There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it
can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.
Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect,
he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals,
yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling
complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Page 16
when he let on to be watching them build Giotto's campanile
and yet always got tired looking as Beatrice passed along on her way
to get a chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a
Ghibelline outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand
where 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
Mark Twain.