12 CHOICE BITS FROM MARK TWAIN.
Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor
Washington. It was this ancestor who fired
seventeen times at our Washington from behind a
tree. So far the beautiful romantic narrative in
the moral story-books is correct, but when that
narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth
round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that
that man was being reserved by the Great Spirit
for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift
his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narra¬
tive seriously impairs the integrity of history.
What he did say was—
"It ain't no (hie !) no use. 'At man's so drunk
he can't stan' still long enough for a man to hit
him. I (hie !) /can't 'ford to fool away any more
am'nition on him /"
That was why he stopped at the seventeenth
round, and it was a good, plain, matter-of-fac^
reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to
us by the eloquent persuasive flavour of probability
there is about it.
I always enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I
felt a marring misgiving that every Indian at
Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier a couple
of times {two easily grows to seventeen in a century),
and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the
Great Spirit was reserving that soldier for some
g'anl mission; and so I somehow feared that the
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