Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:The American Claimant
.pdf
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
live with him for centuries and never suspect the presence
in him of these characteristics.
Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of
a big one at the British embassy, with the militia and the fi re
brigades and the temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at fi rst proposed by one of the earls. The artfi rm and Barrow were present at the wedding, and the tinner
and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was ill and Puss was
nursing him – for they were engaged.
The Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies
for a brief visit, but when it was time to take the train from
Washington, the colonel was missing.
Hawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and
said he would explain the matter on the road.
The explanation was in a letter left by the colonel
in Hawkins’s hands. In it he promised to join Mrs. Sellers later,
in England, and then went on to say:
The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been
born to me within the hour, and I must not even stop to say
goodbye to my dear ones. A man’s highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be attended to with his
best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to his affections or his convenience. And fi rst of all a man’s duties is his
duty to his own honor – he must keep that spotless. Mine is
threatened. When I was feeling sure of my imminent future
solidity, I forwarded to the Czar of Russia – perhaps prematurely – an offer for the purchase of Siberia, naming a vast
sum. Since then an episode has warned me that the method by
which I was expecting to acquire this money – materialization
241
MARK TWAIN
upon a scale of limitless magnitude – is marred by a taint of
temporary uncertainty. His imperial majesty may accept my
offer at any moment. If this should occur now, I should fi nd
myself painfully embarrassed, in fact fi nancially inadequate.
I could not take Siberia. This would become known, and my
credit would suffer.
Recently my private hours have been dark indeed, but
the sun shines again now; I see my way; I shall be able to meet
my obligation, and without having to ask an extension of
the stipulated time, I think. This grand new idea of mine –
the sublimest I have ever conceived, will save me whole, I am
sure. I am leaving for San Francisco this moment, to test it, by
the help of the great Lick telescope. Like all of my more notable discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard, practical scientifi c laws; all other bases are unsound and hence untrustworthy. In brief, then, I have conceived the stupendous
idea of reorganizing the climates of the earth according to
the desire of the populations interested. That is to say, I will
furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable paper, taking
the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair discount,
where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and
let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to
afford a good climate and not caring for an expensive one for
mere display. My studies have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new varieties at will from
the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am convinced that it
has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now forgotten and unrecorded civilizations. Everywhere I fi nd hoary evidences of artifi cial manipulation of climates in bygone times.
242
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
Take the glacial period. Was that produced by accident? Not at
all; it was done for money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and
will some day reveal them.
I will confi de to you an outline of my idea. It is to utilize
the spots on the sun – get control of them, you understand,
and apply the stupendous energies which they wield to benefi cent purposes in the reorganizing of our climates. At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the evoking of
cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under
humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will
become a boon to man.
I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I hope and expect to acquire complete and perfect control of the sun-spots,
also details of the method whereby I shall employ the same
commercially; but I will not venture to go into particulars before the patents shall have been issued. I shall hope and expect to sell shop-rights to the minor countries at a reasonable
fi gure and supply a good business article of climate to the great
empires at special rates, together with fancy brands for coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions. There
are billions of money in this enterprise, no expensive plant is
required, and I shall begin to realize in a few days – in a few
weeks at furthest. I shall stand ready to pay cash for Siberia
the moment it is delivered, and thus save my honor and my
credit. I am confi dent of this.
I would like you to provide a proper outfi t and start north
as soon as I telegraph you, be it night or be it day. I wish you to
take up all the country stretching away from the north pole on
all sides for many degrees south, and buy Greenland and Ice-
243
MARK TWAIN
land at the best fi gure you can get now while they are cheap.
It is my intention to move one of the tropics up there and
transfer the frigid zone to the equator. I will have the entire
Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and
will use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above
what can be utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts. But I have said enough to give you
an idea of the prodigious nature of my scheme and the feasible and enormously profi table character of it. I shall join all
you happy people in England as soon as I shall have sold out
some of my principal climates and arranged with the Czar
about Siberia.
Meantime, watch for a sign from me. Eight days from now,
we shall be wide asunder; for I shall be on the border of the Pacifi c, and you far out on the Atlantic, approaching England.
That day, if I am alive and my sublime discovery is proved and
established, I will send you greeting, and my messenger shall
deliver it where you are, in the solitudes of the sea; for I will
waft a vast sun-spot across the disk like drifting smoke, and
you will know it for my love-sign, and will say “Mulberry Sellers throws us a kiss across the universe.”
APPENDIX
WEATHER FOR USE IN THIS BOOK
Selected from the Best Authorities
A brief though violent thunderstorm which had raged
over the city was passing away; but still, though the rain had
ceased more than an hour before, wild piles of dark and coppery clouds, in which a fi erce and rayless glow was laboring,
gigantically overhung the grotesque and huddled vista of dwarf
houses, while in the distance, sheeting high over the low, misty
confusion of gables and chimneys, spread a pall of dead, leprous
blue, suffused with blotches of dull, glistening yellow, and with
black plague-spots of vapor fl oating and faint lightnings crinkling on its surface. Thunder, still muttering in the close and
sultry air, kept the scared dwellers in the street within, behind
their closed shutters; and all deserted, cowed, dejected, squalid,
like poor, stupid, top-heavy things that had felt the wrath of
the summer tempest, stood the drenched structures on either
side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and picturesque, under the giant canopy. Rain dripped wretchedly in slow drops of
melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken
fl agging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains,
245
MARK TWAIN
where the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river.
“The Brazen Android.” – W. D. O’Connor.
The fi ery mid-March sun a moment hung
Above the bleak Judean wilderness;
Then darkness swept upon us, and ‘t was night.
“Easter-Eve at Kerak-Moab.”
– Clinton Scollard.
The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand.
Snow was again falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as
it were. “Felicia.” – Fanny N. D. Murfree.
Merciful heavens! The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a fi erce light, and next instant the earth reels and
quivers with the awful shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery. It is the signal for the Fury to spring – for a thousand
demons to scream and shriek – for innumerable serpents of
fi re to writhe and light up the blackness.
Now the rain falls – now the wind is let loose with a terrible shriek – now the lightning is so constant that the eyes
burn, and the thunder-claps merge into an awful roar, as
did the 800 cannon at Gettysburg. Crash! Crash! Crash!
It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth. Shriek! Shriek!
Shriek! It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting even the blades of grass. Shock! Shock! Shock! It is
the Fury fl inging his fi ery bolts into the bosom of the earth. –
“The Demon and the Fury.” – M. Quad.
Away up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide
liberties of endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains
246
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
beneath the shining azure heavens. The sky, looking down
in deep blue placidities, only here and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint. –
“In the People’s Country.” – Charles Egbert Craddock.
There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun
still shone brilliantly. The hot wind had become wild and rampant. It was whipping up the sandy coating of the plain in every
direction. High in the air were seen whirling spires and cones of
sand – a curious effect against the deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of
sand were breaking out of the plain in every direction, as though
the plain were alive with invisible horsemen. These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the larger clouds
that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds of sand
were becoming more and more the rule.
Alfred’s eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried
the roof of the boundary-rider’s hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the hut well. It could not be farther
than four miles, if as much as that, from this point of the track.
He also knew these dust-storms of old; Bindarra was notorious for them: Without thinking twice, Alfred put spurs to
his horse and headed for the hut. Before he had ridden half
the distance the detached clouds of sand banded together
in one dense whirlwind, and it was only owing to his horse’s
instinct that he did not ride wide of the hut altogether; for
during the last half-mile he never saw the hut, until its outline
loomed suddenly over his horse’s ears; and by then the sun
was invisible. – “A Bride from the Bush.”
It rained forty days and forty nights. – Genesis.
Литературно-художественное издание
Mark Twain
The American Claimant
Выпускающий редактор: И. Краснова
Редактор: П. Воронин
Корректор: И. Иванова
Компьютерная верстка: О. Стёпкина
Художественное оформление: М. Соколова
В оформлении обложки использованы материалы
по лицензии агентства © shutterstock.com
Проект осуществлён с помощью технологий
print on demand
16+
Знак информационной продукции согласно
Федеральному закону от 29.12.2010 г. № 436-ФЗ.
Подписано в печать 10.01.2018
Формат 60х90/16
Усл. печ. л. 15,50
Отпечатано: АО «Т8 Издательские Технологии»
109548, г. Москва, Волгоградский проспект, дом 42, корпус 5
www.t8print.ru; info@t8print.ru
Тел.: +7 (499) 322-38-30
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]