“People here seem always to express distances by parables. To a stranger it just a little confusing to be so parabolic—so to speak. I collar a citizen, and think I am going to get some valuable information out of him. I ask him how far it is to get to Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shilling and six-pence. Now, we know that doesn’t help a man who is trying to learn. I find myself down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea where I am—being usually lost when alone—and I stop a citizen and say: ‘How far is it to Charing Cross?’ ‘Shilling far in a cab,’ and off he goes. I suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is from the sublime to the ridiculous, he would try to express it in coin.”—Mark Twain, “Savage Club Dinner” speech, 1872 Dollis Hill, England, 1900 Courtesy of The Mark Twain House, Hartford Dollis Hill, England, 1900 Courtesy of The Mark Twain Project, Bancroft Library, Berkeley   Real Video: 56k | 220k   Russell Banks, “Center of the Universe”		Dollis Hill, England, 1900 Courtesy of The Mark Twain House, Hartford   Dollis Hill, England, 1900 Courtesy of The Mark Twain House, Hartford