Mark Twain
Mark Twain held a pistol to his head.
But he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
So, he put down the pistol and picked up a pen…
Many textbooks portray Mark Twain as poised, self-assured, and composed.
However, the Twain described in writings from 1865 and 1866 is far from that man…
At this time, Twain was living in San Francisco and earning $100 a month writing 2,000-word columns, 6 days a week for a newspaper called the Territorial Enterprise.
The 29-year-old Twain was struggling immensely. He was drowning in debt. The local pawnshops owned nearly all his possessions.
In a letter from 1865, he wrote to his brother:
“If I do not get out of debt in three months – pistols or poison for one – exit me,”
And he nearly took the first option.
There are many stories about what exactly made him change his mind:
One story describes how his eyes met a bill for coal he had received. The wording on the bill was so peculiar for such a low sum of requested money that it made him do a double take. It supposedly brought about a chuckle and he reflected on the oddity of life, putting down his pistol.
Some accounts claim that when he brought the pistol to his head, he couldn’t bear to pull the trigger out of his thoughts of cowardice.
Whatever the truth may be, we do know that the great literary figure had some very dark days in his lonely San Francisco apartment…
Shortly after this incident, Twain hit his first home run. He finally leaned into his inclinations of humor with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
It was a humorous work and was published by the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. It brought him his first taste of international fame.
And the rest is history!
USEFUL KNOWLEDGE:
– The Brightest days often come right after the darkest nights.
Life is very strange. In many ways, it is like a video game, in the sense that it is full of tests. Things get extremely hard in life and as long as you hang on and keep pushing, you will make a breakthrough and get to the next level. It’s always hardest right before a significant breakthrough. Then things are great for a while but eventually, the pattern repeats itself. The tests vary in difficulty but they all push the individual to ascend to higher levels of consciousness and character.
This story of Twain’s dark days displays the idea perfectly. He was in just about the lowest place a person can be, yet he didn’t let go of himself and as a result, very quickly got his first big win.
I’m sure you can relate to this story in some way – reflecting on your own difficult times. Hopefully, the video game analogy provides you with a greater awareness of the pattern.
So, when things get dark, hold on, keep pushing and bright daylight will come soon enough.
Written by The Knowledge Archivist on Twitter
Letter To The Tooth Fairy
Logic Is An Enemy
Don’t look behind the covers:
of Covid
of Global Warming
of the Voice
or…
Change A Life
Monkeys With Money and Guns
That is true of some of us. But then, it has always been true. At least since we have had guns. Before then it was ordinary people with spears and clubs.
The challenge for those of us who recognise this is to elevate our contemporaries to a higher level of awareness, intelligence, competence and compassion. We are late to the party. Best we get busy while we still can.
Simplicity
Givers Are Happier
Blending In
I Am Writing Another Book
A page from it:
The Purpose Of This Book
The genus of the book was the observation that according to all indicators, this civilization was not heading up, it was heading down. And that if the current trend is not reverted, then we are headed for some very rough times ahead.
I looked at the worst case scenario and realised that in that case I would not have the skills my forebears had. I would not have enough knowledge to be able to grow food enough to survive. I would not know what to grow from seeds and what to grow from cuttings, what to plant when, how to remedy soil nutrient deficiencies, what crops do well together and what don’t, what pests/diseases affect a crop and, more importantly, how to minimise/eradicate them, how to preserve foods, how to harvest and store seeds for next year.
Therefore the principal purpose of the book is so that a person with zero to little knowledge of the subject (me) could have a single source of reliable data to utilise to be able to grow enough to survive in the event of a societal catastrophe when it will no longer be able to source such data from the internet or a local gardening shop. I envisage that in such a scenario a preparedness manual like this would be worth its weight in gold! It could mean the difference between survival and not.
The secondary purpose is to provide a comprehensive, single reference point to enable a beginning gardener to be able to successfully plan and execute food crop growing in whatever space they have available.
Glimmers
