consequences. Doubtless he chose to dabble in falsehood because it is
generally winked at as the most venial of all moral obliquities--a fault
which is the most thoroughly universal of all that flesh is heir to.
The incident of George Washington and the cherry tree furnished the
basis for countless of his anecdotes; he wrung from it variations
innumerable, from the epigram to the anecdote. His distinction between
George Washington and himself, redounding immeasurably to his own glory,
and demonstrating his complete superiority to Washington as a moral
character, is classic: "George Washington couldn't tell a lie. I can;
but I won't." Perhaps his most humorous anecdote, based upon the same
story, is in connection with the exceedingly old "darky" he once met in
the South, who claimed to have crossed the Delaware with Washington.
"Were you with Washington," asked Mark Twain mischievously, "when he
took that hack at the cherry tree?" This was a poser for the old
darkey; his pride was appealed to, his very character was at stake.
After an awkward hesitation, the old darkey spoke up, a gleam of
simulated recollection (and real gratification for his convenient
memory) overspreading his countenance: "Lord, boss, I was dar. In
cose I was. I was with Marse George at dat very time. In fac--I done
druv dat hack myself"!

Mark Twain's most delightful trick as a popular humorist was to strike
out some comic epigram, that passed currency with the masses whose fancy
it tickled, and also had upon it the minted stamp of the classic
aphorism. These epigrams were frequently pseudo-moral in their nature;
and their humour usually lay in the assumption that everybody is
habitually addicted to prevarication--which is just precisely true
enough and reprehensible enough to validate the epigram. His method was
humorous inversion; and he told a story whose morals are so ludicrously
twisted that the right moral, by contrast, spontaneously springs to