ABSTRACT
How some things rocket to an incredible size even though their growth may be hard to observe in its initial steps.
The rich canon of humorous prose by Mark Twain includes a satire of the “magnanimous-incident” anecdotes of the Victorian age, in which the author claims to have investigated the true sequel of several such stories. A stray poodle with a broken leg that, after having been healed by a benevolent physician, shows up gratefully the next day in the company of another stray dog requiring acute limb treatment, is the seed of a logical chain of events in which the number of dogs waiting in front of the physicians door doubles every day to become four, eight, etc., inspiring new sentiments in the physician’s mind:
This day also passed, and another morning came; and now sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and the people were going around. By noon the broken legs were all set, but the pious wonder in the good physician’s breast was beginning to get mixed with involuntary profanity. The sun rose once more, and exhibited thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the room. The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but traffic was interrupted in that street. The good physician hired a couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required. But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned, and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs ....... 1
....he realized that the thing had gone along far enough, set out to resolve
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it with a shotgun, got bitten by the original poodle, and passed away in the horrendous convulsions of hydrophobia.
