akorn - Mighty Old Tales Retold

Mark Twain - Following the Equator - Chapter VII

Mark Twain
Following the Equator - Chapter VII
The Fiji Islands—Suva—The Ship from Duluth—Going Ashore—Midwinter in Fiji—Seeing the Governor—Why Fiji was Ceded to England—Old time Fijians—Convicts among the Fijians—A Case Where Marriage was a Failure—Immortality with Limitations

Mark Twain - Following the Equator - Chapter VI

Mark Twain
Following the Equator - Chapter VI
Missionaries Obstruct Business—The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka—The Planter's View—Civilizing the Kanaka—The Missionary's View—The Result—Repentant Kanakas—Wrinkles—The Death Rate in Queensland

Mark Twain - Following the Equator - Chapter V

Mark Twain
Following the Equator - Chapter V
A lesson in Pronunciation—Reverence for Robert Burns—The Southern Cross—Troublesome Constellations—Victoria for a Name—Islands on the Map—Alofa and Fortuna—Recruiting for the Queensland Plantations—Captain Warren's NoteBook—Recruiting not thoroughly Popular

Mark Twain - Following the Equator - Chapter IV

Mark Twain
Following the Equator - Chapter IV
Leaving Honolulu—Flying-fish—Approaching the Equator—Why the Ship Went Slow—The Front Yard of the Ship—Crossing the Equator—Horse Billiards or Shovel Board——The Waterbury Watch—Washing Decks—Ship Painters—The Great Meridian——The Loss of a Day—A Babe without a Birthday

Mark Twain - Following the Equator - Chapter III

Mark Twain
Following the Equator - Chapter III
Honolulu—Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands—King Liholiho and His Royal Equipment—The Tabu—The Population of the Island—A Kanaka Diver—Cholera at Honolulu—Honolulu; Past and Present—The Leper Colony

Mark Twain - Following the Equator - Chapter II

Mark Twain
Following the Equator - Chapter II
Change of Costume—Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories—Tests of Memory—A Brahmin Expert—General Grant's Memory—A Delicately Improper Tale

Mark Twain - Following The Equator - Chapter I

Mark Twain
Following The Equator - Chapter I
The Party—Across America to Vancouver—On Board the Warrimo—Steamer Chairs—The Captain—Going Home under a Cloud—A Gritty Purser—The Brightest Passenger—Remedy for Bad Habits—The Doctor and the Lumbago—A Moral Pauper—Limited Smoking—Remittance-men.

Mark Twain - Chapters From My Autobiography - Chapter XXV - THE END

Mark Twain
Chapters From My Autobiography - Chapter XXV - THE END
January 11, 1906. Answer to a letter received this morning:
Dear Mrs. H.,—I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that curious passage in my life. During the first year or two after it happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled, established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from my mind—and so all these twenty-eight or twenty-nine years I have lived in the conviction that my performance of that time was coarse, vulgar and destitute of humor. But your suggestion that you and your family found humor in it twenty-eight years ago moved me to look into the matter. So I commissioned a Boston typewriter to delve among the Boston papers of that bygone time and send me a copy of it.
It came this morning, and if there is any vulgarity about it I am not able to discover it. If it isn't innocently and ridiculously funny, I am no judge. I will see to it that you get a copy.
 

Mark Twain - Chapters From My Autobiography - Chapter XXIV

Mark Twain
Chapters From My Autobiography - Chapter XXIV
From Susy's Biography of Me [1885-6]
Mamma and papa have returned from Onteora and they have had a delightful visit. Mr. Frank Stockton was down in Virginia and could not reach Onteora in time, so they did not see him, and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge was ill and couldn't go to Onteora, but Mrs. General Custer was there, and mamma said that she was a very attractive, sweet appearing woman.

Mark Twain - Chapters From My Autobiography - Chapter XXIII

Mark Twain
Chapters From My Autobiography - Chapter XXIII
[Dictated March 9, 1906.] ... I am talking of a time sixty years ago, and upwards. I remember the names of some of those schoolmates, and, by fitful glimpses, even their faces rise dimly before me for a moment—only just long enough to be recognized; then they vanish. I catch glimpses of George Robards, the Latin pupil—slender, pale, studious, bending over his book and absorbed in it, his long straight black hair hanging down below his jaws like a pair of curtains on the sides of his face. I can see him give his head a toss and flirt one of the curtains back around his head—to get it out of his way, apparently; really to show off.