|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: known him to be a steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours,
a resident of Arkansas City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat,
a little Sunflower packet. He was an austere man, and had
the reputation of being singularly unworldly, for a river man.
Among other things, he said that Arkansas had been injured and kept
back by generations of exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes here.
One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing;
but when you come to look at the effects produced, in the way
of discouragement of immigration, and diminished values of property,
it was quite the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wise
to be coughed down or sneered at. These mosquitoes had been
|
