"The Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant territory--a gentleman who had kept the principal 'saloon' and sold the best whiskey in the principal village in his wilderness, and so, of course, was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its fittest representative. He was a man of paramount influence at home, for he was public spirited, he was chief of the fire department, he had an admirable command of profane language, and had killed several 'parties.' His shirt fronts were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a pound; the gold in his finger ring was worth forty five collars; he wore a diamond cluster-pin and he parted his hair behind. He had always been regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory, and it was conceded by all that no man thereabouts was anywhere near his equal in the telling of an obscene story except the venerable white-haired governor himself. The Hon. Higgins had no come to serve his country in Washington for nothing." (241-2)
Twain, Mark. The Gilded Age. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2002 [1873].
STOP it, Twain. You are so good.
Twain, Mark. The Gilded Age. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2002 [1873].
STOP it, Twain. You are so good.