Daily Archives:May 23rd, 2010

Twaintieth Century

After a hundred years in a vault, Mark Twain’s autobiography is soon to be published. Memo to self: remember to achieve something significant enough in your life that anyone will be interested in reading about you a century later…

It sounds, though, as if the renewed interest in him may be a mixed blessing, which reminds me of a little poem I learned as a child:

Lives of Great Men all remind us
As we o’er their pages turn
That we too may leave behind us
Letters that we ought to burn.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser