Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1908-06-15
MARK TWAIN's sToGIEs.
The Effect They Produced on the After
Dinner Festivities.


Dinner Festivities.
Ore night at the Hartford Monday
Evening club meeting George, our col
ored butler, came to me when the sup
per was nearly over, and l noticed that
he was pale. Normally his complexion
was a clear black and very handsome,
but now it had modified to old amber.
He said:
''Mr. Clemens, what are we going to
do? There is not a cigar in the house
but those old Wheeling long mines.
Can't nobody smoke them but you!
They kill at thirty yards 1t is too
late to telephone-we couldn't get any
cigars out from town-what can we
do? Amt it best to say nothing and
let on that we didn't think?"
NO" | said, that would not be
honest. Fetch out the long nines,"
which he did.
I had just come across those ''long
nines'' a few days or a week before.
| hadn't seen a long nine for years
When | was cub pilot on the Mis-
sissippi in the late fifties 1 had had
great affection for them, because they
were not only-to my mind-perfect,
but you could get a basketful of them
for a cent-or a dime. They didn't use
cents ont there in those days So when
[ saw them advertised in Hartford 1
sent for thousand at once. They
came out to me in badly battered and
disreputable looking old square paste
board boxes, 200 in a box. George
brought box. which was caved in on
| all sides looking the worst it could,
and began to pass them around. The
conversation had been brilliantly ami
| mated I'D to that moment, but now a
| frost fell upon the company-that is to
| say. not all of sudden, but the frost
| fell upon each man as he took up a
cigar and held it poised in the air-and
! there in the middle, his sentence broke
off. That kind Of thing went on all
! around the table until when George
| had completed his crime the whole
place was full of a thick solemnity and
silence.
Those men began to light the cigars.
Rev. DR.. Parker was the first man to
light. He took three or four heroic
whiffs, then gave it up. He got up
with the remark that he had to go to
the bedside of a sick parishioner. He
started out. Rev. DR.. Burton was the
next man. He took only one Whit
and followed Parker Ee furnished a
pretext, and you could see by the
sound of his voice that he didn't thinl.
much of the preteXt and was yeXed
with Parker for getting in ahead with
fictitious ailng client Rev Mr..
Twichell followed and said he had to
go now because be must take the mid
night train for Boston Boston was
the first place that occurred to him,
suppose.
1t was only quarter to II when
they began to distribute preteXts. Al
ten minutes to II all those people were
out of the house. When nobody was
left but George and me, l was cheer
full. l had no compunctions of con
science. no griefs of any kind. But
George was beyond speech because he
held the honor and credit Of the family
above his own, and he was ashamed
that this smirch had been put upon it
told him to go to bed and try to sleeI
1t off. | went to bed myself. At break
fast in the morning when George was
passing a cup of coffee l saw it trem
BILE in his hand. l knew by that sigr
that there was something on his mind
He brought the cup to me and asked
impressively:
"Mr. Clemens, how far is it from the
front door to the upper gate?'
/ said ut is a hundred and twenty
five steps"
He said, "Ir. Clemens. you can star
at the front door, and you can e
plumb to the upper gate and tread OF
one of them cigars every time
1t wasn't true in detail. but in essen
tails it was.-Mark Twain's Autobiog
raphy in North American Review.