Monday, January 29, 2018

Not for nothingness

Flipping off eternity
H. L. Mencken, one-of-a-kind author, critic, newspaperman and iconoclast, died on this day in 1956. Mencken wrote:

"When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness...No show, no matter how good, can conceivably last forever."

Mencken suggested this epitaph for himself in the magazine The Smart Set:

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”

It was, after his death, inscribed on a plaque and placed in the lobby of The Baltimore Sun.

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