“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”
Work
At the beginning of <i>Pudd'nhead Wilson</i> a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, <i>Pudd'nhead Wilson</i> possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, <i>Pudd'nhead Wilson</i> glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.
Quotes
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Mark Twain
Canonical work source
“When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.”
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
“I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way;”
“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so'.”
“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he wo...”