Mark Twain 
Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living 
A Handbook for the Damned Human Race

Irreverent, charming, eminently quotable, this handbook—an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race—contains sixty-nine aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain’s private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing with annoying salesmen and burglars. Culled from Twain’s personal letters, autobiographical writings, speeches, novels, and sketches, these pieces are delightfully fresh, witty, startlingly relevant, and bursting with Twain’s characteristic ebullience for life. They also remind us exactly how Mark Twain came to be the most distinctive and well-known American literary voice in the world. These texts, some of them new or out of print for decades, have been selected and meticulously prepared by the editors at the Mark Twain Project.

Tabla de materias

List of Illustrations

Introduction


1. Everyday Etiquette

A Letter of Apology

About the Effect of Intemperate Language

Be Good, Be Good. A Poem

An Innovative Dinner Party Signal System

About American Manners

Breaking It Gently

Courtesy to Unexpected Visitors

At the Funeral

A Telephonic Conversation


2. Modest Proposals and Judicious Complaints

A Christmas Wish

Proposal Regarding Local Flooding

Complaint about Unreliable Service

Notice about a Stolen Umbrella

An Appeal against Injudicious Swearing

An Unwanted Magazine Subscription

On Telephones and Swearing

About the Proposed Street-Widening

Political Economy

Notice. To the Next Burglar

Suggestion to Persons Entering Heaven


3. The American Table

Memories of Food on an American Farm

American versus European Food

An Inauspicious Meal

A Remarkable Dinner

Food and Scenery


4. Travel Manners

Traveling in Close Quarters

Communicating with the Locals

A Night Excursion in a Hotel Room


5. Health and Diet

Young Sam Clemens and Old-Time Doctoring

The ‘Wake-Up-Jake’

A Healthful Cocktail

A Miracle Cure

Experience of the Mc Williamses with Membranous Croup

Smoking, Diet, and Health at Age Seventy


6. Parenting and the Ethical Child

The Late Benjamin Franklin

On Theft and Conscience

On Training Children

A Sampling of Childish Ethics

Youthful Misdemeanors

Advice to Youth


7. Clothes, Fashion, and Style

A Fashion Item

The Hand of Fashion

That White Suit

Clothes and Deception

A Sumptuous Robe


8. In Case of Emergency

Playing ‘Bear’

An Apparition

The Great Earthquake in San Francisco

Escape of the Tarantulas

Burglary and the Well-Tempered Householder

Under a Policeman’s Eye


About the Texts

Works Cited

Acknowledgments

Sobre el autor

Lin Salamo, Victor Fischer, and Michael B. Frank are editors at the Mark Twain Project of The Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley.