The Stolen White Elephant

by Mark Twain

Book Overview

The King of Siam's decision to send the Queen of England a literal white elephant as a gift sets in motion a broad farce targeting the self-proclaimed brilliance of the corrupt and incompetent chief... 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.