By the Mark Twain

As I have mentioned before I bought the complete works of Mark Twain for $1.06 and loaded them on my Kindle. I have been reading them steadily all year and he has been traveling all over the world, or at least that's how it seems to me as I go from book to book. He tramped through German, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. He went to the Sandwich Islands. He covered Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. Everywhere he goes he writes with wit and insight. I learn more from his writing than I did when I was over there. He went to India, visited the Taj Mahal. Then on to South Africa, and after 13 months he completed his circumnavigation of the earth.

There are two or three versions of Life on the Mississippi in this collection and yesterday I read about steamboat racing - that was something that was always kind of on the periphery of my understanding as a youth, and now I have learned a bit more about it, specifically the race between the Robert E. Lee and The Natchez, in 1870. And while nostalgia ain't what it used to be, I had a notion to call my brother and ask him if he still has the plastic model of the Robt. E. Lee steamboat that my father put together 60 years ago or so. Turns out he does and he sent me this picture of how it looks today:

It's not in bad shape after spending decades sitting on various shelves. Here a link to the story of the original ship. I can't even imagine what riding on one was like, much less piloting something like that in the wilds of the Mississippi as Samuel Clemens did. I also can't figure out what they did with all that cotton in St. Louis, but such are the mysteries of life.

In succeeding chapters Mr. Clemens tells the story of how his brother Henry died when the boat he was on blew up. Very tragic story, and not a story for the faint of heart.

But back to the storyline we have been following today -- since we have already reviewed Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, at this point there is no way that anyone can be offended, triggered, put off, upset or otherwise require a safe space by any racially insensitive role played by Mickey Rooney. His Mr. Yunioshi is far more offensive than this, right?

Cue SJW outrage!

Say, is that Lena Horne or Judy Garland? My eyesight is not too good, I can't tell from here.

Now that I review this post I find that I am offended. I hereby denounce myself for knowing history.