Mark Twain's Salutation to the Twentieth Century

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 8, 1901

Mark Twain's Salutation to the Twentieth Century

BEING solicited for a new century greeting for a special occasion, Mark Twain wrote the following “salutation speech from the nineteenth to the twentieth century,” which is not by any means mere sentiment, nor only humor:—

I bring you the stately maiden named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass.