Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories

Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories

Марк Твен

Легко читаем по-английски

Произведения Марка Твена по праву считают классикой американской литературы. Его рассказы известны своим тонким интеллектуальным юмором и оригинальностью образов. В эту книгу вошли его лучшие смешные рассказы. Книга содержит комментарии и словарь, облегчающие чтение. Предназначается для продолжающих изучать английский язык (уровень 4 – Upper-Intermediate).

Марк Твен / Mark Twain

Смешные рассказы / The Funny Stories

© Прокофьева О.

© ООО «Издательство АСТ»

How to Cure a Cold

It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction – their profit – their actual benefit. It is the only object of this article.

If it helps to restore the health of one sufferer among my race, to bring back to his dead heart again the quick, generous impulses of other days, I shall be rewarded for my work.

Having led a pure and blameless life, I believe that no man who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out of fear that I am trying to deceive him.

Let the public do itself the honor to read my experience in curing a cold and then follow in my footsteps.

When the White House was burned in Virginia, I lost my home, my happiness, my constitution and my trunk.

The loss of the two first named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without a mother or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, who remind you that there are those who think about you and care for you, is easily obtained.

And I did not care about the loss of my happiness. I was not a poet, and it could not be possible that melancholy would stay with me long.

But to lose a good constitution and a better trunk were serious misfortunes.

On the day of the fire, my constitution succumbed to a severe cold.

The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe my feet in hot water and go to bed.

I did so.

Shortly afterward, another friend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath. I did that also.

Within the hour, another friend told me that I had to “feed a cold and starve a fever.”

I had both.

I decided to fill myself up for the cold, and then let the fever starve a while.