He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as one who is thinking aloud— “I wish I owned half of that dog.” “Why?” somebody asked. “Because I would kill my half.”
to be fair, this is a bizarre thing to say. Am I missing some cultural context? Is this some sort of civil war commentary?
From Chris Sunami on literature stackexchange: "Obviously, this would kill the whole dog, so the whole thing is just a deliberately convoluted way of expressing that he wants to kill off the dog to shut it up. (Elaborate circumlocutions were popular comedic devices of the time.)
It's a faux-sophisticated young-person's joke, that probably would have left young men in the frat houses at Wilson's college convulsing with laughter, but it is badly misjudged for this stolid audience. It's Twain's way of establishing the distance in perspective between Wilson and the townspeople." https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/3461/what-does-puddnhead-wilsons-joke-about-half-a-dog-mean