Has an advertisement ever pissed you off so much that you wanted to yell at the person/company selling the product or service? Nowadays people can take to their blogs or twitter to air their grievances, but Mark Twain did it old school with a strongly worded letter. Back in 1905, roughly five years before his death, Twain lashed out at a patent medicine salesman, who was advertising “The Elixir of Life” via leaflet & letter. Aside from calling the product poison and wishing the salesman had a taste of his own medicine, Twain called J.H. Todd ”an idiot of the 33rd degree,” clearly putting this generation’s insults and comebacks to shame. Read the rest of the story over at Letters of Note, and check out the full transcript for every last drop of Twain’s seething scorn.

Mark Bagby, the winner of the I Am the Next Mark Twain writing contest, presented his winning piece at Borders in Bakersfield, CA. Bagby, a professional Mark Twain interpreter, read two short stories from Who Is Mark Twain? but started out the afternoon of wit and satire with a short bit on compliments.

I don’t know if you were watching Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago, but if you were, you might’ve caught this fantastic cameo:

I can understand why Ashton Kutcher is having difficulty keeping his composure during his monologue because, really…Mark Twain on a tiny motorbike? With a fruity cocktail in a bar? Comedy gold.

I realize I’m a bit late on this Christmas story, but I was too busy preparing for the holiday when the Daily Beast posted Twain’s Santa letter on Christmas Eve.  It’s a quick and fun read, written by Mark Twain as Santa, to his daughter Susie on Christmas. “Santa” is writing from The Palace of St. Nicholas In the Moon, and in the letter he details an elaborate plan to visit Susie and deliver more presents.

When I was a child, I wrote letters to Santa every year, but I never heard back from him. Imagine how exciting this must have been for Susie, receiving correspondence from someone who lives among the stars. It would be equally exciting realizing how much Santa looked like her father!

His ghost, that is. Frank Rizzo over at Courant.com (the online home of the Hartford Courant) reports that “Ghost Hunters” visited the Mark Twain House back in September to conduct a paranormal investigation. Did they find Twain at his writing desk, or shooting a game of pool? Tune in to the Syfy channel tomorrow at 9 pm to find out!

Meanwhile, Caitlin, one of the staff members at the Mark Twain House, posted a scary story about the Graveyard Shift Friday night ghost tours – voices have been heard coming from different parts of the house, freaking everyone out! Twain definitely believed in ghosts*, and he wrote a few ghost stories in his time, but the question is, do you believe in ghosts?

* Twain is quoted in Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review as writing on the death of his daughter Jean: “The spirits of the dead hallow a house, for me.”

Now I’ve played with Legos as a child, building tall multi-colored skyscrapers out of plastic blocks, but never did my creations compare to this Lego replica of Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, CT.

Look at that fine craftmanship!  Can you imagine how much time this must have taken?  It certainly isn’t the work of bored children – the seven-and-a-half-foot long model house was built by Lego master builders at the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, MA, in front of an audience.  Talk about pressure!  The model is on display at the Mark Twain House & Museum on a long-term loan, but before it took up residence there, it moved around the country as part of a traveling show.

Care to take a guess as to how many Legos there are?

More views of the house can be seen online, but this would also be something to see in person!

What if Mark Twain was on Twitter?  I mean, technically he is, but Historical Tweets also gave a humorous answer to that question:

So true.

For those wondering, DeQuille is short for Dan DeQuille, the pen name of William Wright.  Wright was also a writer who worked at the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise with Twain in the 1860s, and they were the paper’s star writing team.  The two became great friends and maintained correspondance long after Twain left Nevada.

Still corresponding today I see, although in much shorter form.

The background image for Mark Twain’s Twitter seems to be of the W. M. Black steamboat, which paddled up and down the Missouri River for 37 years, until 1973.

What is most interesting about the tweet though, is that it comes from a quotation that is often misattributed to Twain:

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter.” This quote is by the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal (1623-62), written in a letter to a friend. The original French version was: “Je n’ai fait cette lettre – ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte” – TwainQuotes.com

But it sounds like something Twain would write, doesn’t it?

With the advent of computers (or even typewriters), handwritten manuscripts like this one have become very rare.  Twain wrote out a note to the printer regarding the images that were drawn in the chapter headers, stating their purpose as to convey the weather of the chapter’s setting to the reader without having to waste words on the necessary act.  The key allowed for more than one weather symbol to be used, in case the day was slightly more foggy than rainy.

These days quick doodles could be drawn by a designer and saved with electronic notes attached to them, manipulated with the click of a mouse.  While some illustrations are amazing, there’s something about these pen & ink sketches that really add character to Twain’s manuscript.  Plus, he’s not half bad…

I found these awesome author drawings by Sam Morrison on Flickr.  Can you tell which one is Twain’s?  It is drawn on a page from Huckleberry Finn, a famous background for Twain’s wild (and just as famous?) hair.

While I don’t condone tearing pages out of books, this is certainly worth the visual experience.

Have you seen any interesting Twain art?

Proof that Mark Twain can do anything…even sell soda.