quote:

Twain on "progress" and "contribution" of man...

"'you perceive,' he said, 'that you have made continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gun-powder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter [the atom bomb?] that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.'"

- Mark Twain, 'The Mysterious Stranger', c1910 -

he had just finished a collection of Mark Twain's short works - stories, letters, speeches, etc. 'Old Times on the Mississippi' had taught him something, 'The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' had made him smile legitimately, 'The Private History of a Campaign that Failed' had made him laugh out loud, 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg' had made him think, and 'The Mysterious Stranger' had blown him away, igniting a reconsideration of tenets.

The whole act - of reading by one's volition an author that had been forced upon him and ignored as a student and being genuinely and consistently moved was itself a moving experience.

so he sat back and staring at the junction of his ceiling and far wall with a knowing smile on his face, and appreciated for the first time the John Lennon quote: "The first time you hear (Bob) Dylan, you feel like you're the first person to discover him."

...and but so then he ran off to tell all his literary friends about the magical Samuel Clemens...