Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories

I believe that would have cured me, if it had not been for young Wilson.[3 - I believe that would have cured me, if it had not been for young Wilson. – Думаю, меня бы это вылечило, если бы не мой друг Уилсон.]

When I went to bed, I put my mustard plaster – which was an eighteen-inch square – where I could reach it when I was ready for it.

But young Wilson got hungry at night, and ate it up.

I never saw anybody have such an appetite; I am confident that he would have eaten me if I had been healthy.

After a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and besides the steam baths, I took a lot of the worst medicines ever created. They would have cured me, but I had to go back to Virginia, where, in spite of the variety of new remedies I took every day, I managed to aggravate my disease.

I finally went to San Francisco, and the first day I got here one lady told me to drink a quart of whisky every twenty-four hours, and a friend recommended precisely the same.

Each advised me to take a quart – that makes half a gallon. I plan to do it or perish in the attempt.

Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the consideration of patients the course of treatment I have lately gone through. Let them try it – if it doesn’t cure them, it can’t more than kill them.

The McWilliamses And The Burglar Alarm

The conversation went smoothly and pleasantly from weather to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal to religion; then took a random jump, and landed on the subject of burglar alarms. And now for the first time Mr. McWilliams showed feeling. Whenever I notice this sign on this man’s face, I understand it, and keep silence, and give him opportunity to unload his heart.

“I do not spend one single cent on burglar alarms, Mr. Twain – not a single cent – and I will tell you why. When we were finishing our house, we found we had a little cash left over. And Mrs. McWilliams said, let’s have a burglar alarm. I agreed. Very well: the man came up from New York and put in the alarm, and charged three hundred and twenty-five dollars for it, and said we could sleep without uneasiness now. So we did for a while – say a month. Then one night we smelled smoke, and I was told to get up and see what the matter was. I lit a candle, and went to the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room with a basket of tinware, which he had mistaken for solid silver in the dark.

“He was smoking a pipe. I said, ‘My friend, we do not allow smoking in this room.’ He said he was a stranger, and could not be expected to know the rules of the house. He said he had been in many houses just as good as this one, and it had never been a problem before. He added that usually such rules had never been considered to apply to burglars, anyway.

“I said: ‘Smoke along, then, if it is the custom, though I think that giving a burglar the privilege which is denied to a bishop is a sign of the looseness of the times. But what business do you have in this house, why have you entered it without ringing the burglar alarm?’

“He looked confused and ashamed, and said, with embarrassment: ‘I beg a thousand pardons. I did not know you had a burglar alarm, or I would have rung it. I beg you not to mention where my parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble, and such a breach of the conventionalities of our Christian civilization might disappoint them and affect their health. May I trouble you for a match?’

“I said: ‘Here you are. But to return to business: how did you get in here?’

“’Through a window on the second floor.’

“It was even so. I redeemed the tinware at pawnbroker’s rates, bade the burglar good-night, closed the window after him, and retired to headquarters to report. Next morning we sent for the burglar-alarm man, and he came up and explained that the reason the alarm did not ‘go off’ was that no part of the house but the first floor was attached to the alarm. This was simply idiotic; one might as well have no armor on at all but for on his legs. The expert now put the whole second story on the alarm, charged three hundred dollars for it, and went his way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in the third story, about to go down a ladder with a lot of miscellaneous property. My first impulse was to crack his head with a billiard cue; but I refrained, and proceeded to compromise. I redeemed the property at the familiar rates, after charging ten per cent for use of my ladder. Next day we sent down for the expert once more, and had the third story attached to the alarm, for three hundred dollars.

“By this time the ‘annunciator’ had grown to formidable dimensions. It had forty-seven tags on it, marked with the names of the various rooms and chimneys, and it occupied the space of an ordinary wardrobe. The gong was the size of a washbowl, and was placed above the head of our bed. There was a wire from the house to the coachman’s room in the stable, and a noble gong alongside his pillow.

“We should have been comfortable now but for one defect. Every morning at five the cook opened the kitchen door, and rip went that gong! The first time this happened I thought the last day had come. I didn’t think it in bed – no, but out of it – for the first effect of that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house, and slam you against the wall, and then curl you up like a spider on a stove lid, till somebody closes the kitchen door. Well, this catastrophe happened every morning regularly at five o’clock, and lost us three hours sleep.

“Well, we were gradually fading toward a better land, on account of the daily loss of sleep; so we finally had the expert up again. He ran a wire to the outside of the door, and placed a switch there, where Thomas, the butler, always made one little mistake – he switched the alarm off at night when he went to bed, and switched it on again at daybreak in the morning, just in time for the cook to open the kitchen door, and let that gong slam us across the house, sometimes breaking a window with one or the other of us. At the end of a week we recognized that this switch business was a snare. We also discovered that a band of burglars had been living in the house the whole time – not to steal, for there wasn’t much left now, but to hide from the police. They decided that the detectives would never think of a tribe of burglars taking sanctuary in a house notoriously protected by the most elaborate burglar alarm in America.

“Sent down for the expert again, and this time he struck a most dazzling idea – he fixed the thing so that opening the kitchen door would take off the alarm. It was a noble idea, and he charged accordingly. But you already foresee the result. I switched on the alarm every night at bed-time, no longer trusting on Thomas’s memory; and as soon as the lights were out the burglars walked in at the kitchen door, thus taking the alarm off without waiting for the cook to do it in the morning. For months we couldn’t have any company. Not a spare bed in the house; all occupied by burglars.

“Finally, I got up a cure of my own. The expert answered the call, and ran another wire to the stable, and established a switch there, so that the coachman could put on and take off the alarm. That worked first rate, and we even got to inviting company once more and enjoying life.

“But one winter night we were flung out of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, and when we ran to the annunciator and saw the word ‘Nursery’ exposed, Mrs. McWilliams fainted, and I was close to it myself. I seized my shotgun, and stood waiting for the coachman. I knew that his gong had flung him out, too, and that he would be along with his gun as soon as he could jump into his clothes. When I judged that he was ready, I crept to the room next the nursery, looked through the window, and saw the coachman in the yard below. Then I hopped into the nursery and fired, and in the same instant the coachman fired at the red flash of my gun. Both of us were successful; I crippled a nurse, and he shot off all my back hair. We telephoned for a surgeon. There was not a sign of a burglar, and no window had been raised. One glass was absent, but that was where the coachman’s charge had come through. Here was a fine mystery – a burglar alarm ‘going off’ at midnight of its own accord, and not a burglar in the neighborhood!

“The expert answered the usual call, and explained that it was a ‘False alarm.’ Said it was easily fixed.

“What we suffered from false alarms for the next three years. During the next three months I always flew with my gun to the room indicated, and the coachman was always ready to support me. But there was never anything to shoot at – windows all tight and secure. We always sent down for the expert next day, and he fixed those particular windows so they would keep quiet a week or so, and always remembered to send us a bill.

“After we had answered three or four hundred false alarms, we stopped answering them. Yes, I simply rose up calmly, when slammed across the house by the alarm, calmly inspected the annunciator, took note of the room indicated; and then calmly disconnected that room from the alarm, and went back to bed as if nothing had happened. Moreover, I did not send for the expert. Well, it goes without saying that in the course of time all the rooms were taken off, and the entire machine was out of service.

“It was at this unprotected time that the burglars walked in one night and carried off the burglar alarm! yes, sir, ripped it out, springs, bells, gongs, battery, and all; they took a hundred and fifty miles of copper wire; they just cleaned it out.

“We got it back, we accomplished it finally, for money. The alarm firm said that what we needed now was to have her put in right – with their new springs in the windows to make false alarms impossible, and their new clock attached to take off and put on the alarm morning and night without human assistance. That seemed a good scheme. They promised to have the whole thing finished in ten days. They began work, and we left for the summer. They worked a couple of days; then they left for the summer. After which the burglars moved in, and began their summer vacation. When we returned in the fall, the house was empty. We refurnished, and then sent down to hurry up the expert. He came up and finished the job, and said: ‘Now this clock is set to put on the alarm every night at 10, and take it off every morning at 5:45. All you’ve got to do is to wind her up every week, and then leave her alone – she will take care of the alarm herself.’

“After that we had a most tranquil season during three months. The bill was impressive, of course, and I had said I would not pay it until the new machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The time set was three months. So I paid the bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o’clock in the morning. I turned the hands around twelve hours, according to instructions, and this took off the alarm. But it happened again at night, and I had to set it ahead twelve hours once more to get it to put the alarm on again. That sort of nonsense went on a week or two, then the expert came up and put in a new clock. He came up every three months during the next three years, and put in a new clock. But it was always a failure. His clocks all had the same defect: they would put the alarm on in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night; and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it off again the minute your back was turned.

“Now there is the history of that burglar alarm – everything just as it happened. Yes, sir, and when I had slept nine years with burglars, and maintained an expensive burglar alarm the whole time, for their protection, not mine, I just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough; so with her full consent I took the whole thing out and traded it off for a dog, and shot the dog. I don’t know what you think about it, Mr. Twain; but I think those things are made solely in the interest of the burglars. Good-bye: I get off here.”

To Raise Poultry

Seriously, from early youth I have taken a special interest in the subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches me. Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study with me, and I may say that as early as the age of seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and quickest methods of raising chickens, from raising them by burning matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty night by putting the end of a warm board under their heels. By the time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes stopped to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters stopped to crow, when I passed by.

I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society. The two methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other for winter.

In the one case you start out with a friend along about eleven o’clock’ on a summer’s night (not later, because in some states – especially in California and Oregon – chickens always wake up just at midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your friend carries with him a sack. Arrived at the henroost (your neighbor’s, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one and then another bird’s nose until they are willing to go into that bag without making any trouble about it. You then return home, either taking the bag with you or leaving it behind, according to the circumstances. N. B. – I have seen the time when it was appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it.

In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot), you warm the end of your plank in your friend’s fire vessel, and then raise it and ease it up gently against a sleeping chicken’s foot. If the subject of your attention is a true bird, he will return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two.

The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure, and fifty is not an uncommon price for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece. The best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles of interest about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night, worth ninety cents.

But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject? I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to their bosom[4 - have taken to their bosom – они пригрели] a member who is not a chicken by any means, but a man who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself. I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my good feeling by deeds as well as by this hastily written advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o’clock.

The Siamese Twins

I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning them. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well qualified for the task I have taken upon myself.

The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate indisposition, and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other’s society to that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, their mother was so accustomed to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them. She knew that when she found that one she would find his brother somewhere in the immediate neighborhood.

As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go away from each other. They have even occupied the same house, and it is believed that they have never failed to even sleep together on any night since they were born.[5 - …have never failed to even sleep together on any night since they were born – …ни ночи с самого рождения они не спали порознь.] The Twins always go to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before his brother. Chang does all the indoor work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to go out. However, Chang always goes along. Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his brother, Chang agreed to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on condition that it should not “count.” During the war they were strong partisans, and both fought – Eng on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive. The jury agreed to consider them both prisoners, and then exchange them.

Upon one occasion the brothers quarreled about something, and Chang knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him. Both began to beat each other without mercy. The bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do it, and so allowed them to fight it out. In the end both were carried to the hospital.

Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they grew up, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up. By and by Eng saw that Chang had won the girl’s affection; and, from that day, he had to live with the agony of being a witness to all their cooing. But with a supernatural generosity, he succumbed to his fate, and sat from seven every evening until two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness and kisses of the two lovers. But he sat patiently, and waited, and yawned for two o’clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers on moonlight evenings – sometimes walking ten miles, even though he was usually suffering from rheumatism. Eng cordially wanted them married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the important question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it while Eng was by. However, once, after having walked some sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep from exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the noble brother-in-law. His faithfulness was the theme of every conversation. He had stayed by them all through their long courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above their heads, and said, “Bless you, my children, I will never desert you!” and he kept his word. Fidelity like this is all too rare in this cold world.

By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law’s sister, and married her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day.

The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so close that the feelings and the emotions of the one are instantly experienced by the other. When one is sick, the other is sick; when one feels pain, the other feels it; when one is angry, the other’s temper takes fire.

At the same time, Chang belongs to the Good Templars,[6 - Good Templars – Орден добрых тамплиеров (занимается пропагандой здорового образа жизни, отказа от наркомании и алкоголизма, по нынешний день работает в нескольких европейских странах)] and is a hard-working, enthusiastic supporter of all temperance reforms, but every now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too. This has been a great sorrow to Chang. Eng always walks alongside of him in temperance processions, drunk as a lord, yet no more hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop. And so the two begin to yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good Templars; and, of course, they break up the procession. It would be wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the Good Templars accept the situation, and suffer in silence and sorrow.

There is a moral in these solemn warnings. Let us profit by it.

I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings, but let what I have written suffice.

Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that the ages of the Siamese Twins are fifty-one and fifty-three years.

How I Edited an Agricultural Paper (Once)