By Mark Twain

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 1910)

CONTENTS:

What Is Man?

The Death of Jean

The Turning Point of My Life

How to Make History Dates Stick

The Memorable Assassination

A Scrap of Curious History

Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty

At the Shrine of St. Wagner

William Dean Howells

English as She is Taught

A Simplified Alphabet

As Concerns Interpreting the Deity

Concerning Tobacco

Taming the Bicycle

Is Shakespeare Dead?

WHAT IS MAN?

I

a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit

(The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.)

Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam engine is made?

Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white metal, and so on.

O.M. Where are these found?