Word: twain
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tastes and whims. Naturally he whims some, loses some, in an effort to schedule the Cooperstown baseball shrine, an art gallery, an antique market and a genuine prehistoric dinosaur park and rock garden all in one fractious, febrile day. Still, it might be instructive to conjure Dickens, Trollope and Twain on the road in '76, launched in their camper in the northeastern corner of the U.S. for a swift, spirited, perforce highly selective, swing through the nation. Twain, naturally, wants to drive...
...Mark Twain, Roughing...
They could next drive south to Newport, R.I., a Victorian throwback, once the exclusive playground of the American aristocracy. The Vanderbilt mansions are overwhelmingly beautiful; the lobster is superb. A resident proudly informs them that here "the tomato was first introduced into America." Later Twain explains to the Englishmen what a tomato...
Down the line, a day's journey, is New York City, home of Radio City Music Hall (improbably, one of the best bargains in town) and, this year, the Democratic National Convention. Twain likes the Rockettes, but thinks the Democrats are even more improbable. At night, Central Park features Shakespeare (which Trollope finds surprisingly good) and muggings ("Cut-purses," says Dickens smugly). A most unusual event, they discover, is a relay of 27 "Liberty Torch" runners who will carry water from the Atlantic Ocean across the entire country and dump it into the Pacific. The purpose, like the water...
...Mark Twain takes very seriously what the press says about him. Obviously, this is the price one must pay for his kind of popularity; yet there is not a popular newspaper in the United States which an intelligent man need take seriously on any subject...