The Stolen White Elephant

First edition

"The Stolen White Elephant" is a short story written by Mark Twain and published in 1882 by James R. Osgood. In this detective mystery, a Siamese white elephant, en route from Siam to Britain as a gift to the Queen, disappears in New Jersey. The local police department goes into high gear to solve the mystery but it all comes to a tragic end.

The main characters of the story include:

Mark Twain, who functions as the initial speaker and author of the story.
An elderly gentleman, an Englishman in the British civil service in India, who told the story to Twain during a train ride and is in charge of transporting the white elephant.
Chief Inspector Blunt, a detective who is in charge of finding the lost elephant; he first receives the report of the elephant’s disappearance.
“Hassan Ben Ali Ben Selim Abdallah Mohammed Moist Alhammal Jamsetjejeebhoy Dhuleep Sultan Ebu Bhudpoor” or “Jumbo”, the white elephant
Alaric, a young worker at the detectives’ office.
Captain Burns, another employee of the detectives’ office; he is in charge of carrying out Inspector Blunt’s orders.
The Queen of England plays a non-speaking role.
The King of Siam plays a non-speaking role.

Also, a number of other detectives, servants and civilians play minor roles in the story.

It is just one of the stories in the first edition shown at right. The others are the same as were included in the earlier publication Punch Brothers Punch in 1878, with the omission of "Legend of Sagenfeld, In Germany", "Rogers", and "Speech on the Weather". And the addition of the titular story, "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime", "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning", and "A Curious Experience".

Contents include: "The Stolen White Elephant", "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion", "The Facts concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime", "About Magnanimous-Incident Literature", Punch Brothers Punch, "A Curious Experience", "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn", "Mrs McWilliams and the Lightning", "On the Decay of the Art of Lying", "The Canvassers Tale", "An Encounter with an Interviewer", "Paris Notes", "Speech on the Babies", "Concerning the American Language", "The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton".

External links

'The Stolen White Elephant' text on Project Gutenberg
The Stolen White Elephant public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Mark Twain

Bibliography

Novels	The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Prince and the Pauper Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court The American Claimant Tom Sawyer Abroad Pudd'nhead Wilson Tom Sawyer, Detective Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc A Double Barrelled Detective Story A Horse's Tale The Mysterious Stranger Hellfire Hotchkiss

Short stories	"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" "Cannibalism in the Cars" "General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" "My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" "Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" "A Literary Nightmare" "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" "The Invalid's Story" "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn" "1601" "The Stolen White Elephant" "Luck" "The Million Pound Bank Note" "Those Extraordinary Twins" "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" "A Dog's Tale" "Extracts from Adam's Diary" "The War Prayer" "Eve's Diary" "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" "My Platonic Sweetheart" "The Private Life of Adam and Eve" "Advice to Little Girls"

Short story collections	Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance Sketches New and Old A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches Mark Twain's Library of Humor Merry Tales The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches The Washoe Giant in San Francisco

Plays	Is He Dead? Colonel Sellers Colonel Sellers as a Scientist

Essays	"The Awful German Language" "Advice to Youth" "English As She Is Taught" How to Tell a Story and Other Essays "Concerning the Jews" "A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth" "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" "To My Missionary Critics" "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany" "What Is Man?" "Queen Victoria's Jubilee" "The United States of Lyncherdom" "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" Letters from the Earth

Non-fiction	Territorial Enterprise letters Letters from Hawaii The Innocents Abroad Roughing It Old Times on the Mississippi A Tramp Abroad Life on the Mississippi Following the Equator Is Shakespeare Dead? Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain's Notebook King Leopold's Soliloquy The Private History of a Campaign That Failed Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire The Bible According to Mark Twain Christian Science

Speeches	"Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" Votes for Women

Places, events, and legacy	Conception Birthplace Historic Site State Park Boyhood Home and Museum Mark Twain Cave Mark Twain in Nevada Territorial Enterprise Sagebrush School Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut Stormfield Publisher, Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs Twain–Ament indemnities controversy Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Mark Twain Tonight! Mark Twain: The Musical In popular culture

Family	Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife) Susy Clemens (daughter) Clara Clemens (daughter) Jean Clemens (daughter) John M. Clemens (father) Orion Clemens (brother)

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