Twain On

TMT loves Twain, so this begins our new segment called "Twain on..."









Today, Twain on Bats.

From his Autobiography:

"A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in the right spirit. I know all about these coleoptera, because our great cave, three miles below Hannibal, was multitudinously stocked with them, and often I brought them home to amuse my mother with. It was easy to manage if it was a school day, because then I had ostensibly been to school and hadn't any bats. She was not a suspicious person, but full of trust and confidence; and when I said, "There's something in my coat pocket for you," she would put her hand in. But she always took it out again, herself; I didn't have to tell her. It was remarkable, the way she couldn't learn to like private bats. The more experience she had, the more she could not change her views."

An interesting Twain note: Twain was a river pilot on the mighty Mississippi. The term "mark twain" refers to the task of a pilot to "sound the depths and deem them safe for passage." Samuel Clemens took it as his pen name in 1863. Click for more.