The Californian's Tale

by Mark Twain

Kindle Edition to Mark Twain's classic short story.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Ebooks, American, Travel, 19th Century

11 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1893

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweet story of love, loss, regret and the power of memories. Captivating and engaging.

[Liam James · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a story of beautiful longings and strugglings, of supplications and remorse. A story of “living dead men” through zealous imagery, Twain makes their desperation palpable. Even at the outset this can be felt when the narrator ponders on his famishing for the familiar tidings of art, then later, more intensely when he reveals his desire to see Henry’s wife indeed made him afraid. This is true desolation. Oh but what a painful, albeit obvious, revelation when not us but our naive narrator learns the truth about Henry and his wife. One can only imagine who hurts the most; Henry with his delusions, or the minors, with their yearly pretense.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for class,, the 'reaveal' ruins the entire flow the story had up until that point. it's like dancing gracefully through the air and then suddenly slamming your face into a wall

[Ricardo Lazo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. It has an amazing description of the setting, and the ending is a twist that no one expected. He did not use any kind of foreshadowing, therefore the ending came as a shocker to this action-lacking story.

[✨Hương✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice and touching. Although my teacher said there was a plot twist, I was able to predict Henry's situation. So I can say it's not a surprise for me at all, but rather something meaningful and beautiful in Twain's writing and his words.

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting short story that takes place toward the end of the California gold rush. A traveler sees a well-maintained house in the middle of nowhere which is unusual. Most of the houses he has passed have been abandoned and deteriorating. This jewel of a house attracts his attention and he needs a place to stay. The owner invites him to stay to meet his wife. She is due to come back soon. Meanwhile it is clear that she is the driving force keeping this house a warm and welcoming home.

The story is homey and nice. I enjoyed it. If I say anymore about it, I'd give too much away, but the ending is very good and that makes this story a classic.

I think I have read this story before. I was glad to read/listen to it again.

[Micarla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Achei o final muito impactante! Até um pouco pesado eu diria, mas gostei bastante da forma como a narrativa foi construída, a apresentação do lugar no começo, a descrição da casa tão arrumadinha e bem cuidada a intensidade da admiração do cara para com a esposa, o quanto ela era querida por todo aquele grupo e principalmente a atmosfera estranha sobre tudo isso.

Você lê e pensa "algo errado não está certo aqui" eu fiquei ansiosa pra descobrir o que seria, se eu acertaria, o que aconteceria a seguir e quando revela, vish... passei longe de acertar >.<

[Camie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My oh my! What are these sixth graders reading? Read along with my son. Another excellently done though horribly sad story. Surprised I didn’t know about this one before since I’ve read lots of Mark Twain. So now on sixth grade, we got two sad ones, now we need two happy ones.

[hale ✿ · Rating 2 out of 5]

i read this for english ii. let’s just say, i was not expecting that ending at all. i was expecting SOMETHING, just not that. the writing was beautiful and portrayed the story wonderfully, although, i wish the ending was longer and explained more of the situation, as opposed to the rush at the end.

[Randy Tramp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man invites a stranger and persuades him to wait until his woman came home.

I loved this story. It gripped me from the start and surprised me of the twist at the end.

[غِيد آل غَرَب · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad story

[Edney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiquei surpreso e confesso que li esperando algo contraditório devido as descrições da casa.

[Christina Geoghegan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeSh...

[Christina Geoghegan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeSh...

[Keira Fraser · Rating 4 out of 5]

…um I wasn’t expecting that 😅

[Bruce Cline · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a sweet story!

[Forked Radish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as amusing as I’d hoped.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

B

[Bookatrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Надзвичайно зворушлива історія.

[Pham Tung · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving story about the harsh realities of the California Gold Rush and the loss of innocence that it brought.

[Indie John Baptiste]

Clever tale that I read for English class.

[Ivana Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Californian's tales contains a variety of literary elements. Symbolism is representation of his wife that is present in the letter that Henry always takes out of his pocket.It shows how much he misses her dearly and his eagerness for her to come home. The narrator's point of view affects the story because he is not aware that Henry's wife will not come home. She went to visit her parents and never arrived home because the indians had taken her. The internal conflict is man vs.self because Henry has lost his mind due to the loss of his spouse and especially because his neighbors keep supporting Henry's dwell on the memory with the celebration on the belief that she will come home. The author accurately describes the physical appearance of Henry's cottage and shows the passion of love and memory he holds with her photographs and feminine touches in the furniture. Forshadowing makes us believe that his wife will eventually come, but yet confuses us with the twist ending that she has been dead for 19 years. Overall, I liked this story because it was interesting and the ending was unexpected.

[Nancy Luu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story is amazing by the way Mark Twain wrote it. He has great "show don't tell" he sets the images in our head of how the log cabin looked from outside and out. He describes how Henry's cabin was much different from the other miners because it had the touch of a woman on it. Henry shows the narrator a full tour of the house and each word in the story that was described, I could picture the house with everything nice and organize. The picture of his wife on the wall and she looked very young, Twain has a skill of putting imagery into the reader's head and makes the story more interesting. The ending of the story was also very surprising when the narrator finds out that Henry's wife was missing for over 19 years but he never seem to notice like if he had gone crazy. The ending caught me the most because of how surprising it is how his friends refuse to tell him the truth because he is old and it is not good for his health but they tricked and drugged him once a year for 19 years now. I enjoyed this story and I recommend it to everyone because of the author's great way of writing.

[Edward Madruga · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a very good book . I think that mark twains ability to portray an image in our head by using specific words to describe the house and the mood is excellent. The conflict in this story is the husbands imature desire to not want to accept his wifes passing and to get on with his life.this is a conflict of man v.s self.the husband does not want to go through the responsibilities of being a man and is using the alcohol as a decoy to take responsibility.the husband is caught inbetween being a man and child and when given the decision to take the step of becoming a man but does not take the step and uses the alcohol to remain a child in his heart.Also great because it reveals mankinds stubborness by how he would get sober. The alcohol can repersent the ignoring of something important like how a child will play or eat to forget heartache, and how ignorant we are by not wanting to move along and staying in the past. Also by when we lose something on a larger or smaller scale we are ignorant and do not want to accept reality.

[Cynthia]

I thought the Californian's Tale was a good short story because it was descriptive and it kept you thinking about the wife and if she was ever going to come back home. The beginning was kind of long and tedious, but it potrayed a good show-don't-tell kind of scene. It described the house of the man and we got a feel of how beautiful the house was compared to the rest of the town. The friends weren't real friends because they didn't tell the man the truth about his wife and instead kept him waiting on her and that is not correct.

[Mo Malik · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the story there is an abundance of literary elements, displayed through the conflict and symbol. The conflict in the story is man vs.man because Henry is subconsciuosly fighting himself in the struggle of facing the fact of what happened to his wife. Also, the detailed decorative features of the cottage symbolized the feminine touch a woman has on what they do. In the end, Henry must be drugged in order to be put to sleep otherwise he would throw a tantrum propelles by both anger and depression.

[Anthony Sementilli · Rating 4 out of 5]

PROS
-Clever: This is one of the smartest old stories I've read. I'm kinda jealous how I didn't come up with it first.
-Original Conflict: There really isn't a good guy/ bad guy/ or even gray guy dynamic, just a lot of interest. Or at least I thought so.
-Twist: The end alone is reason enough to watch it.

CONS
-Pacing: I remember the cart was a bit slow.

OVERALL
I don't really like things published before the 20th century, but this is a rare exception.

[Kaye · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is comprised of articles that Twain published for different newspapers over his journalistic careers. Many are laugh out loud funny, and some are just silly. He covers child rearing, earthquakes, fashion, and my personal favorite--cold remedies. He's at his best when he is at his most sarcastic.

[Mahad Abdi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I exceedingly reccomend this book. It is an almost perfect example of imagery. It gave me a vivid image in my head about the cabin. It is discriptive to a high extent. I can imagine the missing wifes house and how neat she kept it. And the extermely clean,white towels in the bathroom. When you have that image it makes the story more interesting.

[Michelle]

As I read this book I saw a lot of imagery because there was a lot of scenes in the story that were very descriptive. Theme of the story which is obviously on love was very like romantic and it was very sad how Henry couldn't forget his wife and also that he he didn't know that or didnt want to accept the fact that an ambush of Indians killed her.