Besides trade, knowledge about science, arts and literature, as well as crafts and technologies was shared across the Silk Road.

"I believe that the trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades, and that it has no real value," Twain writes.

Though he now and then "tomahawked" innocent victims, it was good for native authors to be warned that literature was an exacting trade.