‘An exquisite Mongrel’

“My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian - an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine, for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.’’

— Mark Twain (1835-1910), a long-time resident of Connecticut