Pine Nuts – The Art of Swearing

I have a good friend whose wife puts a jar out whenever I visit, and makes us deposit a
dollar into that jar every time we use a profane word to color our conversation. So I always stock
up on dollar bills before visiting. Maybe it’s because I was in the Marine Corps, but I have found
as an adult, that sprinkling your banter with an occasional cussword for emphasis is like
sprinkling your mashed potatoes with pepper. Of course, if ladies are present I am most
guarded, and if children are present I abstain altogether.

Yet, nobody could swear, I have to believe, like Mark Twain. As his thirty-year
housekeeper Katy Leary wrote in her book, A Lifetime with Mark Twain, “Men don’t come any
better in this world than Mr. Clemens. He swore like an angel, sort of amusing it was—and
gay—not like real swearing. I suppose everybody has a few private cuss words of their own to
help them over the rough places.”

Apparently, there was little or no wrath or malice in Sam’s swearing. As Elizabeth
Wallace averred, “Gently, slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though
they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this stream of unholy
adjectives and choice expletives.”

And Sam had his own personal respect for the art swearing…

“As for profanity, there are times when profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer,
and when it comes to pure ornamental cursing, the average American is gifted above the sons of
men. Oh, I used to be able to utter an oath that would knock the dust up where it struck the
ground. When angry, count four; when very angry, go ahead and swear. It’s the people’s poetry.
A gentleman can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and
affectionate way.

I had a lady friend who was not feeling well last week, and she asked me, ‘Sam, what can
I do to feel better? I feel awful!’ So I told her what my doctor told me, I said, ‘Dear, you must
give up drinking, smoking & swearing.’

She said, ‘But Sam, that would be easy, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I’ve never
sworn.’

There it was. She had been neglecting her habits. Here was this poor moral pauper, a
sinking ship, with no baggage to throw over. Oh yes, one little bad habit might have saved her.”
Sam’s swearing, it might be safe for us to say, was an artform unto itself. I only wish I
could have had the distinct pleasure of hearing it fall upon my ears, like an American folksong.
By listening to Mark Twain’s swearing, well, I’m confident it might improve my own liberal use
of profanity and make me more comprehensible to my comrades in conversation. Sadly, that
might not happen today, but it might happen…

Listen to the audio here