LUCK by Mark Twain

this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public sphere luck by a Mark Twain note this is not a fancy sketch I got it from a clergyman who was an educator at Woolwich 40 times agone

and who witnessed for its verity inked mt it was at a feed in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously outstanding English service names of this generation for reasons which will presently appear I'll withhold his real name and titles and call him Lieutenant General Lord Arthur scones b vc k CB etc etc etc what a seductiveness there's in a famed name there sat the man in factual meat whom I had heard of so numerous thousands of times since that day thirty times before when his name shot suddenly to the meridian from a Crimean battleground to remain ever celebrated it was food and drink for me to look and look and look at that god scanning searching noting the quietness the reserve the noble graveness of his countenance the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness unconsciousness of the hundreds of esteeming eyes fastened upon him unconsciousness of the deep loving sincere deification welling out of the guts of those people and flowing toward him the clergyman at my left wing was an old familiarity of mine clergyman now but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field and as an educator in the military academy at Woolwich just at the moment I have been talking about a veiled and singular light glistered in his eyes and he leaned down and murmured intimately to me indicating the idol of the feed with a gesture intimately his glory is an accident just a product of inconceivable luck the verdict was a great surprise to me if its subject had been Napoleon or Socrates or Solomon my astonishment couldn't have been lesser some days latterly came the explanation of this strange comment and this is what the Reverend told me about 40 times ago I was an educator in the Military Academy at Woolwich I was present in one of the sections when youthful Scoresby passed his primary examination I was touched to the quick with pity for the rest of the class answered uprightly and freeheartedly while he why dear me he didn't know anything so to speak he was putatively good and sweet and sweet and artless and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand there as serene as a graven image and deliver himself of answers which were truly miraculous for asininity and ignorance all the compassion in me was aroused in his behalf I said to myself when he comes to be examined again he'll be slung over of course so it'll be simply a inoffensive act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can I took him away and set up that he knew a little of tyrannizer's history and as he did not know anything differently I went to work and drilled him like a galley slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar 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 army and got respects too while others who knew a thousand times further than he got plucked by some strangely lucky accident an accident not likely to be doubly by a century he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill it was duper fiying well all through his course I stood by him with commodity of the sentiment which a mama feels for a crippled child and he always saved himself just by phenomenon supposedly 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 monitor would be most likely to use and also launched him on his fate well sir try to conceive of the results to my consternation he took the first prize and with it he got a perfect acclamation in the way of respects sleep there was no further sleep for me for a week my heart tortured me day and night what I had done I had done purely through charity and only to ease the poor youths fall I noway had pictured of any similar preposterous result as the thing that had happed I felt as shamefaced and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein then was a rustic head whom I had put in the way of spangling elevations and fabulous liabilities and but one thing could be he and his liabilities would all go to ruin together at the first occasion the Crimean War had just broken out of course there had to be a war I said to myself we could not have peace and give this jackass a chance to die before he is set up out I awaited for the earthquake it came and it made me real when it did come he was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching troop more men grow old and argentine in the service before they climbed to a sublimity like that and who could ever have previsioned that they would go and put such a cargo of responsibility on similar green and shy shoulders I could just slightly have studied if they had made him a cornucopia but a captain think of it I allowed

my hair would turn white consider what I did I who so loved repose and in action I said to myself I am responsible to the country for this and I must go on with him and cover the country against him as far as I can so I took my poor little capital that I had saved up through times of work and grinding frugality and went with a shriek and bought a sludge at ocean in his troop and down we went to the field and there oh dear it was awful blunders why he noway did anything but boob

but you see nothing was in the fellows secret everybody had him concentrated wrong and inescapably misinterpreted his performance every time accordingly they took his idiotic blunders for alleviations of genius they did actually his mildest blunders were enough to make a man in his right mind cry and they did make me cry and rage and rave to intimately and the thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehension was the fact that every fresh boob

he made increased the luster of his character I kept saying to myself he'll get so high that when the discovery does eventually come it will be like the Sun falling out of the sky he went right along over from grade to grade over the dead bodies of his elders until at last in the hottest moment of the Battle of blank down went our colonel and my heart jumped into my mouth for Scoresby was coming in rank now for it said I'll each land in Sheol in ten twinkles sure the battle was awfully hot the Abettors were steadily giving way all over the field our troop enthralled a position that was vital a boob

now must be destruction at this critical moment what does this immortal fool do but detach the troop from its place and order a charge of a neighboring hill where there was not a suggestion of an adversary there you go I said to myself this is the end at last and a way we did go and were over the shoulder of the hill before the insane movement could be discovered and stopped and what did we find an entire and unacquainted Russian army in reserve and what happed were we eaten up that is inescapably what would have happed in 99 cases out of a hundred but no those Russians argued that no single troop would come browsing around there at similar a time it must be the entire English army and that the sly Russian game was detected and blocked so they turned tail and down they went pell mell over the hill and down into the field in wild confusion and we after them they themselves broke the solid Russian center in the field and tore through and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw and the defeat of the Abettors was turned into a broad and splendid palm martial can repeal looked on dizzy with astonishment admiration and delight and transferred right out for scones be and hugged him and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies and what was scorns B's boob

that time simply the mistaking his right hand for his left that was all an order had come to him to fall back and support our right and rather he fell forward and went over the hill to the left but the name he won that day as a marvelous military genius filled the world with his glory and that glory will noway fade while history books last he is just as good and sweet and sweet and unpretending as a man can be but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains he has been pursued day by day and time by time by a most phenomenal and astonishing luck he has been a shining dogface in all our Wars for half a generation he has littered his military life with blunders and yet has noway committed one that did not make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or commodity look at his bone why he's just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations well joe every one of them is a record of some crying asininity or other and taken together they're proof that the veritably stylish thing in all this world that can transpire a man is to be born lucky end of luck by Mark Twain