For the Birthday of Agatha Christie

Today is the 135th anniversary of the birth of English detective-story writer Agatha Christie (1890 -1976).

"Truth," I observed, laying aside the Daily Newsmonger, "is stranger than fiction!" So begins Agatha Christie's detective story "The King of Clubs" (1923), in which detective Hercule Poirot says in part, "Not only is truth stranger than fiction -- it is more dramatic."

The great minds of Agatha Christie"s fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss (Jane) Marple have at least once thought alike. In Mrs. Christie's detective novel The ABC Murders Poirot says, "There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide. Every time he will give himself away." In Mrs. Christie's detective novel A Caribbean Mystery Miss Marple says, "Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide."

Silence of Fools

Those who are sure of themselves do not talk all the time. People who stay calm have real insight. After all, even fools may be thought wise and intelligent if they stay quiet and keep their mouths shut.

     --The Bible: Proverbs 17:27-28 (Good News Translation)

It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

     --Mark Twain

     

Tea

"The little package of Ceylon

arrived in fragrant safety."

So reads a riddle from a letter

by Emily Dickinson.

The answer to that riddle? Tea.

What kind of tea

did that little package contain?

Evidently

it contained pekoe, a superior

kind of black tea.

"It is inferior

for coffee," I say with Mark Twain,

"but it is pretty

fair tea."

"Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd." by Mark Twain : The Poetry Foundation

Read Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd. by Mark Twain : The Poetry Foundation

American writer Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on this day in 1835.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Photo Credit: Library of Congress,

Washington, D.C.