144--Collect.
CONSTANTINOPLE, February.
DR. MARK TWAIN, Washington.
Great Scott, no! By the beard of the Prophet, no! How can you ask such
a thing of me? I am a man of family. I cannot take chances, like other
people. I cannot let a literature come in here which teaches that a
man's wife is as good as the man himself. Such a doctrine cannot do any
particular harm, of course, where the man has only one wife, for then
it is a dead-level between them, and there is no humiliating inequality,
and no resulting disorder; but you take an extremely married person,
like me, and go to teaching that his wife is 964 times as good as he is,
and what's hell to that harem, dear friend? I never saw such a fool as
you. Do not mind that expression; I already regret it, and would replace
it with a softer one if I could do it without debauching the truth. I
beseech you, do not pass that bill. Roberts College is quite all the
American product we can stand just now. On top of that, do you want to
send us a flood of freedom-shrieking literature which we can't edit the
poison out of, but must let it go among our people just as it is? My
friend, we should be a republic inside of ten years.