Twain's myriad

(No small amount of anticipation accompanied the release this year of the "Autobiography of Mark Twain", in no small part because certain parts had never been published - a stipulation Clemens himself made before he died. How juicy! What could be so honest or scandalous that a century was required to make it "safe"? No small fan of Twain's, i was particularly excited. "War Prayer", one of his most powerful pieces, went similarly unpublished until Twain had died. The autobiography isn't as exciting as the buildup, much of it only of interest to Twain scholars...but there are gems. I offer one such.)

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shames and humilations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery grows heavier year by year; at length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last - the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them - and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they existed - a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place, and copies all they did, and goes along the same profitless road, and vanishes as they vanished - to make room for another and another and a million other myriads to follow the same arid path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad, and all the myriads that came after it accomplished - nothing!