ere they sell
the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was
then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty
on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal
chapters are right and straight, now. He told me so himself.

Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa
Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the
hills--the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found
on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to
be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in
the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and
other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me, as they
used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my
family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but
spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it
will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.

Mark Twain.

CHAPTER 1

Pudd'nhead Wins His Name

Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the
Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat,
below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame
dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight
by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories.
Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white
palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots,
prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the
windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants
and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of
intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad
house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge
outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny
weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry
belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. 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 p