MARK TWAIN

vestige of the salve into the glass box. Told him I was in
a hurry, and didn't want it all—it did not hasten him in
the least. Then he got a label—set the receipt down in his
book—then carefully copied on to the label (mislaying
his glasses twice and hunting for them) then pasted the
label on, did the box up in a piece of paper, which he
measured before tearing it off; then went hunting for a
match, then lit his candle and sealed the paper, in four
places, and delivered it to me—a long job, but ended at
last, with my patience. It was a good $40 worth of work,
and all he charged for it was 7/10 of a franc—say 150.
That man will earn a fortune and yet die poor.

Patriotism

A man can be a Christian or a patriot, but he can't
legally be a Christian and a patriot—except in the usual
way: one of the two with the mouth, the other with the
heart. The spirit of Christianity proclaims the brother-
hood of the race and the meaning of that strong word
has not been left to guesswork, but made tremendously
definite—the Christian must forgive his brother man all
crimes he can imagine and commit, and all insults he can
conceive and utter—forgive these injuries how many
times?—seventy times seven—another way of saying
there shall be no limit to this forgiveness. That is the
spirit and the law of Christianity. Well—patriotism has
its law. And it also is a perfectly definite one, there are
no vaguenesses about it. It commands that the brother
over the border shall be sharply watched and brought
to book every time he does us a hurt or offends us with an
insult. Word it as softly as you please, the spirit of pa-
triotism is the spirit of the dog and the wolf. The moment
there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line or a
hamper of fish or some other squalid matter, see patriot-
ism rise, and hear him split the universe with his war-

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