Word: twain
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...Berlin, the American authorities refused to approve a Soviet version of Tom Sawyer for German schools. The reason was a preface which said: "Twain's scorn is directed primarily against the semi-education of parvenus and refined people who imitate the European way of life. . . . The whole mendacity of the capitalistic class, the hypocrisy and bigotry in the U.S. of his time are attacked without leniency or mercy." However, without U.S. sanction, 400,000 Berlin children go on using Soviet-proposed books because the U.S. has not supplied any schoolbooks...
...Chief staple: poi, a fermented paste made from taro root. "And an unseductive mixture it is," wrote Mark Twain, who nevertheless was fascinated by the native method of eating it: "The forefinger is thrust into the mess and stirred quickly around ... the head is thrown back, the finger inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off and swallowed-the eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort of ecstasy...
...Mark Twain got a tribute of which he might or might not have approved. The Mark Twain Association began a drive to finance a $300,000 Mark Twain Chair of Literature at the University of California. Purpose of the "chair": the explanation of humor to students. In the Atlantic appeared some letters Twain had written to his fiancée-and one to her father. Portrait of an anxious-to-please son-in-law-to-be: "I wrote you [the father] and Mrs. Langdon a letter . . . which will offend again, I fear-and yet, no harm was meant, no undue...
...flamadiddles were justified. In the November anniversary number, Editor Edward A. ("Ted") Weeks had rounded up: Albert Einstein on atomic-energy control (as told to Raymond Swing); war letters of General George S. Patton Jr.; unpublished love letters of Mark Twain; excerpts from the notebooks of Henry James; part of a new novel by John P. Marquand; articles by George Bernard Shaw, Budd Schulberg, Sumner Welles, Sir Richard Livingstone.* To show off these prizes to better advantage, the Atlantic had freshened up its format, run its first four-color cover and had its type face lifted by topnotch Typographer...
...about that double meaning. There was no such thing. The gag that horrified Mr. Leech had jes' one single meaning. A few days later Gracie Allen used precisely the same gag on the air. American humorists going back from Chic Sale to Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Artemus Ward have all had fun with just such gags. Everybody laughed, nobody griped-just Leech...