Hal Holbrook revived his one-man show about Mark Twain in New York City last month. It is a role he has played intermittently, but always successfully, since 1959. I'm dating myself, but I first saw him as Twain at New York's Longacre Theatre in 1966 when I was in high school. I saw him a decade later at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, poking good-natured fun at fundamentalism in the heart of the Bible Belt – and making the locals laugh in spite of themselves.

According to one Prof. Louis J. Budd of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, there are now over 100 actors currently making a living as Mark Twain impersonators.

Apparently, Mark Twain is as popular today on the lecture platform as he ever was, and it is not hard to see why. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance of Twain's brand of humor cannot help but be struck by how fresh, how biting and how pertinent it remains, even nearly a hundred years after his death.

Consider just a few random examples:

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live."

"July 4. Statistics show we lose more fools on this day than all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number now left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is no inadequate, the country has grown so."

"People seem to think they are citizens of the Republican Party and that that is patriotism and sufficiently good patriotism. I prefer to be a citizen of the United States."

On one occasion, Twain was debating Andrew Carnegie on the decision to put "In God we Trust" on the nation's coins. "After all, Twain," huffed Carnegie, "America is a Christian country." Twain was unimpressed. "Why Carnegie," he replied, "so is Hell."

Twain always seems to have the last word on any subject, which is perhaps why is most-quoted remark remains, "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."