Eat a Frog

Mark Twain once advised:  If you have to eat a frog, do it first thing in the morning.  If you have to eat two frogs, eat the biggest one first.

Mark Twain was using a metaphor to describe how to handle unpleasant tasks.  Take care of the worst tasks first and the rest of the day will seem nicer by comparison.

Quote of the Day

“To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master.”

— Mark Twain

Or put another way, man made God in man’s own image.  

Mark Twain's Eloquence and His Distaste for Islam

I finally finished "The Innocents Abroad" by Mark Twain.  It was a very entertaining read, and I was impressed with Twain's descriptive prose and vocabulary.  He uses some archaic language, but I found most of it in the Kindle dictionary.  Also impressive was his knowledge of the Bible and that of the ancient Greeks and Romans, of kings and emperors, generals and personages, and ancient battles and events.

Mark Twain's Eloquence
I was impressed with his description of the Sphinx.  He described it as follows:

After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over lines of century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote antiquity.

 And this:

The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful presence of God.

Twain was disgusted with the habit of some of his travel companions, who wanted to chip off pieces from every ancient building, tomb, statue or artifact they visited, to take home as souvenirs.  One fool tried to knock a piece off the chin of the sphinx with a hammer, but was stopped by officials before he could do any damage.  [In 1867 the Sphinx was buried in sand up to its neck, making the face accessible to miscreants like this.]

Twain's Distaste for Islam
Mark Twain wrote disparagingly of Muslims and Islamic culture and living conditions, noting the latter's hostility and antipathy towards non-Muslims.  He reported seeing some Muslim women dressed in body covers from head to toe, noting that they resembled mummies.

He saw Abdul Aziz, lord of the Ottoman Empire, sharing a parade in Paris, with Napoleon III, leader of France, and was disgusted by the presence of the former.  He wrote:

Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization, progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious—and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century greets the Nineteenth!

And this, while describing the Muslim Middle East:

Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.

And this:

The Moslems watch the Golden Gate with a jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they have an honored tradition that when it falls, Islamism will fall and with it the Ottoman Empire. It did not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was getting a little shaky.

I almost hated finishing the book.  A good book is like a valued friend, visited nightly for conversation and cigars before bed.  When the book ends, there is a feeling of sadness.  I have resolved to read all of Twain's books and short stories.

Enjoying Spring in California with Sam Clemens

California Poppies

I hear it is still cold in parts of the US.  Not here in California.  My persimmon tree has exploded in green foilage, my lawn is luxuriant, and there are lemons growing on my lemon tree.  The green hills are splashed with the orange of wild poppies and the yellow of wild mustard.  It is a lovely sight to see.

For the past few weeks I have been reading Mark Twain's book, The Innocents Abroad.  In 1867, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) took a voyage and visited places in Europe, Greece and the Middle East.  His tale of the foreign cities and peoples and cultures is fascinating, and made more enjoyable by his sense of humor.

One of the gambits he and his traveling companions enjoyed was baiting the hired guides.  No matter what ancient statue or artifact they were shown, they asked if it were by Michelangelo.  "No, this was made 2,000 years before Michelangelo was born!"

When they were shown a mummy, they asked if he was dead.  "Of course he's dead, he's been dead for 3,000 years!"  What's his name?  "I don't know his name, what does it matter??"  (or words to that effect).

When shown an ancient manuscript penned by Christopher Columbus, they feigned disinterest, and criticized his handwriting.  Their guide quickly concluded that they were lunatics.  I was laughing like a fool as I read these passages, loudly and boisterously -- over a text written 147 years ago!

The Innocents Abroad is a long book, and worth your time.

Letters From Earth: Mark Twain's Most Controversial Tale

I saw a scene on FaceBook, of a bench on a cliff overlooking surf and beach below.  The caption read, "If you could spend an hour in conversation with anyone living or dead, who would it be?"

It is a fascinating question.  I would undoubtedly opt for conversing with someone who is now dead, some personality from history.  They might include Thomas Edison, Robert E. Lee, General George Patton, John Lennon, Jesus Christ, Vince Guaraldi, Jefferson Davis, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin...the list goes on and on.

Mark Twain

However, one of my top choices would be Mark Twain, the great American writer of the 19th Century.  I find him to be a fascinating personality; I love his wit and wisdom.  Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemmons, was born in 1835 and died in 1910.  He is most famous for his novels, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Prince and the Pauper.  He also wrote some great short stories, like "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyville."  All of these works have strong moral messages, and focus on the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of the human race.

Two of his novels, Connecticut Yankee and Prince and the Pauper, make the reader see through the other guy's eyes, and take a walk in the other guy's shoes.  If you are not the pariah in a society, reviled and spat upon, you should consider how it would feel.  Some believe these two novels were a disguised appeal for better treatment of blacks in America, at a time when a more obvious appeal would have been met with derision and rejection.

Mark Twain had an amazingly open mind for his time.  I especially enjoyed one of his most controversial short stories, "Letters From Earth."  In this story, Satan is one of Heaven's Archangels but gets on the wrong side of God, and is banished from Heaven for a time.  Having nothing to do, Satan visits earth and finds human concepts of God and Heaven to be highly errant and humorous.  He writes to the other Archangels still in Heaven about his observations.  It is a thought-provoking read, and quite funny -- at least, in the first half of the story.  The second half isn't funny at all, but quite alarming.

Satan finds the tale of Adam and Eve strange and contradictory.  He writes:

Naturally you will think the threat to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying was of course not carried out, since they did not create themselves, nor their natures nor their impulses nor their weaknesses, and hence were not properly subject to anyone's commands, and not responsible to anybody for their acts. It will surprise you to know that the threat was carried out. Adam and Eve were punished, and that crime finds apologists unto this day. The sentence of death was executed.

Satan continues:

Very well, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden, and eventually assassinated them. All for disobeying a command which he had no right to utter. But he did not stop there, as you will see. He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly -- and gently -- with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, "You may go free this time, and I will give you another chance." On the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born. He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones.

And this:

You would not suppose that this kind of Being gets many compliments. Undeceive yourself: the world calls him the All-Just, the All-Righteous, the All-Good, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, the All-Truthful, the All-Loving, the Source of All Morality. These sarcasms are uttered daily, all over the world. But not as conscious sarcasms. No, they are meant seriously: they are uttered without a smile.

It is obvious that Mark Twain did not have a high opinion of many Judeo-Christian beliefs.  Through the years I have come to agree with "Letters From Earth," or much of it anyway, and have rejected many of these doctrines.  A just God would not torture souls in Hell for all eternity for being just what He made them to be.  Nor would he order the slaughter of innocents, as He allegedly did to the Midianites.

I will say that being a Christian has the effect of making people more loving and forgiving of each other, and kind to strangers, and predisposed to do good towards their fellow passengers to the grave.  Christianity does much good for the world, and for the human soul.  However, its bad points are that it saddles its adherents with feelings of guilt and fear, for merely being human; and this deters Christians from fully enjoying their lives on earth.

I like Mark Twain very much.  Like him, I refuse to live a life of guilt and fear.

Postscript:  "Letters From Earth" becomes a bitter rant against the God of the Bible in the second half of the tale, describing the mass murder of the Midianites, saving only the virgin women (to be later raped or sold into slavery) and some of the little children.  Indeed, the Midianite episode describes a cruel God similar to Allah, and is comparable to Mohammed's slaughter of the Quraysh, a Jewish tribe, in 622 AD.  When I first read these Biblical passages, many years ago, I was disgusted and immediately concluded that no just God would order such an atrocity.  However, man is quite capable of such slaughter while using God as his excuse and justification.