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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

"Sketches New and Old"

Two Mans being together, they uttered noises at each other
like this: "Haw-haw-haw--dam good, dam good," together with other sounds
of more or less likeness to these, wherefore ye poets conceived that they
talked, but poets be always ready to catch at any frantic folly, God he
knows. Sometimes this creature goeth about with a long stick ye which it
putteth to its face and bloweth fire and smoke through ye same with a
sudden and most damnable bruit and noise that doth fright its prey to
death, and so seizeth it in its talons and walketh away to its habitat,
consumed with a most fierce and devilish joy.'
"Now was the description set forth by our ancestors wonderfully indorsed
and confirmed by the fossils before us, as shall be seen. The specimen
marked 'Captain Kidd' was examined in detail. Upon its head and part of
its face was a sort of fur like that upon the tail of a horse. With
great labor its loose skin was removed, whereupon its body was discovered
to be of a polished white texture, thoroughly petrified. The straw it
had eaten, so many ages gone by, was still in its body, undigested--and
even in its legs.
"Surrounding these fossils were objects that would mean nothing to the
ignorant, but to the eye of science they were a revelation.


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