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familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more
disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came
quick and sharp. She said:
You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed
of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend
what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see
if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a
public canvass with them.
It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night.
But, after all, I could not recede.
I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was looking
listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph,
and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.
PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a
candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to
be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin
China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor
native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch,
their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation.
Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose
suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?
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