be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full
of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by, you only regret that
you didn't see him do it.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

JULY 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all
the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left
in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country
has grown so.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened
--opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. The
twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their
self-love was engaged. Their popularity, so general at first, had
suffered afterward; mainly because they had been TOO popular, and so a
natural reaction had followed. Besides, it had been diligently whispered
around that it was curious--indeed, VERY curious--that that wonderful
knife of theirs did not turn up--IF it was so valuable, or IF it had ever
existed. And with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks,
and such things have an effect. The twins considered that success in the
election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them
irreparable damage. Therefore they worked hard, but not harder than
Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against them in the closing days of the
canvass. Tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole
months now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to
persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe
in the private sitting room.

The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll, and he
made it against both of the foreigners. It was disastrously effective.
He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass
meeting to laugh and applaud. He scoffed at them as adventures,
mountebanks, sideshow riffraff, dime museum freaks; he assailed their
showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley
barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as
gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey. At last he
stopped and stood still. He waited until the place had become absolutely
silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it
with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis
upon the closing words: he said he believed that the reward offered for
the lost kn