Mark Twain 55 min read

The Yankee upstages Merlin at the miracle business, restoring a holy fountain by distinctly modern means.

In this installment of Twain's 1889 classic, Hank Morgan out-conjures the court wizard by 'restoring' a dry well with engineering dressed as enchantment, one of the novel's great set-pieces of science-as-magic. Read it for the showman's delight of a Yankee running rings around the Dark Ages.

In its time

Published in 1889, during the 1880s, lost races and dying earths.

Reading it

55 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).