A Treasury of Mark Twain [antikvár]

Introduction What is so great about Mark Twain? Here, from one of his several accounts of an earthquake in San Francisco: The Pastor of Starr King's church, the Rev. Mr Stebbins, came down out of his pulpit after the first shock and embraced a woman. It was an instance of great presence of mind. Some say the woman was his wife, but I regard the remark as envious and malicious. Upon occasions like this, people who are too much scared to seize upon an offered advantage are always ready to depreciate the superior judgment and sagacity of those who profited by the opportunity they lost themselves. Mark Twain wrote that in 1865.1 submit that it is still funny. From another of his stories about that earthquake: A young gentleman who lives in Sacramento Street rushed downstairs and appeared in public with no raiment on save a knit undershirt, which concealed his person about as much as its tin-foil cap conceals a champagne bottle. He struck an attitude such as a man assumes when he is looking up, expecting danger from above, and bends his arm and holds it aloft to ward off possible missiles - and standing thus he glared fiercely up at the fire-wall of a tall building opposite, from which a few bricks had fallen. Men shouted at him to go in the house, people seized him by the arm and tried to drag him away - even tender-hearted women (O, Woman! in our hours of ease uncertain, coy, and hard to please - when anything happens to go wrong with our harness, a ministering angel thou), women, I say, averted their faces, and nudging the paralyzed and impassible statue in the ribs with their elbows beseeched him to take their aprons - to take their shawls - to take their hoop-skirts - anything, anything, so that he would not stand there longer in such a plight and distract people's attention from the earthquake. But he wouldn't budge - he stood there in his naked majesty till the last tremor died away from the earth, and