No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)
Mark Twain
Language: English
Pages: 214
ISBN: 0520270002
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
drowsiness, populated with unawakened minds. The main action of the novel takes place, by contrast, in a printshop-a potentially subversive center of enlightenment. The printshop is hidden within the labyrinthine expanses of a vast, mouldering castle with hundreds of empty rooms, suggestive of the unused capacities of the human brain. In writing of the printshop, Mark Twain was again recalling early experiences in Hannibal, where he had in his twelfth year been apprenticed to the printing trade.
creature! Then the disaster fell: the men gave it up and struck! The poor master, when he heard the news, staggered to his bed, worn out with worry and wounded pride and despair, to toss there in fever and delirium and gabble distressful incoherencies to his grieving nurses, Marget and Katrina. The men struck in the forenoon of Thursday, and sent the master word. Then they discussed and discussed-trying to frame their grounds. Finally the document was ready, and they sent it to the master. He was
allow them to be hurt, they being useful in the building up of the magician's reputation. Whether 44 was really their protector or not, no matter, they certainly had protection, for every time Father Adolf chained them to the stake they vanished and left the stake empty before the fire could be applied, and straightway they would be found at work in the shop and not in any way frightened or disturbed. After several failures Father Adolf gave it up in a rage, for he was becoming ridiculous and a
I have always felt more sorry for it than ashamed of it." He said it with the gratified look of a person who has uttered a graceful and flattering thing. By God, I think he expected thanks! He did not get them; I said not a word. That made a pause, and was a little awkward for him for the moment; then he went on"I have often visited this world-often. It shows that I felt an interest in this race; it is proof, proof absolute, that I felt an interest in it." He paused, then looked up with one of
soap-bubble statue with delicate rainbow-hues playing over it; watched its skeleton gather form and solidity; watched it put on flesh and clothes, and all that; but I skipped the interviews with the cat; I also skipped the interview with the master; and when the clock had gone back twenty-three hours and I was due to appear drunk in Marget's chamber, I took the pledge and stayed away. Then, for amusement and to note effects, 44 and I-invisibleappeared in China, where it was noonday. The sun was