Two snowy custom dress shirts lie side by side, one belonging to Mark Twain and the other to Oscar Wilde (saved from oblivion because it was at the laundry when he died).

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He wrote off extravagance as detrimental to body and mind, sounding like no one so much as Mark Twain, resisting the siren call of Europe many centuries later.

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It will serve a larger purpose, too, the same one that motivated satirists from Aristophanes and Juvenal to Swift and Pope to Mark Twain and the creators of "Dr. Strangelove": to curb self-indulgence, deflate pretense, and expel stupidity.

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Our system of using couts and rule of law is terrible but it is the best one in the world, he says, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

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