Mark Twain on #MeToobin

Wisdom from the sage of Hannibal, Mo.

As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing-room, and in the most cultured society it has long since been banished from the social board. It has, at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only in private—though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.

—Mark Twain, “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism,” 1879.

Let us now leave an inadvertently public man to his private humiliation and move on to more elevated matters.