Camy --

It hardly needs pointing out in this group (but like you, I'll do it
anyway):

Your condemnation of Twain's recklessness and bad judgment is barely
perceptible next to the scorn and obloquy he heaped on his own head for
those sins.

The fact is, while he cheerfully ridiculed and lampooned the gaudy, greedy
post-Civil War years which he himself christened the Gilded Age, he also was
a man of his time, & he hungered after the same riches as his neighbors &
was ready to go to some lengths to get them.

And though he tried to foist off much of the blame for his business failures
on poor, doomed Charlie Webster, Twain readily 'fessed up to his own
shortcomings in that department ("To succeed, avoid my example") and he
always blamed himself bitterly for Susy's death . . . and Livy's . . . and
baby Langdon's.


Pete Salwen