Wealth & Money Quote by Mark Twain

Twain lands the punchline with the cool efficiency of a barroom joke and the moral heat of a political pamphlet. The setup invites a harmless riddle; the reveal turns it into an indictment. By pairing “taxidermist” with “tax collector,” he exploits the near-rhyme to smuggle in a savage claim: the state doesn’t just take money, it takes pieces of your life. The taxidermist is grotesque but honest about his trade. The tax collector is bureaucratic, respectable, and, in Twain’s framing, far more predatory.

The subtext is classic Twain: suspicion of sanctimony, impatience with official virtue, and a preference for blunt physical imagery over lofty argument. “Skin” is doing heavy work. It’s intimate, protective, the boundary between the self and the world. Saying the tax collector takes more than that suggests a kind of sanctioned flaying that reaches beyond the body into dignity, autonomy, and time. The joke makes an abstract grievance (rates, levies, enforcement) feel visceral.

Context matters because Twain wrote in an America where taxes weren’t merely a line item; they were flashpoints tied to war, industrial wealth, patronage, and the expanding reach of government. He also lived through repeated economic panics and a Gilded Age in which public institutions often looked like private rackets wearing official badges. The wit lets him accuse without sermonizing: laughter becomes a pressure valve and a weapon, inviting the audience to enjoy the joke while quietly consenting to its darker premise-that extraction is the default language of power.