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LET ME PUT THIS SIMPLY Mark Twain reent and entertaining person I ever saw on any stage or read in any book

By then he was an old man, over seventy, but he wore his faar, and constantly ran his long fingers through his famously unruly hair His voice was as raspy as an old barn door He sounded at all ti in a violent rage

“Nothing needs refor, “so much as other people’s habits”

The audience roared in recognition of a universal truth

“Best forget about the aniion…”

The audience waited Sure enough, the rest of the sentence arrived with perfect ti

“Yep… several of them”

He was a, sarcastic, ferocious, and bitter in his repudiation of nearly everything and everyone Elizabeth laughed as hard as I did—harder so, handkerchief pressed to her ood time

I was no author, no satirist, no raconteur, but I did know that the hu funny, every word he spoke was the absolute truth The bigger the lies he pretended to tell, the more truthful the stories became

When he talked about his struggles with trying to give up whiskey and his beloved cigars, we all laughed because we had struggles of our own, and he helped us see that they were ridiculous

When he read froe in which Huck is belas has forced hihed because someone had once forced us into Sunday clothes too

Occasionally Twain landed with both feet in an area that made this audience a little restless, as when he said:

“We had slavery when I was a boy There was nothing wrong with slavery The local pulpit told us God approved of it If there were passages in the Bible that disapproved of slavery, they were not read aloud by the pastors”

Twain paused He looked deadly serious I sawin their seats

“I wonder how they could be so dishonest…”