So that first Twain quote is also not in context. What happened there was that there were rumors circulating in 1918. Oof. Fuck. I wrote 1987. That is not correct. So close. I think it was 1897. Rumors of his death in 1987. They were not exaggerated. Right on. No exaggeration whatsoever. Yeah. I think that was 1897. Yeah, that makes sense. There were rumors that he had died or he was very sick. This was based on one of his cousins falling severely ill and then communications not being very advanced back in those days. He was contacted by a journalist from the New York Journal to comment on the rumors of his death, and Twain explained the situation with his cousin and said, quote, The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

So, with that second quotation, the one about the Patriots, that's from a notebook. That Mark Twain had. It's in a section called Maxims in the Rough. Essentially, this was a place where he was trying to work out some pithy sayings that he was going to use to float on the public. I love that. Just before this quote, Mark Twain had written, quote, Pops is down in the sty. You'll know him from the hogs because he's got his hat on. That one didn't stick. Earlier in the section, he has this series of wordings for a potential new zinger. Quote, none but the dead have free speech. None but the dead are permitted to speak the truth. In America, as elsewhere, free speech is confined to the dead. This is a comedian's notebook, man. He was working out bits, trying to move words around and see if he can come up with something that he wants to bring to the stage. The fact that that Patriot quote is in this section, it's the only place it appears in Twain's published catalog, it kind of makes you think that it wasn't fully cooked. Maybe he wasn't done with that one yet.