Volume 44 - No. 04
by lyle e davis
Those of us who fancy ourselves writers need to pause now and then and pick up and read a story or two by the Master, Mark Twain. It makes one rather humble right smartly.
Samuel Clemens, more commonly known by his pen name of Mark Twain, had it all. This often curmudgeonly man was a storyteller. He could pull a laugh out of you one minute and rip a tear or two out of your eyes the next. He had a knack of capturing the local dialect, of turning a phrase just so, of writing descriptive pieces that transported you right into the middle of wherever it was he wanted you to be The Paper - 760.747.7119
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January 23, 2014
at the time. Much of what he had to say has endured down through the years and has become part of our everyday language. Other comments he’s made are less well known but still tickle the funny bone. One such phrase that brought a chuckle from me:
“Doctor Meredith moved to Hannibal and was our family physician there and saved my life several times. Still, he was a good man and meant well.” Most of us have read “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Still others have read “Roughing It,” “Innocents Abroad,” and a number of other short stories of Twain’s. Those of us who haven’t are missing a real reading treat. The man is as alive, funny,
brilliant, witty and wise as he was when he was tickling America a hundred years ago. Those of us who scribble words to put bread on the table would do well to read him again and again and yet again, to get a feel for the power of words written down in just the right order, just the right manner, and with the application of dialect, accents, wisdom and folly. Chances are we still wouldn’t get it just quite right. Mark Twain did. He endures through today.
I’ve culled some of his more well known phrases that I suspect will amuse you a bit. This brilliant man was born and resided in Missouri during his impressionable teens, in the little riverbank town of Hannibal. He was a journey-
Mark Twain Continued on Page 2
man printer for eight years, was a Mississippi River pilot for four, a prospector in Nevada, a newspaper reporter in Virginia City, Nevada, and then broke upon the American literary scene with a piece called, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
For the next forty five years he penned books, stories, travelogues and observations. He was in huge demand as a lecturer. He was a master story teller and writer. Seldom did he write more than a paragraph without a beautiful and humorous anecdote, phrase, or tall tale. And so, we present you with a gift. A small collection of the brilliant sayings, comments and observations of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.