The Way We Talk

Mark Twain was a master of words.

 Am I the only one who has noticed increasing vulgarity in everyday speech?   This blog looks at changes in what is acceptable in social speech and how it has changed over the years.   

It may surprise you that in the English language, very early curse words evolved from the Bible, because utilizing the Bible in expressing contempt was the worst means of hatefulness.  Also, a disgusting insult was calling someone the name of a different race or ethnicity.  

All of these vulgarities evolved over time, but it is thought that a great change occurred when in WW II when war correspondents were permitted to quote soldiers directly, bringing some 'colorful' language to civilian vocabularies.  Gradually, words that would probably never have been used by earlier generations embedded themselves in our vocabularies.

In recent decades, swearing has become more widely acceptable.  People swear in casual conversation to emphasize what they are saying, or to create humor.  It is also common to show agreement with others by repeating the swear word they had spoken to show their agreement.   

Years ago, the world was shocked when Vice President Cheney spoke directly to candidate Sen. Leahy, using a vulgar expression.  Cheney's words became the headline in many newspapers.  Although politicians had long used curses in private, in public they rarely did so.  There were examples of politicians being overheard using a curse word, or of being caught on a 'hot mike,' but in general politicians avoided cursing publicly.  However, times have changed, and some politicians, even those of high rank, curse openly.  

The way we talk has changed.  I doubt that we will ever go back to Victorian days during which women's speech was genteel, her words as tightly bound as her corset.  Men would never have intentionally sworn in the company of ladies.  

I confess that I do prefer that professionals maintain a certain public dignity and reserve their more colorful language for friends in private conversations.  Unfortunately, I fear that the less that people read, the worse their vocabularies shrink. The great speakers of the past may no longer exist in significant numbers.

Can the 1st Amendment be called upon for help?  Freedom of speech is a highly treasured right, and it seems unlikely that courts would become involved in the now ordinary vulgarity heard today. Most of us are familiar with the prohibition that you cannot stand up in a crowded theater and scream "Fire," putting people at risk of harm as a joke, because of the likelihood that people could be injured in their desperation to escape the theater.  However, common vulgarities are unlikely to receive the Court's attention, unless there is some risk of harm or exceptional circumstances.  

The position of the First Amendment emphasizes the importance of these freedoms:  religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petitioning the Government for redress of grievances should be a reminder of their importance.  However, their very placement should also be a reminder of the respect they are due.     

  

Isaac's Embarrassment

In order to acquire title to a homestead, it was necessary for the homesteader, after staking a claim, living on the land, and making the required improvements, to go before a judge and swear that he or she had lived on the claim and fulfilled the requirements for the mandated period of time.  In addition, he or she had to swear that their intention was to remain on their claim.  The objective of offering free land was to populate the vast open territory in the West, and the requirements were intended to prohibit speculators from claiming land they never intended to occupy, and discouraging those who only claimed a homestead in order to sell it.  Not only were the homesteaders themselves required to swear to these requirements but also they were to bring witnesses.

Isaac Werner was asked by several neighbors to go with them to appear before the judge, under oath, and swear that he had knowledge that the homesteader had fulfilled the requirements.  One of the neighbors for whom Isaac appeared had met all of the requirements of living on and improving his claim for the required time, but he had also made a deal to dispose of the land in a horse swap before having proved up his claim.  Isaac knew nothing about the horse deal when he agreed to appear as a witness for his friend.  When a U.S. Marshal arrested Isaac's friend for lying under oath about having not sold the land before proving it up, Isaac felt, rightfully so, that he had been taken advantage of by a friend.

Photo Credit:  Lyn Fenwick

American laws and traditions place great emphasis on the importance of oaths.  In the case of Isaac and his friend, both men raised their hands and swore to tell the truth and the whole truth.  One lied and the other supported that lie because his oath was based on his honest belief that his friend had met the homestead requirements.  Isaac did not know about the horse deal, and he swore to the truth as he knew it.

I confess.  I have very little patience with or respect for a liar.  Yet, nailing down the "truth" is sometimes not quite a simple thing.  The best simple definition I found for truth is 'that which is in accordance with fact or reality.' 

However, a more serious search for a definition leads to Philosophers' definitions and Religious definitions, as well as many specific theories.  Correspondence theories emphasize truth as corresponding to the actual state of affairs.  Coherence theories require fitting the elements within a whole system.  Pragmatic theory holds that truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting concepts into practice.  Consensus relies on a definition of truth as that which is agreed upon by a group.

As those who follow this blog already know, I often turn to Mark Twain for common sense definitions, and he seems to have addressed lies more frequently than truth, but here are two of his tongue-in-cheek observations.  Truth is the most valuable thing we have.  Let us economize it, Twain suggested.  Elaborating a bit on that theme, he wrote, Familiarity breeds contempt.  How accurate that is.  The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.  Sometimes his humor takes a second to catch his point! 

Recent news has involved the decision by the Justice Department to drop the criminal case against Michael Flynn despite his having admitted twice in court that he had lied under oath.  When an interviewer asked Attorney General Barr, who signed off on the decision to drop the criminal case, "When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?" Barr replied, "Well, history is written by the winner.  So, it largely depends on whose writing the history..."

Credit:  Portrait Artist Susan B. Durkee

I have written before in this blog about that particular saying, and it is certainly true that those in authority do present history to a present audience in a way favorable to them.  The fact that future authorities may present history in a light favorable to them does not determine how those in the present should evaluate truth vs. lies.

Again, I turn to Mark Twain for guidance, and he has clearly addressed the point. Anybody can tell lies: there is no merit in a mere lie, it must possess art, it must exhibit a splendid & plausible & convincing probability; that is to say, it must be powerfully calculated to deceive.  

Isaac Werner lived in a time when everyone knew their neighbors, yet he managed to be embarrassed by a friend, who put him in the position to support that friend's proof of claim by concealing from Isaac the horse trade.  Today we have so many more resources to evaluate truth; yet, we seem to find it more and more difficult for everyone to agree what truth is.  In closing, I will suggest that sometimes we make things too complicated when the truth is as simple as the definition with which I began--"that which is in accordance with fact or reality."  

           

When Travel is Curtailed

Mark Twain in a Fort Worth, TX Park

One of the books in Isaac Werner's library was The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress, Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land  by Mark Twain.  It purports to be an ordinary travel book, but with Mark Twain as the author, it is certainly not.  In fact, one of the examples from the book is Twain's contrasting of what he experiences from what travelogue authors had mislead him to expect.  He also pointed out the profiteering and the inaccurate presentation of history at locations they visit.

While it might be expected from reading The Innocents Abroad that Twain had little regard for foreign travel, that is not the case.  In fact, in his Autobiography of Mark Twain he wrote:  "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindness."

At this historic moment when the Coronavirus has resulted in travel bans around the world, it is a good time to reflect on Twain's words.  Does travel open our eyes and minds to people and places different from ourselves and the places from which we come?

Certainly travel is greatly changed from1869 when Mark Twain's book was published.  Isaac Werner was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and he traveled west to Illinois shortly before or just after Twain's book was published.  There, Isaac was a druggist, and later a partner in a milling operation.  In the later 1870s,  he was attracted by the offer of free land in Kansas to travel further west to claim a homestead and a timber claim.  Yet, his longing to see more of the world was apparent from the travel books he bought and the stereoscope image cards he purchased.  His journal makes clear, however, that he never travelled more than a days journey from his claims once he settled in Kansas.

Yet, Isaac traveled through the books in his library, protecting his mind from "prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindness" through reading, with books to learn foreign languages, books about art and history, and books authored by foreign writers.

As we are warned against travel and encouraged to remain at home as much as possible to avoid exposure to the Coronavirus, perhaps it is a good time to read some of those books we have put off reading!  If your book shelves offer nothing tempting, today we have the option of reading books online.  What would Isaac have thought of that! 

Do Ethics Matter?

In Isaac Werner's community, neighbors often shared work.  Sometimes it was for cash.  Other times, one person would help a neighbor do a particular job, and in turn, that neighbor would help him with a different job.  Or, neighbors might work together because equipment each lacked was possessed by the other person.

Isaac described in his journal one situation that did not turn out as expected.  He had shared jobs in the past with two neighbors, so when he arranged to share labor with a younger brother and his friend, Isaac assumed the same terms that the older brother had agreed would apply.  They worked together for three days, and when it was time to settle up, there was no disagreement about the agreed price per day for labor.  When the price for the equipment the younger brother had supplied was calculated, the young man insisted the prevailing rate was $1.50 per day rather than the $1 a day his brother had agreed in the past, and Isaac reluctantly accepted the increase.  Then it was time to calculate the fee for Isaac's horse and equipment, but the young men insisted there should be no charge for them.  Because no discussion had occurred before the work began, Isaac finally settled up with the young men, but the entry in his journal that evening made it clear that he felt that he had been treated unfairly and had been made a fool.

Bertrand Russell, 1954

Bertrand Russell, a British mathematician and philosopher living from 1872 to 1970 wrote:  "Without civic morality Communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value."

Reflecting on Russell's words, and applying them to Isaac's situation, should we place the blame on Isaac for having assumed the arrangement that had been customary when working with the older brother would apply, or should we place the blame on the younger men for having proceeded with the job without alerting Isaac that they expected a different arrangement from what had been customary in the past?

Times change.  Customs change.  Do the underlying ethics and moral conventions change, or as Bertrand Russell suggested, without personal morality does our survival lose all value?  We are seeing changes in the civic morality of our world every day, and it will probably not surprise you that I have turned to history to reflect on those changes.

James Fenimore Cooper in a Midshipman's uniform

For example, a member of the House of Representatives, Rashida Tlaib, recently called the president an obscenity.  She did not apologize, explaining instead that she was simply a very passionate person.  Looking to history, I found a quote from James Fenimore Cooper's novel, The Deer Slayer.  He wrote:  "Mendacity and vulgarity can only permanently affect those who resort to their use."  Is he right that the harm done was to Representative Tlaid herself, or did her vulgar term harm the president, or does such language harm the entire  community, as Russell suggested?

A newly elected member of the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, carelessly exaggerated the potential savings possible if only tighter controls were imposed on Pentagon budgets. It took me only a few minutes to look up the total Pentagon budget, and even if the entire budget were reduced to zero, her alleged savings could not be achieved longer than I can keep up with all the zeros to the compute the years!  Should that matter?  Albert Einstein thought so, for he wrote, "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."

Sometimes words are not needed to reveal changes in civic morality, as in the President's imitating the physical difficulties of reporter, Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, (which impacts the function and range of motion of joints).  Vice president Hubert Humphrey had an answer for that:  "The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped."

Mark Twain, Bronze in Fort Worth

Reconsidering Isaac's anger about the resolution of the expenses for the shared labor, perhaps we should ask a question I did not raise.  Had the customs in his community changed so that what the younger men expected was appropriate and did they simply assume Isaac would have been aware of those changes so that they did not recognize any need to discuss the compensation in advance.  Is it reasonable to accept that civic morality changes from generation to generation and communities must adapt?  Or, are there certain standards we should expect from those in our own community and the greater national community of which we are a part?

Is all of this a generational thing?  Here's what Mark Twain had to say about the subject:  "The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after that, he knows too little."

Nearly New Year's Eve

(c) Lyn Fenwick drawing from 2015

There are still a few days until 2018 tumbles to a disquieting close, and the notion of New Year's Resolutions may seem like a relic from the past.  Or, maybe not.  Perhaps it is up to each of us to reflect on what resolutions we each might contribute to make 2019 less disquieting.

I am a collector of quotes--odds and ends from many sources, including this one I found on a cereal box, with which I will begin.  Unfortunately, the cereal box did not provide the author.  "Fame is fleeting, money evaporates, and all we have left is character."  New Year's Eve is a pretty good time for a character check.

Younger readers may not recognize the name of John Wooden, but those of us with some gray in our hair will remember this incredible coach and what was for a while his unbeatable University of California team!  This is what he called His Creed:  "Be true to yourself.  Make each day a masterpiece.  Help others.  Drink deeply from good books.  Make friendship a fine art.  Build a shelter against a rainy day."  You don't have to play basketball to find some good advice in Wooden's creed, and any or all of those commitments would make great resolutions.

Words attributed to Wm Shakespeare on the internet but probably a prank to see if people believed that attribution, nevertheless made their way onto my quote collection because they challenged me to consider how seriously I honor the things that I say matter to me.  I share this not to suggest you adopt the particular things mentioned but rather to challenge you, as it did me, to consider whether you truly honor by your actions the things you say you value.  "You say you love the rain, but you open your umbrella.  You say you love the sun, but you find a shady spot.  You say you love the wind, but you close your windows.  This is why I am afraid, you say you love me too." 

The advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson has inspired many generations, and I found this in my quote file:  "The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."   Some would say, I believe, that doing those things will bring you happiness.

Most of us will tolerate hard truths from Mark Twain because he's clever...or perhaps because we think he is poking fun at others rather than at us. This is one of my favorites:  "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

I will close with a movie quote taken from a conversation when a young man, discouraged by what he sees around him, turns to his uncle for advice.  The movie is Secondhand Lions and the actor speaking the quoted lines is the great Robert Duvall.  "Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most:  that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power, mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies.  You remember that, boy.  Doesn't matter if they are true or not.  A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in."   

Selecting these quotes to share has given me hope for 2019, and I hope they have given you some ideas for your own New Year's Resolutions.  Admit it.  You know you probably will not stick to a diet or adhere to an exercise program for more than a few weeks.  And if you are a smoker, the odds are against really quitting because of a New Year's Resolution.  Maybe, however, something I shared might be worth the effort...  Have a safe and happy New Years Eve!

(You can click to enlarge the drawing.  Please pay particular attention to the words around the clock face.)

Cat People vs. Dog People

Isaac Beckley Werner was definitely a Cat Person.  He mentions being given a puppy by a neighbor once, but after the entry about the gift the puppy was never mentioned again.  I assume it was returned.

However, he loved his cats.  This was rather unusual, because he also had a great fondness for birds.  He trusted the predictions of seasonal changes from migrating ducks and geese flying south in autumn and returning to the north in the spring, and he knew the predictable time that his favorite song birds would return in the spring.  

He also liked chickens and had a favorite among his flock.  Unfortunately, when a skunk got into the hen house, it was his favorite that was killed.

But his favorites were his cats.  Before giving away a kitten, he made sure the neighbor taking it had some sort of shelter available for the cat.

Just for fun, this blog is about the distinction between Dog People vs. Cat People.  Studies have found that there are personality differences! Mark Twain was among the authors in Isaac's library collection of books, and Twain is known for being a Cat Person!

Portrait by Lyn Fenwick (c)

Of course, some people love both cats and dogs.  However, if people have a specific favorite, more are dog lovers than cat lovers.

Researcher Denise Guastello, an associate professor of psychology at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin concluded that such preferences may be related to the types of environments cat or dog people prefer.  Quoted by Rachael Rettner in her article, Guastello said: "It makes sense that a dog person is going to be more lively, because they're going to want to be out there, outside, talking to people, bringing their dog.  Whereas, if you're more introverted, and sensitive, maybe you're more at home reading a book, and your cat doesn't need to go outside for a walk."

The studies do seem to confirm that Dog People are more likely to be extroverts, while Cat People are more likely to be introverts.  In addition to being more likely to be introverts, cat owners are more likely to live alone, to be more timid, modest, obliging, and fairly trusting. Dog People, on the other hand, are generally described as being forceful, assertive, persistent, self-assured, and self-confident.

Dog a descendant of Rin-Tin-Tin

Those who identify themselves as Cat People are unlikely to want to have a dog in their household.  When asked if they were given a dog would they keep it, Cat People tended to say "no," while if Dog People were given a cat, they were more likely to say they would keep it.  That seems to have been true of Isaac, when his friend gave him a puppy.

I tend to identify myself as a Dog Person, but we have had both cats and dogs and we've loved them all.  The photograph at right is of me with a breeder of German Shepherds whose line is descended from Rin-Tin-Tin.  He was a gorgeous dog!

Because cat lovers tend to be introverts, and often book lovers, that would certainly apply to Isaac.  In our family, it may be our cat who is the book lover!

Emerson the Cat

Isaac Werner was a single man who lived alone, enjoying his reading.  He was willing to work hard for the things he supported, but he often did his work in a solitary way, for example, going to the school house to make repairs when he saw that they were needed.  He was modest and obliging, for although he initiated the formation of the County Agricultural Society and the local group of Progressive neighbors, he was content to serve as the Secretary of the groups, rather than feeling snubbed because he wasn't chosen as the President of the groups he formed.  In fact, he was elected Secretary of nearly every organization of which he was a part.  He definitely met many of the common characteristics of a Cat Person.

I thought you might have some fun with some of the generalizations about common traits.  Cat people are more intelligent than dog people.  Cat people are more neurotic than dog people.  Dog people tend to be more conservative than cat people.  Dog people are more obedient--just like dogs.  Cat people are more open-minded that dog people.  Dog people are more masculine than cat people.  Dog people and cat people have a different sense of humor.  (These Basic Differences Between Dog People and Cat People are taken from a list by Lorenzo Jensen III.)

Frankly, I agree with some of the generalizations, but many do not seem to fit my friends and their pets.  The generalizations are based on studies and are simply a measure of what is more likely to be the case.  They certainly aren't absolutes! 

The Books in Our Lives

Jefferson:  "I cannot live without books."

When I did the series on favorite children's books and ask readers of the blog to share the favorites from their childhoods, I was inundated with so many replies that it took several blogs to share all of your favorites.  Last week, I invited readers to share their favorite adult book titles, and only a few of you replied.  Since I know that so many of you were eager readers as children, and because educators believe forming the habit of reading in childhood will develop active adult readers, I expected to be inundated with adult book titles.  I'm disappointed, but I did receive some great replies!  

One of my foreign followers  loves reading history, so he began by admitting that he doesn't read much fiction.  However, he does like John le Carre (1931-    ) spy novels and named The Night Manager as his favorite.  He also enjoys Westerns, naming Ernest Haycox  (1899-1950) and, especially, Jack Schaefer (1907-1991) as favorites.  He warned against trying to take the easy way out by seeing movies based their books--pale imitations, in his opinion!

Edward Bellamy

I have another friend who enjoys mysteries and travel books, neither of which appeal to me.  She has shared some wonderful suggestions outside those genres that I have loved.   Our friendship really took root when we discovered we both had read The House by Otowi Bridge by Peggy Pond Church (1903-1987).

Two people responded to my call for favorite adult books by telling me we share a favorite.  LS chose To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1926-2016), which I think every aspiring lawyer should read.

SGR agrees with me about East of Eden being our favorite among John Steinbeck's novels.  She is a voracious reader and declined naming a specific favorite among all the books she loves.  However, she did share a favorite from  among books recently read, and her recommendation came with three reviews and an interview of the author as attachments.  Yes, she has tempted me to read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (1964-    ).

Life is too short to read all of the books I'd like to read, so I enjoy recommendations from friends who are readers.  Recently, JD recommended The Sympathizer, which I mentioned in last week's blog.  I would never have read it without his recommendation, and I'm so glad that I did.  In turn, I recommended All the Light We Cannot See, and he tells me he enjoyed it.

I do believe what we read shapes who we are, and for that reason I find no pleasure reading books that are no more than a way to pass the time.  Researching my manuscript about Isaac Werner, I felt that I came to know him from the books he chose to read.  He also led me to books being read during the populist movement, so that I came to understand what inspired and shaped working class people of that time.  Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1850-1898) was so popular that Bellamy Clubs, whose members sought to implement some of his futuristic ideas, were formed around the world.  Mark Twain (1835-1910) is still popular today.  Other books that he owned are no longer read, but I appreciated the immersion into that era that reading those books gave me.

Thanks to those of you who shared "the books in your lives!"

Isaac's Love for Cats

Emerson helping with my blog

Mark Twain, Isaac B. Werner, and I have in common our appreciation for the character of cats.  In our marriage, my husband and I have been owned by five cats, all of whom found us.  Prince found my husband at the college farm where he worked when we were in college.  Remington decided that our dog Abbey needed a playmate, and mewed to be found.  Black Kitty and Jacob found us when I put out milk for their wild mother cat in an unsuccessful attempt to tame her. (I didn't know she had kittens--they stayed, she didn't.)  Emerson flagged us down from the side of the road by pretending to be a tiny kitten lost on a freezing night (instead of the 4 or 5 year old Tom cat our veterinarian says he is).  Obviously Emerson is a literary cat, and after seeing last week's blog, he suggested that I do a follow-up this week about Mark Twain and Isaac Werner's particular affection for cats.

New York Herald

Isaac was known throughout his community for his love of cats.  One of his journal entries involved his disgust with a neglectful mother cat who left the box behind the stove that he had provided for her and her kittens.  When Isaac found the cold, apparently dead kittens the next morning, he fired up the stove and wrapped the kittens in a towel and placed them on the door of the warming oven in an attempt to revive them.  He was successful with only one of the kittens.  Unfortunately, even bringing the mother and her kittens into the house and providing them with a box behind the stove was not enough to keep them from freezing when strong winds pushed the cold air inside his house at night after the fire died down.  Many early settlers suffered from frost bite inside their crude homes.  

One of Isaac's journal entries documents a visit by my great grandparents, Aaron & Susan Beck, who came looking for a kitten to adopt.  The cartoon at above-left was published in the New York Herald on December 13, 1925 to accompany the memoirs of Clement's secretary Mary Howden.  The caption reads "That cat will write her autograph all over your leg if you let her."

Mark Twain's love for cats of legendary.  He wrote, I simply can't resist a cat, particularly a purring one.  They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.  

The portrait at right is by Connecticut portrait artist Susan Drake.  To see more of her work you may visit her website at http://www.susandurkee.com/ and see some of the famous people she has painted.  Her studio is called The Lobster Pot, the name given by Twain to the property when he owned it at the turn of the last century.  If you are lucky enough to consider having her do your portrait, you may find out how to reach her at that same site.

Twain admitted "Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these."  Certainly he and Isaac would have hit it off well, for Twain also declared "When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction."  

Two of Twain's passions!

In a letter dated October 2, 1908, Twain wrote to Mable Larkin Patterson about two of his passions--cats and billiards.  "One of them likes to be crammed into a corner-pocket of the billiard table...and then he watches the game (and obstructs it) by the hour, and spoils many a shot by putting out his paw and changing the direction of a passing ball."

Well known for his own yarns, Twain admitted his awareness that a falsehood will travel forever with countless re-tellings when he said, "One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."  

Some people resent the occasional indifference shown them by their cat, but Twain regarded that as one of the breeds most admirable qualities.  "Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash.  That one is the cat.  If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."  --from Twain's Notebook, 1894

Who says cats aren't loving?

Legend has it that there are 'cat people' and 'dog people,' but if that is so, some of us are exceptions to that rule and love both.  Since I have shared with you the names of all our cats, it seems only fair that I mention our two dogs as well.  First came Lady, a beautiful black and tan mixed-breed, small spaniel, who took care of us through college, the Air Force, and my husband's career start and my law school.  Then came Abbey, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel who became Remington the cat's best buddy (but only when no one was looking!) 

Frankly, we have found both our cats and our dogs to be loving companions--although I confess that training a full-grown Tom cat is proving next to impossible.  We have, however, taught him that he shouldn't be doing what he is going to do anyway! 

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A Shared Love for Books

Photo credit:  Larry Fenwick

On a recent trip to Fort Worth my husband encountered this sculpture of Mark Twain, and knowing how much I would enjoy seeing it, he paused for some photographs.

Among the many books in Isaac Werner's library was Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad.  On February 24, 1871 he recorded in his journal:  "Wrote and ordered again a copy of Innocents Abroad...,"  but it was clearly not the first copy of Twain that he owned, for on March 2, 1871 he wrote in his journal, "During eve boys standing round store reading Mark Twain and general fun."  The copy that he had ordered arrived March 10, 1871:  "I received for express a copy of Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad."  Isaac's last entry about the book was made on March 18, 1871:  "During day I read Mark Twain's description of Cathedral at Milan, just feeling interested to read up about that building."

Early edition

Innocents Abroad was published in 1869 and is an account of Twain's traveling with a group of Americans in 1867 aboard a chartered vessel called the Quaker City.  The book was the best selling of all of Twain's books during his lifetime, and it remains one of the all-time most popular travel books.

Stone plaque

Near the statue of Twain was this plaque, which reads:  Given to the Families of Fort Worth for the Joys of Reading Together.  The donor was identified as "Red Oak Books."  Of course, my curiosity lead me to research the donor, and I learned that in 1991 Jon and Rebecca Brumley established the Red Oak Foundation intended to encourage reading to young children.  As part of their mission Red Oaks Books gives over 37,000 new, hardcover books to disadvantaged families each year.

Photo credit:  Larry Fenwick

One of the first things that attracted me to Isaac Werner was our shared love for books.  Not only do we both love books, but we both value the importance of building a personal library.

Clearly Jon and Rebecca Brumley share that love for books and realize not only the importance of reading to children but also the importance of each child having books of his or her own.

Someday I just may join Mark Twain on his bench, and if no one is nearby to laugh at the silly lady talking to a statue, I might even tell Twain about the homesteader on the Kansas prairie who loved books and who read Innocents Abroad with his friends. 

Advice from Henry Ward Beecher

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.  Henry Ward Beecher

 

Inside Isaac's journal was a lengthy newspaper clipping which described how to keep a journal.  The author of the article was Henry Ward Beecher, a Congregationalist minister, social reformer, and abolitionist.  Today his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, is probably better known, for she is the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, whom Abraham Lincoln addressed as 'the lady who started this war,' when they met.  However, during his life, Harriet's brother Henry was also widely known.

 

Henry had his own encounter with Lincoln, who heard him preach.  Beecher advanced the Union cause on a speaking tour through England during the Civil War, and when the flag was again raised over Fort Sumter near the end of the Civil War, he was the primary speaker.  Beecher lived in a time when eloquent preachers could become celebrities, drawing crowds to their services and becoming acquainted with other well known people.  After hearing Rev. Beecher preach, Mark Twain described his performance as "sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms this way and that, discharging rockets of poetry and exploding mines of eloquence, halting now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a point."  Even if Twain was guilty of his well-known exaggerations, Beecher must have been a forceful speaker.  Using his celebrity to speak out for causes, Beecher supported women's suffrage, temperance, and Darwin's theory of evolution.

 

The pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in faraway Brooklyn, New York had a significant role in early Kansas.  Before the Civil War, Beecher raised money for the early settlers in Kansas and Nebraska who were willing to oppose slavery, using the money he raised to buy them rifles.  Consequently, the guns acquired the nickname of "Beecher's Bibles."

 

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you.  Never excuse yourself.  Henry Ward Beecher

 

Even the scandal involving accusations of improprieties with a female member of his church, the wife of his friend, did not extinguish Beecher's celebrity.  The Plymouth Church Board of Inquiry exonerated Beecher but excommunicated the woman's husband, and a second Board of Inquiry two years later excommunicated the woman as well.

 

Whether Isaac was aware of the scandal is unknown, but he respected Beecher's opinion well enough to have clipped an article written by Beecher from the newspaper to save in his journal.  Beecher counseled against filling a personal journal with feelings and opinions, recommending that a journal should be a record of specific events--of weather, people seen that day, and how time was spent.  The clipping in Isaac's journal is undated, but Beecher's advice would indicate that the opinions and emotions of a young man shared in Isaac's journal entries of 1870-71 were before he read Beecher's newspaper column, and the entries of 1884-1891 when the journal resumed were influenced by Beecher's advice to stick to facts.

 

Journaling may have been a Werner family tradition.  His twin brother Henry Beckley Werner also kept a diary, which was donated to Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania by Henry's son, Charles Hain Werner.  The diary entries may be read at http://library.albright.edu/casc.  It was very interesting for me to compare entries from 1871 from both twin brothers' journals, particularly the entries about brother Henry Werner's travels to Virginia.

 

Even after Henry Ward Beecher's death in 1887, his advice was available to people, as can be seen from the advertisement taken from the County Capital newspaper to which Isaac subscribed.  Posthumously, Beecher was still dispensing advice on "courtship, early marriages, church work, choir music, women and housekeeping."  Frankly, I wonder what Rev. Beecher had to say about housekeeping!  The very thought of Henry Ward Beecher delivering his opinion to women readers of the Ladies Home Journal on the subject of housekeeping calls to mind Rev. Beecher's own words. 

 

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs.  It's jolted by every pebble on the road.  Henry Ward Beecher



Isaac's Library

I immediately formed a kinship with Isaac because of our common love for books. When Isaac's Journal begins in December of 1870, he is a druggist in Rossville, Illinois, in his mid-twenties. He is prospering, with every bit of money he can set aside spent on books, views for his stereoscope, and portrait cards of famous people that he kept in albums. He had a curious mind that he wanted to fill with the writings of great authors, pictures of the world, and images of important people, and he was determined to build his collections, despite being criticized by some of his less literary friends. About the money he spent, he wrote in his Journal: "Some get rid of a good deal [of money] in horses and buggies, great many in whisky, and how many on women? Ike [Isaac] fools good deal away in Books and Views and Pictures." That is not to suggest that Isaac wasn't keeping his eyes open for a well-educated young lady. He tried charming one young miss by loaning her some of his art books, and he paid particular attention to a bright young bookkeeper at Henderson & Lee's store, the first female employed in that position in town. He was also quite interested in a young woman who played chess and appreciated music, but unfortunately for Isaac, none of these relationships matured into a romance.

From his successful business he had assets he could have invested or loaned at profitable rates of interest, but instead he continued to buy books, explaining in his Journal: "How interesting and delightful such reading is and the daily increase in familiarity with such noble literary monuments. When I think back over all my best investments yet made, what I done [sic] in good Books I must consider the Master stroke of all. What a permanent and ever increasing value does such an investment bring..."

These words were written when he was young, but even during the hard times as a homesteader on the Kansas prairie, he treasured his books and added to his library occasionally. Most of the later additions were of a practical nature and often pamphlets rather than beautifully bound volumes, but he never doubted the value of books. Isaac would have agreed completely with Barbara Tuchman, who wrote, "Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."

Many of the books in Isaac's library are still read today--Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, Gibbon's History of the Roman Empire, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Cervantes's Don Quixote, monthly issues of "Scientific American" which he had bound. He also collected books of art, philosophy, engineering, law, economics, political theory, logic, travel, and languages. He had reference books about Shakespeare, the Bible, and Dictionaries of words, authors, and artists. Among them all, he seemed to love Shakespeare best. I can picture Isaac sitting in his early dugout, before he had built his house and still lacking a horse to ride to the nearest town, reading Shakespeare by lamplight.

I was so curious about the books Isaac read that I went to some of my favorite used book websites and ordered the oldest editions I could find of titles he had mentioned. I guess you might say that Isaac and I formed a book club! Pictured are the following: Progress & Poverty by Henry George, Twain's Innocents Abroad, A Comprehensive Dictionary of Organ Stops, Classical Antiquities, Cuba with Pen & Pencil, Theory of Spencerian Penmanship, Bain's Logic: Deductive & Inductive, Cooper's Justinian, and The Culture Demanded by Modern Life. The books on art and travel that I would have particularly enjoyed could not be found, but the sampling I read impressed me with Isaac's thirst for knowledge. Surely you can understand why I must tell the story of this remarkable man!

[The stereoscope and views in the photograph belonged to my ancestors. I do know from Isaac's Journal, however, that he visited my great grandparents, Aaron & Susan Beck, and shared his stereoscope views with them.

Finding Isaac's Journal

When I learned that my deceased cousin had owned a homesteader's journal, I began asking questions, starting at the museum to which Cousin Lucille had bequeathed many of her possessions.  Unfortunately, no one seemed to know anything about the journal, but I was invited to look through the unsorted boxes of my cousin's possessions stored in the basement of the museum.  Like many small town museums, the Lucille M. Hall Museum depends on volunteers, and I felt selfish searching for the journal when it was obvious that they needed help sorting.  I made a compromise with my conscience.  As I began opening boxes, I sorted contents and identified pictures that I recognized, but I chose boxes that looked like they might contain the missing journal.  When the last two volunteers came down into the basement where I was sorting to let me know they were leaving for the day, they told me I was welcome to stay and continue looking.  I wasn't too keen on staying alone in the basement of an old building whose creaking and dripping sounds were not familiar to me.  I left with them.

The next day, a volunteer had gone into the storeroom where I had been working and had opened the box next to the one I was sorting.  It was the last box on the shelf, and inside was Isaac's Journal.  If I had stayed to work only a few minutes longer, I would have found it.  The important thing, however, was that the journal had been found--and what a discovery it was!

 

Each day from August of 1884 to June of 1891, Isaac wrote in this large, leather-bound journal, two inches thick, pages ten inches wide by fifteen and a half inches tall, containing 480 pages--the kind of legal journal in which records at the court house are kept.  In the front pages of the journal are entries from 1870 and 1871, when Isaac was a young druggist in Rossville, Illinois.  With no explanation for a 13 year interruption, the journal resumes during Isaac's years as a homesteader in Stafford County, Kansas.  Knowing that I wanted to use the journal for research, the museum board allowed me to take it home to do the work.                                                                                                                             

In order to organize and index all of the information the journal contained, I quickly realized I needed to transcribe it.  Isaac's penmanship is actually quite good, but he filled the pages from edge to edge in a fairly small script, and at my best, I was able to type only about one page every forty-five minutes.  I wasn't sure I could complete such a project.  After two weeks, I called one of the board members and told her what I was trying to do.  She said not to worry about how long it was taking, since without my inquiry, the journal might have gone undiscovered for months or even years.  The task of transcribing took me eleven months, involving one crashed laptop and a trip to my optometrist!                               

Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad:  "At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at his work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest."  Twain goes on to say that such enthusiasm only lasts about twenty-one days; however, Isaac's commitment lasted far longer, and it is a historical treasure.  The front page identifies the Journal as "Vol. 5th."  Sadly, the whereabouts of volumes 1-4 are unknown.

The writing done in 1870-1871 is that of a young man--full of ideas, opinions, and personal feelings.  When the journal writing resumes in 1884, the entries are of a more practical nature--the weather, his crops, labor done and done for him by others, economic matters, community events, and political activities.  Isaac seems to have been influenced in his changed style by a newspaper column authored by Henry Ward Beecher, which Isaac clipped and glued in the journal.  Beecher disapproved of confessional journal keeping, offering instead the following advice: "One may trace from day to day the mere facts of personal history, the proceedings of the farm, or the books read, visits made or received, the events in society, the conversations with men of mark, the facts of the weather, the seasons, the aspects of nature, and, in short, a journal for knowledge, in distinction from feeling, might be kept with great profit."  Isaac adhered to this advice for six years, preserving a record of prairie life and social struggles.

Isaac lived in an exciting time, but he kept his Journal for himself, written in sentence fragments and containing names familiar to him but a mystery to today's reader.  I decided to bring this historical place and time, with Isaac at its center, alive for readers!  Even while I was transcribing and indexing the Journal, further research began.

[Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.]