"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer Abroad (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

man,-a lean pale feller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, you
know,-and they kept saying it wouldn't go. It made him hot to hear them,
and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was animals and
blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to face with one
of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations, and was too dull
to know it; and right here on this spot their own children and
grandchildren would build a monument to him that would outlast a thousand
years, but his name would outlast the monument. And then the crowd would
burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and ask him what was his name
before he was married, and what he would take to not do it, and what was
his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all the things that a crowd
says when they've got hold of a feller that they see they can plague.
Well, some things they said WAS funny,-yes, and mighty witty too, I ain't
denying that,-but all the same it warn't fair nor brave, all them people
pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp, and him without any gift of
talk to answer back with. But, good land! what did he want to sass back
for? You see, it couldn't do him no good, and it was just nuts for them.
They HAD him, you know. But that was his way. I reckon he couldn't help
it; he was made so, I judge. He was a good enough sort of cretur, and
hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which
wasn't his fault. We can't all be sound: we've got to be the way we're
made. As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so
they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way, which makes
everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. If
they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for
them.
The part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy,
and had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things
in, and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We went
aboard, and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining,
and old Nat Parsons was there, too. The professor kept fussing around
getting ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and
old Nat he was the last. Of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind
US. We mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves.
But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big
shout, and turned around-the city was dropping from under us like a shot!
It made me sick all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and couldn't
say a word, and Tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. The city went
on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be doing
nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got smaller
and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and closer, and
the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling around, and
the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of melted
together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big scar on the
earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and down the
river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so much. By and
by the earth was a ball-just a round ball, of a dull color, with shiny
stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was rivers. The Widder
Douglas always told me the earth was round like a ball, but I never took
any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers, and of course I paid no