Clemens no longer kept note-books, as in an earlier time, but set down innumerable memoranda-comments, stray reminders, and the like—on small pads, and bunches of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about his room. I gathered up many of them then and afterward, and a few of these characteristic bits may be offered here.
KNEE
It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest & truest & highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.
JEHOVAH
He is all-good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other —take your choice. He made it hard to get into heaven and easy to get into hell. He commended man to multiply & replenish-what? Hell.
MODESTY ANTEDATES CLOTHES
& will be resumed when clothes are no more. [The latter part of this aphorism is erased and underneath it he adds:]
MODESTY DIED
when clothes were born.
MODESTY DIED when false modesty was born.