THE ANGEL-FISH CLUB OF MARK TWAIN_For Mr. Fowler's 8th grade class_

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain.  

He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Twain passed through a period of deep depression that began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of meningitis. 

Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls he viewed as surrogate granddaughters, the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club.

The dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games.

Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight."

 In 1907 Twain met Dorothy Quick (then aged 11) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning "a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death".

 

Why, hello, Missy.  What are you doing lurking in the shadows of this haunted French Quarter club?

What?  Some bully forced you in here to get chewed up?  Alice, my dear, would you go out and see if that bully has any taste at all ... only a finger or two.  Now, don't pout, Alice.  You have to watch that figure.

Come, Missy, sit at my table.  I won't bite.  That's Alice's quaint behavior. 

I hate sitting at a table alone.  What is a table without a child to brighten it?  That's better.  Here, let me stick this angel fish pin on your pretty blouse.

Could you ask me a question or two for your report?  Why, surely, you can.


What is this pin for?


Well, I suppose we are all collectors...

As for me, I collect pets: young girls -- don't giggle there, Missy --

girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent -- dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears.

Their parents were always near so they were safe from nasty gosssip.



Is that all, you ask.



I lost my dear daughter, Susy, in 1896.  It near ended me.  After my wife's death on June 5, 1904, I experienced a terrible storm of unrest and loneliness.

Clara and Jean. my remaining daughters, were busy with their studies and their labors    

and I was washing about on a forlorn sea of banquets and speechmaking in high and holy causes...

I had reached the grandpapa stage of life; and what I lacked and what I needed was grandchildren.



Why, yes, Missy, I guess you are my newest grandchild.  Now, that laugh was deserved.  I'll call you my latest angel-fish.


What is an angel-fish you ask?


 The Bermudian angel-fish, with its splendid blue decorations, is easily the most beautiful fish that swims ...

I call my collection of young grandgirls The Aquarium.  The club's badge is the angel-fish's splendors reproduced in enamels and mounted for service as a lapel-pin --

 at least that is where the girls wear it. I get these little pins in Bermuda; they are made in Norway.


Have I ever been to Norway?


Why, Missy, the closest I got was the Black Forest in Germany.



Did I ever meet a ghost before I became one?


Missy, I have ransacked the Sandwich Islands until I could not walk for the saddle sores.  I have surf-bathed til I nearly drowned.  I have ridden by moonlight through a ghostly plain of sand strewn with human bones and contested with the shades of slain warriors there. 

 

What are the Sandwich Islands?



Why, you folks call them Hawaii now I reckon. 

For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore,

its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear the plashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished 160 years ago.


Did my stories have wit or humor?


Why, isn't that an insightful little question with big implications. 

Wit and Humor—if any difference it is in duration—lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, brief, and can do damage—the other fools along and enjoys elaboration.

Laughter without a tinge of philosophy is but a sneeze of humor. Genuine humor is replete with wisdom.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.



Who is that handsome young man approaching us?


Why, that is Victor Standish, Alice's boyfriend.  Ah, he just winked at you.  Uh, oh, Alice is storming our way.

Scoot!  I will not have a granddaughter eaten at my table.

 Why, that gal really knows how to run.  Aw, she left her notes.

I wonder who Michael Jackson is?

 

IRENE GERKEN

(Member of Angel-Fish Club)
circa 1896 - May 19, 1969

This photo of Irene Gerken and Clemens appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 19, 1908.
Gerken was not identified in the TIMES photo.

ALL I LOVED, I LOVED ALONE_for Milo James Fowler's 8th grade class

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement

Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.

He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career

You there, young man.  Why are you staring at me so as I sit at my table in this haunted French Quarter club?

What is that? 

Your teacher has assigned you a paper on me, and you thought to get the story from the "horse's mouth" as you put it.  How flattering.

Did you know that I traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1, 1830?

No, young sir, matriculated does not mean I dribbled when I drank.  Matriculate is to be be enrolled at a college or university.  You probably watched that horrid Cyrus female twerk with a dwarf, did you not?

Oh, how did I get Allan as my middle name? 

Allan was the brute of a man who took me in when my mother died from consumption at the age of eleven.  He and his wife gave me the middle name "Allan" though they never adopted me.

What happened between he and I? 

He inherited money, married a younger woman, and we quarreled over the children born out of his many affairs.  He disowned me.

Was I mad? 

You should really inquire into a career in journalism, young sir.  Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence–

whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

Was I murdered? 

How tender-hearted today's youth is.  I cannot help you there.  All I remember was that it was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.

Did I put morals into my stories and poems?

A writer need have no care of his moral. It is there -- that is to say, it is somewhere --

and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves.

When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the "Dial," or the "Down-Easter,"

together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend:

so that it will all come very straight in the end.

Young man, I have seen stuffed animals with eyes less glassy than yours. 

Did I get my poem and stories ideas from dreams?

Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.

So no, I did not get my ideas from slumber. 

Poets write their dreams in the day so they do not have to dream at night.  They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

You frown, young man.  You do not understand me?

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to your mind, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case,

 the powers of meditation busy and bury themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

Oh, young man, look coming our way: Alice Wentworth. 

You are in for a treat or perhaps she is.  You are a bit pudgy.  It must come from your joking ways.

Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine.

Yes, young sir, Alice is ghostly pale, dark of eye, and sharp of tooth. 

Keeping these impressions in view, you should be cautious in what you say before the young lady;

for I can not be sure that she is sane; and,

in fact, there is a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes which half leads me to imagine she is not.

Where are you going so fast, young man? 

You left your notes on the table.  Oh, well, Alice will have to look for finger sandwiches elsewhere.

 

 

FOR MILO JAMES FOWLER'S CLASS: WEEP NOT FOR THE UNDEAD

** Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850), commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's right movement advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement.

She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.


I am Margaret Fuller.

You may recognize my name from the adventures of Samuel McCord and that scamp, Victor Standish.

History has me drowned upon this date in 1850 aged forty. In 1853, when Captain Samuel McCord met me aboard the cursed DEMETER, I was still all too alive.

Shortly thereafter, I became a unique form of undead. But then, I have always been unique -- alive or undead.

My beliefs (feminist and Transcendentalist), accomplishments and fervent personality put me in the spotlight throughout my life,

but my "last" years, spent in Rome supporting the short-lived Roman Republic, reached an operatic level of passion and poignancy.

As foreign correspondent of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, I argued the cause of the Italian revolutionists in the dispatches sent home. In Rome, I assisted on the Republican ramparts and in their field hospitals.

I also married an Italian nobleman who was prominent in the Republican cause, and had a son by him. 

With the ramparts fallen and my husband in jeopardy, I reluctantly decided to return to America, 

despite premonitions of disaster and warnings from Emerson and other Concord friends that my socialist leanings and doubtful marriage would provoke public disfavor.

As if I have ever cared what the rabble thought. 

When my boat ran aground just off the New York coast, I chose to stay with my husband, who could not swim. Both of us were washed to sea and never found, (so history reports).

But Henry (David Thoreau) found me washed upon the shore not far from my young boy’s body.

The memorial to me put up by my family reads,

“Born a child of New England, / By adoption a citizen of Rome, / By genius belonging to the World.”

My genius has never been in question.

Edgar Allan Poe thought me such. He believed that the fallacy in my lobby for women's rights was that

"She judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there are not more than one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth."

Poe’s evaluation is echoed in comments by Emerson and Hawthorne — though they let slip that their attraction might be more than intellectual (as it was) when they both referred to me in print as “Margaret Fuller, the Sexy Muse.”

I now know all the people worth knowing in America,and I find no intellect comparable to my own except for dear Ada (Byron, Lady Loveless - author of the first computer language a 100 years before the invention of the computer itself.)

McCord has his moments, but he is restrained by his Victorian ideals and code that he will not cast aside. I love him for his nobility. It will be the death of him.

What will be the death of you? I wager your friends know even if you do not. I leave you with a bit of my own verse:

“Let me gather from the Earth,
one full grown fragrant flower,
Let it bloom within my bosom
through its one fragile hour….”

Of my past, I neither rejoice nor grieve, for bad or good, I acted out my character.

THE LAST CREEPY FREEBIES!

Check out the full descriptions of Creepy Freebies at Milo James Fowler’s blog: In Media Res

Milo is proud this Friday to host

  James Garcia Jr., Robert C. Eccles, Michelle Ann King, and Aaron Polson.
 

To tip my Stetson in a fond farewell to

Creepy Freebies,

I will give away FREE

FRIDAY, SATURDAY, & SUNDAY:

 

http://www.amazon.com/LUCIFERS-ORPHAN-JOURNEY-LOST-ebook/dp/B00FVGDTN8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381725811&sr=8-1&keywords=lucifer%27s+orphan%3A+journey+of+the+lost

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

 

CREEPY FREEBIES THE TRIQUEL

Check out the full descriptions of Creepy Freebies at Milo James Fowler’s blog: In Media Res

Milo is proud this Friday to  host
 Ellie Garratt, Jeff Chapman, Anthony J. Rapino, and Lyndon Perry.

and of course
as fellow participant, I offer yet another FREE BOOK: 

 

"Look not out to the sea at night.

Nor listen to its awful murmurs

hints of drowned souls

'Neath its ink-black waves.

 

Ancient is the sea.

Older than Man.

Reluctant to give life.

Eager to take it.

 

The Sea binds us to her,

whispering in odd gleams upon waves,

hiding cold life which reigned long before we knew

our lungs were not gills.

 

Look not deep under its dark ripples

Nor upon its slick, black bottom where

Nameless Things worship stone idols,

praying for the land to sink,

and they again to reign."

 

- Meilori Shinseen.

 

FREE THIS FRIDAY
AND
ALL THIS WEEKEND!

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/RITES-OF-PASSAGE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

 

Samuel McCord's earliest adventure,

hunting a murderess wearing the face of her victim

and sailing into the Bermuda Triangle

aboard a ship filled with the undead.

For a limited time, you can catch up on E J Wesley's
Moonsongs series for just .99 cents (regularly $2.99) -
Moonsongs Anthology 1 (books 1, 2, & 3) is on sale October 15th - 20th at Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

CREEPY FREEBIES ensnares VICTOR STANDISH!

Check out the full list of Creepy Freebies at Milo James Fowler’s blog: In Media Res

This Friday's freebies will be courtesy of +Simon Kewin, +Roland Yeomans, +Christine Rains, and +Cate Gardner

FREE TODAY AND TOMORROW!

 
Victor & Alice are in the French Quarter of 1834. Voodoo. Demigods. Revenants. And the hilarious Menage a Trois of Death!

But first you see Victor visit THE WALKING DEAD!

Hit your cursor over the image! 

THIS WEEKEND FOR FREE:
 

LEARN TO WRITE BETTER AND LAUGH ALONG THE WAY

 

 

 Death comes to Victor's World

LAST DAY!

BURNT OFFERINGS FREE FOR ONE MORE DAY!

http://www.amazon.com/BURNT-OFFERINGS-ROLAND-YEOMANS-ebook/dp/B008N4QGA8/ref=pd_sim_kstore_10

 

When dreams are sacrificed, it is the soul that burns.

 

Thanks for making BURNT OFFERINGS --

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,089 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

• #13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror > Short Stories    

GOOD NEWS:

 

Erin Cole's AFTER DUSK

(This CREEPY FREEBIE's giveway)

 

made it to #2,500 on Amazon's fiction ebook list,

#10 in horror short stories,

and #15 in single author short stories,

so many thanks to all of you.

 

SAD NEWS:

 

I've been told that

Wayman Publishers is probably going out of business.

 

There goes the anthology which was going to publish

another of my short stories.

 

Visit Meilori's in THE CROSSROADS BLUES

{I really loved the cover}

 

Have any of you been purchased by a publisher

only to have it go out of business?

 

THIS FRIDAY'S CREEPY FREEBIES and WEEKEND DELIGHTS

Visit  Milo James Fowler to see what goodies are the CREEPY FREEBIES for this Friday

Every Friday, there's going to be a bunch of Hallowe'enish fiction available for free download. It should be a blast.

This weekend to extend the fun, I am offering FREE!

BURNT OFFERINGS

http://www.amazon.com/BURNT-OFFERINGS-ROLAND-YEOMANS-ebook/dp/B008N4QGA8/ref=pd_sim_kstore_10

 

 

(Covers courtesy of the genius of Leonora Roy}

 

Next FRIDAY and SATURDAY my THE RIVAL will be FREE!

On November 1st

I will draw for this double AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO

of Christian Slater and Brad Pitt

from

INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE

Just FACEBOOK about this giveaway or

write a post about this great drawing sometime in the month of October

(paste the link in the comments section here if you blog about it and email me about your FB comment).