Monday, May 3, 2021

Mark Twain's Pre-Twitter Indictment of the Justice System Applies Even More Today


Mark Twain's aversion to describing anything in simple terms seems to have been so severe one might be forgiven for believing the simple act of writing a trite phrase on a piece of paper would cause him to break out in hives.

Consider this line from "Roughing It", a 500-page account of his time in the American west during the mid-nineteenth-century Gold Rush:

The men who murdered Virginia's original twenty-six cemetery-occupants were never punished."

Cemetery occupants?! If I ever find opportunity to use a phrase of Twain's in conversation I totally want it to be that one. I may get my teeth knocked out for it but I'm absolutely sure it will be worth it.