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Mark Twain’s affection for cats is well-known, and no one would be surprised to hear he also liked dogs. Less well known, however, is his admiration for horses and their kin, donkeys and mules. Clearly fascinated with them, he wrote more about Equine animals than he did about either cats or dogs combined. This book offers a collection of Mark Twain’s funniest and most compelling writings about equine animals. Organized chronologically within categories such as “Uneasy Rider,” “Sorry Steeds,” and “Eccentric Equines,” the textual selections cover his early trips out west, his travels to Europe and Middle East, and his later years. The book also includes horse stories drawn purely from his imagination, including the short novella
A Horse’s Tale. Other equine vignettes are drawn from such Twain’s classics as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,”
Huckleberry Finn, and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
List of contents
CONTENTS Introduction Note on Texts PART I: Uneasy Rider 1. Saddle Up!
2. The Genuine Mexican Plug
3. The World’s Poorest Horseman?
4. A Ride Too Far
5. Diffidence about Horses
PART II: Happy Trails 6. The Hawaiian Love of Horses
7. A Ragged and Uncouth Procession
8. A New and Exhilarating Sensation
9. Downsized Donkeys
PART III: Horse Trading 10. Shrewd Hawaiians
11. A Reckless Little Mule
12. A Hard Lot in Lebanon
13. The Omnibuses of Egypt
14. The Man Who Put up at Gadsby’s
PART IV: Sorry Steeds 15. Putting the Cart Before the Horses
16. An Infernally Lazy Blood Relation
17. The Monotony of Mules
18. Horse Sense
19. A Magnificent Ruin!
20. An Old Gray Mare
PART V: Eccentric Equines 21. The Fifteen-minute Nag
22. Fitz Smythe’s Hungry Hoss
23. Appetites That Nothing Will Satisfy
24. You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but ...
25. The Shiest Horse in the World
26. Stylish Asses
27. Racing Mules
PART VI: Daredevil Riders 28. Bemis’s Buffalo Adventure
29. Pony Riders
30. A “Mule Thing” to Be Respected
31. The Mexican Plug Remembered
32. A Real Bully Circus
PART VII: Unhappy Horsey Happenstances 33. Lost in the Dark
34. The Horses Know the Way ...
35. A Well-bred Horse vs. an Underbred Rider
36. A Horse of the “Spanish Persuasion”
37. A Big Vicious Colt
38. The Worst Place to Ride a Donkey
39. Topsy-turvy Horses
PART VIII: War Horses 40. Saint Joan Learns to Ride
41. Bringing up the Rear
42. Horses and Armor Make a Bad Mix
43. “Slim Jim” vs. the Tower of Iron
44. Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
45. A Rough Rider on Wheels
PART IX: Closer to Home and Family 46. Milk Run
47. Clara’s Magic Calf
48. How Not to Ride a Donkey
49. Preventing Cruelty to Animals
50. The Most Precious Horses in the World
51. The Maude Squad
About the author
R. Kent Rasmussen is the holder of a UCLA doctorate in history and a retired reference-book editor. He has long been recognized as a leading world authority on Mark Twain, about whom he has published fourteen books. Those volumes include such now-standard reference works as
Mark Twain A toZ; its expanded revision,
Critical Companion to Mark Twain; and
The Quotable Mark Twain. Books that he has edited include four volumes of critical essays; several collections of Mark Twain’s own writings, including the Penguin Classics edition of
Autobiographical Writings,
Mark Twain for Dog Lovers, and
Mark Twain’s Tales of the Macabre & Mysterious—the latter two both Lyons Press publication. He lives in Thousand Oaks, California and is now working on his sixteenth Mark Twain book.
