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    7 best short stories - Humor
    7 best short stories - Humor
    7 best short stories - Humor
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    7 best short stories - Humor

    By Saki (H.H. Munro), Anton Chekhov, Stephen Leacock and

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    About this ebook

    The ability to produce humor and laughter is one of the things that makes us human. Humor implies a complex knowledge of the world and the ability to interpret reality in multiple layers. That said, it is not surprising that many authors have chosen humorous fiction to convey their message.
    The critic August Nemo selected seven short stories that use humor to reach and entertain the reader:

    - A Burlesque Autobiography by Mark Twain
    - Luck by Mark Twain
    - The Death of a Government Clerk by Anton Chekhov
    - The Mouse by Saki
    - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
    - Soaked in Seaweed: or Upset in the Ocean by Stephen Leacock
    - My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock
    For more books with interesting themes, be sure to check the other books in this collection!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTacet Books
    Release dateMay 12, 2020
    ISBN9783967994131
    7 best short stories - Humor

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      7 best short stories - Humor - Saki (H.H. Munro)

      Publisher

      Luck

      by Mark Twain

      ––––––––

      [Note: This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth.—M.T.]

      It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name and titles, and call him Lieutenant General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C., K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name! There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatnessunconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.

      The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mineclergyman now, but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to meindicating the hero of the banquet with a gesture:

      Privatelyhe's an absolute fool.

      This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverend was a man of strict veracity, and that his judgement of men was good. Therefore I knew, beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this hero: he was a fool. So I meant to find out, at a convenient moment, how the Reverend, all solitary and alone, had discovered the secret.

      Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told me.

      About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while hewhy, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can. I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Csar's history; and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like a galley slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Csar which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went through on that purely superficial cram, and got compliments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accidentan accident not likely to happen twice in a centuryhe was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.

      It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I stood by him, with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled child; and he always saved himselfjust by miracle, apparently.

      Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the line of questions which the examiners would be most likely to use, and then launching him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a perfect ovation in the way of compliments.

      Sleep? There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fallI never had dreamed of any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a woodenhead whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.

      The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captainthink of it! I thought my hair would turn white.

      Consider what I didI who so loved repose and inaction. I said to myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his regiment, and away we went to the field.

      And thereoh dear, it was awful. Blunders? Why, he never did anything but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secreteverybody had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every timeconsequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius; they did, honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cryand rage and rave too, privately. And the thing that kept

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