Most people do not know that if it were not for Joan of Arc, that there would never have been a Mark Twain.Sam Clemens, an apprentice printer who had no use for schoolin', larnin' or them books was walking home one day from work as a child, when a Divine Wind blew a page from a book against his leg.
Sam picked it up and read it. It was about the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc.
He rushed home and burst upon his family, demanding if to know if this Joan was real or fiction.
Afterwards he would read of Joan and read every book he could lay his hands on.
He would carry Joan with him his entire life and finally after 6 starts and two years, he would publish his masterpiece in the Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, anonymously.
In reading the forward which Mr. Twain wrote with great prose and care, I wanted to share with readers today those words of inspiration and tragic betrayal for the words Twain would write, reflect in the worst possible ways the age in which Americans and the world now exist in.
Joan of Arc in her time was the light of the Old North Church, the meekness of George Washington, the faithfulness of Billy Graham and the Statue of Liberty which would birth America.
and the year was 1431 when the child of France was executed by her own people.........
The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest and fine and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown; and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true in an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul of both - she was all these things in an age when crime was common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries and bestialities.
She was perhaps the only unselfish person whose name has a place in profane history. No vestige of self seeking can be found in any word or deed of hers.
When she had rescued her King from his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing.
All she would take for herself - if the King would grant it - was leave to go back to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel her mother's arms about her, and be housemaid and helper.
But Joan of Arc, a mere child in years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless under an alien domination, its treasuries bankrupt, its Soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the hearts of a people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse, and it rose and followed her.
She led it from victory to victory, she turned back he tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the English power, and died with the earned title, Deliverer of France, which she bears to this day.
And for all reward, the French King whom she had crowned stood supine and indifferent while French priests took the noble child, the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and burned her alive at the stake.
Mark Twain 1895
I speak often enough of this age in which we exist in mirror and exceeding the great criminal centuries of all human history. Lying, cheating, electioneering, theft, usurpation, blasphemy, sacrilege and sodomy are but a few of the adjective titled to the noun of this time.
It is a time when Good is called evil and evil is called good.
It is Good to remember though in such end times degraded by inhumanity of the demoniac order, when ridicule, threats, stalking and verbal rapine are the commonality of the commonest of cocktail crowd cronies, that in mirror of America, there once was a France from whose womb arose a Lady of a child whose Goodness speaks upon the whispering wind of the ages for all whose hearts are knitted to their Maker.........to know, understand and realize, that they are never alone even in the fires of the times and the ends of all they think is reality........when Truth, Justice, Honor seem as an abandoned house, with moaning broken winds and the flagging curtains of a ghost not yet dead........but that Honor, Justice and their Truth speaks to the ages perpetually, arising each day from the stake, released from the embers of martyr's myst of the Spirit, traveling through the ages.........that all Ladies and Gentlemen are not alone, for they can stand up as examples of virtue when the world is one cesspool of degradation calling it goodness.
This is our cause for responsible Liberty born in that ages ago Middle Eastern saga handed down from God to Moses that we who are His can govern ourselves in the discipline of His Commandment.
The government of her age thought they could snuff out the light of the Maid of Orleans, Jeanne D'Arc though breathed embers across the globe in fidelity to God, nation and family.
WE the people may exist in an age of darkness foisted upon our unchained hearts, but we will live in duty, honor, loyalty and Truth for our Master in God..........and in those virtuous attributes God's will will be done, for He is not mocked.
America still has the breath of Him in His daughters. The flame continues on burning more bright in each darkening day of the approaching abyss.
agtG 232, 295
