On my reading list are the last two volumes of Twain’s autobiography. I enjoyed the “disorder” and digressions of the first two volumes but then I have my own weird, just like everyone else.
The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
NY: Bantam Books, 1957
“How I Edited an Agricultural Paper”
(49) Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.
“A Trial"
(84) He had all a sailor’s vindictiveness against the quips and quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first and last aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice.
“A True Story” - devastating critique of slavery which Twain says he took verbatim from the speech of a former slave. Hard to use today as it includes the “n-word” and would thus be seen as “racist” now.
“The Diary of Adam and Eve”
(277) It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
(282) Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy.
“Th3 £1,000,000 Bank-Note”
(317) Just like an Englishman, you see; pluck to the backbone.
“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
(383) Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.
“Was It Heaven? Or Hell?”
(480-481) Time slipped along, and in the due course a change came over their spirits. They had completed the human being’s first duty - which is to think about himself until he had exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people.
“The Belated Russian Passport”
(422) There, alongside the door, was the trade-mark of the richest and freest and mightiest republic of all the ages: the pine disk, with the planked eagle spread upon it, his head and shoulders among the stars, and his claws full of out-of-date war material; and at that sight the the tears came into Alfred’s eyes, the pride of country rose in his heart, Hail Columbia boomed up in his breast, and all his fears and sorrows vanished away; for here he was safe, safe! not all the powers of the earth would venture to cross that threshold to lay a hand upon him!
“The $30,000 Bequest”
(506) “I don’t care!” retorted the angry man. “It’s the way you feel, and if you weren’t so immorally pious you’d be honest and say so.”
Aleck said, with wounded dignity:
“I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. There is no such thing as immoral piety.”
(514) At bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up Son of Temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a WCTU, with all that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness.
“A Horse’s Tale”
(527) That sort of words doesn’t keep, in the kind of climate we have out here. [excuse the grammar as it is a horse talking]
“Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”
(571) His face was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match.
(579) Oh, hold on; there’s plenty of pain here [Heaven] - but it don’t kill. There’s plenty of suffering here, but it don’t last. You see, happiness ain’t a thing in itself - it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasannt. That’s all it is. There ain’t a thing you can mention that is happiness in its own self - it’s only so by contrast with the other thing. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh. Well, there’s plenty of pain and suffering in heaven - consequently there’s plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness.
“The Mysterious Stranger”
(646) You people do not suspect that all of your acts are of one size and importance, but it is true; to snatch at an appointed fly is as big with fate for you as in any other appointed act -"
(666) Oh, it’s true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities.
(6678-679) “Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made everyone of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels etermal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitatioin, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!…
“You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and fooish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
