SIGNATURE LINE STUPIDITY

I've had many signature lines, and i often attempt to get a wry comment (at least what is a wry comment in my opinion) to put there, and have often relied upon Mr. Clemens, although i've had a lot of quotes from a variety of authors.

Not long ago, i was reading a novel by Harry Leon Wilson. Wilson was a moderately popular and successful novelist in America in the period from about 1910 to about 1930. He is remembered, it he is remembered at all, for his novel Ruggles of Red Gap. The novel i was reading was Lone Tree. It is about a former rounder (i.e., what people today refer to as a "cowboy") who had become a modestly successful cattleman, and on whose land oil is discovered, making him a multi-millionaire. His wife and father-in-law and his wife's sisters go crazy with the money, and as the novel opens, they are in Europe, spending foolishly as though there were no tomorrow. He has gone to New York, to be there when they come back on the passenger liner. While there, he is taken ill, and is taken to a hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Being wealthy, he is put into a private room, and has two private-duty nurses. The day nurse is a "flapper," who is a wise acre, and who hopes her "case" will be there long enough so that she can earn enough money to buy a stylish fur coat. The night nurse is Doyle, a no nonsense type who gets along well with Ben (the rancher/oil millionaire), and who has a sole obsession in life--babies. Men don't impress her much, though, so the normal avenue for a woman to get a baby is not open to her.

But there is a baby in the maternity ward who has been abandoned by her mother, who was herself earlier abandoned by the father. Doyle dreams of stealing the boy, and Ben encourages and abets her, using his wealth and contacts to hatch a successful plot. This is by no means the whole of the story, but it is what is need to "set-up" an explanation. One evening, at the change of shift, Doyle and the flapper are in the bathroom talking about the "case" (Ben), when Doyle becomes obsessed with railing against men, and plotting to steal the baby. The flapper says to her:

"You talk like Joan of Arc . . . that gal the British set fire to."

I found it mildly amusing, and decided to put it in my signature line. It has gotten more response than any other signature line i've ever had. It has been commented upon at least three (and i think, four) times. Two of the comments have been hilarious. Tryst argued about stupid things for pages in a completely unrelated thread (i suspect that Tryst is another persona of the member Try Again, but that's a different story). In a thread in the English forum, in which one of our Chinese members was asking about commas, Contrex, an America-hating Saxon who says he lives in France, also attempted to deny the truth of the signature line (which is what Tryst attempted to do).

Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, Mr. Wizard--what the Hell is up with that? Why does such an innocuous little line taken from a 1929 novel which is long forgotten stir up such silliness?

Y'all are goofy.