am they not against when farms have some of their own. That ends General Questions. We now move to First Ministry's questions. Order. Question number one, Kezia Dugdale. To ask the First Minister, what engagements she has planned for the rest of the day. Engagements to take forward the Government's programme for Scotland. Let's end the old Westminster way of doing things, which has caused misery for for Scotland's most vulnerable. We have the opportunity to chart a different economic path, one that benefits the whole of society. Not my words, Presiding Officer, but the words of Michelle Thomson in the SNP's general election manifesto. Words that ring somewhat hollow now that we know the Crown Office is investigating the economic path that the SNP MP went down herself. Just eight months after her lawyer was struck off for his involvement in her property deals, Michelle Thomson was selected to be an SNP candidate for Edinburgh West. Can the First Minister tell Parliament if anybody in the SNP, whether it is Nicola Sturgeon herself, SNP politicians or SNP officials at any level, were aware of Michelle Thomson's allegations before they were printed in the Sunday Times? I recognise that there is a lot of interest in the issue, but I remind all members that questions to the First Minister should relate to matters that are within her general responsibility. That is not a matter of what the First Minister is obliged to respond. I am more than happy to respond. As I said yesterday, the SNP did not have prior knowledge of any of those issues. As I said yesterday, serious issues have been raised here, and I acknowledge that serious issues, which, if they were to be proven, would be issues of significant concern. It is also important to stress, Presiding Officer, that Michelle Thomson maintains that all of her business dealings were within the law and that she strongly denies any wrongdoing. That might be an unfashionable view, but politicians, just like anyone else in our society, are entitled to a presumption of innocence. I would have thought that a political party that has spent this week advocating a kinder politics would perhaps have been the first to acknowledge that fact. There is now a police investigation under way into those matters. It is important that that investigation is allowed to proceed without anyone seeking to prejudge its outcome. Michelle Thomson has decided to step aside from the SNP while that investigation is undertaken. I think that that was the right thing for her to have opted to do. I think that it is now incumbent on the rest of us to allow that investigation to proceed and to proceed to a conclusion. Kezia Dugdale. The First Minister is right, and I am not prejudging anything, but I am asking her— No, no, no, no, no. Order. No, no, no. We need to look at the facts here, Presiding Officer. The facts are undisputed. A tribunal issues a damning verdict. That is a fact.  That is a fact. The Crown Office was made aware of concerns. That is a fact. Vulnerable families lost out. It is the First Minister saying that no one, at any level in the SNP, knew about the nature of Michelle Thomson's business dealings. Does that mean that nobody asked her? Kezia Dugdale is right when she says that it is a fact that there has been a solicitor's discipline tribunal. She is also right to say that it is a fact that a solicitor has been struck off. Neither of those things proves the guilt of anything, of any other person. I simply make the point that I made earlier on. However, tempting it is for all of us in the hurly-burly of politics to seek to prejudge issues, politicians like everyone else are entitled to a presumption of innocence. Now, I have said yesterday—I have said again today—that the SNP had no prior knowledge of those issues. Of course, as I have already said, Michelle Thomson denies any wrongdoing, therefore, presumably, she would maintain that there was nothing for her to have brought to the attention of the SNP. Our vetting procedures as a party are robust, but we keep them under review, as I would hope every political party does. However, I would also put forward—again, I think that this is something that I would expect all political parties to acknowledge—that, while we make all reasonable checks and ask reasonable questions, by definition it is not reasonable to expect that matters of which we have no knowledge can be investigated. What is also ridiculous, I think, to suggest of any political party, Presiding Officer, the SNP, or anybody else, is that any party would knowingly allow a candidate to go forward for selection, knowing that there were serious problems about the integrity of that individual candidate. Let me repeat that there is a police investigation into aspects of those matters under way. I, as the leader of the SNP, and indeed as First Minister, will always act in a way that I think is appropriate, but I will be driven in doing so, Presiding Officer, by facts, not by insinuation. Presiding Officer, I am not asking the First Minister to comment on the specifics of a live investigation. No, no. Order. I accept that, of course, criminal matters are for the police, but this is also a moral matter, and I would expect her to comment on that. What we have here is vulnerable families losing out for the financial gain of others. Vulnerable people are being taken advantage of as their homes are snapped up at knock-down prices. Does she agree with me that profiteering from vulnerable families is just plain wrong? Kezia Dugdale, although she disagrees with me as she is entitled to do on a whole range of issues, I hope that she would accept that my commitment to social justice and my commitment to helping vulnerable people like hers is beyond any question. If there are matters that are proven to have been done wrong, then those will be serious issues that the SNP will respond to. I repeat again that we are dealing with an individual who denies wrongdoing, who denies any breach of the law and who denies that she has acted improperly. I do not have access—neither, incidentally, does Kezia Dugdale—to all of the information and the circumstances that the police will be able to access. That is why it is important for all of us to allow the police to do their job. There is a police investigation under way. I think that it is appropriate that that investigation is thorough, robust and comes to a conclusion. The rest of us should be prepared to allow it to do so. Kezia Dugdale. I just asked the First Minister whether she thought that profiteering from vulnerable people was right or wrong. This is a First Minister that claims that nobody in the SNP knew anything about this, and I will take her word for that. I will take her word. But now she does know that she knows that an elected representative in her party acted in a way that is unacceptable. This is someone that the SNP did know. Fiona Hyslop, already in trouble herself, spoke of Mrs Thompson's knowledge of business and passion to make Scotland a better place. Angela Constance is on record celebrating Michelle Thompson's compassion. Alex Neil said that Michelle Thompson demonstrated commitment to how business can be used to support social justice, and this is the First Minister who made her shadow business secretary. The First Minister has spent two days running away from Michelle Thompson as fast as she can, but it is not the case that, for the last two years, Michelle Thompson has been right at the heart of everything that the SNP stands for. One fact that Kezia Dugdale has omitted from that long list of mud-slinging there was that today, following the issues that are coming to light, Michelle Thompson is currently not a member of the SNP, because she took the decision while those investigations are under way to relinquish the party whip. As a result of the SNP rules, that means that her party membership is also suspended. That was the right and responsible thing for her to have done in the circumstances. I have no intention, on a serious matter, on a matter that I recognise is serious, to get into a party political exchange over this. However, I will simply point out that it has not always been the case that Labour politicians have been accused of serious offences that they have found themselves outside the party while those investigations have been undertaken. I repeat what I said earlier on. I have very onerous responsibilities as First Minister and I have responsibilities as leader of the SNP. I will always seek to discharge those responsibilities to the very best of my ability, but I will discharge those responsibilities on the basis of the facts before me. I will do that in this case and I will do it in every other case. That is the responsible and appropriate way for me to proceed. To ask the First Minister when she will next meet the Prime Minister. First Minister. No plans in the near future. Ruth Davidson. Let's try going through all of this again. We already know that the Crown Office and Police Scotland were asked whether they would investigate this case in July of last year. We know that the Law Society raised it with the Crown Office in December. We know that journalists have been investigating it all summer, and we know that the police were called in nearly three months ago. Yet the First Minister is asking us to believe that nobody in the SNP, the party of government, from the constituency in Edinburgh West, right up to the chief executive and the leader herself, knew anything about this until they read it in the paper almost two weeks ago. Does the First Minister think that this sounds believable, or is it the case that somebody somewhere turned a blind eye? I do think that the reasonable people listening to the answers that I'm giving today will opt to believe that that is the case. Why? Because I would not stand here and say it was the case if it wasn't the case. Ruth Davidson says that we all knew that the Law Society was investigating that the Crown Office was investigating that journalists were investigating all summer. Did she know any of that before the Sunday Times published those stories? I certainly didn't know those things until they came to light in the media. If Ruth Davidson is saying that everybody knew this, then presumably she would have known, but unless she's saying so, I'll take it that she didn't. The fact of the matter is that we had no prior knowledge of those issues. We now do know about the allegations that have been made, and I stress the word allegations. There is now, as is entirely appropriate, a police investigation into those allegations. I'm happy and keen to see that investigation be thorough and robust, and I will take whatever action at the conclusion of that. The facts determine that it is necessary and appropriate, and I think that it would be fitting for all politicians to take exactly the same approach. Ruth Davidson? The First Minister is in charge when it suits her, but when the wheel comes off she is constantly surprised by what's going on. She's surprised by tea in the park, she's surprised by Government loans to SNP donors, and now she's surprised by this. What the First Minister can't have missed were the sort of business practices that Michelle Thompson was involved in and boasted about in public view on her own website. Since the First Minister says that she's read the papers, she must also have read the responses from the vulnerable people who are hurt and who are angry at the way in which they've been treated in order to profit the First Minister's former business spokesperson. This morning, Michelle Thompson's solicitor said that she wants to come back into front-line politics as quickly as possible. Today, the First Minister has mentioned the police investigation a number of time. Let's put the police investigation to one side for a moment. On the basics of ethics and integrity alone, does the First Minister welcome Michelle Thompson back to her front bench? For the so-called party of law in order to stand up in a parliamentary chamber and say on extremely serious matters, let's just put the question of a police investigation to one side. Frankly, beggars belief. I'm in no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if the allegations—again, I stress the word allegations—are proven to be correct, then that will represent behaviour that I find completely unacceptable. However, I am not going to judge the outcome on the basis of somebody who maintains their innocence and an investigation that has not yet concluded. It would be incredibly unfair and inappropriate for me to do that. I put it in this chamber and, indeed, to the public that it is unfair and unacceptable for any politician to ask me to do that. However, when we have all of the facts, when the investigation is concluded, I will take whatever decisions and whatever actions I deem necessary. Those decisions will be driven by facts, not by insinuation and the attempts of opposition parties to stir up political trouble and difficulty. That's the way I'll continue to proceed and I think it's the appropriate thing to do. To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the cabinet. Matters of importance to the people of Scotland. Last week, the First Minister told me that GPs were happy with her plans for primary care, but look at what the chair of the Royal College of GPs said this week. The Scottish Government needs to act urgently. It's stalled, sitting fallow. The Government needs to stop prevaricating and deliver immediate action, not more promises for tomorrow. GPs are far from happy. This morning, Shona Robison addressed the GP conference. What new and immediate action did she commit to? I can give Willie Rennie some more up-to-date information about the views of GPs. As he rather said, Shona Robison has been making announcements today. Here's what Dr Alan McDevitt, chair of the BMA's Scottish GP committee, has said today. The removal of the co-off system is a significant step towards our vision for the future of general practice in Scotland. This bold move by the cabinet secretary is part of the reinvigoration of general practice in Scotland. It will have a positive effect on practices by reducing workload and bureaucracy, allowing GPs to focus on the complex care needs of their patients. That's the views of GPs, or at least the GP representative of Shona Robison's announcement this morning. I could also read out a lot of quotes from social media this morning of GPs in England listening to that announcement and wishing they could come to Scotland to practice instead. Willie Rennie? She talks about the co-off, but that's going to be two years away. That's hardly immediate action. This is what is happening today. NHS Fife told me that it is having to step in to save metal practice. Yesterday, we learned of pressures in Aberdeen for GPs at night-time, and Dumfries and Galloway NHS issued a recruitment warning. The First Minister said that she was doing everything that she could, but 99 per cent of GPs said that it was not enough. The truth is that the Scottish Government has been caught napping. Ministers say that everything is fine. Everyone else says that it is not. It's like the police all over again. I am trying to shake the Government and the First Minister out of her denial. When will she open her eyes? When will she end the denial? The First Minister? Willie Rennie says that I say that everything is fine, and I don't say that. That's why I was able last week to list a long list of initiatives back by resources that Shona Robison and the Government were taking, but the bulk of the answer that I gave to his first question were not actually my own words at all. They were the words of Dr Allan McDevitt, who is the chair of the BMA's Scottish GP committee. We are working closely and constructively with GPs to deal with recruitment challenges, to deal with the pressures that come from the changing demographics of our country, changing patterns of technology and how healthcare is delivered, to make sure that we have a system and a model of primary care that is fit for practice, not just now but into the years that lie ahead. We are determined that that is backed by a modern fit for practice GP contract. I think that that is exactly the action that people would expect the Government working with GPs today. We will continue to do it, and as we do, I have no doubt that Willie Rennie will continue to cart from the sidelines. Question 4, Christina McKelvie. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, to ask the First Minister what progress the Scottish Government is making in implementing the so-called Claire's Law. I think that it is right that people in relationships should have the opportunity to seek the facts about their partner's background if, for example, they have concerns that their partner has a history of violence. The disclosure scheme for domestic abuse in Scotland, otherwise known as Claire's Law, has proven successful in the pilot areas of Ayrshire and Aberdeen. I was delighted to announce in July the decision to roll that scheme out across the country. The scheme, as of today, will therefore be available across Scotland. That means that anyone who feels that they may be at risk of domestic abuse will have the right to ask for information about their partner. I think that that sends a strong and unequivocal message that abuse is unacceptable and that we are committed to action that can help to reduce the risk of further harm. Christina McKelvie. I thank the First Minister for that answer on that very, very welcome roll-out today. Would she agree with me and the many organisations that have campaigned for this that Police Scotland's disclosure scheme for domestic abuse is vital, absolutely vital, to defeat the scourge of domestic violence in Scotland? Yes, I absolutely agree with that. I hope that everybody would agree with that. We want to stop domestic abuse in all of its forms and this scheme enables us, gives us another very important tool to help to do that. Put simply, this scheme does have the ability to save lives, but it is not the only thing that we need to do to combat domestic abuse. That is why we are also taking forward a range of other measures to prevent and eradicate domestic abuse. In March, I announced another £20 million over the next three years to step up our work to tackle violence against women and girls. That money will be used to drive innovation and improvement within the justice system, tackle perpetrators of domestic abuse and increase public awareness. I think that the collection of initiatives that this Government is taking, I hope, backed by cross-party support, will help us in the years to come to make sure that we are not just taking a stand against domestic abuse, we are reducing the impact of domestic abuse in our communities. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I too welcome the rolling out of Claire's law. However, I am disappointed that the lack of progress made on the delivery of Equally Safe. The strategic board for implementation was supposed to have reported six months ago, but it is yet to meet, and it will be sad that the first Parliament led by a female First Minister was to go down in history as the one that I had done least to tackle violence against women. Can I ask the First Minister if she will take the opportunity to make progress on the implementation of Equally Safe this afternoon by backing my amendments to the human trafficking bill? I have to say that I found aspects of that question by Rhoda Grant deeply depressing, because this is an issue on which I am a politician. I am as capable of any politician in this chamber, perhaps more capable than some of being party political on a variety of issues, but this is an issue that we should not be party political on, Presiding Officer. Given that I have just stood here and announced today the start of the complete roll-out of a pioneering innovative scheme to help to reduce domestic violence, given that I have just talked again about the additional £20 million resources that I decided to invest in measures to reduce domestic violence, to come up with a comment like that, I think, is not worthy of the member, but she does raise an important point about Equally Safe, and she will be aware that we are making progress in taking forward the commitments in Equally Safe. I am happy to write to her with a detailed report. She will see some reference to this in the programme for government that was published just a few weeks ago. This is an issue where not just am I determined—I think that everybody across this chamber is determined to see real progress—so, for goodness sake, whatever else we may divide on, let's get together and say that we are going to tackle and eradicate domestic abuse in this country. Can I welcome the creers law and the other initiatives that the First Minister announced in her first answer? Can I tell her at the cross-party group on men's violence against women last night that there was some discussion about the specific offence of domestic abuse that was in the consultation paper? Can she tell us why there has been a delay in introducing such a law and can she give a categorical guarantee that such a law will be introduced in due course? I think that anybody who has listened to my comments in this will have a very strong sense of my commitment to doing this. There hasn't been a delay in introducing this. What we have done is consult on the general principle. We are now moving forward to consult on the specific wording of a new offence of domestic abuse. The reason why we are doing that is because there are differences of opinion as Malcolm Chisholm, given the sterling work that he has done in the issue over a long number of years, will know. On something as important as this, the view is that it is vital that we get it right. I believe that a specific offence of domestic abuse will allow us to capture more aspects of domestic abuse than the current law enables us to do. I am absolutely committed to doing this, but I am committed to doing it properly so that it has the desired effect of helping the many women who currently suffer abuse in forms that the current law is not well suited to dealing with. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to the findings in Unison Scotland's college staff survey report learning the hard way. The progress that we have made in recent years through college reform is largely due to the commitment and professionalism of college staff across Scotland. I want to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all our college staff for the role that they play in the success of our colleges. Our priority is to build on that, ensuring that staff continue to be well led and well supported. Clearly, it is very important to understand properly the views expressed by staff, generally and in particular through staff surveys, like the one that Iain Gray has commented on. The education secretary will discuss the survey findings at her next meeting with Unison Scotland and will commit to taking forward whatever needs to be done in order to address the concerns expressed in that survey. Presiding Officer, I do not think that the findings of this survey are hard to understand. 90 per cent of staff think that colleges are underfunded, 64 per cent think that college services have declined, 77 per cent do not expect them to improve in the next year, and 69 per cent blame the Scottish Government. Rather than expressing our gratitude to our hardworking college staff, does the First Minister not think that she should apologise? I will continue to take the view and the approach that I think is right to work with our college staff to make sure that our colleges continue to deliver excellent education for our young people. As I have said previously in this chamber, when we look at resource budgets in cash terms, this Government is spending more than Labour did when it was in office. We will continue to make sure that we give priority in our spending decisions to education, given the importance that we attach to it. I would also point out, as I have done many times before, that in every one of the last three years, we have not just met but exceeded our target to maintain the number of full-time equivalent places. The number of full-time students under 25 is increased by 15 per cent, full-time students over 25 up by 25 per cent. The number of women studying full-time courses is up by 15 per cent. Of course, we are also investing heavily in the college estate, more than £530 million in college estates since 2007. Those are the commitments that we will make to make sure that we have a quality college education sector. The staff who work in that sector are vital to that, so we will continue to listen to them, to respond to them and to work with them to deliver even further improvements. The First Minister was reported in Audit Scotland's report on Scotland's Colleges 2015 earlier this year that the SFA had met students as part of its six-month post-merger evaluations to discuss issues such as changes to learning and teaching, enrolment and access to colleges, and feedback indicated that there had been little adverse effect on students. Is the First Minister aware of whether that remains the position? I am certainly aware of the Auditor General's report, which was published back in April. It is, I think, the most current evidence-based assessment of the state of the sector, and it draws on surveys and other feedback indicating that our reforms have had no adverse impact on students. I would say that it is backed up by the evidence that shows that more full-time students are achieving recognised qualifications. The number of students achieving HNCs and HNDs has increased by over 20 per cent since 2007. There has been a 34 per cent increase in students progressing from college to university with advanced standing since 2009-10. The proof of the pudding in that respect is in the eating. We have a college sector now that is enabling more young people to get the qualifications that they need, either to go further in education or to go successfully into the workplace, which is perhaps one of the reasons why we are seeing youth unemployment at the much lower levels now than it has been in the past. To ask the First Minister what steps the Scottish Government is taking to increase business innovation. I was placed in house on Monday this week that a new innovation fund totalling £78 million will be available to stimulate business innovation. The fund will comprise £31 million of European regional development fund money, which will be matched by £47 million of funding from Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council. It will enable a range of key activities aimed at increasing the number and level of companies investing in innovation in order to stimulate greater business university collaboration. It will also supplement the work of our innovation centres, with a particular aim to shorten development cycles for SMEs that will create new products and services. Thank you First Minister for that answer. Can she advise how that will work alongside the progress that is being made on the can-do strategy? Does she agree that it is important that we do not just see Scotland as an attractive place to do business, but we also see it as an attractive place to start businesses as well? Absolutely. I want Scotland to be seen as a great place, the best in the UK, to do business, to set up businesses, to expand businesses and to invest in businesses. Mark McDonald raises a very important component of our strategy. Scotland can do, which is a title that I love, is our route map to becoming a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation. I know that Labour does not like the idea of Scotland can do, but I do like it a lot. It is launched in November 2013. We have invested in entrepreneurial talent. We have expanded our range of business innovation support tools. We are also building a £124 million network of innovation centres that will allow industry to make the best use of our world-class university research and expertise, and we will showcase Scotland's fantastic capacity for innovation through our plan network of innovation investment hubs in Dublin, Brussels and London. In every sense, we are a Government putting our confidence in Scotland, which is probably why Scotland is putting its confidence in this Government. Thank you, Presiding Officer. How much of the £78 million announced on Monday is new money? As Gavin Brown would have been aware if he had listened to my answer, the announcement that I made on Monday is a combination of money from the European Regional Development Fund and money from our enterprise agencies and from the Scottish Funding Council. It is additional money that will augment the work that those agencies continue to do. The estimate is that it will allow our enterprise agencies to work with an additional 1,000 companies to help and support them to become more innovative. The message that we want to send out is that if there are big ideas out there in our companies, we want to help those companies to bring them to fruition. Thank you. That ends First Minister's questions. We are now moving to members' business. Members who leave the chamber should do so quickly and quietly.


Hello everyone. Hi, my name is Joe Arnold and I'm the CEO of Swiss stack and today we're going to talk about Global clusters in Swift and what global clusters is is the ability to replicate data to multiple sites multiple data centers wherever they happen to be and this morning we got to see Concur on stage talk about their use of global clusters and what they're doing is they have two data centers And in each one of those data centers, they have copies of their data going into whichever data center is Closest to where their customers are and What Swift does is it replicates the data between those two data centers, so it's it's available Now they're have a use case where they're trying to scale up to tens of billions of Images and that's what it was architected to do but more to the point It's really not about disaster recovery It's about providing a better experience for the customers because by having the content Closer to where that customer is they're able to upload faster. They're able to download that content faster and in the case of an emergency they're able to Flop over to the other data center and and keep right on going so kind of a picture of how this this works We have so let's say you have a we're going to configure this We're actually going to walk through this right now between Portland and Hong Kong if you're dragging some content over to Say you're using the application. What happens is if you incorporate something like a Global load balancing then that request would be routed to a nearby location So there's many DNS servers services that provide this and so you take advantage of that It gets written with full durability in a single location We call this affinity right and then asynchronously that data gets replicated to another location If another user comes along and say they're in a different part of the world or Different then they can load that content picture of a cat and Also using geo DNS they get routed to a nearby data center and they'll pull pull that pull that up So that's kind of roughly how it works and the technology that we provide is well one we've been part of the development of so our company is Swiss stack and what we do is we provide a a Deployment platform management platform around open stack Swift But not just that we also have people on the core Swift team who help build a lot of the features that are in Swift And global clusters is one of them and so what we have is a is a product and there's really there's two parts to it one part is This something that we call the Swiss stack nodes and the Swiss stack nodes includes open stack Swift it includes management monitoring information All that whole runtime stack needed to get that environment up and running. I've actually have a lot of authentication components in there Everything to need Then there's the Swiss stack controller and what the controller does is it allows you to manage deploy scale and Configure an environment so you can do things like rolling upgrades Configure user accounts we collect usage information things like things like that So what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through Setting this thing up. So right now we have a we have a web client and what I'm going to do is Just demonstrate this so I actually have this infrastructure running right now and I'm uploading some of that content. This is just a web interface to that that you can use you can skin this for your for your own purposes and What I'm going to do is I'm going to take I feel like Julia child I've already done a node installation and what happens is this node will connect to The Swiss stack controller and it makes that connection it registers itself And we can go through the process of claiming that and adding that new node to a cluster So I have this URL here that it created for me when I did the installation commands and by the way this installs on a Buntu it installs on sent us it installs on on red hat as well Let's see, okay, so let's paste that guy in here and I get this cleaning claiming process And so it's going to start establishing a connection between the that node and the controller So we got a VPN session between the two Again, the new controller doesn't reach out to the node the node reaches out to whatever controller that it's using and So I'm going to go through that claiming process and add it to a cluster So I'm going to go to demo 10 already have two nodes running in this environment and I'm going to Injust this new one I'm going to say drop this into the Hong Kong node and I actually have a load balance or set up between the two and On each node. There's a health check URL, which will add it in or remove it Depending if a response to the health check or not and so I'm going to do is I'm going to configure this guy One of the neat things is you can actually specify a separate replication network for global clusters And I mean we just acknowledge that that WAN link is going to be an expensive Tube between your two sites and so if you want to do things like Throttle that network differently, then you can just set that different network network right here We're going to manage the drives and what this means is we're just going to format these that format these guys and it will go through the process of Taking each drive that's on that node We'll label it will format it Inventory it so that way when drives float around the data center, which they do when you plug that back in node back Into the system it knows what to do with it Now I'm going to add this node this capacity into the cluster And we actually have two options here one is one is called gradual Edition one's immediate addition and we also have the same concept when you're adding a new Geographic region because one thing is when you when you add a new region into your into your storage system you don't want to instantaneously replicate everything all at the same time and You will just saturate network connections users won't be able to access the storage system So what we do is we throttle that by doing things in an incremental way And we do that both when we add new devices into the cluster and also when we add replicas or add Geographies different regions into the cluster so we can do it in a smooth way So I'm just going to do now Change All right, so now I'm going to enable the node in the cluster and and Deploy changes. It's telling me to do that. I'm adding this node and I'm deploying the config to the cluster and So now what it's doing is it's building a ring and then it's going to push the ring out to all those devices And we wait I can tell you more anyway, so here's where you configure it So we have the regions so I just configured a couple in here So you have the we have our Portland region Hong Kong region We have some middleware that can be configured One of our real popular ones that we have is an an active directory an LDAP integration Oops, this one here and what this does is if you have an LDAP system already set up in your environment It will connect back into that and allow you to instead of having to create a user per On the dedicated on the storage system We just connect into the active directory LDAP system and you don't need to provision any additional user accounts So it's just a it's a nice management tool to have on there And the reason why this takes so long is because we're doing a lot of math. We're actually Building this struct data structure in the ring Which does the data placement because we have this data placement strategy called as unique as possible And what it does is if you have one node and you have a bunch of drives in that node It'll place the data Across each one of those drives if you start adding more nodes like two nodes three nodes four nodes Then it will distribute that the replicas across all of the available all that available capacity You start moving outside of the data center into regions Then or into zones and then into regions It'll also distribute those data across and and that way you get availability for the data And if catastrophe strikes in one of those locations, then you're protected from the failure. So, ah, okay, it finished so I'm going to go Open that web console again, and I have my my data here. Let me go create another one Another container right I got my fresh container and I'm going to upload more data onto my Cluster with more capacity Soon as the load balancer figures out that that new capacity is there It's been configured to pull in that that extra capacity into the environment And now I have a bigger cluster in more regions to put my data in so that's the functionality of global clusters Oh, Mari has another thing so at our booth. We have this we've been working with On a new drive format with you want to go to our booth and check it out It's it's a drive with an ethernet jack on it. It's been produced by seagate and we've written Open stack Swift code to be compatible with this new drive format It is actually an ethernet drive you plug it in Into a switch and it gets an IP address and then you communicate over it with keys and values It's it's it's a just a completely Revolutionary no pun intended way to store a device data into a device So please our booth is right over by the entrance on the on the left-hand side And I'm getting queued here. All right, so then We have a session on This afternoon where we're talking about A software defined storage with open stack and that will be over by the hotel at 340 We will have a book on Software-defined storage with open stack Swift which will be available at our booth after 2 o'clock today. We hope 3 o'clock just to be sure and then Which side? All right, then the case that then we have the workshop on deploying open stack Swift on Thursday at 4 30 where everyone show up with your laptop and we're going to go through the process of Doing the configuration doing the deployment setting things up Failing the environment and we're going to do it in a rapid fire succession We're actually going to set up raw vanilla Swift and go through that and then we're going to go through and set up Swift stack and go through that so we get our hands dirty on a bunch of different stuff On Thursday afternoon at 4 30 again, that'll be right across the street from the hotel Mario is there anything else I should add you've been prompting me and queuing me here This is a phenomenal thing like do come check it out. I'll be here for a few more minutes And happy to answer any questions we have about Swift and Swift stack and there's my new Cluster in the environment Ready to go Thanks for listening. Have a good day


during this module we are going to see the assessment of culturally diverse clients as we see that because of the cultural differences the clients could be different on the basis of their age, the religion, sexuality, ethnicity, gender, disability or any other basis but one of the important professional task of a psychologist is that he can never discriminate his clients on the basis of all these things so where comes all of these things or where discrimination comes so it will be culturally bias assessment so we have to see that a mutual or fear or culturally open assessment is done by a psychologist for this purpose psychologists need to develop the cultural competence for the assessment of the clients and the treatment of the clients so till the time the cultural competence does not come till then the discrimination in all these things cannot be avoided so now looking into what is cultural competence cultural competence is capacity to increase the understanding of cultural differences because every culture is different from other cultures, their practices are different, different behaviors are being performed, different customs are being done so till the time the understanding is not there, the cultural competence will not develop a traditional research which I have already given an example of is Margaret Mead's research where she started living in a specific tribe to develop the cultural competence she spent a lot of time there for her life and after she developed the cultural competence she worked on child rearing practices so you know sometimes it happens that the cultural competence could be developed in different ways or you live there, interact with them, spend time with them and after that the cultural competence develops then ability to acknowledge cultural assumptions and biases and believe me these cultural biases are different and we see this everywhere we see superstitions everywhere, we see different assumptions everywhere so understanding that is very important for an individual before he does therapeutic intervention willingness to make changes in thought and behavior of address cultural bias if you have become so offended by that cultural bias as a psychologist that you cannot even do dialogue on it you cannot develop any consensus on it with your client you feel that this principle is a very wrong practice because there are many such cultural practices which the psychologist himself does not agree with so first develop consensus on it yes there is a difference and this is acceptable to them after that the process of assessment and therapy is called to develop cultural competence then cultural competence is not a static thing it is an ongoing procedure of the examination and change not a goal to be attained once it is not that we have developed a course of 3 hours of cultural competence cultural competence is exactly the same as we are practicing any virtue it is inculcated over the period of time similarly cultural competence is developed within us with learning, with practice while spending the time and things like that a cultural competence program demonstrates the empathy and understanding of cultural differences that treatment, design, implementation and evaluation so once we talk about the cultural competence we need to understand the cultural competence in all the domain of our assessment like within this there can be implementation plan there can be diagnosis in it there can be evaluation in it now how will cultural competence differ from diagnosis I will give you a very brief example of this for instance we see a drug dependence case it is a diagnosed problem in DSM but if we see it in a Muslim society's culture then its connotations, its implications and the goals and dynamics of treatment will differ as compared to any other country where taking drugs is allowed by law so we need to see that cultural competence determines that what and how different practices are being done a culturally competent program is characterized by knowledge of or sensitivity of first language of client till the time you do not keep an acquaintance with a client's first language then the cultural competence cannot be developed like a psychologist is speaking in English and the person who understands it can understand it so how will you comprehend it then understanding and respecting the cultural nuisance of the client population if you are not respecting the practices of it and you are disowning it you are disrespecting it you are making fun of it that in your culture these practices are like this it seems to be very illogical so how will you train them how will you assess them how will you count them that would become a very trivial task so first of all develop these consensus that there are cultural differences and you will accept them and work individually that is very important for the production of the client population in program, policy making and decision making now since there are cultural differences you are working on a project by overcoming them till the time you do not have a client's consensus you cannot take any decision for that then employing treatment methods that reflect the cultural specific values and treatment needs of the client even when we plan an intervention and treatment method then it is very important that the clients keep their cultural background in mind and plan the intervention that is acceptable for them and visible for them so these are the things which are the basis of professional competence and one need to be very professionally competent when working with culturally diverse population


CHAPTER 14 AT THE APPETITE CURER This establishment's name is Hochberhaus. It is in Bohemia, a short day's journey from Vienna, and being in the Austrian Empire is, of course, a health resort. The Empire is made up of health resorts. It distributes health to the whole world. Its waters are all medicinal. They are bottled and sent throughout the earth. The natives themselves drink beer. This is self-sacrifice, apparently, but outlanders who have drunk Vienna beer have another idea about it. Particularly the Pilsner, which one gets in a small cellar up an obscure back lane in the first Besirk. The name has escaped me, but the place is easily found. You inquire for the Greek church. When you get to it, go right along by. The next house is that little beer mill. It is remote from all traffic and all noise. It is always Sunday there. There are two small rooms with low ceilings supported by massive arches. The arches and ceilings are whitewashed. Otherwise the rooms would pass for cells in the dungeons of a Bastille. The furniture is plain and cheap. There is no ornamentation anywhere. Yet it is a heaven for the self-sacrificers, for the beer there is incomparable. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the world. In the first room you will find twelve or fifteen ladies and gentlemen of civilian quality. In the other one a dozen generals and ambassadors. One may live in Vienna many months and not hear of this place, but having once heard of it and sampled it, the sampler will afterward infest it. However this is all incidental, a mere passing note of gratitude for blessings received. It has nothing to do with my subject. My subject is health resorts. All unhealthy people ought to domicile themselves in Vienna and use that as a base, making flights from time to time to the outlying resorts according to need, a flight to Marienbad to get rid of fat, a flight to Karlsbad to get rid of rheumatism, a flight to Kultenleutgaben to take the water cure and get rid of the rest of the diseases. It is all so handy. You can stand in Vienna and toss a biscuit into Kultenleutgaben with a twelve-inch gun. You can run out thither at any time of the day. You go by the phenomenally slow trains, and yet inside of an hour you have exchanged the glare and swelter of the city for wooded hills and shady forest paths and soft cool airs and the music of birds and the repose and peace of paradise. And there are plenty of other health resorts at your service and convenient to get at from Vienna, charming places, all of them. Vienna sits in the center of a beautiful world of mountains, with now and then a lake and forests. In fact, no other city is so fortunately situated. There are abundance of health resorts, as I have said, among them this place, Hochperhaus. It stands solitary on the top of a densely wooded mountain and is a building of great size. It is called the Appetite Anstalt, and people who have lost their appetites come here to get them restored. When I arrived, I was taken by Professor Holmberger to his consulting room and questioned, It is six o'clock. When did you eat last? At noon. What did you eat? Next to nothing. What was on the table? The usual things, chops, chickens, vegetables, and so on. Yes, but don't mention them, I can't bear it. Are you tired of them? Oh, utterly! I wish I might never hear of them again. The mere sight of food offends you, does it? More, it revolts me. The doctor considered a while, then got out a long menu and ran his eye slowly down it. I think, said he, that what you need to eat is—but here, choose for yourself. I glanced at the list and my stomach threw a handspring. Of all the barbarous layouts that were ever contrived, this was the most atrocious. At the top stood tough, underdone, overdue tripe, garnished with garlic. Halfway down the bill stood young cat, old cat, scrambled cat. At the bottom stood sailor boots, softened with tallow, served raw. The wide intervals of the bill were packed with dishes calculated to insult a cannibal. I said, Doctor, it is not fair to joke over so serious a case as mine. I came here to get an appetite not to throw away the remnant that's left. He said gravely, I am not joking. Why should I joke? But I can't eat these horrors. Why not? He said it with a naivete that was admirable, whether it was real or assumed. Why not? Because, my doctor, for months I have seldom been able to endure anything more substantial than omelets and custards. These unspeakable dishes of yours. Oh, you will come to like them. They are very good. And you must eat them. It is the rule of the place, and is strict. I cannot permit any departure from it. I said, smiling, well then, doctor, you will have to permit the departure of the patient. I am going. He looked hurt, and said, in a way which changed the aspect of things, I am sure you would not do me that injustice. I accepted you in good faith. You will not shame that confidence. This appetite cure is my whole living. If you should go forth from it, with the sort of appetite which you now have, it could become known. And you can see yourself that people would say my cure failed in your case, and hence can fail in other cases. You will not go. You will not do me this hurt. I apologized, and said I would stay. That is right. I was sure you would not go. It would take the food from my family's mouths. Would they mind that? Do they eat these fiendish things? They? My family?  Of course not. Oh, they don't. Do you? Certainly not. I see. It's another case of a physician who doesn't take his own medicine. But I don't need it. It is six hours since you launched. Will you have supper now or later? I am not hungry, but now is as good a time as any, and I would like to be done with it and have it off my mind. It is about my usual time, and regularity is commanded by all the authorities. Yes, I will try to nibble a little now. I wish a light horse-whipping would answer instead. The Professor handed me that odious menu. Choose, or will you have it later? Oh, dear me. Show me my room. I forgot your hard rule. Wait just a moment before you finally decide. There is another rule. If you choose now, the order will be filled at once.  You cannot get a dish from that entire bill until I consent. All right. Show me to my room, and send the cook to bed. There is not going to be any hurry. The Professor took me up one flight of stairs and showed me into a most inviting and comfortable apartment consisting of parlor, bed-chamber, and bathroom. The front windows looked out over a far-reaching spread of green glades and valleys, and tumbled hills clothed with forests, a noble solitude unvext by the fuzzy world. In the parlor were many shelves filled with books.  Yours is a stubborn bad case, and I think the first fourteen dishes in the bill are each and all too delicate for its needs. I ask you as a favour to restrain yourself and not call for them. Restrain myself, is it? Give yourself no uneasiness. You are going to save money by me.  I said it with bitterness, for I felt outraged by this calm, cold talk over these heartless new engines of assassination. The Doctor looked grieved, but not offended. He laid the bill of fare on the commode at my bed's head, so that it would be handy, and said, Yours is not the worst case I have encountered by any means. Still it is a bad one, and requires robust treatment. Therefore I shall be gratified, if you will restrain yourself and skip down to number fifteen, and begin with that. Then he left me, and I began to undress, for I was dog-tired and very sleepy. I slept fifteen hours, and woke up finally refreshed at ten the next morning. Vienna coffee! It was the first thing I thought of, that unapproachable luxury, that sumptuous coffee-house coffee, compared with which all other European coffee, and all American hotel coffee, is mere fluid poverty. I rang and ordered it. Also Vienna bread, that delicious invention. The servant spoke through the wicket in the door, and said, But you know what he said. He referred me to the bill of fare. I allowed him to go. I had no further use for him. After the bath I dressed, and started for a walk, and God as far as the door. It was locked on the outside. I rang, and the servant came, and explained that it was another rule. The seclusion of the patient was required until after the first meal. I had not been particularly anxious to get out before, but it was different now. Being locked in makes a person wishful to get out. I soon began to find it difficult to put in the time. At two o'clock I had been twenty-six hours without food. I had been growing hungry for some time. I recognized that I was not only hungry now, but hungry with a strong adjective in front of it. Yet I was not hungry enough to face the bill of fare. I must put in the time somehow. I would read and smoke. I did it, hour by hour. The books were all of one breed, shipwrecks, people lost in deserts, people shut up in caved-in mines, people starving in besieged cities. I read about all the revolting dishes that ever-famishing men had stayed their hunger with. During the first hours these things nauseated me. Hours followed in which they did not so affect me. Still other hours followed, in which I found myself smacking my lips over some tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which was a sort of dumplings containing a compost made of caviar and tar. It was refused me. During the next fifteen hours I visited the bell every now and then, ordered a dish that was further down the list, always a refusal. But I was conquering prejudice after prejudice right along. I was making sure progress. I was creeping up on number fifteen with deadly certainty, and my heart beat faster and faster. My hopes rose higher and higher. At last when food had not passed my lips for sixty hours victory was mine, and I ordered number fifteen. Soft-boiled spring chicken in the egg, six dozen hot and fragrant. In fifteen minutes it was there, and the doctor along with it, rubbing his hands with joy. He said with great excitement, It's a cure. It's a cure. I knew I could do it. Dear sir, my grand system never fails. Never. You've got your appetite back. You know you have. Say it and make me happy. Bring on your carrion. I can eat anything in the bill. Oh, this is noble. This is splendid. But I knew I could do it. The system never fails. How are the birds? Never was anything so delicious in the world. And yet, as a rule, I don't care for game. But don't interrupt me. Don't. I can't spare my mouth. I really can't. Then the doctor said, The cure is perfect. There is no more doubt nor danger. Let the poultry alone. I can trust you with a beef steak now. The beef steak came as much as a basketful of it with potatoes and Vienna bread and coffee. And I ate a meal then that was worth all the costly preparation I had made for it. And dripped tears of gratitude into the gravy all the time. Gratitude to the doctor for putting a little plain common sense into me when I had been empty of it so many, many years. Two. Thirty years ago, Heimberger went off on a long voyage in a sailing ship. There were fifteen passengers on board. The table fair was of the regulation pattern of the day, at seven in the morning, a cup of bad coffee in bed, at nine breakfast, bad coffee with condensed milk, soggy rolls, crackers, saltfish, at one p.m. luncheon, cold tongue, cold ham, cold corned beef, soggy cold rolls, crackers, five p.m. dinner, thick pea soup, saltfish, hot corned beef and sauerkraut, boiled pork and beans, pudding. Nine till eleven p.m., supper, tea with condensed milk, cold tongue, cold ham, pickles, sea biscuit, pickled oysters, pickled pigs feet, grilled bones, golden buck. At the end of the first week eating had ceased, nibbling had taken its place. The passengers came to the table, but it was partly to put in the time and partly because the wisdom of the ages commanded them to be regular in their meals. They were tired of the course and monotonous fair and took no interest in it, had no appetite for it. All day and every day they roamed the ship half hungry, plagued by their gnawing stomachs, moody, untalkative, miserable. Among them were three confirmed dyspectics. These became shadows in the course of three weeks. There was also a bed-ridden invalid. He lived on boiled rice. He could not look at the regular dishes. Now came shipwreck and life in open boats with the usual paucity of food. Provisions ran lower and lower. The appetites improved then. When nothing was left but raw ham and the ration of that was down to two ounces a day per person, the appetites were perfect. At the end of fifteen days the dyspectics, the invalid and the most delicate ladies in the party were chewing sailor boots in ecstasy and only complaining because the supply of them was limited. Yet these were the same people who couldn't endure the ship's tedious corned beef and sauerkraut and other crudities. They were rescued by an English vessel. Within ten days the whole fifteen were in as good condition as they had been when the shipwreck occurred. They had suffered no damage by their adventure, said the Professor. Do you note that? Yes. Do you note it well? Yes, I think I do. But you don't. You hesitate. You don't rise to the importance of it. I will say it again with emphasis. Not one of them suffered any damage. Now I begin to see. Yes, it was indeed remarkable. Nothing of the kind. It was perfectly natural. There was no reason why they should suffer damage. They were undergoing nature's appetite cure, the best and wisest in the world. Is that where you got your idea? That is where I got it.  What makes you think that? Why, shouldn't I? You seem to think it taught you one. That is nothing to the point.  I see. Were they fools? They were human beings. Is it the same thing? Why do you ask? You know it yourself, as regards his health and the rest of the things.  He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive what they mean. It is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for himself. He has to get everything at second hand. If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year. Those passengers learned no lesson then. Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English ship, and pretty soon they were nibbling again. Nibbling, appetiteless, disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half-hungry, their outraged stomachs cursing and swearing, and whining and supplicating all day long, and in vain for they were the stomachs of fools. Then, as I understand it, your scheme is quite simple.  If the food fails to taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you. Don't eat it again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you, and do you good too. And I observe no regularity as to ours. When you are conquering a bad appetite, no. After it is conquered, regularity is no harm, so long as the appetite remains good. As soon as the appetite wavers, apply the corrective again, which is starvation, long or short, according to the needs of the case. The best diet, I suppose, I mean the wholesomeest. All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomeer than others. But all the ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether the food be fine or coarse, it will taste good and will nourish if a watch be kept upon the appetite, and a little starvation introduced every time it weakens. Nansen was used to find fair, but when his meals were restricted to bare meat months at a time, he suffered no damage and no discomfort, because his appetite was kept at par through the difficulty of getting his bare meat regularly. But doctors arranged carefully considered and delicate diets for invalids. They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him. It would weaken him, wouldn't it? Nothing to hurt. Look at the invalids in our shipwreck.  It weakened them, but it didn't hurt them. It put them in fine shape to eat heartily of hearty food and build themselves up to a condition of robust health. But they did not perceive that. They lost their opportunity. They remained invalids. It served them right. Do you know the tricks that the health resort doctors play? What is it? My system disguised. Covert, starved, covert starvation, grape cure, bath cure, mud cure. It is all the same. The grape and the bath and the mud make a show and do a trifle of the work. The real work is done by the surreptitious starvation. The patient accustomed to four meals and late hours at both ends of the day. Now consider what he has to do at a health resort.  If you speak to him, he says anxiously, my water, I am walking off my water, please don't interrupt and goes stumping along again. Eats a candied rose leaf, lies at rest in the silence and solitude of his room for hours, mustn't speak, mustn't read, mustn't smoke. The doctor comes and feels of his heart now and his pulse and thumps his breast and his back and his stomach and listens for results through a penny-flagellette, then orders the man's bath, half a degree roimer cooler than yesterday. After the bath another egg, a glass of sewage at three or four in the afternoon and promenade solemnly with the other freaks. Dinner at six, half a donut and a cup of tea. Walk again, half past eight, supper, more butterfly, at nine to bed. Six weeks of this regime. Think of it, it starves a man out and puts him in splendid condition. It would have the same effect in London, New York, Jericho, anywhere. How long does it take to put a person in condition here? It ought to take but a day or two, but in fact it takes from one to six weeks according to the character and mentality of the patient. How is that? Do you see that crowd of women playing football and boxing and jumping fences yonder? They have been here six or seven weeks. They were spectral poor weaklings when they came. They were accustomed to nibbling dainties and delicacies at set hours four times a day, and they had no appetite for anything. I questioned them, and then locked them into their rooms, the frailest ones to starve nine or ten hours, the others twelve or fifteen. Before long they began to beg, and indeed they suffered a good deal. They complained of nausea, headache, and so on. It was good to see them eat when the time was up. They could not remember when the devouring of a meal had afforded them such rapture. That was their word. Now then, that ought to have ended their cure. But it didn't. They were free to go to any meals in the house, and they chose their accustomed four. Within a day or two I had to interfere. Their appetites were weakening. I made them knock out a meal. That set them up again. Then they resumed the four. I begged them to learn to knock out a meal themselves, without waiting for me. Up to a fortnight ago they couldn't. They really hadn't manhood enough, but they were gaining it, and now I think they are safe. They drop out a meal every now and then of their own accord. They are in fine condition now, and they might safely go home, I think. But their confidence is not quite perfect yet, so they are waiting a while. Other cases are different. Oh, yes! Sometimes a man learns the whole trick in a week. Learns to regulate his appetite and keep it in perfect order. Learns to drop out a meal with frequency, and not mind it. But why drop the entire meal out? Why not a part of it? It's a poor device, and inadequate. If the stomach doesn't call vigorously, with a shout, as you may say, it is better not to pester it, but just give it a real rest. Some people can eat more meals than others, and still thrive. There are all sorts of people, and all sorts of appetites. I will show you a man, presently, who was accustomed to nibble at eight meals a day. It was beyond the proper gait of his appetite by two. I have got him down to six a day now, and he is all right, and enjoys life. How many meals do you affect per day? Formerly, for twenty-two years, a meal and a half. During the past two years, two and a half, coffee and a roll at nine, luncheon, one, dinner, seven-thirty or eight. Formerly, a meal and a half, that is, coffee and a roll at nine, dinner in the evening, nothing in between? Is that it? Yes. Why did you add a meal? It was the family's idea. They were uneasy. They thought I was killing myself. You found a meal and a half per day enough, all through the twenty-two years? Plenty. Your present poor condition is due to the extra meal. Drop it out.  You don't gain, you lose. You eat less food now in a day on two and a half meals than you formerly ate on one and a half. True. A good deal less. For in those old days my dinner was a very sizable thing. Put yourself on a single meal a day now, dinner, for a few days till you secure a good sound, regular, trustworthy appetite. Then take to your one and a half permanently, and don't listen to the family any more. When you have any ordinary ailment, particularly of a feverish sort, eat nothing at all during twenty-four hours. That will cure it. It will cure the stubbornness cold in the head too. No cold in the head can survive twenty-four hours of modified starvation. I know it. I have proved it many a time. End of Chapter 14 at the Appetite Cure. Read by John Greenman. Section 20 of How to Tell a Story and Other Essays by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. How to Tell a Story and Other Essays by Mark Twain. Chapter 15 in Memoriam. Olivia Susan Clemens. Died. August 18th, 1896. Aged, 24. In a fair valley, oh, how long ago, how long ago, where all the broad expanse was clothed in vines, and fruitful fields and meadows starred with flowers, and clear streams wandered at their idle will, and still lakes slept, their burnished surfaces a dream of painted clouds, and soft airs went whispering with odorous breath, and all was peace in that fair veil, shot from the troubled world a nameless hamlet drowsed. Hard by, apart, a temple stood, and strangers from the outer world passing noted it with tired eyes, and seeing saw it not. A glimpse of its fair form, an answering momentary thrill, and they passed on, careless and unaware. They could not know the cunning of its make. They could not know the secret shut up in its heart. Only the dwellers of the hamlet knew. They knew that what seemed brass was gold. What marble seemed was ivory. The glories that enriched the milky surfaces, the trailing vines and interwoven flowers, and tropic birds-wing clothed all in tinted fires. They knew for what they were, not what they seemed, encrusting all of gems, not perishable splendors of the brush. They knew the secret spot where one must stand. They knew the surest hour, the proper slant of sun, to gather in unmarred, undimmed, the vision of the fane in all its fairy grace. A fainting dream against the opal sky. And more than this they knew that in the temple's inmost place a spirit dwell made all of light. For glimpses of it they had caught beyond the curtains when the priests that served the altar came and went. All loved that light and held it dear that had this partial grace. But the adoring priests alone who lived by day and night submerged in its immortal glow knew all its power and depth, and could appraise the loss, if it should bade, and fail, and come no more. All this was long ago, so long ago, the light burned on, and they that worshipped it, and they that caught its flash at intervals and held it dear, contented lived in its secure possession. Ah, how long ago it was! And then when they were nothing fearing, and God's peace was in the air, and none was prophesying harm, the vast disaster fell, where stood the temple when the sun went down, was vacant desert when it rose again. Ah, yes, to his ages since it chanced. So long ago it was, that from the memory of the Hamlet folk the light has passed, they scarce believing now that once it was, or if believing, yet not missing it, and reconciled to have it gone. Not so the priests, oh, not so the stricken ones that served it day and night, adoring it, abiding in the healing of its peace. They stand yet, where erst they stood speechless in that dim morning long ago, and still they gaze, as then they gazed, and murmur, it will come again. It knows our pain, it knows, it knows. Ah, surely it will come again. S. L. C. Lake Lucerne, August 18th, 1897 End of Chapter 15, In Memoriam, read by John Greenman Section 21 of How to Tell a Story and Other Essays by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. How to Tell a Story and Other Essays by Mark Twain Chapter 16 Mark Twain, A Biographical Sketch by Samuel E. Moffat In 1835 the creation of the Western Empire of America had just begun. In the whole region west of the Mississippi, which now contains 21 million people, nearly twice the entire population of the United States at that time, there were less than half a million white inhabitants. There were only two states beyond the Great River, Louisiana, and Missouri. There were only two considerable groups of population, one about New Orleans, and the other about St. Louis. If we omit New Orleans, which is east of the river, there was only one place in all that vast domain with any pretension to be called a city. That was St. Louis, and that Metropolis, the wonder and pride of all the Western country, had no more than ten thousand inhabitants. It was in this frontier region, on the extreme fringe of settlement, that just divides the desert from the zone. That Samuel Langhorn Clemens was born, November 30, 1835, in the hamlet of Florida, Missouri. His parents had come there to be in the thick of the Western boom, and by a fate for which no lack of foresight on their part was to blame, they found themselves in a place which succeeded in accumulating 125 inhabitants in the next sixty years. When we read of the westward sweep of population and wealth in the United States, it seems as if those who were in the van of that moment must have been inevitably carried on to fortune. But that was a tide full of eddies and back currents, and Mark Twain's parents possessed a faculty for finding them that appears nothing less than miraculous. The whole Western Empire was before them where to choose. They could have bought the entire site of Chicago for a pair of boots. They could have taken up a farm within the present city limits of St. Louis. What they actually did was to live for a time in Columbia, Kentucky, with a small property in land, and six inherited slaves, then to move to Jamestown on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee, a place that was then no farther removed from the currents of the world's life than Uganda, but which no resident of that or any other part of Central Africa would now regard as a serious competitor, and next to migrate to Missouri, passing St. Louis and settling first in Florida and afterward in Hannibal. But when the whole map was blank, the promise of fortune glowed as rosely in these regions as anywhere else. Florida had great expectations when Jackson was president. When John Marshall Clemens took up eighty thousand acres of land in Tennessee, he thought he had established his children as territorial magnates. That phantom vision of wealth furnished later one of the motives of the gilded age. It conferred no other benefit. If Samuel Clemens missed a fortune he inherited good blood. On both sides his family had been settled in the South since early colonial times. His father, John Marshall Clemens of Virginia, was a descendant of Gregory Clemens, who became one of the judges that condemned Charles I to death, was accepted from the amnesty after the restoration in consequence, and lost his head. A cousin of John M. Clemens, Jeremiah Clemens, represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1849 to 1853. Through his mother, Jane Lampton, Lampton, the boy was descended from the Lamptons of Durham, whose modern English representatives still possessed the lands held by their ancestors of the same name since the 12th century. Some of her forebears on the maternal side, the Montgomery's, went with Daniel Boone to Kentucky and were in the thick of the romantic and tragic events that accompanied the settlement of the dark and bloody ground, and she herself was born there twenty-nine years after the first log cabin was built within the limits of the present Commonwealth. She was one of the earliest, prettiest, and brightest of the many bells that have given Kentucky such an enviable reputation as a nursery of fair women, and her vivacity and wit left no doubt in the minds of her friends concerning the source of her son's genius. John Marshall Clemens, who had been trained for the bar in Virginia, served for some years as a magistrate at Hannibal, holding for a time the position of county judge. With his death in March 1847, Mark Twain's formal education came to an end, and his education in real life began. He had always been a delicate boy, and his father, in consequence, had been lenient in the matter of enforcing attendance at school, although he had been profoundly anxious that his children should be well educated. His wish was fulfilled, although not in the way he had expected. It is a fortunate thing for literature that Mark Twain was never ground into smooth uniformity under the scholastic Emory Wheel. He has made the world his university, and in men and books and strange places, and all the phases of an infinitely varied life, has built an education broad and deep on the foundations of an undisturbed individuality. His high school was a village printing office, where his elder brother Orian was conducting a newspaper. The thirteen-year-old boy served in all capacities, and in the occasional absences of his chief he reveled in personal journalism, with original illustrations hacked on wooden blocks with a jackknife, to an extent that riveted the town's attention, but not its admiration, as his brother plaintively confessed. The editor spoke with feeling, for he had to take the consequences of these exploits on his return. From his earliest childhood young Clemens had been of an adventurous disposition. Before he was thirteen he had been extracted three times from the Mississippi and six times from Bear Creek in a substantially drowned condition, but his mother, with a high confidence in his future that never deserted her, merely remarked, People who are born to be hanged are safe in the water. By 1853 the Hannibal Tether had become too short for him. He disappeared from home and wandered from one eastern printing office to another. He saw the world's fair at New York and other marvels, and supported himself by setting type. At the end of this wander-yard financial stress drove him back to his family. He lived at St. Louis, Muscatine, and Keokuk, until 1857, when he induced the great Horace Bixby to teach him the mystery of steamboat piloting. The charm of all this warm, indolent existence in the sleepy river towns has colored his whole subsequent life. In Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, life on the Mississippi and Puddin Head Wilson, every phase of that vanished estate is lovingly dwelt upon. Native character will always make itself felt, but one may wonder whether Mark Twain's humor would have developed in quite so sympathetic and buoyant of vein if he had been brought up in Ecclfekken instead of in Hannibal, and whether Carlisle might not have been a little more human if he had spent his boyhood in Hannibal instead of in Ecclfekken. A Mississippi pilot in the later fifties was a personage of imposing grandeur. He was a miracle of attainments. He was the absolute master of his boat while it was under way, and just before his fall he commanded a salary precisely equal to that earned at that time by the Vice President of the United States, or a Justice of the Supreme Court. The best proof of the superlative majesty and desirability of his position is the fact that Samuel Clemens deliberately subjected himself to the incredible labor necessary to attain it. A labor compared with which the efforts needed to acquire the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at a university are as light as a summer course of modern novels. To appreciate the full meaning of a pilot's marvelous education one must read the whole of life on the Mississippi, but this extract may give a partial idea of a single feature of that training, the cultivation of the memory. First of all there is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do. That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is so and so. He must know it. For this is eminently one of the exact sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon in the old times, if he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase, I think, instead of the vigorous one, I know. One cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of river, and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street in New York and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently, until you know every house and window and door and lamppost, and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And then if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the character, size, and position of the crossing stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs in that long street and change their places once a month, and still manage to know their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a pilot's pureless memory by the fickle Mississippi. I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world, to know the old and new testaments by heart, and be able to recite them glibly forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways, and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility compared to a pilot's massed knowledge of the Mississippi, and his marvelous facility in handling it, and how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work, how placidly effortless is its way, how unconsciously it lays up its vast stores hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single valuable package of them all. Take an instance. Let a Ledzman say, half twain, half twain, half twain, half twain, half twain, until it becomes as monotonous as the ticking of a clock. Let conversations be going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, and no longer consciously listening to the Ledzman, and in the midst of this endless string of half twains let a single quarter twain be interjected without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again just as before. Two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain was uttered, and give you such a lot of head marks, stern marks, and side marks to guide you that you want to be able to take the boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself. The cry of quarter twain did not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid up the important details for future reference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter. Young Clemens went through all that appalling training, stored away in his head the bewildering mass of knowledge a pilot's duties required, received the license that was the diploma of the River University, entered into regular employment, and regarded himself as established for life, when the outbreak of the Civil War wiped out his occupation at a stroke, and made his weary apprenticeship a useless labor.  Clemens was in New Orleans when Louisiana seceded, and started north the next day. The boat ran a blockade every day of her trip, and on the last night of the voyage, the batteries at the Jefferson Barracks, just below St. Louis, fired two shots through her chimneys. Brought up in a slave-holding atmosphere, Mark Twain naturally sympathized at first with the South. In June he joined the Confederates in Rawls County, Missouri, as a second lieutenant under General Tom Harris. His military career lasted for two weeks, narrowly missing the distinction of being captured by Colonel Ulysses S. Grant, he resigned explaining that he had become incapacitated by fatigue through persistent retreating. In his subsequent writings he has always treated his brief experience of warfare as a burlesque episode, although the official reports and correspondence of the Confederate commanders speak very respectfully of the work of the Raw Countrymen of the Harris Brigade. The elder Clemens' brother, Orian, was persona grata to the administration of President Lincoln, and received in consequence an appointment as the first secretary of the new territory of Nevada. He offered his speedily reconstructed junior the position of private secretary to himself, with nothing to do and no salary. The two crossed the plains in an overland coach in eighteen days, almost precisely the time it will take to go from New York to Vladivostok, when the Trans-Siberian Railway is finished. A year of variegated fortune hunting among the silver mines of the Humboldt and Esmeralda regions followed. Occasional letters written during this time to the leading newspaper of the Territory, the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, attracted the attention of the proprietor, Mr. J. T. Goodman, a man of keen and unerring literary instinct, and he offered the writer the position of local editor on his staff. With the duties of this place were combined those of legislative correspondent at Carson City, the capital. The work of young Clemens created a sensation among the lawmakers. He wrote a weekly letter spined with barbed personalities. It appeared every Sunday, and on Mondays the legislative business was obstructed with the complaints of members who rose to questions of privilege and expressed their opinion of the correspondent with a serbity. This encouraged him to give his letters more individuality by signing them. For this purpose he adopted the old Mississippi-Ledsman call for two fathoms, twelve feet, Mark Twain. At that particular period dueling was a passing fashion on the Comstock. The refinements of Parisian civilization had not penetrated there, and a washu duel seldom left more than one survivor. The weapons were always Colt's navy revolvers, distance, fifteen paces, fire and advance, six shots allowed. Mark Twain became involved in a quarrel with Mr. Laird, the editor of the Virginia Union, and the situation seemed to call for a duel. Neither combatant was an expert with a pistol, but Mark Twain was fortunate enough to have a second who was. The men were practicing in adjacent gorges, Mr. Laird doing fairly well, and his opponent hitting everything but the mark.  At that moment the enemy came over the ridge, saw the dead bird, observed the distance, and learned from Gillis, the humorous second, that the feat had been performed by Mark Twain, for whom such an exploit was nothing remarkable. They withdrew for consultation, and then offered a formal apology, after which peace was restored, leaving Mark Twain with the honors of war. However, this incident was the means of affecting another change in his life. There was a new law which prescribed two years imprisonment for anyone who should send, carry, or accept a challenge. The fame of the proposed duel had reached the capital eighteen miles away, and the Governor wrathfully gave orders for the arrest of all concerned, announcing his intention of making an example that would be remembered. A friend of the dualists, heard of their danger, outrode the officers of the law, and hurried the parties over the border into California. Mark Twain found a birth as City Editor of the San Francisco Morning Call, but he was not adapted to routine newspaper work, and in a couple of years he made another bid for fortune in the mines. He tried the pocket mines of California this time, at Jackass Gulch in Calaveras County, but was fortunate enough to find no pockets. Thus he escaped the hypnotic fascination that has kept some intermittently successful pocket miners willing prisoners in the Sierra Cabins for life, and in three months he was back in San Francisco, penniless, but in the line of literary promotion. He wrote letters for the Virginia Enterprise for a time, but, tiring of that, welcomed an assignment to visit Hawaii for the Sacramento Union, and write about the sugar interests. It was in Honolulu that he accomplished one of his greatest feats of straight newspaper work. The clipper Hornet had been burned on the line, and when the skeleton survivors arrived, after a passage of forty-three days in an open boat on ten days' provisions, Mark Twain gathered their stories, worked all day and all night, and threw a complete account of the horror aboard a schooner that had already cast off. It was the only full account that reached California, and it was not only a clean scoop of unusual magnitude, but an admirable piece of literary art. The Union testified its appreciation by paying the correspondent ten times the current rates for it. After six months in the islands, Mark Twain returned to California and made his first venture upon the lecture platform. He was warmly received and delivered several lectures with profit. In 1867 he went east by way of the Isthmus, and joined the Quaker City excursion to Europe and the Holy Land as correspondent of the Alta California of San Francisco. During this tour of five or six months the party visited the principal ports of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. From this trip grew The Innocence Abroad, the creator of Mark Twain's reputation as a literary force of the First Order. The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County had preceded it, but The Innocence gave the author his first introduction to international literature. A hundred thousand copies were sold the first year, and as many more later. Four years of lecturing followed, distasteful but profitable. Mark Twain always shrank from the public exhibition of himself on the platform, but he was a popular favorite there from the first. He was one of a little group, including Henry Ward Beecher and two or three others, for whom every Lyceum committee in the country was bidding, and whose capture at any price ensured the success of a lecture course. The Quaker City excursion had a more important result than the production of The Innocence Abroad. Through her brother, who was one of the party, Mr. Clemens became acquainted with Miss Olivia L. Langdon, the daughter of Jervis Langdon of Elmira, New York, and this acquaintance led, in February 1870, to one of the most ideal marriages in literary history. Four children came of this union. The eldest Langdon, a son, was born November 1870, and died in 1872. The second, Susan Olivia, a daughter, was born in the latter year, and lived only twenty-four years, but long enough to develop extraordinary mental gifts and every grace of character. Two other daughters, Clara Langdon and Jean, were born in 1874 and 1880, respectively, and still live, 1899. Mark Twain's first home as a man of family was in Buffalo, in a house given to the bride by her father as a wedding present. He bought a third interest in a daily newspaper, The Buffalo Express, and joined its staff. But his time for jogging in harness was past. It was his last attempt at regular newspaper work, and a year of it was enough. He had become assured of a market for anything he might produce, and he could choose his own place and time for writing. There was a tempting literary colony at Hartford. The place was steeped in an atmosphere of antique peace and beauty, and the Clemens family were captivated by its charm. They moved there in October 1871 and soon built a house, which was one of the earliest fruits of the artistic revolt against the mid-century Philistanism of domestic architecture in America. For years it was an object of wonder to the simple-minded tourist, the facts that its rooms were arranged for the convenience of those who were to occupy them, and that its windows, gables, and porches were distributed with an eye to the beauty, comfort, and picturesqueness of that particular house, instead of following the traditional lines laid down by the carpenters and contractors who designed most of the dwellings of the period, distracted the critics, and gave rise to grave discussions in the newspapers throughout the country of Mark Twain's practical joke. The years that followed brought a steady literary development. Roughing it, which was written in 1872, and scored a success hardly second to that of the innocence, was, like that, simply a humorous narrative of personal experiences, variegated by brilliant splashes of description. But with the gilded age, which was produced in the same year in collaboration with Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, the humorous began to evolve into the philosopher. Tom Sawyer, appearing in 1876, was a veritable manual of boy nature, and its sequel, Huckleberry Finn, which was published nine years later, was not only an advanced treatise in the same science, but a most moving study of the workings of the untutored human soul in boy and man. The Prince and the Pauper, 1882, a Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, 1890, and Putinhead Wilson, first published serially in 1893-94, were all alive with a comprehensive and passionate sympathy to which their humor was quite subordinate, although Mark Twain never wrote, and probably never will write, a book that could be read without laughter. His humor is as irrepressible as Lincoln's, and, like that, it bubbles out on the most solemn occasions. But still, again, like Lincoln's, it has a way of seeming, in spite of the surface in congruity, to belong there. But it was in the personal recollections of Joan of Arc, whose anonymous serial publication in 1894-95 betrayed some critics of reputation into the absurdity of attributing it to other authors, notwithstanding the characteristic evidences of its paternity that obtruded themselves on every page, that Mark Twain became, most distinctly, a prophet of humanity. Here, at last, was a book with nothing ephemeral about it, one that will reach the elemental human heart as well among the flying machines of the next century as it does among the automobiles of today, or as it would have done among the stagecoaches of a hundred years ago. And, side by side with this spiritual growth, had come a growth in knowledge and in culture. The Mark Twain of the innocence keen-eyed, quick of understanding and full of fresh, eager interest in all Europe had to show, but frankly avowing that he did not know what the mischief of the renaissance was, had developed into an accomplished scholar and a man of the world for whom the globe had few surprises left. The Mark Twain of 1895 might conceivably have written the innocence abroad, although it would have required an effort to put himself in the necessary frame of mind, but the Mark Twain of 1869 could know more have written Joan of Arc than he could have deciphered the Maya hieroglyphics. In 1873 the family spent some months in England and Scotland, and Mr. Clemens lectured for a few weeks in London. Another European journey followed in 1878. A tramp abroad was the result of this tour, which lasted 18 months. The Prince and the pauper, Life on the Mississippi, and Huckleberry Finn, appeared in quick succession in 1882, 1883, and 1885. Considerably more amusing than anything the humorist ever wrote was the fact that the trustees of some village libraries in New England solemnly voted that Huckleberry Finn, whose power of moral uplift has hardly been surpassed by any book of our time, was too demoralizing to be allowed on their shelves. All this time fortune had been steadily favorable, and Mark Twain had been spoken of by the press, sometimes with admiration, as an example of the financial success possible in literature, and sometimes with uncharitable envy, as a haughty millionaire forgetful of his humble friends. But now began the series of unfortunate investments that swept away the accumulations of half a lifetime of hard work, and left him loaded with debts incurred by other men. In 1885 he financed the publishing house of Charles L. Webster and Company in New York. The firm began business with the prestige of a brilliant coup. It secured the publication of the memoirs of General Grant, which achieved a sale of more than six hundred thousand volumes. The first check received by the Grant heirs was for two hundred thousand dollars, and this was followed a few months later by one for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. These are the largest checks ever paid for an author's work on either side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile Mr. Clemens was spending great sums on a type-setting machine of such seductive ingenuity as to captivate the imagination of everybody who saw it. It worked to perfection, but it was too complicated and expensive for commercial use, and after sinking a fortune in it between 1886 and 1889, Mark Twain had to write off the whole investment as a dead loss. On top of this the publishing house, which had been supposed to be doing a profitable business, turned out to have been incapable conducted, and all the money that came into its hands was lost. Mark Twain contributed sixty-five thousand dollars in efforts to save its life, but to no purpose, and when it finally failed he found that it had not only absorbed everything he had put in it, but had incurred liabilities of ninety-six thousand dollars, of which less than one-third was covered by assets. He could easily have avoided any legal liability for the debts, but as the credit of the company had been based largely upon his name, he felt bound and honoured to pay them. In 1895-96 he took his wife and second daughter on a lecturing tour around the world, wrote following the equator, and cleared off the obligations of the house in full. The years 1897, 1898, and 1899 were spent in England, Switzerland, and Austria. Vienna took the family to its heart, and Mark Twain achieved such a popularity among all classes there as is rarely won by a foreigner anywhere. He saw the manufacture of a good deal of history in that time. It was his fortune, for instance, to be present in the Austrian Reichsrath on the memorable occasion when it was invaded by sixty policemen, and sixteen refractory members were dragged roughly out of the hall. That momentous event in the progress of parliamentary government profoundly impressed him. Mark Twain, although so characteristically American in every fiber, does not appeal to Americans alone, nor even to the English-speaking race. His work has stood the test of translation into French, German, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Magyar. That is pretty good evidence that it possesses the universal quality that marks the master. Another evidence of its fidelity to human nature is the readiness with which it lends itself to dramatization. The Gilded Age, Tom Sawyer, the Prince and the pauper, and Putinhead Wilson, have all been successful on the stage. In the thirty-eight years of his literary activity Mark Twain has seen generation after generation of American humorists rise, expand into sudden popularity, and disappear, leaving hardly a memory behind. If he has not written himself out like them, if his place in literature has become every year more assured, it is because his humor has been something radically different from theirs. It has been irresistibly laughter-provoking, but its sole end has never been to make people laugh. Its more important purpose has been to make them think and feel, and with the progress of the years Mark Twain's own thoughts have become finer, his own feelings deeper and more responsive. Sympathy with the suffering, hatred of injustice and oppression, and enthusiasm for all that tends to make the world a more tolerable place for mankind to live in, have grown with his accumulating knowledge of life as it is. That is why Mark Twain has become a classic, not only at home, but in all lands whose people read and think about the common joys and sorrows of humanity.