Just when I thought I must surely have read everything Sam Clemens ever wrote, I stumbled onto a speech delivered in Boston way back in 1888, when Sam described the sleeping habits of Siamese twins: “While one sleeps, the other snores.” 

Yet again, Samuel brings a smile to my weathered face. I cannot count the times he has done that over the past four decades, and if each smile adds an extra minute of life, well, I should live comfortably to a venerable old age of one hundred and fifty-seven. In truth, I was not constructed to live more than 75 years, but a close association with my constant comrade, SLC, has allowed me to have a look around at the eighties. Thank you, Samuel! The view is scintillating!

While thumbing through a few more of his speeches, I discovered this gem, tucked away in an address at a Fourth of July Dinner of the American Society of London in 1899…

 “At the end of the party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. He went out first, and of course had the choice of hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But I hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind, he will take anybody’s hat. The result was that the whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.”

In honor of Sam’s impending 191st birthday, I might like to share with you a few of his secrets to longevity…

“My habits protect my life, while they would assassinate you. In the matter of diet, I have been persistently strict in sticking to things that did not agree with each other’s company, and letting them fight it out on the inside.  

As for drinking, I have no rules about drinking, when others are drinking, I like to help.  I have found that a tumbler full of whiskey in the early evening is a preventative against toothache.  I’ve never had the toothache, and I don’t intend to have one. Giving up smoking is easy…I’ve done it thousands of times. As for exercise, I’ve never taken any exercise, and I don’t intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. I’ve never seen any advantage in being tired. And as for profanity, there are times when profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer. When angry, count four; when very angry, go ahead and swear. It’s the people’s poetry.

You cannot reach old age by another man’s road. The important thing, the essential thing, is that we endeavor so to live, that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.”

Thank you, Samuel, for the smiles…    

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO

— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”