A Mysterious Visit.

Otago Witness, Issue 1320, 17 March 1877, Page 21

A Mysterious Visit.

(by mark twain.)

The first notice that was taken of me when I " settled down," recently, was by a gentleman who said he was an assessor, and connected with the U. S. Internal Revenue. I said I had never heard of this branch of business before, but I was very glad to see him all the same ; would he sit dqwn ? He sat down. I did not know anything to say, and yet I felt that people who had arrived at the dignity of keeping house must be conversational, must be easy and sociable in company. So, in default of anything eke I had to say, I asked him if he was opening his shop in our neighbourhood. He said he was.

[I did not wish to appear ignorant, but I had hoped he would mention what he had for sale.] I ventured to ask him " how was trade V* and he said " So-so."

I then said we would drop in, and if we liked his house as well as any other, we would give him our custom. He said he thought we would like his house well enough to confine ourselves to it — said he never saw anybody' who would go off and hunt up another man in this line after trading with him once. That sounded pretty complacent, but, barring that natural expression of villany which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

I do not know how it came about exactly, but gradually we appeared to melt down and run together, conversationally speaking, and then everything went along as comfortable as clock-work.

We talked, and talked, and talked— at least I did. And we laughed, and laughed, and laughed — at least he did. But all the time I had my presence of mind about me — I had, by native shrewdness, turned on " head," as the engineers say. I was determined to find out all about his business, in spite of his obscure answers, and 1 was determined I would have it out of him without his suspecting what I was at. I meant to trap him with • deep, deep ru*e. I would tell him all

about my own business, and he would so warm to me during this seductive burst of confidence that he would forget himself and tell me all his affairs before he suspected what I was about. I thought to myself, "My son, you little know what an old fox you are dealing with." I said :

"Now you never would guess what I made lecturing this winter and last spring ?"

* ' No — don't believe I could to save men. Let me see — let me see. About two thousand dollars, maybe. But no— no, sir. I know you couldn't have made that much. Say seventeen hundred maybe." " Ha, ha ! I knew you couldn't. My lecturing receipts for last spring and this winter were fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. What do you think of that ?"

''Why it is amazing — perfectly amazing. I will make a note of it. And you say even this wasn't all ?"

"All? Why bless you, there was my income from the Buffalo Express far four months — about — well, what should you say to about eight thousand dollars, for instance ?"

"Say ! Why I should say I should like to see myself rolling in just such another ocean of affluence. Eight thousand! I'll make a note of it! Why man !— and on top of all this am I to understand that you had still more income ?"

"Ha, ha, ha! Why you're only in the suburbs of it so to speak. There's my book— 'The Innocents Abroad'— price 3.50 dols. to 5 dols., according to the binding. Listen to me. Look me in the eye. During the last four months and a half ending March 15, 1870, we've sold ninety-five thousand copies of that book ! Ninety-five thousand ! Think of it ! Average four dollars a copy, say. It's nearly four hundred thousand dollars, my son. I get half." " The suffering Moses ! I'll set that down. Fourteen — 3even — fifty — eight — two hundred. Total, say — well, upon my word, the grand total is about two hundred and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars. Is that possible ?" " Possible J If there's any mistake it's the other way. Two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars, cash, is my income for this year, if I know how to cipher." Then the gentleman got up to go. It came over me most uncomfortably that maybe I had made my revelations for nothing, besides being flattered into stretching them considerably by the stranger's astonished exclamations. But no ; at the last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope and said it contained his advertisement; and that I would find out all about his business in it ; and that he would be happy to have my custom — would in fact be proud to have the custom of a man of such prodigious income; and that he maed to think that there were several wealthy men in Buffalo, but when they came to trade with him he discovered that they barely had enough to live on ; and that in truth it had been such a weary age since he had Been a rich man, face to face, and talked with him, and touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing me. As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement. I studied it attentively for four minutes. I then called up to the cook and said :

"Hold me while I faint. Let Maria turn the batter-cakes."

By-and-by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum mill on the corner and hire an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and give me a lift occasionally in the day-time when I came to a hard place. Ah ! What a miscreant he was ! His "advertisement" was nothing in the world but a wicked tax return— a string of^ impertinent questions about my private affairs, occupying the best part of four foolscap pages of fine print—questions, I may remark, got up with such marvellous ingenuity that the oldest man in the world could not understand what the most of them were driving at — questions, too, that were calculated to make a man report about four times his actual income to keep him from swearing to a lie. I looked for a loop-hole, but there did not appear to be any. At the legal five per cent. I must pay over to the government the appalling sum of ten thousand six hundred and fifty dollars income tax.

[I may remark in this place that I did not do it.]

I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose table is regal, whose outlays are numerous, yet a man who has no income, as I have often noticed by the revenue returns, and to him I went for advice in my distress. He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto ! — I was as a pauper ! It was the neatest thing that ever was. He did it simply by deftly manipulating the bill of " Deductions."

"If it weren't for those eleven saving clauses under the head of * Deductions,' " he said, "I should be beggared every year to support this wicked, this extortionate and tyrannical government."

This gentleman stands away up among the very best of solid men of Buffalo— the men of moral weight, of commercial integrity, of unimpeachable social spotlessness—so I bowed to his example. I went down to the revenue office, and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up and swore lie after lie, fraud after fraud, villany after villany, till my immortal soul was coated inches and inches thick with perjury, and my selfrespect was gone for ever and ever.

But what of it ? It is nothing more than thousands of the highest, and richest, and proudest, and most respected, honoured, and courted men in America do every year. And so I don't care. I am not ashamed. I shall simply, for the present, talk little and wear fire proof gloves, lest I fall into certain habits irrevocably.