH-WAH-PUKKETEKEEWIS
(Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye) TWAIN adorned the middle of the
eighteenth century, and aided Gen. Braddock with all his heart to resist
the oppressor Washington. It was this ancestor who fired seventeen
times at our Washington from behind a tree. So far the beautiful
romantic narrative in the moral story-books is correct; but when that
narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken
savage said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the Great
Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious
rifle against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity of
history. What he did say was:
"It ain't no (hic !) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' still long
enough for a man to hit him. I (hic !) I can't 'ford to fool away any more
am'nition on him!"
That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was, a good
plain matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to
us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.
I always enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring
misgiving that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier

a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and
missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was
reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared
that the only reason why Washington's case is remembered and the
others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy' came true, and in that of the
others it didn't. There are not books enough on earth to contain the
record of the prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have
made; but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the
prophecies that have been fulfilled.
I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so
thoroughly well known in history by their aliases, that I have not felt it
to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the
order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned RICHARD
BRINSLEY TWAIN, alias Guy Fawkes; JOHN WENTWORTH
TWAIN, alias Sixteen-String Jack; WILLIAM HOGARTH TWAIN,
alias Jack Sheppard; ANANIAS TWAIN, alias Baron Munchausen;
JOHN GEORGE TWAIN, alias Capt. Kydd; and them there are George
Francis Train, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar and Baalam's Ass--they
all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distantly
removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch,
whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order to
acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they
have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.
It is not well; when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry
down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of
your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I
now do.
I was born without teeth--and there Richard III had the advantage of me;
but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the
advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor
conspicuously honest.
But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so
tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to
leave it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have

read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would
have been a felicitous thing, for the reading public. How does it strike
you?

AWFUL, TERRIBLE MEDIEVAL ROMANCE

CHAPTER I
THE SECRET REVEALED.
It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of
Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the
tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret council
was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in a chair of
state meditating. Presently he, said, with a tender accent:
"My daughter!"
A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly
mail, answered:
"Speak, father!"
"My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that
hath puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the
matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke
of Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son
were born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided
a