MARCH 27, 2005 --

LPR stopped at the Mark Twain House and Museum on Farmington Avenue on the western edge of Hartford, Connecticut,
March 23.

This site has undergone impressive
renovation since LPR was last there, two years ago.

From the parking lot, there is now an entrance built into the hill, where the house sits. Near this entrance is a
souvenir store, and a ramp that leads to the museum and on to the top of the hill.

The walls along the ramp carry Twain sayings, etched in the bricks. One
of the says is: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

LPR has a hunch that Mark Twain, hearing the vitriol hurled about our political arena, these sad days, would counsel that we should do right, adding, it will astonish some people and cause an apoplectic
reaction in the rest.

One of the clerks at the souvenir shop called several collections of Twain sayings to LPR's attention and LPR setttled on "The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain,"
edited by Alex Ayres (Meridian paperback), having been impressed, some years previously, by Twain's observation,
set down in a notebook while he was writing "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arfthur's Court," -- "Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense."

LPR recommends, strongly, a visit to the Mark Twain House and Museum.