An idiot of the 33rd degree

Tl;dr: Mark Twain sent a letter to a snake oil salesperson and was not polite. I love it

I get pissed off easily. So did Mark Twain.

In November of 1905, J. H. Todd, a salesman attempted to sell bogus medicine to Mark leaflet delivered to his home.

Mark received the medicine called “The Elixir of Life” which could cure such ailments as meningitis (which had previously killed his daughter in 1896) and diphtheria (which killed his 19-month-old son). He was recently widowed after his wife suffered heart failure, and dictated this reply to his secretary, which he then signed.

Feck social media marketers today…

An idiot of the 33rd degree

Transcript

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

 

You can read the rest of the memo collection here.