Mark Twain

ANECDOTE...

Mark Twain loved to brag about his hunting and fishing exploits. He once spent three weeks fishing in the Maine woods, regardless of the fact that it was the state's closed season for fishing. Relaxing in the lounge car of the train on his return journey to New York, his catch iced down in the baggage car, he looked for someone to whom he could relate the story of his successful holiday.

The stranger to whom he began to boast of his sizable catch appeared at first unresponsive, then positively grim. "By the way, who are you, sir?" inquired Twain airily. "I'm the state game warden," was the unwelcome response. "Who are you?" Twain nearly swallowed his cigar. "Well, to be perfectly truthful, warden," he said hastily, "I'm the biggest damn liar in the whole United States."

QUOTE-WORTHY...

Aman who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.—MARK TWAIN

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE...

(1835–1910)

Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] was a U.S. humorist, writer, and lecturer. As a boy living on the banks of the Mississippi, he became enchanted with the romance of life on the great river. Although apprenticed to a printer at an early age, he never did settle down to any one profession, but made his living as a river pilot, a prospector in the Far West, a newspaper reporter. When he finally began writing in earnest, he took his pseudonym from the riverman's term for water just barely deep enough for safe navigation.