y their aliases, that I have not felt
it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the
order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned Richard Brinsley
Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain, alias Sixteen-String
Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard; Ananias Twain, alias
Baron Munchausen; John George Twain, alias Captain Kydd; and then there
are George Francis Twain, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam's
Ass--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat
distinctly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral
branch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in
order to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for,
they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.

It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry
down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of
your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I
now do.

I was born without teeth--and there Richard III. had the advantage of
me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the
advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously
honest.

But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame
contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave
it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read
had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have
been a felicitous thing for the reading public. How does it strike you?

HOW TO TELL A STORY

The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference from Comic
and Witty Stories

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only
claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily
in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.

There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the
humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is
American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The
humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling;
the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER.

The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander
around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the
comic and witty stories must be brief and en