The Prince and the Pauper

On one autumn day in London two boys are born: one to a family that does not want him, one to a family, and a country, that has spent years praying for him. Years later they meet by chance, change clothes for a joke, look into a glass and cannot tell which is which, and then the palace guards throw the real prince out into the street. What follows is Twain's best trick. The boy who will be King of England is walked through his own kingdom and shown, one item at a time, what his laws actually do: the red-hot branding iron, a man sentenced to be boiled alive, a half-witted woman to be hanged for a yard of cloth from a weaver, two women burning at the stake while their daughters scream. The jokes never stop and neither does the fury underneath them. Twain inscribed the book to his own daughters, which tells you he thought children could stand it, and he was right.