Neo-American Church

PREFACE

It is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular to do next winter anyway.

The following narrative is a veracious representation of my recollection of events and what I have to say about the character of persons and places is a veracious representation of my opinion of those persons and places, as in the following veracious sentence:

“Any person who questions my veracity is a filthy swine.”

Some quotations are exact. Most are approximations. None are deliberately misleading. I have changed the names and identifying characteristics of a few peripheral figures but most of the names given here are the names which I recall being used at the time.

One will not read far in Millbrook without encountering hyperbolic idioms and extended rhetorical metaphors. I have made a considerable effort to be factual but no effort at all to write my history in a plonking style.

The mental strain produced by attempting to separate style from content under such circumstances may be too much for some people. They are left in the lurch. The lurch, however, is well-provisioned. Take a bearing on the planet Saturn and paddle like crazy.

I hope readers who find factual errors will write to me about them.

The chapter headings and quotations thereunder are taken from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain and are in the original order.

Philosophers are so far from rejecting the opinion of a continued existence upon rejecting that of our sensible perceptions, that tho’ all sects agree in the latter sentiment, the former, which is, in a manner, its necessary consequence, has been peculiar to a few extravagant skeptics; who after all maintained that opinion in words only, and were never able to bring themselves sincerely to believe it.

—David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

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