A Revisit to Twain’s Cure

Some fifty years back, when I was a sprightly lad of fourteen, I chanced upon the short yarn “A Cure for the Blues,” penned by none other than that old river rat, Mark Twain. Back then, I reckoned it a senseless waste of a good afternoon—nothing more’n a tangle of words that didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Well, sir, the years have a way of pilin’ up like driftwood on the Klamath River, and ain’t it a marvel how they shift a fella’s perspective?

Just a few ticks of the clock ago, I sat myself down and gave that tale another go-round—my first since that long-gone day. Senseless? Like hell, it is!

This evenin’, that story cracked open my eyes like a lantern in the fog, showin’ me the lay of the land in Twain’s time—how folks scribbled and jawed for a livin’—and, by thunder, how snug it fits over the literary and journalistic doin’s of this weary old world today.

It is, I reckon, a queer thing to say, but precious little’s changed, save the earth’s grown a mite older and a touch more tuckered out. Yet here I sit, my spirit kickin’ up its heels, feelin’ as seasoned and wise as that ol’ white-haired sage, Mark Twain hisself.

Ain’t that a notion to get a man grinning and give him a restful night of sleep?