Many thanks for your letter, with enclosed photograph. Your resemblance
to me is remarkable. In fact, to be perfectly honest, you look more
like me than I look like myself. I was so much impressed by the
resemblance that I have had your picture framed, and am now using it
regularly, in place of a mirror, to shave by.
Yours gratefully,
S. L. CLEMENS.
Although not generally recognized, it is undoubtedly true that Mark
Twain was a wit as well as a humorist. He was the author of many
epigrams and curt aphorisms which have become stock phrases in
conversation, quoted in all classes of society wherever the English
language is spoken. His phrasing is unpretentious, even homely, wearing
none of the polished brilliancy of La Rochefoucauld or Bernard Shaw; but
Mark Twain's sayings “stick” because they are rooted in shrewdness and
hard commonsense.
Mark Twain's warning to the two burglars who stole his silverware from
“Stormfield” and were afterwards caught and sent to the penitentiary, is
very amusing, though not highly complimentary to American political
life:
“Now you two young men have been up to my house, stealing my tinware,
and got pulled in by these Yankees up here. You had much better have
stayed in New York, where you have the pull. Don't you see where you're
drifting. They'll send you from here down to Bridgeport jail, and the
next thing you know you'll be in the United States Senate. There's no
other future left open to you.”
The sign he posted after the visitation of these same burglars was a
prominent ornament of the billiard room at “Stormfield “: