Pudd’nhead Wilson quotes

Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible.

A home without a cat⁠—and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat⁠—may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick sidewalks, stood locust-trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrance in spring when the clusters of buds came forth.

He was very proud of his old Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous.

To be a gentleman⁠—a gentleman without stain or blemish⁠—was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful.

He was respected, esteemed and beloved by all the community. He was well off, and was gradually adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children.

Within a week he had lost his first name; Pudd’nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it stayed.

That first day’s verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to get it set aside, or even modified.

The nickname soon ceased to carry any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.

Her face was shapely, intelligent and comely—even beautiful. She had an easy, independent carriage—when she was among her own caste—and a high and “sassy” way, withal; but of course she was meek and humble enough where white people were.

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro.

She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a Negro.

On his deathbed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the Judge and his wife. Those childless people were glad to get him.

Childless people are not difficult to please.

Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and bought Chambers.

their mental vision was not focused for it. They read those playful trifles in the solidest earnest, and decided without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson was a pudd’nhead—which there hadn’t—this revelation removed that doubt for good and all.

That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

After this the Judge felt tenderer than ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.

“Good morning, Mr. Higgins—present you to Count Angelo Capello.” Handshake, admiring stare, “Glad to see ye,”—courteous nod, smily “Most happy!” and Higgins passes on.

None of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they didn’t pretend to be.

None of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught them unprepared.

The Judge laid himself out hospitably to make them have a good time, and if there was a defect anywhere it was not his fault.

He told them a good many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before.

And he told them all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the Society of Freethinkers.

And he told them all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the Society of Freethinkers.

He said the society had been in existence four years, and already had two members, and was firmly established.

He would call for the brothers in the evening if they would like to attend a meeting of it.

“I’ve knelt to a nigger wench!” he muttered. “I thought I had struck the deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this. …

Well, there is one consolation, such as it is⁠—I’ve struck bottom this time; there’s nothing lower.

”

She could have proved nothing to anybody, and her threat about the writings was a lie; but she knew the person she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as to the effect they would produce.

She went and sat down on her candle-box, and the pride and pomp of her victorious attitude made it a throne.

She said—

This pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to lend them a batch of the work to read at home.

In the course of their wide travels they had found out that there are three sure ways of pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three.

There was an interruption, now. Young Tom Driscoll appeared, and joined the party. He pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the first time when they rose to shake hands;

for a village fire-company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does get a chance it makes the most of it.

Such citizens of that village as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against fire; they insured against the fire-company.

Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and determined Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence.

They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their friends.

The day’s fishing finished, they came floating down stream in their skiff, talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:

yes, and of a sort to break a body’s heart. It’s a bag of gold that has turned to dirt and ashes in my hands. It could save me, and save me so easily, and yet I’ve got to go to ruin.

It’s like drowning with a life-preserver in my reach.

All the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to other people—Pudd’nhead Wilson, for instance; even his career has got a sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, I should like to know?

“I suppose that will answer—yes, that will answer.

But I reckon she is pretty old, and old people don’t often outlive the cautious pace of the professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on his still-hunt.

”

“You are right, my boy; I would.

A man’s secret is still his own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that.

You did well, and I am proud of you.” Then he added mournfully, “But I wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the field of honor.”

I tole you you couldn’t go into no bad comp’ny. Well, you’s gwyne into my comp’ny, en I’s gwyne to fill de bill. Now, den, trot along, trot along!”

Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust, which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the hanging-eve history of a million rascals.

But when he got up in the morning, luck was against him again: A brother-thief had robbed him while he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.

“Ain’t you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won’t do for her chile? Day ain’t nothin’ a white mother won’t do for her chile. Who made ’em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made ’em.

In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good Lord he made ’em so.

I’s gwyne to be sole into slavery, en in a year you’s gwyne to buy yo’ ole mammy free ag’in. I’ll show you how. Dat’s de plan.”

The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis.

It rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding.

Toward midnight Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theatre in the heavy downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would have shut the door, he found that there was another person entering—doubtless another lodger;

I wouldn’t treat a dog so! I is all broke down en wore out, now, en so I reckon it ain’t in me to storm aroun’ no mo’, like I used to when I ’uz trompled on en ’bused. I don’t know—but maybe it’s so.

Leastways, I’s suffered so much dat mournin’ seem to come mo’ handy to me now den stormin’.

”

the things that create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old man’s mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom conceived a hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man around at once.

The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it.

”

“That is quite simple; that is easily explicable. I am not his doll—his baby—his infatuation: his nephew is. The Judge and his late wife never had any children. The Judge and his wife were past middle age when this treasure fell into their lap.

One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years.

It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can’t tell mudcat from shad.

It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can’t tell mudcat from shad.

A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.

Tom is this old man’s angel; he is infatuated with him. Tom can persuade him into things which other people can’t—not all things; I don’t mean that, but a good many—particularly one class of things:

Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that.

The stillness gives warning that something is coming.

All palms and finger-balls went down, now, all slouching forms straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon Wilson’s face. He waited yet one, two, three moments, to let his pause complete and perfect its spell upon the house;