the middle, and said,

"_Accommodation_ to me? It is the most extraordinary spirit of
accommodation I have ever heard of--the idea of your selling a dog that
didn't belong to you--"

I broke him off there, and said,

"There is no relevancy about this kind of argument; you said yourself
that the dog was probably worth a hundred dollars, I only asked you
three; was there anything unfair about that? You offered to pay more,
you know you did. I only asked you three; you can't deny it."

"Oh, what in the world has that to do with it! The crux of the matter is
that you didn't own the dog--can't you see that? You seem to think that
there is no impropriety in selling property that isn't yours provided
you sell it cheap. Now, then--"

I said,

"Please don't argue about it any more. You can't get around the fact
that the price was perfectly fair, perfectly reasonable--considering
that I didn't own the dog--and so arguing about it is only a waste of
words. I have to have him back again because the man wants him; don't
you see that I haven't any choice in the matter? Put yourself in my
place. Suppose you had sold a dog that didn't belong to you; suppose
you--"

"Oh," he said, "don't muddle my brains any more with your idiotic
reasonings! Take him along, and give me a rest."

So I paid back the three dollars and led the dog down-stairs and passed
him over to his owner, and collected three for my trouble.

I went away then with a good conscience, because I had acted honorably;
I never could have used the three that I sold the dog for, because it
was not rightly my own, but the three I got for restoring him to his
rightful owner was righteously and properly mine, because I had earned
it. That man might never have gotten that dog back at all, if it hadn't
been for me. My principles have remained to this day what they were
then. I was always honest; I know I can never be otherwise. It is as I
said in the beginning--I was never able to persuade myself to use money
which I had acquired in questionable ways.

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

MARK TWAIN.

End of Project Gutenberg's Chapters from My Autobiography, by Mark Twain

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