Mark Twain IV (subtitled, "This is Where Twain was Wrong")

In his "unauthorized autobiography" which, as you by now know, is very dear to me, Twain complains of inexperienced writers who want to be published immediately, without paying the proper dues.

Not even the most confident untrained soldier offers himself as a candidate for a brigadier-generalship, yet this is what the amateur author does. With his untrained pen he puts together his crudities and offers them to all the magazines one after the other -- that is to say, he proposes them for posts restricted to literary generals who have earned their rank and place by years and even decades of hard and honest training in the lower grades of the service.

However, I respectfully poing out that Twain's next sentence is completely wrong.

I am sure that this affront is offered to no trade but ours.

Twain gives an imaginary example of a singer with no experience, wishing to sing second tenor in a Metropolitan production of Lohengrin.

[The manager asks the singer,] "Have you ever studied music?"

"A little -- yes, by myself, at odd times, for amusement."

"You have never gone into regular and laborious training, then, for the opera, under the masters of the art?"

"No."

"Then what made you think you could do second tenor in Lohengrin?"

"I thought I could. I wanted to try. I seemed to have a voice."

"Yes, you have a voice, and with five years of diligent training under competent masters you could be successful, perhaps, but I assure you you are not ready for second tenor yet. You have a voice; you have presence; you have a noble and childlike confidence; you have a courage that is stupendous and even superhuman. These are all essentials and they are in your favor but there are other essentials in this great trade which you still lack. If you can't afford the time and labor necessary to acquire them leave opera alone and try something which does not reqauire training and experience. Go away now and try for a job in surgery."

This is where Twain was wrong. This happens every single day at the Metropolitan. Not the last paragraph -- no one at the Met, or in New York City -- has the time to give that sort of advice.

Mark Twain Speaks III

Along outside of the front fence ran the country road, dusty in the Summertime, and a good place for snakes - they liked to lie in it and sun themselves; when they were rattlesnakes or puff adders we killed them; when they were black snakes or races, or belonged to the fabled "hoop" breed we fled, without shame; when they were "house snakes" or "garters" we carried them home and put them in Aunt Patsy's work basket for a surprise; for she was prejudiced against snakes, and always when she took the basket in her lap and they began to climb out of it, it disordered her mind. She never could seem to get used to them; her opportunities went for nothing. And she was always cold toward bats, too, and could not bear them; and yet I think a bat is as friendly a bird as there is. My mother was Aunt Patsy's sister and had the same wild superstitions. A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in the right spirit.

Mark Twain Speaks

Besides being America's first great author, Mark Twain was incontestably one of the greatest and funniest storytellers. In his lectures he honed and fine-tuned certain tales, into a form that often surpassed the earlier, written-down versions. Here is one such example, included by Twain's own request in his memoirs. It is probably one of the funniest paragraphs ever committed to paper.

Look at Mariar Whitaker -- there was a girl for you! Little? Why yes, she was little, but what of that? Look at the heart of her -- had a heart like a bullock -- just as good and sweet and lovely and generous as the day is long; if she had a thing and you wanted it, you could have it -- have it and welome; why Mariar Whitaker couldn't have a thing and another person need it and not get it -- get it and welcome. She had a glass eye, and she used to lend it to Flora Ann Baxter that hadn't any, to receive company with; well, she was pretty large, and it didn't fit; it was a number 7, and she was excavated for a 14, and so that eye wouldn't lay still; every time she winked it would turn over. It was a beautiful eye and set her off admirable, because it was a lovely pale blue on the front side -- the side you look out of -- and it was gilded on the back side; didn't match the other eye, which was one of them browny-yellery eyes and tranquil and quiet, you know, the way that kind of eyes are; but that warn't any matter -- they worked together all right and plenty picturesque. When Flora Ann winked, that blue and gilt eye would whirl over, and the other one stand still, and as soon as she begun to get excited that handmade eye would give a whirl and then go on a-whirlin' and a-whirlin' faster and faster, and a-flashing first blue and then yaller and then blue and then yaller, and when it got to whizzing and flashing like that, the oldest man in the world couldn't keep up with the expression on that side of her face.