Teresa, We Have Another Twain Fan Here.

[Corlyss_D]

Mourningstar has been using a quote from Twain in his signature. And what makes that remarkable is he is from the Netherlands.

[Teresa B]

Hey, great news! A Twain fan from the Low country! (I must change my signature, it's been the same now for so long, Twain would never forgive me for being sooo complacent.)

By the way, I really enjoyed that bio of the young Twain you recommended. I keep meaning to thank you! The author (whose name, shamefully, I am forgetting at the moment--Powers??) writes in a wonderful, melodic way, and tells an engaging (true!) yarn.

Teresa

[Ralph]

I'm a Twain fan too.

Trivia question: Mark Twain wrote an article about an incident in the Pacific that involved a very controversial, often swept under the rug, matter that was also the subject of an English case that's taught to all first-year law students.

[RebLem]

I am also a bit of a Twain fan. My favorite Twain story is An Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. Capt. Stormfield dies, and has some difficulty getting to heaven because the comet on which he is travelling to heaven is somehow misdirected, and he comes into heaven through an entrance usually used by a species from another planet. It has my favorite first line in all of literature--

"Well, after I'd been dead about forty years, I began to get a little anxious."

[Corlyss_D]

I'm a Twain fan too.

Trivia question: Mark Twain wrote an article about an incident in the Pacific that involved a very controversial, often swept under the rug, matter that was also the subject of an English case that's taught to all first-year law students.

Where's the question?

[Corlyss_D]

The author (whose name, shamefully, I am forgetting at the moment--Powers??) writes in a wonderful, melodic way, and tells an engaging (true!) yarn.

Doesn't he tho'! You're spot on about melodic style. Ron Powers is the author. He's been flogging his new full up bio, but somehow he's just not as interesting this time around - maybe because he spends way too much time trying to make Twain relevant to today by talking up his vehement opposition to "American Imperialism" in the form of the Spanish American War and the assumption of Cuba and the Philippines. There was a lot more to Twain's life than that.

Glad you enjoyed the book.

[Ralph]

I'm a Twain fan too.

Trivia question: Mark Twain wrote an article about an incident in the Pacific that involved a very controversial, often swept under the rug, matter that was also the subject of an English case that's taught to all first-year law students.

Where's the question?

*****

Duh. Poor Corlost. WHAT IS THE FAMOUS ENGLISH CASE?

[Teresa B]

I'm a Twain fan too.

Trivia question: Mark Twain wrote an article about an incident in the Pacific that involved a very controversial, often swept under the rug, matter that was also the subject of an English case that's taught to all first-year law students.

Where's the question?

*****

Duh. Poor Corlost. WHAT IS THE FAMOUS ENGLISH CASE?

OK, how's this:

Could it be Twain's 1879 sketch "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn", in which a case involving the law against trespass ended up triggering an ill-fated "revolution" against Britain and the impeachment of Pitcairn Island's Chief Magistrate, incited by a rather scurrilous American named Stavely?

The trespasser was a chicken, who some thirty years before had wandered from the property of its owner, a Ms. Young, onto that of Mr. Thursday October Christian, a grandson of Fletcher Christian. Christian sued for "damages" resulting from said trespass, but it seems he was dissatisfied with the verdict, demanding a bushel of yams, but only being awarded a half-peck (no pun intended). He kept on appealing until the case reached the Supreme Court, where it apparently languished until it reached the final verdict--the same result.

Christian was willing to leave it at that, but Stavely put the bug in his ear that maybe the orignal law didn't exist anymore. Sure enough, it had vanished from the state archives! Stavely then called for impeachment of Mr. Nickoy, the magistrate, who said he had never meddled with the records in the candle-box they were kept in.

The rest was history. (Twain made a funny point about the reason trumped up by poor Nickoy's enemies for his purported destruction of the trespass law--that he favored Christian because he was his cousin.)

If that ain't the answer, then I have at least whetted your appetite for Twain's biting, hilarious and eerily timeless prose.

Teresa

[Corlyss_D]

Duh. Poor Corlost. WHAT IS THE FAMOUS ENGLISH CASE?

Does it involve US Federal Procurement Law?

[Richard]

I always thought that Edward Grieg looked a little like Mark Twain:



http://www.nndb.com/people/870/000024798/grieg-1890.jpg

[Ralph]

Duh. Poor Corlost. WHAT IS THE FAMOUS ENGLISH CASE?

Does it involve US Federal Procurement Law?

*****

In England? No. Think hard.

[Ralph]

I always thought that Edward Grieg looked a little like Mark Twain:



http://www.nndb.com/people/870/000024798/grieg-1890.jpg

*****

Grieg also resembled his fellow composer, Anonymous.

[Ted]

One of my special favorites from the pen of Mark Twain

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stori ... lPou.shtml

[mourningstar]

I am an incomplete Twain Fan. if i say i was a Twain fan. I would Disgrace alot of Fans. I haven't read "enough" from him. I am just getting into it.

I wrote down several favourite Quotes

The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.

* Autobiographical Dictation (1906)

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. - Puddn Head Wilson

The truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel...and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" — with his mouth. - What Is Man? (1906)