ABSTRACT
Mark Twain was being funny, but as was typical of him, this particular quotation came stuffed with irony wrapped in a lightly breaded shell of truth. It might reflect an outcome-based outlook on a sports activity that seems to spoil the enjoyment process. Or perhaps more subtly, it reflects the self-fulfilling prophecy of a self-defeating outcome-based perspective on a sporting contest. Perhaps if Mark Twain expected good outcomes going into the activity and perhaps if Twain could count on positive support and positive evaluation from the innermost people in his social circles, he might not have found the good walk to be so tainted after all? Under those circumstances, perhaps Twain might look forward to making that walk again, and again, and again. It would do wonders for Twain’s health, and if more of us in the United States were like this new, more positive Twain, it would do wonders for American society as a whole.
