The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

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range complaint to come from the mouths of people

hen very angry, swear.-Pu

s first thought was, "Oh, joy, it was all a dream!" Then he laid himself heavily down aga

to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. He began to think. Sufficiently

f birth was decreed for him? And why is this awful difference made between white and black? … How ha

that breakfast was nearly ready. "Tom" blushed scarlet to see this aristocratic

has done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for

down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before. The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral lands

n him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to a white rowdy and loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on equal terms. The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and uncharacteris

time; and once when Judge Driscoll said, "What's the matter with you? You look as meek as a nigger," he felt as secre

es and endearments were become a

in his heart; for he said to himself, "He is white; and I am his chattel

t his character had undergone a pretty radical cha

rom this, if opportunity offered-effects of a quite serious nature, too. Under the influence of a great mental and moral upheaval his character and habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while with the subsidence of the storm both began to settl

pressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule over, and he was better than nothing. Her strong character and aggressive and commanding ways compelled Tom's admiration in spite of the fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his comfort. However, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tattle about the privacies of th

emptation caught him again. He won a lot of money, but lost it, and with

hiding there with his mother until toward daylight Friday morning, when he went to his uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped up to his room, where he could have the use of the mirror and toilet articles. He had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing, with black gloves and veil. By dawn he wa

followed him? The thought made Tom cold. He gave up the raid for the day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he knew. His mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of the grand reception at Patsy Cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the opportunity was like a special providence, it was so inviting and p

ival of the twins on that same Friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of that morning-a girl in young