A Burlesque Autobiography

"Two or three persons having at different timesintimated that if I would write an autobiography theywould read it, when they got leisure, yield at last to thisfrenzied public demand, and herewith tender my history:Ours is a noble old house, and stretches a long wayback into antiquity. The earliest ancestor the Twains haveany record of was a friend of the family by the name ofHiggins. This was in the eleventh century, when our peoplewere living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Whyit is that our long line has ever since borne the maternalname (except when one of them now and then took aplayful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead ofHiggins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt muchdesire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and weleave it alone. All the old families do that way."