And then the President said:

Here we are, well into the second week of the campaigns which will culminate in this year’s General Election.

There will be, one way or the other, a new Governor of our great state.

We will have a smattering of new state officials, including a new Commissioner of Agriculture. It is rumored that Doyle Connor, a man who held the office for many years, said that the only qualification for the job was to look good on a horse.

You will notice that I said: “It is rumored…..”, I placed that caveat into my statement because I am going to write this week about quotes, misquotes and quotes that were never said by the supposed author in the first place.

Take this one:

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21 I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years”.

This has always been attributed to Mark Twain, but no scholar has ever been able to find it in any of his writings. We know that the statement is true, but Twain did not say it. I am ready to accept it as originating here and now in my column, but only because my father has no opportunity for retribution.

Ol’ Sam’l (Twain’s real first name) did lay this one on us, and it is not used as often as it should be:

“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow as the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we have gained by prying into the matter”.

In this one statement we have anthropology, history, religion, science and humor stirred into one pot. Now, that’s the way I expect Mr. Clemmons to write!

You can see from these two quotes that the same saying, filled with the wisdom of the ages, does not draw equal attention when they come from common folk. With Mark Twain’s imprimatur upon it readers will chuckle and get out a highlighter, or E-mail it far and wide. But I put it in my weekly writing, and the reaction is: “After all, he is eighty years old, and you can’t expect anything better”, and there it dies.

Like many folks in Jackson County I attended a church service today. It was a good service, as such things go. The music was excellent, and we had a covered dish dinner afterwards, and even a Methodist can find no fault there. As in most services the preacher read a scripture. Most announce the location in the Bible and give time for the congregation to find the page and follow along with him as he reads it out loud. Not me. I trust preachers to read correctly the selected verses, and will continue to do so, until he commends to us a passage from the Book of Nicodemus, either in the Old or the New Testament. Bible reading is no time for flights of imagination. It is serious business.

Most politicians often borrow quotes from others to fit a particular event. Many of us heard President Reagan on the occasion of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger quote the first and last lines of the sonnet High Flight. It was a stirring and moving moment. The Great Communicator read:

“Oh, I Have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on silver-colored wings…

and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of...

And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high unsurpassed sanctity of Space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

The poem was composed by a young pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. He wrote it on the back of a letter and sent it home. He crashed a few days later and the poem has been quoted from time to time throughout the years, but never at a more appropriate time than when President Reagan spoke the words to a grieving nation.

President John F. Kennedy has been known for his speeches, and we admired the way that he gave them. “…..ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.” But we do not often continue the quote, and we should. It reads “My fellow citizens of the World, ask not what America will do for you, but what we together can do for the freedom of man”. What breadth this adds! And, by the way, the first time the beginning sentence came to the attention of the public was from the pen of Kahlil Gilbran, and was written in Arabic.

Since I began this column with a couple of humorous sayings, I would like to end with my favorite.

One of the most controversial issues of all time has been the sale and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The statement below has been narrowed down to a member of Congress, but no one yet claims it. A member had been queried on his opinion, and he answered, in part:

“If when you say whiskey you mean the Devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty,…..then I am against it with all of my power.

But if when you say whiskey, you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips…the sale of which puts into our treasuries untold millions of dollars that are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children……to build highways and schools and bridges, then certainly I am in favor of it.”

I intend to give all members of Congress a reasonable time, say thirty days from the date of publication of this column, to claim credit for the authorship.

And if no one steps forward, it is mine!