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96 Tom Sawyer Abroad
Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him; and says:
"Good-bye — a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry."
And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander around poor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the Desert.
Jim said he'd bet it was a lesson to him.
"Yes," Tom says, "and like a considerable many lessons a body gets. They ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way again — and can't. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. What kind of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn't climb chimblies no more, and he hadn't no more backs to break."
"All de same, Mars Tom, dey is sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence. De Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire."
" Well, I ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can happen twice just the same way. There's lots of such things, and they educate a person, that's what Uncle Abner always said; but there's forty million lots of the other kind — the kind that don't happen the same way twice — and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than the small-pox. When you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought to been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward, because the small-pox don't come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner |
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