Séamas O'Reilly: Laughter is the best medicine for the Burkes' loathsome behaviour
'There’s not much I can say about Enoch Burke and his family that hasn’t been said better, and indeed funnier, elsewhere — there is, in fact, not much I can say about them that hasn’t already been said about the bubonic plague'
Mark Twain said, “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand”.
It’s a nice line, all the nicer for the fact that Twain did actually say it — on this occasion, in his unfinished novel The Mysterious Stranger — making it a genuine quote of his and, therefore, rare among roughly 95% of quotes attributed to him online.
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