Sketches new and old complete by Mark Twain - The Original Classic Edition Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition. It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, after many years, back in print. This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you. Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside: He said he would rather have died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a thunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen lightning-rods-"Let us have peace!" . . . H"m, Reverend Le-well, there was a feller here, once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of "49-or maybe it was the spring of "50-I don"t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn"t finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn"t he"d change sides. . . .