The following notice was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin Mac Donnell. ~~~~~ _Mark Twain Playing Cards: Favorite Characters and Quotes_. ProsperoArt.com, 2014. 52 card deck, plus two jokers, boxed. $9.95. It may seem strange to review a deck of cards, but there's likely an aphorism by Mark Twain that would be apropos in this situation, and even if there isn't one then any old quote will glow with authority if Mark Twain's name is appended to it. This is not the first time Mark Twain has found himself featured in a deck of cards, but it seems to be the first time he has ever had an entire deck of cards devoted to him alone. Many versions of the popular card game, _Game of Authors_, added Mark Twain to its pantheon of honored authors during his lifetime, but no decks of cards were produced that were entirely about Mark Twain, which seems remarkable for a fellow whose name has graced cigars, whiskeys, wines. peaches, oranges, oysters, coal, a train, some steamboats, fur coats, shirts, pants, shoes, schools, a lake, a golf course, three dozen hotels, three soft drinks, and a stud horse. This deck of cards is delightfully illustrated by Jan Padover, and is part of a series that includes decks devoted to the _Bible_, Native Americans, _Alice in Wonderland_, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Mark Twain would approve of the other decks, but not Jane Austen*, and despite the attractive design it's not certain whether he would approve of his own deck. Each card contains one Mark Twain quote and one illustration. Twain readers will recognize illustrations of Tom, Huck, Jim, Miss Watson, Boggs, Hank Morgan, and even King Leopold. However, some of the quotes might look suspect. Of the fifty-four cards, thirteen contain quotes for which there is no evidence to attribute them to Mark Twain. Four of those thirteen have been discredited by the notoriously reliable twainquotes.com website. Most of the other spurious quotes seems to have been plucked from notoriously unreliable websites like brainyquotes.com, goodreads.com, wikiquote.org, and thinkexist.com. For the record the foul quotes appear on the 4, 5, and 6 of spades, the 9 of clubs, the 2, 3, 5, 8, and 10 of hearts, and the 2, 3, 8, and 10 of diamonds. The other forty-one cards have genuine quotes, and although none are sourced, some sources are obvious in context. A few of those forty-one authentic quotes are not verbatim and need an editor's tweaking. Of course, it must be obvious that misattributed quotes on playing cards are not nearly as grievously offensive as books filled with errors that poison the well for future Twainians who might innocently lower their buckets, but it's still annoying. Just because a quote has appeared with Mark Twain's name attached to it in a stack of cheeky self-help books, or on some popular online websites, don't make it so. Mark Twain never said "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living" (8 of hearts), or "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most" (6 of spades), or "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions" (2 of diamonds), but he did say "It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive" (_Following the Equator_) and "The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant encumbrance. How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!" (_Mark Twain in Eruption_). Twenty-five percent of the cards in this deck contains words by others falsely attributed to Mark Twain. That's a most unpleasant encumbrance, and hard to undo no matter how many times they are reshuffled. _____ *I think it was Mark Twain who once said that any deck of cards could be improved by simply removing the Jane Austen cards from that deck, even if they were the only cards in the deck. NB: What Mark Twain actually said is "Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it" (_Following the Equator_).