“Received in audience by the Most Illustrious, Most Powerful, Most Gracious, Most Reverend, her Grandeur, the Acting Head of the Human Race, whom I addressed by these her official titles, and humbly thanked her, kneeling; then by permission indicated by a gesture, rose and stood before the Throne. . . .

Her Grandeur was clothed as the Arctic skies are clothed when the northern lights flood them with their trembling waves of purple and crimson and golden flame, and through this shifting and changing dream of rich colors the flash of innumerable jewels went chasing and turning, gleaming and expiring like trains of sparks through burnt paper.”

—Mark Twain (1835–1910), as titled, from Papers from the Adam Family, published posthumously in Letters from the Earth, 1962.