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It's unusual for me to read a book these days. I did yesterday, but the tale wasn't that long, and it could easily be called a short story. I don't really know what criteria is used to label it a short story or a novel. It was written by Mark Twain, but he died in 1910 before he could publish it. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger
The chances are that I won't dig too deep into how the publishers decided on what to print as the compendium of the several versions that were available after his death. Apparently, there were at least three endings to choose from. Here is a link to the version I read. This site is pretty well laid out and its easy to click from chapter to chapter through it:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger/Chapter_1
The overly long post I wrote to one of the discussion groups I participate in was done in the throes of excitement I experienced as I easily read my way through the story. I stated excitedly in that post that there was a real possibility that I read this book or saw the Hollywood film when I was a kid that set me off exploring the internet to find out more about it.
The whole story intrigued me. The main character was an angel named Satan who claimed to be the nephew of the Biblical angel of the same name who had fallen from grace and was ejected from heaven. The most shocking part could have been that Satan, as mentor to the narrator, revealed to him almost the same vision word for word as my own "remembering vision" that happened sixty years after Twain's death.
I've read similar accounts of other writers visions in which they were shown a personal form of the history of Earth, but Twain's version was ghastly close to my own. Particular about how the vision was mostly about the history of war and bigger and better weapons over the centuries to the present time. The story line of our mutual vision is ongoing and will be until life can't hang out here anymore. The media news is always about the various wars going on all over the Earth simultaneously.
As I read the story at one sitting (it only took 4-5 hours) it became apparent that the roles of both mentor and apprentice could have been about me. In real life I've played both roles with aplomb. More similar to my own life story is that the various roles I identified with included the cowardly parts of the narrator.
Its easy for me to yield to the temptation that the last story Twain tried to tell before he died was so similar to my experience with Edgar Allan Poe's ghost that took me around the universe in a manner similar to that described in Twain's story. My opinion seems to be that this is a ancient theme with multiple variations, virtually "the old, old story" I heard so much about in Sunday School, and a hymn by the same name.
The weather is finally changing. It's rained all night and is forecast to rain at least through tonight too. The rain is the result of a cool front slowly passing our way, and bringing cooler temperatures and less humidity.
The "less humidity" is the comforting part of the forecast. It's supposed to cool off at night for better sleeping too. I couldn't take enough clothes off yesterday to cool down, and today my feet are cold. A new record for high temperatures was easily set this summer. "The end is near." '-)
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
