The Complete Works Of Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson

. A PERSON who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen and so I was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without first subjecting them to rigid exhausting revision and correction by a trained barrister if that is what they are called. These chapters are right now in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate eye of William Hi, who studied law part of a while in southwest Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to Florence for his health and is still helping for exercise and board in Macaroni Vermicellis home-feed shed which is up the back alley As you turn round the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just byond the house where that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into the mill when he let on to be watching them build Gioths carnpdle and yet always got tired Ioobg soon as Beatrice passed along on her way to get a chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a Ghibelline outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was then, too, and this is not httery, far from it. He was a little rusty in his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three Iong chapters are right and straight now. He told me so himself. Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the VilIa Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the hills-the same certainly dording the most charming view to be found on this planet, and with it the most dream- like and enchanting sunsets to be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and other grandees of this line lmldng approvingIy down upon me as they used to Iook down upon Dank, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will tell the truth or trump-but get the trick. -Puddnhend WiIsaas Calendar. The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawsons Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a days journey, per steamboat, below St. huis. In r830 it was a snug little mlIection of modest one and two-story frame dwellings whose white- washed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckIes, and moming-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch- me-nots, princes-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers whilc on the window-sills of the hciusa shad wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and term-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of inknseIy red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of thc rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame...