Mark his words . . .

Samuel Clemens

Illustration by Tina Berning

(Image from New York Times)

The humorist Garrison Keillor, in his New York Times book review on the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (edited by Harriet Elinor Smith et al.), which he's inexplicably titled "Mark Twain's Riverboat Ramblings" (December 16, 2010), has these words to borrow from the still young but already great Mr. Clemens himself:

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

I find this sly remark hilarious . . . and utterly serious at the same time. Yesterday's Islamists ought to keep the sage saying in mind as they continue to tweak the tail of the West and the rest . . . though I reckon this incisive aphorism by clever Clemens can cleave twain ways.

And I do not like that upper cut, I do not like it, Sam-Cut-Up . . .