News
ENLARGE
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — After listening to advocates of several traditional religions, I'm moved to found a religion for the 21st century, the “Do Rights.”
There is one commandment, a commandment that comes from Mark Twain, “Always do right, this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
No meetings, no collections, no tidings, no holy wars, no holidays, only a vow to do right.
The ordinary reverence, the reverence defined and explained by the dictionary, costs nothing. Reverence for one's own sacred things — parents, religion, flag — these come natural to us; they are involuntary, like breathing. There is no personal merit in breathing. But the reverence which is difficult, and which has personal merit, is the respect which we pay, without compulsion, to the political and religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not ours.
We can't revere his gods or his politics, and no one expects us to do that, but we could respect his belief in them if we tried hard enough. But it is very, very difficult; it is next to impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If a man does not believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean it does nowadays, because now we cannot burn him.
Huckleberry had to turn to his sound heart to defeat his deformed conscience when he considered telling on Jim, an escaped slave …
“Right then, ‘long comes a skiff with two men in it! With guns!
And one of ‘em says, ‘What's that yonder?'”
“Piece of log raft.”
You belong on it?”
Yes, sir.”
“Any men on it!?”
Only one, sir.”
Now there's five blacks run off — is your man white? Or black?”
“He's ... white. They went off. I know'd I done wrong. I guess there weren't no use for me to learn to do right. A body that don't get started right when he's little just ain't got no show! Den I says to myself, hold on. If I'da done right and give Jim up, would I feel better'n I do now? Why no, I says, I'd feel bad. I'd feel just as bad as I do right now. Well then, says I, what's the use in my learnin' to do right, when it's troublesome to do right, and it ain't no trouble to do wrong. And the wages is just the same. Well I was stuck. I couldn't answer that.”
Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
The important thing, the essential thing, is that we endeavor so to live, that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain was told by a fortune teller that he was going to die in a foreign land — New Jersey. About such things he did not care a whit.
Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time. Take an old man's blessing. And always … do right.”
— McAvoy Layne, proprietor of The Mark Twain Cultural Center at Incline Village, visits schools as the Ghost of Mark Twain. Learn more at www.marktwainculturalcenter.org.
There is one commandment, a commandment that comes from Mark Twain, “Always do right, this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
No meetings, no collections, no tidings, no holy wars, no holidays, only a vow to do right.
The ordinary reverence, the reverence defined and explained by the dictionary, costs nothing. Reverence for one's own sacred things — parents, religion, flag — these come natural to us; they are involuntary, like breathing. There is no personal merit in breathing. But the reverence which is difficult, and which has personal merit, is the respect which we pay, without compulsion, to the political and religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not ours.
We can't revere his gods or his politics, and no one expects us to do that, but we could respect his belief in them if we tried hard enough. But it is very, very difficult; it is next to impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If a man does not believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean it does nowadays, because now we cannot burn him.
Huckleberry had to turn to his sound heart to defeat his deformed conscience when he considered telling on Jim, an escaped slave …
“Right then, ‘long comes a skiff with two men in it! With guns!
And one of ‘em says, ‘What's that yonder?'”
“Piece of log raft.”
You belong on it?”
Yes, sir.”
“Any men on it!?”
Only one, sir.”
Now there's five blacks run off — is your man white? Or black?”
“He's ... white. They went off. I know'd I done wrong. I guess there weren't no use for me to learn to do right. A body that don't get started right when he's little just ain't got no show! Den I says to myself, hold on. If I'da done right and give Jim up, would I feel better'n I do now? Why no, I says, I'd feel bad. I'd feel just as bad as I do right now. Well then, says I, what's the use in my learnin' to do right, when it's troublesome to do right, and it ain't no trouble to do wrong. And the wages is just the same. Well I was stuck. I couldn't answer that.”
Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
The important thing, the essential thing, is that we endeavor so to live, that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain was told by a fortune teller that he was going to die in a foreign land — New Jersey. About such things he did not care a whit.
Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time. Take an old man's blessing. And always … do right.”
— McAvoy Layne, proprietor of The Mark Twain Cultural Center at Incline Village, visits schools as the Ghost of Mark Twain. Learn more at www.marktwainculturalcenter.org.
