Mark Twain
08-21-06, 11:19 PM
Name: Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN," and give them to the "New Orleans Picayune." They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison...I burlesqued it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent of eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a "cub" at the time. I showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in the "New Orleans True Delta." It was a great pity; for it did nobody any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart. There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful. I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the first time pilloried in print...He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never again signed Mark Twain to anything. At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands—a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.
Age: Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Race: I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way. I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Gender: Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
Occupation: It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble.
History
A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it. Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: The conscientious historian will correct these defects. History can carry on no successful competition with news, in the matter of sharp interest. It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
History requires a world of time and bitter hard work when your "education" is no further advanced than the cat's; when you are merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up mess of empty names and random incidents and elusive dates; which no one teaches you how to interpret, and which, uninterpreted, pay you not a farthing's value for your waste of time. The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejuidice.
One of the most admirable things about history is, that almost as a rule we get as much information out of what it does not say as we get out of what it does say. And so, one may truly and axiomatically aver this, to-wit: that history consists of two equal parts; one of these halves is statements of fact, the other half is inference, drawn from the facts. To the experienced student of history there are no difficulties about this; to him the half which is unwritten is as clearly and surely visible, by the help of scientific inference, as if it flashed and flamed in letters of fire before his eyes. When the practised eye of the simple peasant sees the half of a frog projecting above the water, he unerringly infers the half of the frog which he does not see. To the expert student in our great science, history is a frog; half of it is submerged, but he knows it is there, and he knows the shape of it.
Weapon
I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had only one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our 'conductors' practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.
Special Powers
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
Age: Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Race: I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way. I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Gender: Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.
Occupation: It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble.
History
A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it. Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: The conscientious historian will correct these defects. History can carry on no successful competition with news, in the matter of sharp interest. It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
History requires a world of time and bitter hard work when your "education" is no further advanced than the cat's; when you are merely stuffing yourself with a mixed-up mess of empty names and random incidents and elusive dates; which no one teaches you how to interpret, and which, uninterpreted, pay you not a farthing's value for your waste of time. The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejuidice.
One of the most admirable things about history is, that almost as a rule we get as much information out of what it does not say as we get out of what it does say. And so, one may truly and axiomatically aver this, to-wit: that history consists of two equal parts; one of these halves is statements of fact, the other half is inference, drawn from the facts. To the experienced student of history there are no difficulties about this; to him the half which is unwritten is as clearly and surely visible, by the help of scientific inference, as if it flashed and flamed in letters of fire before his eyes. When the practised eye of the simple peasant sees the half of a frog projecting above the water, he unerringly infers the half of the frog which he does not see. To the expert student in our great science, history is a frog; half of it is submerged, but he knows it is there, and he knows the shape of it.
Weapon
I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had only one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our 'conductors' practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.
Special Powers
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.