Project Gutenberg's The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories, by Mark Twain

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Title: The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

Author: Mark Twain

Release Date: June, 1994 [Etext #142]
Posting Date: May 12, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK $30,000 BEQUEST AND OTHERS ***

Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer

THE $30,000 BEQUEST

and Other Stories

by Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)

Contents: The $30,000 Bequest
A Dog's Tale
Was It Heaven? Or Hell?
A Cure for the Blues
The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant
The Californian's Tale
A Helpless Situation
A Telephonic Conversation
Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale
The Five Boons of Life
The First Writing-machines
Italian without a Master
Italian with Grammar
A Burlesque Biography
How to Tell a Story
General Washington's Negro Body-servant
Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds"
An Entertaining Article
A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
Amended Obituaries
A Monument to Adam
A Humane Word from Satan
Introduction to "The New Guide of the
Conversation in Portuguese and English"
Advice to Little Girls
Post-mortem Poetry
The Danger of Lying in Bed
Portrait of King William III
Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
Extracts from Adam's Diary
Eve's Diary

THE $30,000 BEQUEST

CHAPTER I

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants,
and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church
accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far
West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the
Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was
unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and
his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere.

Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only
high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five
years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had
begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had
climbed steadily up