“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow,” he once wrote. “There is no humor in heaven.”
In 1909, Twain made an eerie prediction: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”
On April 21, 1910—one day after Halley’s Comet reached its brightest point—Mark Twain died.
He’d gambled his fortune on a machine and lost everything. But his real invention wasn’t mechanical—it was literary. He created the authentic American voice: irreverent, funny, furious at injustice, suspicious of authority, haunted by the gap between what America claims to be and what it actually does.
That voice still matters. Huckleberry Finn is still taught because Huck’s moral crisis—choosing to help Jim escape slavery even though society says it’s wrong—captures the defining American question: When law and conscience conflict, which do you follow?
Twain chose conscience. Even when it cost him everything.
Continue reading…
