The Stolen White Elephant

By Mark Twain

Book Overview

You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by the people of that country. You know it is sacred to kings, only kings may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0958784523
• ISBN13: 9780958784528
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Pgw
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Murder

Mark Twain gave advice to a young man who wanted to be a writer: "When you catch an adjective, ill it. No, I don't mean that utterly, but kill the most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together, they give strength whenthe are wide apart. An adjective-habit, or a wordy, diffuse, or flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

Mark Twain at his best

"The Stolen White Elephant" is a broad farce mocking the self-proclaimed omniscience of many fictional detectives, told entirely in the form of a series of ridiculous telegraphs. Revolving around the theft of a literal white elephant, the gift of the King of Siam, this manifestly absurd story is nevertheless modeled after the real life efforts of a blundering New York Police Department to recover the corpse of one Alexander T. Stewart, stolen from his family vault in 1878.