Roy J. Friedman Mark Twain Collection (Library of Congress)

These acerbic, poignant, and thought-provoking essays concern mankind, its relationship with God, and how the mind works. Twain himself considered them dark and cynical, delaying their publication for many years before finally releasing them as an anonymous, limited-edition collection. The title essay constitutes a deeply felt blow against religious hypocrisy, written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a young idealist and an elderly, world-weary...

"A Mark Twain sketch may begin as an ordinary cartoon: a camel eating the author's coat. You can see the scene, and it's very funny: the camel "opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before in his life." But then comes the Twain touch. The camel finds some newspaper correspondence, starts to eat it, and "dies a death of indescribable agony, choking on one of the mildest...

Recounts the adventures of a young boy and an escaped slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft, and tells of the people they encounter, including a pair of swindlers and two families in a feud.