Hist
104, Lecture 10:
“Appetite & Force”: The Growth of Global Empires
(PDF)(DOC)
a. “A
Salutation Speech from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth”
Taken down in shorthand by Mark Twain:
“ I bring you the stately matron called CHRISTENDOM -- returning bedraggled,
besmirched and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria,
South Africa and the Philippines; with her soul full of meanness, her
pocket full of boodle and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give
her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass."
Dec. 31, 1900.
Give her the glass; it may from error free her
When she shall see herself as others see her.
b. From Mark Twain, Letter to Joseph Twichell, January 27, 1900:
“My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing and full
of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and hypocrisies. As for the
word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a lie; and as for the thing itself,
I wish it was in hell, where it belongs.”