The $30,000 bequest and other stories . wain seems to have made something ofa stir about the year 1160. He was as full of fun ashe could be, and used to take his old sabre and sharpenit up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,and stick it through people as they went by, to seethem jump. He was a born humorist. But he gotto going too far with it; and the first time he wasfound stripping one of these parties, the authoritiesremoved one end of him, and put it up on a nice highplace on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate thepeople and have a good time. He never liked anysituation so m
The $30,000 bequest and other stories . wain seems to have made something ofa stir about the year 1160. He was as full of fun ashe could be, and used to take his old sabre and sharpenit up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,and stick it through people as they went by, to seethem jump. He was a born humorist. But he gotto going too far with it; and the first time he wasfound stripping one of these parties, the authoritiesremoved one end of him, and put it up on a nice highplace on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate thepeople and have a good time. He never liked anysituation so much or stuck to it so long. Then for the next two hundred years the familytree shows a succession of soldiers—noble, high-spirit-ed fellows, who alwayswent into battle sing-ing, right behind thearmy, and always wentout a-whooping, rightahead of it. This is a scathingrebuke to old deadFroissarts poor witti-cism that our familytree never had but onelimb to it, and thatthat one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruitwinter and A Burlesque Biography 199 Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain,called the Scholar. He wrote a beautiful, beauti-ful hand. And he could imitate anybodys hand soclosely that it was enough to make a person laugh hishead off to see it. He had infinite sport with histalent. But by-and-by he took a contract to breakstone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiledhis hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was inthe stone business, which, with inconsiderable inter-vals, was some forty-two years. In fact, he died inharness. During all those long years he gave suchsatisfaction that he never was through with one con-tract a week till the government gave him was a perfect pet. And he was always a favoritewith his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous mem-ber of their benevolent secret society, called the ChainGang. He always wore his hair short, had a pref-erence for striped clothes, and died lamented by thegovernment. H
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