On 11 Oct 2004 at 12:29, Larry Howe wrote: > You aren't trying to stir up another political storm here on the MT > Forum, are you? No. The current situation might be helpful in understanding Twain's (and the others') state of mind, though. Think of the difference in national mood before and after "everything changed" on 9/11. Most people's projections for the 21st century are probably much "darker" today than they were before, regardless of what's happening in their personal lives. One hundred years ago, imperialism had that effect on Twain and the others. As the second quote from Charles Eliot Norton suggests, the issue could even frame their views of their personal lives. There is a funny coincidence in one of Twain's responses along that line. On the back of a December 15, 1906, letter about the Philippines from Herbert Welsh, Twain wrote, "The woes of the wronged and the unfortunate poison my life, and make it so undesirable that pretty often I wish I were 90 instead of 70." Welsh suffered a nervous breakdown from over-work on imperialism three years before and had just resumed his activities. Fortunately for him, Twain's response was never mailed. I'm not suggesting that imperialism was the sole influence on his later writings. The quotes are most directly related to the series of historical fantasies he wrote in the early 1900s in which he made similar predictions about the fall of the republic. There were also his experiences in Vienna, the Dreyfus Affair, Supreme Court-sanctioned segregation, the epidemic of lynchings, etc., as well as personal phenomena like deaths of friends and family, celebrity, age, etc. My point is that to look at his writings as only reflecting personal experiences is to remove Twain from a world in which he was very definitely engaged during those years. Jim Zwick