“A Literary Nightmare” (1876)

Here’s another humor piece by Mark Twain. It has an intriguingly modern aspect in that it is essentially about earworms—decades ahead of radio. Our outraged helpless narrator (presumably Twain) has run across a little poem that now haunts him. He saw it in the newspaper. The poem is the first thing presented in this piece and, yes, I can see how it works. It has an irresistible rhythm once it has been impressed upon you a couple times, along with eccentric spellings based on dialect-like pronunciation, as if to burnish the stickiness. The poem is apparently intended as a mnemonic for train conductors: “Conductor, when you receive a fare / Punch in the presence of the passenjare! / A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, / A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare …” And it goes on. This piece later traveled under the title of “Punch, Brothers, Punch” for the line in the chorus, “Punch, brothers! punch with care!” If you are like Mark Twain or me your brain is now mentioning to you, perhaps repeatedly, “Punch in the presence of the passenjare!” Here we find, of course, the Mark Twain who chipped in to the development of Daffy Duck—exasperated, quick to fly off the handle, and something of a fool. If I’m in the right mood, this is a Mark Twain I love. Note the original title, the better title. Or: “I returned home, and suffered all the afternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner; suffered and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bed and rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up at midnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visible upon the whirling page except ‘Punch! punch in the presence of the passenjare.’ By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings.” Every time he shares his misery he makes it a little more your own. Between the prescience about the earworm problem and Twain’s general good form here—and the brevity, an asset in humor as well as horror—I’d call this one of his better humor pieces. For one thing, it’s actually pretty funny. See also “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences.”

Mark Twain, Humorous Stories & Sketches (Library of America)
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