FREE SPEECH — The First Amendment Center reports that more than a century after it was written, an essay by Mark Twain on the "freedom" of candid speech is published for the first time in the December 22 issue of the New Yorker. A sample from The Privilege of the Grave":
As an active privilege, [free speech] ranks with the privilege of committing murder: We may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact. Free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate, both are crimes and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished; free speech, always when committed, which is seldom.
Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside. Then all that ink and labor are wasted, because I cant print the results. Ive just finished an article of this kind and it satisfies me entirely. It does my weather-beaten soul good to read it and admire the trouble it would make for me and the family. I will leave it behind and utter it from the grave.
Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside. Then all that ink and labor are wasted, because I cant print the results. Ive just finished an article of this kind and it satisfies me entirely. It does my weather-beaten soul good to read it and admire the trouble it would make for me and the family. I will leave it behind and utter it from the grave.
