Monday, January 24, 2011

Mark Twain Insult of the Day #1

As mentioned, I'm reading the massive first volume of the thrice-massiver Autobiography of Mark Twain, and about a hundred pages in find that I'm getting to the good stuff. For example, he wrote a couple of pages about his experience navigating the London Underground that had me literally laughing out loud. I'm also rediscovering (I think I knew it but forgot) that Mr. Clemens was particularly adept at insults. From time to time, I'll share some good ones here.

Today's subject is James W. Paige, a self-styled Edison without Edison's cleverness or business sense, who talked Clemens out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a typesetting machine with little to show for it. Clemens wrote:

Paige and I always meet on effusively affectionate terms; and yet he knows perfectly well that if I had his nuts in a steel-trap I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap till he died.

I invite you to borrow that quote and apply it to someone in your own life today.

2 comments:

Sherwood Harrington said...

... Edison without Edison's cleverness or business sense...

If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.

sligo said...

you guys might have to take this act on the road...