When you talk about landing on a comet or the Orionid Meteor Shower ...I think about Halley's Comet ...and I am reminded of one of my favorite
people...Mark Twain...Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens came in at birth with Halley’s Comet
and left in death on its return trip…a man of high ideals, wit, and a man who
has made history in our own backyard in Elmira, not Missouri!!
As many times as I visit Elmira, I always pay a visit to its
cemetery and follow its well-marked trail to Mark Twain's grave. I found it by
chance many years ago and since then it has become more landscaped and more
signs enable the visitor to find it. I guess it is called "cemetery
tourism".
Other signs take you to "Twain Country" and
maneuver you to 1 Park Place, which is in the middle of Elmira College Campus
in downtown Elmira. There in a park like setting is the steamboat captain
shaped - gazebo like structure - built for him by his sister-in-law as a summer
retreat. The structure once stood on a high hill above Elmira on her property
called Quarry Hill Farm. Today it has been moved to the campus and inside is
the desk that Twain used for 20 years to write many of his classic American
stories like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
His wife Livy Jervis Langdon was from Elmira and in truth the
Clemens family are all burred on her fathers cemetery plot! So it really it is
"Twain Country" down there.
Twain considered himself "The American" and he truly
was a part of the fabric of what makes us...us! His quips were so American
humor and as funny and pertinent today as ever....Here are two I like....
“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a
member of Congress... But I repeat myself.”
Another
favorite of mine is, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures
that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress!”
Not as well remembered however, were his continual efforts to
promote equality and dignity for all of human kind. Twain was a member for
almost 10 years of the American Anti-Imperialism League – he was the Vice
President until his death.
This group opposed imperialism by America for any reason. They
believed that by joining the rest of the world (at that time) in its conquests
for commercialism or religious means, America would be abandoning the ideals of
self-government and non-interventionism ideals expressed in the United States
Declaration of Independence or in Lincoln’s precepts in the Gettysburg Address.
Twain was an interesting man...the quintessential "American"!
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