Mark Twain's Practical Joke.

Otago Witness, Issue 2647, 7 December 1904, Page 78

Mark Twain's Practical Joke.

Mark Twain, at a banquet recently, told the following story of one of his apprenticeship pranks : — "About a thousand years ago, approximately, 1 was apprenticed as a printer's devil to learn the trade, in common with three other boys of about my own age. There came to the village a long-legged individual of about 19 from one of the interior counties — fish-eyed, no expression, and without rlie suggestion of a smiie — couldn't have smiled for a. salary. We took him for a fool, and thought we would scare him to death. "We went to the village druggist and borrowed a skeleton. The skeleton did not belong to the druggist, but he had imported it for the village - doctor. The price of the skeleton was nftv_flslla«- — r^f~ - = =2rf5 = ffctz~ilr~aDOut 9 o'clock at night, and we got this man — Nicodemus Dodge, was his name — to go down out of the way, and then wa put it in his bed. He lived in a little one-storeyed log-cabin in the middle of a vacant lot. We left him to get homo by himself. We enjoyed the result in the light of anticipation, but by-and-bye we began to drop into silence. "The possible consequences were preying upon us.^ 'Suppose that it frightens him into madness, overturns his reason, and sends him screeching through the streets? We shall spend sleepless nights the rest of our days.' Everybody was afraid. By-and-bye -it was forced to the lips of - one of us that we had better gc at once and see what had happened. Loaded down with crime, we approached the hut and peeped through the window. That longlegged critter was sitting on the bed with a hunk of gingerbread in his hand, and between .the bites he played a tune on a jew-s-harp. There he sat, perfectly happy,, and all around him were toys and gimcracks and striped candy. He had gone and sold that skeleton for five dollars !"