| I now perceive why all men are the deadly
and uncompromising enemies of the rattlesnake: it is merely because the
rattlesnake has not speech. Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able
to persuade man that it differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something
valuable about it somewhere, something worth preserving, something even
good and high and fine, when properly "modified," something entitling
it to protection from the club of the first comer who catches it out of
its hole. - Letter to Editor of Free Russia, "An unpublished letter on the Czar," 1 July 1890 |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
| Strip the human race, absolutely naked,
and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of
tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning
of a monarchy. - Mark Twain's Notebook |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
| I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure
that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as
useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have
the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up
shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd
and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would
have as sound a divine right as any other royal house. ... The worship of
royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would
easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because
it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody,
imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and
so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human
king, and would certainly get it. - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
|
There are shams and shams; there are frauds and frauds, but the transparentest
of all is the sceptered one. We see monarchs meet and go through solemn
ceremonies, farces, with straight countenances; but it is not possible
to imagine them meeting in private and not laughing in each other's faces. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should see the thrones
of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I should really see
the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented
by man-- monarchy. |
 Illustration by "Dwig" from the Dave Thomson collection |
|
We hold these truths to be self-evident -- that all monarchs are usurpers
and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne was ever set
up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing
the legitimate right to set it up -- the numerical mass of the nation. It is hard enough luck being a monarch, without being a target also. A select and peculiar kind of slave-proprietor who does not get his property
by purchase, or trick, or beguilement, but inherits it -- from an ancestor
who stole it. |
"A
Yankee in King Edward's Court" or
"Europe at the Throne of Twain"
"Dwig" cartoon from SUCCESS MAGAZINE, September 1907
Original cartoon owned by the Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, MO.
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