Mark Twain quote about his father's surprising maturation (antedating attrib circa 1915) (req paper verification)

[Victor Steinbok]

A similar quote can be found in another 1930 publication (also snippet
view):

http://bit.ly/4PC0Gc
Selected readings in character education By Dennis Clayton Troth, p. 355

Unfortunately, the snippet does not offer the attribution, as I was not
searching for "Twain":

""...he could hardly stand to be in his father's presence because his
father was so old-fashioned and ignorant; about three years later he
noticed that now and then his father said a sensible thing; about five
years later he was amazed to discover how his father had improved in the
last eight years..."

A different search led to another reference the same book and the quote
here *is* attributed to Mark Twain:

"Mark Twain once said that when he was a young man he could hardly stand
it to
... five years later he was amazed to discover how his father had
improved in
..."

It's a bit more cryptic, but it does appear to be the same page (355)
and the snippet does show what appears to be the very top of the first
line of the quote above (the actual quoted text is from the search
results page). Combining the two citations appears to result in the same
attribution.

The *exact* same quote as the Journal of Social Hygiene (except for the
addition of the word "much" after "how") also appears in vol. 63 of
Journal of proceedings and lectures (National Education Association of
the United States, p. 419). Google claims the volume is from 1925.
http://bit.ly/89J0Co

I tried several variations of the search with different strings matching
parts of the quotation and only came up with these three.

     VS-)

On 1/8/2010 4:13 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> ...
> The quote and its Twain attribution appear to be part of "extracts
> from a sermon delivered by President Gray of Bates College."
>
> Citation: 1930 October, Journal of Social Hygiene, Page 437, Vol. XVI,
> No. 7, News and Abstracts, Youth's Problems are Old as the World.
>
> Nearly two generations ago, Mark Twain told how, when he was
> seventeen, he could hardly bear to be with his father, because the
> latter was so ignorant; at twenty he noticed that now and then his
> father said a sensible thing, but at twenty-five he was simply amazed
> to discover how his father had improved in the last eight years. After
> all there is little difference between the 1850's and the 1930's.
>
> http://www.archive.org/details/journalofsocialh16amerrich
> http://www.archive.org/stream/journalofsocialh16amerrich#page/436/mode/2up/search/amazed
>
> Google Books has a snippet-restricted version of the document.
> http://books.google.com/books?id=NvkVAQAAIAAJ&
> http://books.google.com/books?id=NvkVAQAAIAAJ&q=Twain#search_anchor
>
> Garson
>

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