Mark Twain New York. The Langdon family plot is marked by a 12-foot monument (two fathoms, or "mark twain") placed there by his surviving daughter Clara. There is also a smaller headstone. He expressed a preference for cremation (for example, in "Life on the Mississippi"), but he acknowledged that his surviving family would have the last word. Officials in Connecticut and New York estimated the value of Twain's estate at $471,000 ($ today). Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but he became a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies, and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, he combined rich humor, sturdy
Witch (word) Witch (word) The word witch derives from the Old English nouns "wicca" ('sorcerer, male witch') and "wicce" ('sorceress, female witch'). The word's further origins in Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European are unclear. The Old English verb "wiccian" has a cognate in Middle Low German "wicken" (attested from the 13th century, besides "wichelen" "to bewitch"). The further etymology of this word is problematic. It has no clear cognates in Germanic outside of English and Low German, and there are numerous possibilities for the Indo-European root from which it may have been derived. Other suggestions for the underlying root are untenable or widely rejected: