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Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain
page 63 of 344 (18%)

"Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Bang him!"
"Dhround him!"

It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash
in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--a
single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them
in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me.
They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave
me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like
a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to
injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.

About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest
caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get
loose. I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the
foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several
inches above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round and
round in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--each
round trip a half-mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four
times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.

At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe
in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the
other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind.
Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he
said:

"Got a match?"

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