The Comic Mark Twain Reader : The most humorous selections from his Stories, Sketches, Novels, Travel Books, and Speeches

For the first time, the best of the humorous pieces of the brilliant and beloved “wild humorist of the Pacific slope” are collected in one volume. Yams and tall tales, sketches and stories, lectures and speeches, and excerpts from the long works: The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi. From his hilarious account of enduring the Turkish Bath to his ascent of the Riffelberg in evening dress, from his observations on “so manifest a humbug as the ant” to his riotous analysis of The Awful German Language, at home or abroad, attacking presidents or pressmen, the comic Mr. Twain’s presence is much in evidence in these pages. True humorist, sardonic and pessimistic genius, “the printer’s apprentice from Hannibal... masculine, personal, sarcastic, tender, nostalgic — and very funny.” Charles Neider, well-known novelist, critic, biographer, editor, and anthologist, is America’s foremost Mark Twain scholar. “Great humor,” he writes in the introduction, “when blended with wonderful language, wisdom and humaneness, is an irresistable and priceless treasure.” In preparing this unique and timely collection of Mark Twain’s comic writings, Mr. Neider has compiled for us precisely such a treasure. Cover Inside Flaps Back Cover Title Contents Introduction, by Charles Neider STORIES ┣━ The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County ┣━ Journalism in Tennessee ┣━ The Facts in the Great Beef Contract ┣━ How I Edited an Agricultural Paper ┣━ Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup ┣━ The Invalid’s Story ┣━ The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm ┗━ Playing Courier SPEECHES ┣━ The Fourth of July ┣━ Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims ┗━ Woman, God Bless Her! from The Innocents Abroad (1869) ┣━ Glove Purchase in Gibraltar ┣━ Parisian Shave ┣━ Billfinger ┣━ Guide-English ┣━ Shortage of Soap ┣━ A Sort of People ┣━ A Skinning ┣━ An Ancient Playbill ┣━ Guying the Guides ┣━ Turkish Bath ┣━ That Girl in Yalta ┣━ “Jericho” ┣━ A Party of Eight ┣━ King Solomon-in-all-his-glory ┣━ A Fearless Man ┣━ The Benton House ┣━ The Great Pyramid of Cheops ┣━ Cookery Complaints ┗━ A Newspaper Valedictory from Roughing It (1872) ┣━ The Cayote ┣━ When the Buffalo Climbed a Tree ┣━ A Hundred and Ten Tin Whistles ┣━ A Genuine Mexican Plug ┣━ Mr. Arkansas ┣━ The Great Landslide Case ┣━ Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral ┣━ The Story of the Old Ram ┣━ Fetch Her Outl ┣━ Tom Quartz ┣━ “Blanketing” the Admiral ┣━ The Greeley Correspondence with Erickson ┣━ Markiss, King of Liars ┣━ A Practical Joke from A Tramp Abroad (1880) ┣━ Jim Baker’s Bluejay Yarn ┣━ The Great French Duel ┣━ Cholley Adams ┣━ The Laborious Ant ┣━ Nicodemus Dodge ┣━ An American Party ┣━ American in Europe ┣━ Ascending the Riffelberg ┗━ The Awful German Language from Life on the Mississippi (1883) ┣━ Keelboat Talk and Manners ┣━ An Incognito Exploded ┣━ The House Beautiful ┣━ Manufactures ┗━ The Art of Inhumation from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) ┣━ Pap, His Own Self ┗━ The Duke and the Dauphin SKETCHES AND TALES ┣━ Curing a Cold ┣━ Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man ┣━ The Facts in the Case of the Senate Doorkeeper ┣━ Female Suffrage ┣━ The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation ┣━ My Late Senatorial Secretaryship ┣━ Private Habits of Horace Greeley ┣━ Last Words of Great Men ┣━ A Mystery Cleared Up ┣━ The Late Benjamin Franklin ┣━ The Reception at the President’s ┣━ The Widow’s Protest ┣━ About Barbers ┣━ A Burlesque Biography ┣━ An Encounter with an Interviewer ┣━ The Frog Jumping of the County of Calaveras ┣━ Punch, Brothers, Punch ┣━ Remarkable Gold Mines ┣━ A Petition to the Queen of England ┣━ A Cure for the Blues ┣━ Traveling with a Reformer ┣━ Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses ┣━ My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It ┗━ Amended Obituaries Sources Index of Titles A collection of the humorous works of Mark Twain, including stories, tall tales, lectures, speeches, and excerpts from "The Innocents Abroad," "Life on the Mississippi," and other long works