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From:
John Greenman <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 18 Jan 2021 10:54:57 -0500
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I KNOW I’m not alone in seeing the MANY times that MT has painted portraits of “the powerful” he was aware of…and how some of those portraits have SO MUCH in common with our so-to-be ex-president!

Here’s one….

from "Christian Science”-Book II- Preface

"There were remarkable things about the strange called the Man-Mystery — things so very extraordinary that they monopolized attention and made all of him seem extraordinary ; but this was not so, the most of his qualities being of the common, every-day size and like anybody else’s. It was curious. He was of the ordinary stature, and had the ordinary aspects ; yet in him were hidden such strange contradictions and disproportions! He was majestically fearless and heroic; he had the strength of thirty men and the daring of thirty thousand; handling armies, organizing states, administering governments — these were pastimes to him; he publicly and ostentatiously accepted the human race at its own valuation — as demigods — and privately and successfully dealt with it at quite another and juster valuation — as children and slaves; his ambitions were stupendous, and his dreams had no commerce with the humble plain, but moved with the cloud-rack among the snow-summits. These features of him were, indeed, extraordinary, but the rest of him was ordinary and usual. He was so mean-minded, in the matter of jealousy, that it was thought he was descended from a god ; he was vain in little ways, and had a pride in trivialities; he doted on ballads about moonshine and bruised hearts; in education he was deficient, he was indifferent to literature, and knew nothing of art; he was dumb upon all subjects but one, indifferent to all except that one — the Nebular Theory. Upon that one his flow of words was full and free, he was a geyser. The official astronomers disputed his facts and derided his views, and said that he had invented both, they not being findable in any of the books. But many of the laity, who wanted their nebulosities fresh, admired his doctrine and adopted it, and it attained to great prosperity in spite of the hostility of the experts .” — The Legend of the Man-Mystery, ch. i.




John Greenman
207-974-9911 
My Archive.org audio recordings <https://archive.org/search.php?query=Audio+%22John+Greenman%22&sort=-downloads>

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