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sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put
me in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know that
this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now? Listen.
Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are
still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human
activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even
inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district
messenger boys and so-on. In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was
often mistaken for fair weather. Upon one occasion I was traveling in
the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my
horse and myself. All the town came out to look. The tribes of Indians
gathered to look. A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary
compliment which pleased me greatly. Other attentions were paid me.
Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University
and offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic
Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my
duties. But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly kindness
of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me. I tried to
stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should object to so
manifest a compliment. The thing grew and grew and spread and spread
and became exceedingly embarrassing. The University stood it a couple of
years; but then for the sake of the college they felt obliged to call
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