Manchester High School - Somanhis Yearbook (Manchester, CT)

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JOKES AND SAYINGS BY MARK TWAIN If you don't like New Iingland weather-wait a while. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. You would never believe how many places you can stick a needle into your- self until you go into the embroidery line and devote yourself to art. An author wrote to Mr. Clemens on the diet for authors. He asked if Mr. Clemens thought fish was good brain food. Mr. Clemens answered that it sup- plied phosphorus, but it did have further quality he thought the author need- ed Il couple of whales, from the looks of his letter. Wfhen Mark asked a neighbor if he might borrow a book, the neighbor re- plied that he might if he used it in the neighbor's library. NVhen the same neigh- bor asked Mark if he might borrow Mark's lawn, mower, Mark replied, Yes, if you will use it here! Clemens tells of himself and Bret Harte writing a play. Well, Bret came down to Hartford and we talked it over and then Bret wrote it while I played billiards, but of course I had to go over it to get the dialect right. Bret never did know anything about dialectfy NVhe11 his fortunes were at the lowest ebb, and a report went through the United States saying that Mark Twain was dead, he received a dispatch from a newspaper asking for details. '.l'he humorist immediately sent a message that made all the world laugh: The report of my death is greatly exaggerated. Clemens said to Matthews, who wrote articles for a paper: You are the very wrong-headest person in America, and you are judicious. And of the article, 'I read it to the cat-well, I never saw a cat carry on, so be- ford. You looked yesterday like the victim of a, flood and today' you're a refugee from the erupting Vesuvius. Mrs. Stowe was leaving for Florida one morning and Clemens ran over early to say good-by. On l1is return Mrs. Clemens regarded him: 'WVhy, Youth, she said, you haven't on any collar and tie. He said nothing but went to his room, did up these items in a neat package and sent it over by a servant with a line: Herewith receive a call from the rest of me. 65 'X'-5'

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0 1835

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Twain made a remark about the cook, and the butler remarked after they had had an argument about who did the most for the family: 'KYou are both far too clever to do much work. This was an unexpected shock for cook and butler. Mark Twain and VVilliam D. Howells were arguing about which one was the more famous. Howell insisted it was Twain, Every person, young and old, knows you. To prove this statement they entered a phonograph store and asked for Mark T'wain's picture. The shop keeper looked surprised for a moment and then asked, In what does she play ?', 'x A doctor friend of Mark's gave him some tablets for a cold and as Mark didn't visit his friends very often, the doctor sent. a bill to him. Mark came the next day and acted very angry and disturbed. But when his friend explain- ed it was only a. means of making Mark visit him, Mark laughed and faithfully promised to come to visit more often. After Mark had finished his speech at a dinner, a lawyer arose, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, as was his habit, and inquired: Doesn't it strike the company as a little unusual that a professional humor- ist should be so funny P Twain came back with the drawling inquiry: E Doesn't it strike this company as a little unusual that a lawyer should have his hands in his own pockets P Tonight Joan of Arc was burned to the stake. Qmeaning that he had fin- ished the book.j Mark Twain once said that pansies were violets with a college education. Gardening with Brains Finch. , General Grant said, t'Neither of us originated the idea of Sherman's march to the sea. The enemy did it. , Soap and education aren't as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. 65