“If any man has just merciful and kindly instincts he would be a gentleman, for he would need nothing else in the world.”
-Mark Twain, Layman’s Sermon
A gentleman gives to the world more than he takes, and thinks nothing of it.
“People commonly use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post; for support rather than illumination.”
– Mark Twain (attributed)
95% of those polled think I’m a genius. And statistics never lie.
“There isn’t a Parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.”
-Mark Twain, Following the Equator
The center of the world, that’s what the equator thinks of itself. A balmy middle of equal days and nights, one after the other, on and on, breezing along in the warm sun.
But stand at any point on earth – say, for instance, the 60th parallel – where polar bears lumber and long winter nights reveal shimmering curtains of light from the rarefied, electrically-charged atmosphere known as Aurora Borealis.
What, then, is so special of the equator? All points are at once center and edge. Head out long enough in one direction and you’ll soon be back right where you started. Every place is its own equator.
Mark Twain takes a break:
I don’t think Mark Twain ever visited the 60th parallel, but, well, somebody has to. I’ll be away for the next three weeks on an Earthwatch expedition to Churchill, Manitoba. It seems as if Mark Twain would rather stay nearer the “equator” and wait for his adoring admirer to come full circle. We’ll be back the first week of March. Keep the faith.
“I do not make any pretense that I dislike compliments. The stronger the better and I can manage to digest them.”
-Mark Twain, speech, “The Last Lotos Club”
Do go on.
Really, though, enough about me…
How was I?
“No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.”
-Mark Twain
Party politics is the reality of our political process, but does it always foster a truly patriotic spirit?
Nobody, whether Democrat, Republican, or any other political party, can decree what constitutes individual patriotism. For better or worse, that is left for me to decide – but only for me. You’ll have to decide for yourself, as will what is now some 300 million other American souls.
What a messy business this American republic is. And when it works, what a miracle.
“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”
-Mark Twain
Besides, the cat would have none of it.
“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.”
Just as you finish it you realize you haven’t even yet begun.
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
-Mark Twain
A lesson hard won – such as holding the cat by its tail – need only be learned once, but it is surely learned well.
At least one hopes – and if not, it’s your own damn fault.
“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.”
-Mark Twain, Letter to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 1863
And thank goodness another New Years is over.
“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice”
-Mark Twain
The story of our past changes with each telling, and each person telling it. As such, it is best, most times, to get a second opinion.