"Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an

aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring

No. 2.

"The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its

grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.

Possibly more.

"Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet.

Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The

business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics

could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment

as Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would be so

powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands. Would

you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business

of the world in the grip of a single Company? And don't you think that

the business would grow-grow like a weed?"

"Ach, America--it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath--then

we will talk."

So then we talked--talked till pretty late. Would Germany and England

join the combination? I said the Company would know how to persuade

them.

Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we

parted.

I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection

with this matter. And we will now keep the invention itself out of print

as well as we can. Descriptions of it have been granted to the "Dry

Goods Economist" (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers. I

have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he

can do it.

With love,

S. L. C.

If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came

from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the

letter which he inclosed--the brief and concise report from a

carpet-machine expert, who said: "I do not feel that it would be of

any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in

America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no

field for a company to develop the invention here. A cursory

examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value

upon the invention, from a practical standpoint."

With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem

to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations.

Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved

him a great sum in money and years of disappointment. But perhaps

he would not have heeded it then.

The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War. Clemens was

constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose

son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA,

June 17, '98.

DEAR JOE,--You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must

be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension--enough to make

it just schmeck, as the Germans say. Dave will come out with two or

three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall

all be glad it happened.

We started with Bull Run, before. Dewey and Hobson have introduced an

improvement on the game this time.

I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history--as I am enjoying this

one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my

knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is

another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I think this is the

first time it has been done.

Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus.

He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it

will be a world of trouble to settle the rows--better leave well enough

alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going to break the soft

smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.

Company! (Sh! it happens every day--and we came out here to be quiet.)

Love to you all.

MARK.

They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village

near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet. Many friends came

out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans. Clemens,

however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we

gather from the next to Howells.

To W. D. Howells, in America:

KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN,

Aug. 16, '98.

DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter came yesterday. It then occurred to me that I

might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of

weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to me I

was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing itself

while I was at work at my other literature during the day. But next day

my other literature was still urgent--and so on and so on; so my letter

didn't get put into ink at all. But I see now, that you were writing,

about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come across the

Atlantic per mental telegraph. In 1876 or '75 I wrote 40,000 words of a

story called "Simon Wheeler" wherein the nub was the preventing of an

execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the other

side of the globe. I had a lot of people scattered about the globe who

carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button, made

of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and have

a talk, they "pressed the button" or did something, I don't remember

what, and communication was at once opened. I didn't finish the story,

though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000

words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside.

This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able to

call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental

telegraph--and not merely by impression, the impression will be

articulated into words. It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be,

because in the upper civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was

going to say sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people

along with the already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is called

who doesn't wish to talk he will be like those visitors you mention: "not

chosen"--and will be frankly damned and shut off.

Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and

again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only

think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen

--the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men

whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had

no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us hope

so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13 mag.

articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500 words altogether,

succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of diligently-wrought MS.,

the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort. I could make all of those

things go if I would take the trouble to re-begin each one half a dozen

times on a new plan. But none of them was important enough except one:

the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out in Paris three or four years

ago and told you about in New York under seal of confidence--no other

person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the story to be called "Which was

the Dream?"

A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was a

totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself, and

straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and

confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already

put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly

satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the

first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but by

the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would have

been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can carry the reader a

long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap. In the

present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy; but I

shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you should see a little

short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic Sweetheart"

written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may have been a

suggester, though.

I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not to

let on that they don't.

We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the

baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to

rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a

chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell. But you do it--therefore

why should you think I can't?

[Remainder missing.]

The dream story was never completed. It was the same that he had

worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland. It would be

tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to

accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it

eventually went to waste. The short story mentioned, "My Platonic

Sweetheart," a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark

Twain's lifetime. Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's

Magazine.

The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the

startling event of that summer. In a letter to Twichell Clemens

presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs. Later he treated it

at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of

personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld

from print. It has since been included in a volume of essays, What

Is Man, etc.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep. 13, '98.

DEAR JOE,--You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines. No

--Harper, Century and McClure do; an example I should like to recommend to

other publishers. And so I thank you very much for sending me Brander's

article. When you say "I like Brander Matthews; he impresses me as a man

of parts and power," I back you, right up to the hub--I feel the same

way--. And when you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for

my crimes against the Leather stockings and the Vicar, I ain't making any

objection. Dern your gratitude!

His article is as sound as a nut. Brander knows literature, and loves

it; he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so

lucidly and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him,

even when you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such

merits as a book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered

through an acre of mud. And so he has a right to be a critic.

To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me. I

haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I

hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden

me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I

have to stop every time I begin.

That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I

am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's jubilee last

year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder,

which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years

from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in

at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken

with tears, "My God the Empress is murdered," and fly toward her home

before we can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to

you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your

neighbor Antony should come flying and say "Caesar is butchered--the head

of the world is fallen!"

Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and

genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being

draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday,

when the funeral cortege marches. We are invited to occupy a room in the

sumptuous new hotel (the "Krantz" where we are to live during the Fall

and Winter) and view it, and we shall go.

Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom they

retail similar slanders. She said in French--she is weak in French--that

she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of the

"demimonde." Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land, that

mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy. But these

Malaproperies are always inventions--they don't happen.

Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids. Had a

noble good one with Parker and Dunham--land, but we were grateful for

that visit!

Yours with all our loves.

MARK.

[Inclosed with the foregoing.]

Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must

concede high rank to the German Emperor's. He justly describes it as a

"deed unparalleled for ruthlessness," and then adds that it was "ordained

from above."

I think this verdict will not be popular "above." A man is either a free

agent or he isn't. If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is

responsible for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if

the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this

prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the German court cannot

condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic; and

by disregarding its laws even Emperors as capable and acute as William II

can be beguiled into making charges which should not be ventured upon

except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.

MARK.

The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even

luxurious, circumstances. The hard work and good fortune which had

enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,

provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is

characteristic and interesting.

To W. D. Howells, in New York:

HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L. NEVER MARKT 6

Dec. 30, '98.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though I

shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is

passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure

moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how

indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a

hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your

letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any in

--the years, anyway." That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost

me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and

buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get rid

of a virtue.....

I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care

to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in

difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having

peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone.

Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has come

with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps

the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were

lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till

another figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured up for her own

satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in

Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which

represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the

bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking

4 1/2 centers before.

At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the

Mouse-Trap played and well played. I thought the house would kill itself

with laughter. By George they played with life! and it was most

devastatingly funny. And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses

in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted

them. The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were

taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls. Then there was a

nigger-minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too,

for the nigger-show was always a passion of mine. This one was created

and managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was

the middle man. There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a

Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young

fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be

one or the other.

It's quite true--I don't read you "as much as I ought," nor anywhere near

half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.

I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete,

but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the

papers. I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey

begins, and that will not happen again. The last chance at a bound book

of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your

short things, by the Harpers. I read the whole book twice through and

some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far

as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is

admiring it yet. Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know

where they get them.

Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to

live in New York. We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and

expenses. But perhaps nothing will come of it. We do afford to live

in the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a

drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't

get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).

Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us

of

"The days when we went gipsying

A long time ago."

Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us

others and will not look our way. We saw the "Master of Palmyra" last

night. How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human

grand-folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!

With love from all of us to all of you.

MARK.

XXXVIII

LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. VIENNA. LONDON. A SUMMER IN

SWEDEN

The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying

handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz. Their rooms, so often thronged

with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the "Second

Embassy." Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies.

Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most

notable. Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners--his

sayings and opinions were widely quoted.

A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would

naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review

of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a

brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment.

The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident

an added interest.

To Wm. T. Stead, in London:

No. 1.

VIENNA, Jan. 9.

DEAR MR. STEAD,-The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.

Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.

MARK TWAIN.

To Wm. T. Stead, in London:

No. 2.

DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than the

other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should

not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and

history seems to show that that cannot be done. Can't we reduce the

armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the

powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength

10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of

course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at

one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all of them

to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must withdraw my

influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward

signs of sanity. Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed

together. They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be

against nature and not operative. A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per

cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if

three other powers will join. I feel sure that the armaments are now

many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or

war. Take wartime for instance. Suppose circumstances made it necessary

for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did

before--settle a large question and bring peace. I will guess that

400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).

In five hours they disabled 50,000 men. It took them that tedious, long

time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.

But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower

guns, raining 600 balls a minute. Four men to a gun--is that the number?

A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man. Thus a modern soldier is 149

Waterloo soldiers in one. Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of

each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as

effectively as we did eighty-five years ago. We should do the same

beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then. The

allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip

him.

But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,

taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field. Each

man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.

Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are

not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.

Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could

arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million

men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,

they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their

populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents

which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking

and sit down and cipher a little.

Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can

gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where

it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed. Then we can have all the

peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it.

VIENNA, January 9.

P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--"350 million" ought

to be 450 million; "349,982,000" ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark

about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on the

planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a half the

existing males.

Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to

him across the years. He always welcomed such letters--they came as

from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness. He

sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an

undercurrent of affection.

To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:

HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,

Feb. 26, 1899.

DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed. He was to teach

me the river for a certain specified sum. I have forgotten what it was,

but I paid it. I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A. T.

Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one trip),

and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.

The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect. Bixby is not 67: he is

97. I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk

when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for

57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than

he really was. At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac

commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of

his before the Revolution. He has piloted every important river in

America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.

I have never revealed these facts before. I notice, too, that you are

deceiving the people concerning your age. The printed portrait which you

have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was

19. I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby

for your grandson. Is it spreading, I wonder--this disposition of pilots

to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan--they

probably go to Sunday school now--but it will not deceive.

Yes, it is as you say. All of the procession but a fraction has passed.

It is time for us all to fall in.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

To W. D. Howells, in New York:

HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I. NEUER MARKT 6

April 2, '99.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now;

waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary man,

with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work in the

same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect

way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to you

there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a poor

joke--the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible, (last

year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders over,

and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of

it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so I

have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor praisefully about

him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go on writing, for

that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much. (for I don't wish to

be scalped, any more than another.)

April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party,

and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the

swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding

Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.

Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses

which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to

sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which

used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the

public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!

But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to

detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well done,

perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book--[Following the Equator.]

--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion

through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness

fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How I did loathe

that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and India.

Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier--and I bragged

to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a fine

profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth

$60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been spending

$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming

extravagance.

Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to

make a speech at a banquet. Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram

from London asking for the speech for a New York paper. I (this is

strictly private) sent it. And then I didn't make that speech, but

another of a quite different character--a speech born of something

which the introducer said. If that said speech got cabled and printed,

you needn't let on that it was never uttered.

That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people. We

were there a week and had a great time. At the banquet I heard their

chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious

speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not

understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian. But the art of it!

--it was superlative.

They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience

--all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the effects. The

English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young English

women who earn their living teaching their language; and that there are.

others besides these.

For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;

gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign

languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night

the concerts and operas. Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and

bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.

(Correction. Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)

I am renewing my youth. I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last

Saturday night. And I've been to a lot of football matches.

Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals ("Literature,"

March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the

top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered

disappointment for the third time--and will never fare any better, I

hope, for you are where you belong, by every right. She wanted to know

who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her. Nor when

the election will be completed and decided.

Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every

morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and

basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and

cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the

human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not

despair.

(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea. ('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!

Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one,

a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency

of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking

out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for

she said nothing that was funny. "Spose so many 've told y' how they

'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle

Kehe! say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n

saw Tolstoi; he said--" It made me shudder.

April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining

that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members;

and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand it. But I

have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the

pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large difference in these

things.

13th. I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office

of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and

that and the other damned breed of priests.

Yrs ever

MARK.

Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not

with the frequency of former years. Perhaps neither of them was

bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly

less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,

there was always the discouragement of distance. Once Howells

wrote: "I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn

round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can

begin it." And in another letter: "It ought to be as pleasant to

sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it

isn't..... The only reason why I write is that I want another

letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.

I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than

lunch. I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that

brings unbearable leisure. I hope you will be in New York another

winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of

eternity."

Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal

to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a

close.

To W. D. Howells, in New York:

May 12, 1899.

DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p. m. Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving

for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human

race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary of

Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an

Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who

wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and

wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and

several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,

the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans. It made just a

comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through

the folding doors. I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.

Clemens, but this was a pleasant one. I had only one accident. The old

Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for we

violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on others

--for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious beliefs

and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is a democrat and

so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is laborers' rights and

approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me. And so on. After

she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began to talk sharply

against her for contributing money, time, labor, and public expression of

favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day) in the silk factories

of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and betrayed me into over-warm

argument. I am sorry: for she didn't know anything about the subject,

and I did; and one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the

chosen of God.

(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place. The Sec. of Legation

is a good man, but out of place. The Attache is a good man, but out of

place. Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship;

and her possible is 17,200 tons.)

May 13, 4 p. m. A beautiful English girl and her handsome English

husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird.

English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk

English till she was 8 or 10. She came up clothed like the sunset, and

was a delight to look at. (Roumanian costume.).....

Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and

to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and

his wife have gone to chaperon them. They gave me a chance to go, but

there are no snow mountains that I want to look at. Three hours out,

three hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance;

yelling conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new

acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and

if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the

foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on. The terms

seemed too severe. Snow mountains are too dear at the price ....

For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as

soon as I could afford it. At last I can afford it, and have put the

pot-boiler pen away. What I have been wanting is a chance to write a

book without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's

feelings, and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions,

delusions; a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the

plainest language and without a limitation of any sort. I judged that

that would be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.

It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I

didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found

it out. But I am sure it is started right this time. It is in

tale-form. I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he

is constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how

mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities

and his place among the animals.

So far, I think I am succeeding. I let the madam into the secret day

before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening

chapters. She said--

"It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!"

"Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think."

I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn

out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump

into it.

Yours ever

MARK.

The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to

give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger. It was not

finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until

after his death. Six years later (1916) it was published serially

in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.

The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were

received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in

earlier years. Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the

midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing

incident of one of their entertainments.

To W. D. Howells, in America:

LONDON, July 3, '99

DEAR HOWELLS,--..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no use

--I can't get time for anything these days. I must break off and write a

postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed. This afternoon he

left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and carried off my

hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.) When the rest of

us came out there was but one hat that would go on my head--it fitted

exactly, too. So wore it away. It had no name in it, but the Canon was

the only man who was absent. I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.; saying that

for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did not belong

to me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and my family

were getting alarmed. Could he explain my trouble? And now at 8.30 p.m.

comes a note from him to say that all the afternoon he has been

exhibiting a wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace of expression,

etc., etc., and have I missed a hat? Our letters have crossed.

Yours ever

MARK.

News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll. Clemens had been always

one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend. To

Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy.

To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York:

30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE.

DEAR MISS FARRELL,--Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any

death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit,

he was a man--all man from his crown to his foot soles. My reverence for

him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it

with usury.

Sincerely Yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna,

in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised

by Heinrick Kellgren. Kellgren's method, known as the "Swedish

movements," seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments,

and he heralded the discovery far and wide. He wrote to friends far

and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might

happen to have. Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to

close with some mention of the new panacea.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe:

SANNA, Sept. 6, '99.

DEAR JOE,--I've no business in here--I ought to be outside. I shall

never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven. Venice?

land, what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I have

seen about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away

beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and

marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety. America? Italy? The

tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be. And this

one--this unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest. It brings the

tears, it is so unutterably beautiful.

If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here. The

people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists

pretend to do. You wish to advise with a physician about it? Certainly.

There is no objection. He knows next to something about his own trade,

but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one.

I respect your superstitions--we all have them. It would be quite

natural for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct

him as to the value of the new religious specialty which the Western

missionary is trying to put on the market, before investing in it. (He

would get a verdict.)

Love to you all!

Always Yours

MARK.

Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of

course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to

give. Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock,

without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual

practice which few would be likely to imitate. Nevertheless, what

he says is interesting.

To W. D. Howells, in America:

SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.

DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you. I learned a

trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago. I

meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized

the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences, then

remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory

introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously

using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to

carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that I

was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch

presently. It was a beautiful success. I knew the substance of the

sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest of

it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the snap

and go and freshness of an impromptu. I was to read several pieces, and

I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience thought

I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and was

going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so I

always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it had

begun. I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time over

again. It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented. Try

it. You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment. Their

attention is fixed, and never wavers. And that is not the case where one

reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly

exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is

not improvising, but reciting from memory. And in the heat of telling a

thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest

suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then! Try it. Such a phrase has

a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if

prepared beforehand, and it "fetches" an audience in such an enthusing

and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another

one, sure.

Your September instalment--["Their Silver Wedding journey."]--was

delicious--every word of it. You haven't lost any of your splendid art.

Callers have arrived.

With love

MARK.

"Yes," wrote Howells, "if I were a great histrionic artist like you

I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what

I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise

their deadness frankly and read them."

From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned

by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science. It

was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic

appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check

in payment for it. This brought prompt acknowledgment.

To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.:

LONDON, Oct. 19, '99

DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man feel

proud and good! To say a compliment well is a high art--and few possess

it. You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity with a

handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher go.

I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say so,

recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you approve

an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised peanuts and you

kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article is worth.

You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.

Sincerely Yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now

seemed to be coming his way. The Joan of Arc introduction was the

same that today appears in his collected works under the title of

Saint Joan of Arc.

To W. D. Howells, in New York:

LONDON, Oct. 19, '99.

DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains but

it pours. I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the English

translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials and

Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes. I wrote the

introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from a tale

I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of note-making

--a fearful job for a man not used to it. This morning brought a note

from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who edits the

translation, saying, "Never mind the notes--we'll make the translators

do them." That was comfort and joy.

The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to talk

Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M. P.'s

--(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I

couldn't have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and

explain--and lose an hour. Just then came Murray and said "Leave that to

me--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you

write a note and tell him I am coming."

(Which I did, later.) Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party

last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat

this time. In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk, now

--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: "You mustn't think it is

because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure you

upon honor it isn't. I should bring my old one."

I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to

write introductory monographs for the book.

Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.

The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she

performed before her judges.

Lord Roberts, her military genius.

Kipling, her patriotism.

And so on. When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X;

that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they

could do monographs worthy of the book. He hadn't run the others to

cover yet, but was on their track. Very good news. It is a grand book,

and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people. As for me, I

took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a

performance.

Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter,

and was lifted higher than ever. Next came letters from America properly

glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one

roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing $200

additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I didn't

mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second time he

has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and no one

else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust them.

And last of all came a letter from M-. How I do wish that man was in

hell. Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.

But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M----in hell it

would have been perfect. But that will happen, and I can wait.

Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on

paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said

it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime

subject. I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the

stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over again

and have a good time with it.

Oh, I know how you feel! I've been in hell myself. You are there

tonight. By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not eating

it. Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming. I have

declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland. I wanted the money,

but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance.

With love to all of you

MARK.

LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER TROUBLES.

THE RETURN TO AMERICA

The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in

osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense

of other healing methods.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

LONDON, Jan. 8, 1900.

DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another. Mental Telegraphy will

be greatly respected a century hence.

By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the remarkable

cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I brought upon

myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that she had been

taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an American

invention.

Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas, in

a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after Kellgren

began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in Germany. Dr.

Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded that Kellgren

moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across six hours of

longitude, without need of a wire. By the time Still began to

experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the principles of

his system and established himself in a good practice in London--1874

--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas, Mental

Telegraphically.

Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in

arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name

of Osteopathy. Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has got

itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the

physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges;

that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a

school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100

students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and

that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear me,

there are not 30 in Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions and

prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to do

anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as witness

the telegraph, dentistry, &c.

Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon

make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and then,

25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and tell all

about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B-----as in the case of the

telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she

heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.

I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay

and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along

and gives it a first rate trial. Many an ass in America, is getting a

deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old healing

principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let it boom

along! I have no objection. Let them call it by what name they choose,

so long as it does helpful work among the class which is numerically

vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e. the fools, the idiots,

the pudd'nheads.

We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads.

We know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the

race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque

system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's

stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach

at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage to

some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the drug

either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of

the nostrums. The doctor's insane system has not only been permitted to

continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by the State and

made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against a free-man's

proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method of defending

his body against disease and death.

And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the

State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the

patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous

business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of

experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.

Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in

the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.

I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list I

count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there isn't one

which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.

Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the

surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has

revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect for

the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am

convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and

the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken

the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face

without laughing.

See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us: two

weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and by

consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple attack

--influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the gravity

of the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought she ought

to send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I should

want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no--not that I was

indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of a

dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is

unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor, and

it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me to

send for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around--cured. It is safe to

say that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet, and

booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition and

afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.

It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the

Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a time he gave most

of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with

little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically

expressed. War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer

troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China. It was a

disturbing, exciting year.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,

Jan. 25, 1900.

DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content and

praise God--it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he didn't go

with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn. He is good company,

cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle. Your doing a lecture tour

was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be

proud of yourself. No mount of applause or money or both could save it

from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even to

me, who am made of coarser stuff.

I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that

one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it

failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.

Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way

shameful and excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine

articles about it, but I have to stop with that. For England must not

fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political

degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of

Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.

Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld. He is an enemy of

the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human race

created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of

it. God had his opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no,

He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a

regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects. For a

giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this

war. I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man

introduces the topic. Then I say "My head is with the Briton, but my

heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will

talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice." And so we discuss, and have

no trouble.

Jan. 26.

It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human

race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the

purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a

conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the "Times" various

samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it

as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a

paper which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our

Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with the rest of his

regalia in the wash.

I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and

smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their

contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval

of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.

I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats

itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here

thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.

With great love to you all

MARK.

One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of

human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly

by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been

preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But his opinion

of the race could hardly have been worse than it was. And nothing

that human beings could do would have surprised him.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.

DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and

give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang

the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the

war out there has no interest for me.

I have just been examining chapter LXX of "Following the Equator," to see

if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads

curiously as if it had been written about the present war.

I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly

conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.

Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational

ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and

limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of

disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise

and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful life

void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form of

civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where to

look for it. I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of

artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it

isn't complete. We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the

great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of

the two. My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing

and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and

hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a

lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it

belongs.

Provided we could get something better in the place of it. But that is

not possible, perhaps. Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,

therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it.

And so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days,

nor fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and fall

would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.... Naturally,

then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, and no

(instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my belief.

Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists.

I wanted to know how the men impress you. As to their Art, I know fairly

well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a

physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his

ignorance. Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are

not very precious.

Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.

Love to you all

MARK.

The next letter affords a pleasant variation. Without doubt it was

written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him

into indiscretion. This was always happening to him, and letters

like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.

To Mr. Ann, in London:

WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.

DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw that

letter. Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for I

didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a

stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward

the investor, and I am not willing to do that. I have another objection,

a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise scored

a success or a failure would damage me. I can't afford that; even the

Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more character to

spare than I have. (Ah, a happy thought! If he would sign the letter

with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing, of course.

I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme that he would

sign. As he does not know me, it follows that he would sign anything

that I would sign. This is unassailable logic--but really that is all

that can be said for it.)

No, I withdraw the letter. This virgin is pure up to date, and is going

to remain so.

Ys sincerely,

S. L. C.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

WELLINGTON COURT,

KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.

DEAR JOE,--Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes

very deep. I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for me.

Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of the

billiard-party in our house. When we come home, how shall we have

billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson?

I believe I could not endure that. We must find another use for that

room. Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry

Robinson. The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such

warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery.

But not in any repellent sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life

made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with

us always, and there will be no parting.

It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate, youth!

Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and got his

great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams and

entered the Sahara of fact. The deep consciousness of Susy's good

fortune is a constant comfort to me.

London is happy-hearted at last. The British victories have swept the

clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the

private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of

Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley

and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish

lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings,

every one. Night before last it was all Irish--24. One would have to

travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle

and absence of shyness and self-consciousness.

It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is

Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord

Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and a

disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch

breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of

the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is

usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of the

battle. An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are

idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep

bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull and

without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but losing

his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with the Kelt.

Sir Wm. Butler said "the Kelt is the spear-head of the British lance."

Love to you all.

MARK.

The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.

Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate

friend of the Clemens household. "Lecky" was W. E. H. Lecky, the

Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many

years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:

In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington

Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,

at Dollis Hill. To-day the place has been given to the public under

the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an

earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there. It was a

beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks. In a

letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: "It is

simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are

beyond everything. I believe nowhere in the world do you find such

trees as in England." Clemens wrote to Twichell: "From the house

you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green

turf..... Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in

three minutes on a horse. By rail we can be in the heart of London,

in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five."

Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.

To the Editor of the Times, in London:

SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was

swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim

was justified. But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind. I live

eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at 4

o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon,

thus making the trip in thirteen hours.

It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.

C.

DOLLIS HILL, N. W.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W.

LONDON, Aug. 12, '00.

DEAR JOE,--The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here to

tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them. We

furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather--and they used it all

up, in their extravagant American way. Since then we have sat by coal

fires, evenings.

We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York

where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of

putting this family in proper condition.

Livy and I dined with the Chief Justice a month ago and he was as

well-conditioned as an athlete.

It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese. They have

been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I

hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good.

I only wish it; of course I don't really expect it.

Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you

Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the

connection. This is thoroughly exasperating. Aren't we ever going to

meet again?

With no end of love from all of us,

MARK.

P. S. Aug. 18.

DEAR JOE,--It is 7.30 a. m. I have been waking very early, lately. If

it occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it.

This is our day of mourning. It is four years since Susy died; it is

five years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing

kisses at us from the railway platform when we started West around the

world.

Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday.

With love

MARK.

We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence

was drawing to an end. More than nine years had passed since the

closing of the Hartford house--eventful years that had seen failure,

bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes. All the

family were anxious to get home--Mark Twain most anxious of all.

They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up

for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which

follows.

To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London:

Sep. 1900.

MY DEAR MACALISTER,--We do really start next Saturday. I meant to sail

earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family

Hotels. They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist

elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time of

the Heptarchy. Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them. The

once spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much

discomfort as can be had anywhere out of jail for any money. All the

modern inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete for

a century. The prices are astonishingly high for what you get. The

bedrooms are hospitals for incurable furniture. I find it so in this

one. They exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like

inn of fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it. Some

quite respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit

and arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and

superstition. The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but

older I think. Older and dearer. The lift was a gift of William the

Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric. They represent geological

periods. Mine is the oldest. It is formed in strata of Old Red

Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende,

superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of

prehistoric man. It is in No. 149. Thousands of scientists come to see

it. They consider it holy. They want to blast out the prints but

cannot. Dynamite rebounds from it.

Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha.

Yours ever affectionately,

MARK TWAIN.

They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week

later America gave them a royal welcome. The press, far and wide,

sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were

offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him.

The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of

house-hunting. They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but

after a brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote:

To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston:

NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900.

DEAR MR. BAXTER,--It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days

with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and the

house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to live,

our hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be strong enough

to endure that strain.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but

the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive. Through

Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street,

a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for

the winter. "We were lucky to get this big house furnished," he

wrote MacAlister in London. "There was not another one in town

procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right--space

enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned,

great size."

The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely

forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:

Nov. 30.

DEAR MADAM,--I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am

weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly

approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that

ring door-bells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding

conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I

think the boys enjoy it.

My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the

front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises. But I am

very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting

spongy.

Very truly yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1901-1906

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

VOLUME V.

XL

LETTERS OF 1901, CHIEFLY TO TWICHELL. MARK TWAIN AS A REFORMER.

SUMMER AT SARANAC. ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY

An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal, early in 1901, said:

"A remarkable transformation, or rather a development, has taken

place in Mark Twain. The genial humorist of the earlier day is now

a reformer of the vigorous kind, a sort of knight errant who does

not hesitate to break a lance with either Church or State if he

thinks them interposing on that broad highway over which he believes

not a part but the whole of mankind has the privilege of passing in

the onward march of the ages."

Mark Twain had begun "breaking the lance" very soon after his return

from Europe. He did not believe that he could reform the world, but

at least he need not withhold his protest against those things which

stirred his wrath. He began by causing the arrest of a cabman who

had not only overcharged but insulted him; he continued by writing

openly against the American policy in the Philippines, the

missionary propaganda which had resulted in the Chinese uprising and

massacre, and against Tammany politics. Not all of his efforts were

in the line of reform; he had become a sort of general spokesman

which the public flocked to hear, whatever the subject. On the

occasion of a Lincoln Birthday service at Carnegie Hall he was

chosen to preside, and he was obliged to attend more dinners than

were good for his health. His letters of this period were mainly

written to his old friend Twichell, in Hartford. Howells, who lived

in New York, he saw with considerable frequency.

In the letter which follows the medicine which Twichell was to take

was Plasmon, an English proprietary remedy in which Mark Twain had

invested--a panacea for all human ills which osteopathy could not

reach.

To Rev. Joseph Twichell, in Hartford:

14 W. 10TH ST. Jan. 23, '01.

DEAR JOE,--Certainly. I used to take it in my coffee, but it settled to

the bottom in the form of mud, and I had to eat it with a spoon; so I

dropped the custom and took my 2 teaspoonfuls in cold milk after

breakfast. If we were out of milk I shoveled the dry powder into my

mouth and washed it down with water. The only essential is to get it

down, the method is not important.

No, blame it, I can't go to the Alumni dinner, Joe. It takes two days,

and I can't spare the time. Moreover I preside at the Lincoln birthday

celebration in Carnegie Hall Feb. 11 and I must not make two speeches so

close together. Think of it--two old rebels functioning there--I as

President, and Watterson as Orator of the Day! Things have changed

somewhat in these 40 years, thank God.

Look here--when you come down you must be our guest--we've got a roomy

room for you, and Livy will make trouble if you go elsewhere. Come

straight to 14 West 10th.

Jan. 24. Livy says Amen to that; also, can you give us a day or two's

notice, so the room will be sure to be vacant?

I'm going to stick close to my desk for a month, now, hoping to write a

small book.

Ys Ever

MARK

The letter which follows is a fair sample of Mark Twain's private

violence on a subject which, in public print, he could only treat

effectively by preserving his good humor. When he found it

necessary to boil over, as he did, now and then, for relief, he

always found a willing audience in Twichell. The mention of his

"Private Philosophy" refers to 'What Is Man?', privately published

in 1906; reissued by his publishers in 1916.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

14 W. 10th Jan. 29, '01.

DEAR JOE,--I'm not expecting anything but kicks for scoffing, and am

expecting a diminution of my bread and butter by it, but if Livy will let

me I will have my say. This nation is like all the others that have been

spewed upon the earth--ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its

vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they

get all these hypocrites assembled there!

I can't understand it! You are a public guide and teacher, Joe, and are

under a heavy responsibility to men, young and old; if you teach your

people--as you teach me--to hide their opinions when they believe the

flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a

publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to your conscience? You are

sorry for me; in the fair way of give and take, I am willing to be a

little sorry for you.

However, I seem to be going counter to my own Private Philosophy--which

Livy won't allow me to publish--because it would destroy me. But I hope

to see it in print before I die. I planned it 15 years ago, and wrote it

in '98. I've often tried to read it to Livy, but she won't have it; it

makes her melancholy. The truth always has that effect on people. Would

have, anyway, if they ever got hold of a rag of it--Which they don't.

You are supposing that I am supposing that I am moved by a Large

Patriotism, and that I am distressed because our President has blundered

up to his neck in the Philippine mess; and that I am grieved because this

great big ignorant nation, which doesn't know even the A B C facts of the

Philippine episode, is in disgrace before the sarcastic world--drop that

idea! I care nothing for the rest--I am only distressed and troubled

because I am befouled by these things. That is all. When I search

myself away down deep, I find this out. Whatever a man feels or thinks

or does, there is never any but one reason for it--and that is a selfish

one.

At great inconvenience, and expense of precious time I went to the chief

synagogue the other night and talked in the interest of a charity school

of poor Jew girls. I know--to the finest, shades--the selfish ends that

moved me; but no one else suspects. I could give you the details if I

had time. You would perceive how true they are.

I've written another article; you better hurry down and help Livy squelch

it.

She's out pottering around somewhere, poor housekeeping slave; and Clara

is in the hands of the osteopath, getting the bronchitis pulled and

hauled out of her. It was a bad attack, and a little disquieting. It

came day before yesterday, and she hasn't sat up till this afternoon.

She is getting along satisfactorily, now.

Lots of love to you all.

MARK

Mark Twain's religion had to do chiefly with humanity in its present

incarnation, and concerned itself very little with any possible

measure of reward or punishment in some supposed court of the

hereafter. Nevertheless, psychic investigation always interested

him, and he was good-naturedly willing to explore, even hoping,

perhaps, to be convinced that individuality continues beyond death.

The letter which follows indicates his customary attitude in

relation to spiritualistic research. The experiments here

mentioned, however, were not satisfactory.

To Mrs. Charles McQuiston:

DOBBS FERRY, N. Y.

March 26, 1901.

DEAR MRS. McQUISTON,--I have never had an experience which moved me to

believe the living can communicate with the dead, but my wife and I have

experimented in the matter when opportunity offered and shall continue to

do so.

I enclose a letter which came this morning--the second from the same

source. Mrs. K----is a Missourian, and lately she discovered, by

accident, that she was a remarkable hypnotiser. Her best subject is a

Missouri girl, Miss White, who is to come here soon and sustain strictly

scientific tests before professors at Columbia University. Mrs. Clemens

and I intend to be present. And we shall ask the pair to come to our

house to do whatever things they can do. Meantime, if you thought well

of it, you might write her and arrange a meeting, telling her it is by my

suggestion and that I gave you her address.

Someone has told me that Mrs. Piper is discredited. I cannot be sure,

but I think it was Mr. Myers, President of the London Psychical Research

Society--we heard of his death yesterday. He was a spiritualist. I am

afraid he was a very easily convinced man. We visited two mediums whom

he and Andrew Lang considered quite wonderful, but they were quite

transparent frauds.

Mrs. Clemens corrects me: One of those women was a fraud, the other not a

fraud, but only an innocent, well-meaning, driveling vacancy.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

In Mark Twain's Bermuda chapters entitled Idle Notes of an Idle

Excursion he tells of an old sea captain, one Hurricane Jones, who

explained biblical miracles in a practical, even if somewhat

startling, fashion. In his story of the prophets of Baal, for

instance, the old captain declared that the burning water was

nothing more nor less than petroleum. Upon reading the "notes,"

Professor Phelps of Yale wrote that the same method of explaining

miracles had been offered by Sir Thomas Browne.

Perhaps it may be added that Captain Hurricane Jones also appears in

Roughing It, as Captain Ned Blakely.

To Professor William Lyon Phelps;

YALE UNIVERSITY,

NEW YORK, April 24, 1901.

MY DEAR SIR,--I was not aware that old Sir Thomas had anticipated that

story, and I am much obliged to you for furnishing me the paragraph.

t is curious that the same idea should leave entered two heads so unlike

as the head of that wise old philosopher and that of Captain Ned Wakeman,

a splendidly uncultured old sailor, but in his own opinion a thinker by

divine right. He was an old friend of mine of many years' standing;

I made two or three voyages with him, and found him a darling in many

ways. The petroleum story was not told to me; he told it to Joe

Twichell, who ran across him by accident on a sea voyage where I think

the two were the only passengers. A delicious pair, and admirably mated,

they took to each other at once and became as thick as thieves. Joe was

passing under a fictitious name, and old Wakeman didn't suspect that he

was a parson; so he gave his profanity full swing, and he was a master of

that great art. You probably know Twichell, and will know that that is a

kind of refreshment which he is very capable of enjoying.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

For the summer Clemens and his family found a comfortable lodge in

the Adirondacks--a log cabin called "The Lair"--on Saranac Lake.

Soon after his arrival there he received an invitation to attend the

celebration of Missouri's eightieth anniversary. He sent the

following letter:

To Edward L. Dimmitt, in St. Louis:

AMONG THE ADIRONDACK LAKES, July 19, 1901.

DEAR MR. DIMMITT,--By an error in the plans, things go wrong end first in

this world, and much precious time is lost and matters of urgent

importance are fatally retarded. Invitations which a brisk young fellow

should get, and which would transport him with joy, are delayed and

impeded and obstructed until they are fifty years overdue when they reach

him.

It has happened again in this case.

When I was a boy in Missouri I was always on the lookout for invitations

but they always miscarried and went wandering through the aisles of time;

and now they are arriving when I am old and rheumatic and can't travel

and must lose my chance.

I have lost a world of delight through this matter of delaying

invitations. Fifty years ago I would have gone eagerly across the world

to help celebrate anything that might turn up. IT would have made no

difference to me what it was, so that I was there and allowed a chance to

make a noise.

The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin

with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its

capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in

youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can't have it. When

you are old, you get it and there is nothing worth buying with it then.

It's an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity

to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without

the capacity.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along.

I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is

no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities

proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and

inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way

and imminent as indicated above.

Yours is a great and memorable occasion, and as a son of Missouri I

should hold it a high privilege to be there and share your just pride in

the state's achievements; but I must deny myself the indulgence, while

thanking you earnestly for the prized honor you have done me in asking me

to be present.

Very truly yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

In the foregoing Mark Twain touches upon one of his favorite

fancies: that life should begin with old age and approach strong

manhood, golden youth, to end at last with pampered and beloved

babyhood. Possibly he contemplated writing a story with this idea

as the theme, but He seems never to have done so.

The reader who has followed these letters may remember Yung Wing,

who had charge of the Chinese educational mission in Hartford, and

how Mark Twain, with Twichell, called on General Grant in behalf of

the mission. Yung Wing, now returned to China, had conceived the

idea of making an appeal to the Government of the United States for

relief of his starving countrymen.

To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

AMPERSAND, N. Y., July 28, '01.

DEAR JOE,--As you say, it is impracticable--in my case, certainly. For

me to assist in an appeal to that Congress of land-thieves and liars

would be to bring derision upon it; and for me to assist in an appeal for

cash to pass through the hands of those missionaries out there, of any

denomination, Catholic or Protestant, wouldn't do at all. They wouldn't

handle money which I had soiled, and I wouldn't trust them with it,

anyway. They would devote it to the relief of suffering--I know

that--but the sufferers selected would be converts. The

missionary-utterances exhibit no humane feeling toward the others, but in

place of it a spirit of hate and hostility. And it is natural; the Bible

forbids their presence there, their trade is unlawful, why shouldn't

their characters be of necessity in harmony with--but never mind, let it

go, it irritates me.

Later.... I have been reading Yung Wing's letter again. It may be that

he is over-wrought by his sympathies, but it may not be so. There may be

other reasons why the missionaries are silent about the Shensi-2-year

famine and cannibalism. It may be that there are so few Protestant

converts there that the missionaries are able to take care of them. That

they are not likely to largely concern themselves about Catholic converts

and the others, is quite natural, I think.

That crude way of appealing to this Government for help in a cause which

has no money in it, and no politics, rises before me again in all its

admirable innocence! Doesn't Yung Wing know us yet? However, he has

been absent since '96 or '97. We have gone to hell since then. Kossuth

couldn't raise 30 cents in Congress, now, if he were back with his moving

Magyar-Tale.

I am on the front porch (lower one--main deck) of our little bijou of a

dwelling-house. The lake-edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me that

I can't see the shore, but only the water, small-pored with

rain-splashes--for there is a heavy down-pour. It is charmingly like

sitting snuggled up on a ship's deck with the stretching sea all around

--but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rain-storm is depressing,

while here of course the effect engendered is just a deep sense of

comfort and contentment. The heavy forest shuts us solidly in on three

sides there are no neighbors. There are beautiful little tan-colored

impudent squirrels about. They take tea, 5 p. m., (not invited) at the

table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, and one of them has

been brave enough to sit upon Jean's knee with his tail curved over his

back and munch his food. They come to dinner, 7 p. m., on the front

porch (not invited). They all have the one name--Blennerhasset, from

Burr's friend--and none of them answers to it except when hungry.

We have been here since June 21st. For a little while we had some warm

days--according to the family's estimate; I was hardly discommoded

myself. Otherwise the weather has been of the sort you are familiar with

in these regions: cool days and cool nights. We have heard of the hot

wave every Wednesday, per the weekly paper--we allow no dailies to

intrude. Last week through visitors also--the only ones we have had

--Dr. Root and John Howells.

We have the daily lake-swim; and all the tribe, servants included (but

not I) do a good deal of boating; sometimes with the guide, sometimes

without him--Jean and Clara are competent with the oars. If we live

another year, I hope we shall spend its summer in this house.

We have taken the Appleton country seat, overlooking the Hudson, at

Riverdale, 25 minutes from the Grand Central Station, for a year,

beginning Oct. 1, with option for another year. We are obliged to be

close to New York for a year or two.

Aug. 3rd. I go yachting a fortnight up north in a 20-knot boat 225 feet

long, with the owner, (Mr. Rogers), Tom Reid, Dr. Rice, Col. A. G. Paine

and one or two others. Judge Howland would go, but can't get away from

engagements; Professor Sloane would go, but is in the grip of an illness.

Come--will you go? If you can manage it, drop a post-card to me c/o H.H.

Rogers, 26 Broadway. I shall be in New York a couple of days before we

sail--July 31 or Aug. 1, perhaps the latter,--and I think I shall stop at

the Hotel Grosvenor, cor. 10th St and 5th ave.

We all send you and the Harmonies lots and gobs of love.

MARK

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

AMPERSAND, N. Y., Aug. 28.

DEAR JOE,--Just a word, to scoff at you, with your extravagant suggestion

that I read the biography of Phillips Brooks--the very dullest book that

has been printed for a century. Joe, ten pages of Mrs. Cheney's masterly

biography of her fathers--no, five pages of it--contain more meat, more

sense, more literature, more brilliancy, than that whole basketful of

drowsy rubbish put together. Why, in that dead atmosphere even Brooks

himself is dull--he wearied me; oh how he wearied me!

We had a noble good time in the Yacht, and caught a Chinese missionary

and drowned him.

Love from us all to you all.

MARK.

The assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901.

Such an event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human

nature in general. His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is

sound in philosophy. At what period of his own life, or under what

circumstances, he made the long journey with tragic intent there is

no means of knowing now. There is no other mention of it elsewhere

in the records that survive him.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901)

DEAR JOE,--It is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a

certainty, and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling.

The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful, and we are all glad,

and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness. Oh, the

talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same old Human

Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the talkers

are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers are

saying wild things, crazy things--they are out of themselves, and do not

know it; they are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they declare

the assassin sane--a man who has been entertaining fiery and reason

--debauching maggots in his head for weeks and months. Why, no one is

sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it. Our

insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying forms

--fortunately harmless forms as a rule--but in whatever form they occur

an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us distinctly over

the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form happens to be of

the murderous kind we must look out--and so must the spectator.

This ass with the unpronounceable name was probably more insane than

usual this week or two back, and may get back upon his bearings by and

by, but he was over the sanity-border when he shot the President. It is

possible that it has taken him the whole interval since the murder of the

King of Italy to get insane enough to attempt the President's life.

Without a doubt some thousands of men have been meditating the same act

in the same interval, but new and strong interests have intervened and

diverted their over-excited minds long enough to give them a chance to

settle, and tranquilize, and get back upon a healthy level again. Every

extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds of thousands of

men for a few moments or hours or days. If there had been ten kings

around when Humbert fell they would have been in great peril for a day or

more--and from men in whose presence they would have been quite safe

after the excess of their excitement had had an interval in which to cool

down. I bought a revolver once and travelled twelve hundred miles to

kill a man. He was away. He was gone a day. With nothing else to do,

I had to stop and think--and did. Within an hour--within half of it

--I was ashamed of myself--and felt unspeakably ridiculous. I do not

know what to call it if I was not insane. During a whole week my head

was in a turmoil night and day fierce enough and exhausting enough to

upset a stronger reason than mine.

All over the world, every day, there are some millions of men in that

condition temporarily. And in that time there is always a moment

--perhaps only a single one when they would do murder if their man was at

hand. If the opportunity comes a shade too late, the chances are that it

has come permanently too late. Opportunity seldom comes exactly at the

supreme moment. This saves a million lives a day in the world--for sure.

No Ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously

devoured by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware, near the

temporary-insanity frontier--and over they go, now! There is a day--two

days--three--during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half of

them; and there is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from any

of them, no doubt.

It may take this present shooting-case six months to breed another

ruler-tragedy, but it will breed it. There is at least one mind

somewhere which will brood, and wear, and decay itself to the

killing-point and produce that tragedy.

Every negro burned at the stake unsettles the excitable brain of another

one--I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the lurid

theatricality of his exit do it--and the duplicate crime follows; and

that begets a repetition, and that one another one and so on. Every

lynching-account unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white

men, and lights another pyre--115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8

months this year; in ten years this will be habit, on these terms.

Yes, the wild talk you see in the papers! And from men who are sane when

not upset by overwhelming excitement. A U. S. Senator-Cullom--wants this

Buffalo criminal lynched! It would breed other lynchings--of men who are

not dreaming of committing murders, now, and will commit none if Cullom

will keep quiet and not provide the exciting cause.

And a District Attorney wants a law which shall punish with death

attempts upon a President's life--this, mind you, as a deterrent.

It would have no effect--or the opposite one. The lunatic's mind-space

is all occupied--as mine was--with the matter in hand; there is no room

in it for reflections upon what may happen to him. That comes after the

crime.

It is the noise the attempt would make in the world that would breed the

subsequent attempts, by unsettling the rickety minds of men who envy the

criminal his vast notoriety--his obscure name tongued by stupendous Kings

and Emperors--his picture printed everywhere, the trivialest details of

his movements, what he eats, what he drinks; how he sleeps, what he says,

cabled abroad over the whole globe at cost of fifty thousand dollars a

day--and he only a lowly shoemaker yesterday!--like the assassin of the

President of France--in debt three francs to his landlady, and insulted

by her--and to-day she is proud to be able to say she knew him

"as familiarly as you know your own brother," and glad to stand till she

drops and pour out columns and pages of her grandeur and her happiness

upon the eager interviewer.

Nothing will check the lynchings and ruler-murder but absolute silence

--the absence of pow-pow about them. How are you going to manage that?

By gagging every witness and jamming him into a dungeon for life; by

abolishing all newspapers; by exterminating all newspaper men; and by

extinguishing God's most elegant invention, the Human Race. It is quite

simple, quite easy, and I hope you will take a day off and attend to it,

Joe. I blow a kiss to you, and am

Lovingly Yours,

MARK.

When the Adirondack summer ended Clemens settled for the winter in

the beautiful Appleton home at Riverdale-on-the-Hudson. It was a

place of wide-spreading grass and shade-a house of ample room. They

were established in it in time for Mark Twain to take an active

interest in the New York elections and assist a ticket for good

government to defeat Tammany Hall.

XLI

LETTERS OF 1902. RIVERDALE. YORK HARBOR. ILLNESS OF MRS. CLEMENS

The year 1902 was an eventful one for Mark Twain. In April he received a

degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri and returned to his

native State to accept it. This was his last journey to the Mississippi

River. During the summer Mrs. Clemens's health broke down and illnesses

of one sort or another visited other members of the family. Amid so much

stress and anxiety Clemens had little time or inclination for work. He

wrote not many letters and mainly somber ones. Once, by way of

diversion, he worked out the idea of a curious club--which he formed--its

members to be young girls--girls for the most part whom he had never

seen. They were elected without their consent from among those who wrote

to him without his consent, and it is not likely that any one so chosen

declined membership. One selection from his letters to the French

member, Miss Helene Picard, of St.-Die, France, will explain the club and

present a side of Mask Twain somewhat different from that found in most

of his correspondence.

To Miss Picard, in St.-Die, France:

RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON, February 22, 1902.

DEAR MISS HELENE,--If you will let me call you so, considering that my

head is white and that I have grownup daughters. Your beautiful letter

has given me such deep pleasure! I will make bold to claim you for a

friend and lock you up with the rest of my riches; for I am a miser who

counts his spoil every day and hoards it secretly and adds to it when he

can, and is grateful to see it grow.

Some of that gold comes, like yourself, in a sealed package, and I can't

see it and may never have the happiness; but I know its value without

that, and by what sum it increases my wealth.

I have a Club, a private Club, which is all my own. I appoint the

Members myself, and they can't help themselves, because I don't allow

them to vote on their own appointment and I don't allow them to resign!

They are all friends whom I have never seen (save one), but who have

written friendly letters to me.

By the laws of my Club there can be only one Member in each country, and

there can be no male Member but myself. Some day I may admit males, but

I don't know--they are capricious and inharmonious, and their ways

provoke me a good deal. It is a matter which the Club shall decide.

I have made four appointments in the past three or four months: You as

Member for France, a young Highland girl as Member for Scotland, a

Mohammedan girl as Member for Bengal, and a dear and bright young niece

of mine as Member for the United States--for I do not represent a country

myself, but am merely Member at Large for the Human Race.

You must not try to resign, for the laws of the Club do not allow that.

You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best of

company; that nobody knows of your membership except myself--that no

Member knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are

levied and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend

one!).

One of my Members is a Princess of a royal house, another is the daughter

of a village book-seller on the continent of Europe. For the only

qualification for Membership is intellect and the spirit of good will;

other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count.

May I send you the Constitution and Laws of the Club? I shall be so

pleased if I may. It is a document which one of my daughters typewrites

for me when I need one for a new Member, and she would give her eyebrows

to know what it is all about, but I strangle her curiosity by saying:

"There are much cheaper typewriters than you are, my dear, and if you try

to pry into the sacred mysteries of this Club one of your prosperities

will perish sure."

My favorite? It is "Joan of Arc." My next is "Huckleberry Finn," but

the family's next is "The Prince and the Pauper." (Yes, you are right

--I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I

go thrashing around in political questions.)

I wish you every good fortune and happiness and I thank you so much for

your letter.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Early in the year Clemens paid a visit to Twichell in Hartford, and

after one of their regular arguments on theology and the moral

accountability of the human race, arguments that had been going on

between them for more than thirty years--Twichell lent his visitor

Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, to read on the way home.

The next letter was the result.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON.

Feb. '02.

DEAR JOE,--"After compliments."--[Meaning "What a good time you gave me;

what a happiness it was to be under your roof again; etc., etc." See

opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord

Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New York;

thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and

reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed

and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of

having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years

since I have known these sensations. All through the book is the glaze

of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous spectacle. No, not all

through the book--the drunk does not come on till the last third, where

what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red

and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and

proper adornment. By God I was ashamed to be in such company.

Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Arminian position) that the Man

(or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved

to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!

Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses the

one which for the moment is most pleasing to ITSELF. Perfectly correct!

An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane.

Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my

suppressed "Gospel." But there we seem to separate. He seems to concede

the indisputable and unshakable dominion of Motive and Necessity (call

them what he may, these are exterior forces and not under the man's

authority, guidance or even suggestion)--then he suddenly flies the logic

track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior forces

responsible to God for the man's thoughts, words and acts. It is frank

insanity.

I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and

Necessity he grants, a third position of mine--that a man's mind is a

mere machine--an automatic machine--which is handled entirely from the

outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing: not an ounce

of its fuel, and not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior

engineer as to what the machine shall do, nor how it shall do it nor

when.

After that concession, it was time for him to get alarmed and shirk--for

he was pointing straight for the only rational and possible next-station

on that piece of road the irresponsibility of man to God.

And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result:

Man is commanded to do so-and-so. It has been ordained from the

beginning of time that some men shan't and others can't.

These are to be blamed: let them be damned.

I enjoy the Colonel very much, and shall enjoy the rest of him with an

obscene delight.

Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you and yours!

MARK.

We have not heard of Joe Goodman since the trying days of '90 and

'91, when he was seeking to promote the fortunes of the type-setting

machine. Goodman, meantime, who had in turn been miner, printer,

publisher, and farmer; had been devoting his energies and genius to

something entirely new: he had been translating the prehistoric

Mayan inscriptions of Yucatan, and with such success that his work

was elaborately published by an association of British scientists.

In due time a copy of this publication came to Clemens, who was full

of admiration of the great achievement.

To J. T. Goodman, in California:

RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON,

June 13, '02.

DEAR JOE,--I am lost in reverence and admiration! It is now twenty-four

hours that I have been trying to cool down and contemplate with quiet

blood this extraordinary spectacle of energy, industry, perseverance,

pluck, analytical genius, penetration, this irruption of thunders and

fiery splendors from a fair and flowery mountain that nobody had supposed

was a sleeping volcano, but I seem to be as excited as ever. Yesterday

I read as much as half of the book, not understanding a word but

enchanted nevertheless--partly by the wonder of it all, the study, the

erudition, the incredible labor, the modesty, the dignity, the majestic

exclusiveness of the field and its lofty remoteness from things and

contacts sordid and mean and earthy, and partly by the grace and beauty

and limpidity of the book's unsurpassable English. Science, always great

and worshipful, goes often in hodden grey, but you have clothed her in

garments meet for her high degree.

You think you get "poor pay" for your twenty years? No, oh no. You have

lived in a paradise of the intellect whose lightest joys were beyond the

reach of the longest purse in Christendom, you have had daily and nightly

emancipation from the world's slaveries and gross interests, you have

received a bigger wage than any man in the land, you have dreamed a

splendid dream and had it come true, and to-day you could not afford to

trade fortunes with anybody--not even with another scientist, for he must

divide his spoil with his guild, whereas essentially the world you have

discovered is your own and must remain so.

It is all just magnificent, Joe! And no one is prouder or gladder than

Yours always

MARK.

At York Harbor, Maine, where they had taken a cottage for the

summer--a pretty place, with Howells not far distant, at Kittery

Point--Mrs. Clemens's health gave way. This was at a period when

telegraphic communication was far from reliable. The old-time

Western Union had fallen from grace; its "system" no longer

justified the best significance of that word. The new day of

reorganization was coming, and it was time for it. Mark Twain's

letter concerning the service at York Harbor would hardly be

warranted today, but those who remember conditions of that earlier

time will agree that it was justified then, and will appreciate its

satire.

To the President of The Western Union, in New York:

"THE PINES"

YORK HARBOR, MAINE.

DEAR SIR,--I desire to make a complaint, and I bring it to you, the head

of the company, because by experience I know better than to carry it to a

subordinate.

I have been here a month and a half, and by testimony of friends,

reinforced by personal experience I now feel qualified to claim as an

established fact that the telegraphic service here is the worst in the

world except that Boston.

These services are actually slower than was the New York and Hartford

service in the days when I last complained to you--which was fifteen or

eighteen years ago, when telegraphic time and train time between the

mentioned points was exactly the same, to-wit, three hours and a half.

Six days ago--it was that raw day which provoked so much comment--my

daughter was on her way up from New York, and at noon she telegraphed me

from New Haven asking that I meet her with a cloak at Portsmouth. Her

telegram reached me four hours and a quarter later--just 15 minutes too

late for me to catch my train and meet her.

I judge that the telegram traveled about 200 miles. It is the best

telegraphic work I have seen since I have been here, and I am mentioning

it in this place not as a complaint but as a compliment. I think a

compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible,

because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous

and gentle reception.

Still, there is a detail or two connected with this matter which ought

perhaps to be mentioned. And now, having smoothed the way with the

compliment, I will venture them. The head corpse in the York Harbor

office sent me that telegram altho (1) he knew it would reach me too late

to be of any value; (2) also, that he was going to send it to me by his

boy; (3) that the boy would not take the trolley and come the 2 miles in

12 minutes, but would walk; (4) that he would be two hours and a quarter

on the road; (5) and that he would collect 25 cents for transportation,

for a telegram which the he knew to be worthless before he started it.

From these data I infer that the Western Union owes me 75 cents; that is

to say, the amount paid for combined wire and land transportation

--a recoup provided for in the printed paragraph which heads the

telegraph-blank.

By these humane and Christian stages we now arrive at the complaint

proper. We have had a grave case of illness in the family, and a

relative was coming some six hundred miles to help in the sick-room

during the convalescing period. It was an anxious time, of course,

and I wrote and asked to be notified as to the hour of the expected

arrival of this relative in Boston or in York Harbor. Being afraid of

the telegraph--which I think ought not to be used in times of hurry and

emergency--I asked that the desired message be brought to me by some

swift method of transportation. By the milkman, if he was coming this

way. But there are always people who think they know more than you do,

especially young people; so of course the young fellow in charge of this

lady used the telegraph. And at Boston, of all places! Except York

Harbor.

The result was as usual; let me employ a statelier and exacter term, and

say, historical.

The dispatch was handed to the h. c. of the Boston office at 9 this

morning. It said, "Shall bring A. S. to you eleven forty-five this

morning." The distance traveled by the dispatch is forty or fifty miles,

I suppose, as the train-time is five minutes short of two hours, and the

trains are so slow that they can't give a W. U. telegram two hours and

twenty minutes start and overtake it.

As I have said, the dispatch was handed in at Boston at 9. The expected

visitors left Boston at 9.40, and reached my house at 12 noon, beating

the telegram 2 solid hours, and 5 minutes over.

The boy brought the telegram. It was bald-headed with age, but still

legible. The boy was prostrate with travel and exposure, but still

alive, and I went out to condole with him and get his last wishes and

send for the ambulance. He was waiting to collect transportation before

turning his passing spirit to less serious affairs. I found him

strangely intelligent, considering his condition and where he is getting

his training. I asked him at what hour the telegram was handed to the

h. c. in Boston. He answered brightly, that he didn't know.

I examined the blank, and sure enough the wary Boston h. c. had

thoughtfully concealed that statistic. I asked him at what hour it had

started from Boston. He answered up as brightly as ever, and said he

didn't know.

I examined the blank, and sure enough the Boston h. c. had left that

statistic out in the cold, too. In fact it turned out to be an official

concealment--no blank was provided for its exposure. And none required

by the law, I suppose. "It is a good one-sided idea," I remarked;

"They can take your money and ship your telegram next year if they want

to--you've no redress. The law ought to extend the privilege to all of

us."

The boy looked upon me coldly.

I asked him when the telegram reached York Harbor. He pointed to some

figures following the signature at the bottom of the blank--"12.14."

I said it was now 1.45 and asked--

"Do you mean that it reached your morgue an hour and a half ago?"

He nodded assent.

"It was at that time half an hour too late to be of any use to me, if I

wanted to go and meet my people--which was the case--for by the wording

of the message you can see that they were to arrive at the station at

11.45. Why did, your h. c. send me this useless message? Can't he read?

Is he dead?"

"It's the rules."

"No, that does not account for it. Would he have sent it if it had been

three years old, I in the meantime deceased, and he aware of it?"

The boy didn't know.

"Because, you know, a rule which required him to forward to the cemetery

to-day a dispatch due three years ago, would be as good a rule as one

which should require him to forward a telegram to me to-day which he knew

had lost all its value an hour or two before he started it. The

construction of such a rule would discredit an idiot; in fact an idiot

--I mean a common ordinary Christian idiot, you understand--would be

ashamed of it, and for the sake of his reputation wouldn't make it. What

do you think?"

He replied with much natural brilliancy that he wasn't paid for thinking.

This gave me a better opinion of the commercial intelligence pervading

his morgue than I had had before; it also softened my feelings toward

him, and also my tone, which had hitherto been tinged with bitterness.

"Let bygones be bygones," I said, gently, "we are all erring creatures,

and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise."

Sincerely

S. L. CLEMENS.

One day there arrived from Europe a caller with a letter of

introduction from Elizabeth, Queen of Rumania, better known as

Carmen Sylva. The visitor was Madam Hartwig, formerly an American

girl, returning now, because of reduced fortunes, to find profitable

employment in her own land. Her husband, a man of high principle,

had declined to take part in an "affair of honor," as recognized by

the Continental code; hence his ruin. Elizabeth of Rumania was one

of the most loved and respected of European queens and an author of

distinction. Mark Twain had known her in Vienna. Her letter to him

and his own letter to the public (perhaps a second one, for its date

is two years later) follow herewith.

From Carmen Sylva to Mark Twain:

BUCAREST, May 9, 1902.

HONORED MASTER,--If I venture to address you on behalf of a poor lady,

who is stranded in Bucarest I hope not to be too disagreeable.

Mrs. Hartwig left America at the age of fourteen in order to learn to

sing which she has done thoroughly. Her husband had quite a brilliant

situation here till he refused to partake 'dans une afaire onereuse',

so it seems. They haven't a penny and each of them must try to find a

living. She is very nice and pleasant and her school is so good that she

most certainly can give excellent singing lessons.

I beg your pardon for being a bore to one I so deeply love and admire,

to whom I owe days and days of forgetfulness of self and troubles and the

intensest of all joys: Hero-worship! People don't always realize what a

happiness that is! God bless you for every beautiful thought you poured

into my tired heart and for every smile on a weary way!

CARMEN SYLVA.

From Mark Twain to the Public:

Nov. 16, '04.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,--I desire to recommend Madame Hartwig to my

friends and the public as a teacher of singing and as a concert-vocalist.

She has lived for fifteen years at the court of Roumania, and she brought

with her to America an autograph letter in which her Majesty the Queen of

Roumania cordially certified her to me as being an accomplished and

gifted singer and teacher of singing, and expressed a warm hope that her

professional venture among us would meet with success; through absence in

Europe I have had no opportunity to test the validity of the Queen's

judgment in the matter, but that judgment is the utterance of an entirely

competent authority--the best that occupies a throne, and as good as any

that sits elsewhere, as the musical world well knows--and therefore back

it without hesitation, and endorse it with confidence.

I will explain that the reason her Majesty tried to do her friend a

friendly office through me instead of through someone else was, not that

I was particularly the right or best person for the office, but because I

was not a stranger. It is true that I am a stranger to some of the

monarchs--mainly through their neglect of their opportunities--but such

is not the case in the present instance. The latter fact is a high

compliment to me, and perhaps I ought to conceal it. Some people would.

MARK TWAIN.

Mrs. Clemens's improvement was scarcely perceptible. It was not

until October that they were able to remove her to Riverdale, and

then only in a specially arranged invalid-car. At the end of the

long journey she was carried to her room and did not leave it again

for many months.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

RIVERDALE, N. Y., Oct. 31, '02.

DEAR JOE,--It is ten days since Susy [Twichell] wrote that you were laid

up with a sprained shoulder, since which time we have had no news about

it. I hope that no news is good news, according to the proverb; still,

authoritative confirmation of it will be gladly received in this family,

if some of you will furnish it. Moreover, I should like to know how and

where it happened. In the pulpit, as like as not, otherwise you would

not be taking so much pains to conceal it. This is not a malicious

suggestion, and not a personally-invented one: you told me yourself,

once, that you threw artificial power and impressiveness into places in

your sermons where needed, by "banging the bible"--(your own words.)

You have reached a time of life when it is not wise to take these risks.

You would better jump around. We all have to change our methods as the

infirmities of age creep upon us. Jumping around will be impressive now,

whereas before you were gray it would have excited remark.

Poor Livy drags along drearily. It must be hard times for that turbulent

spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It is a

most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself. Between

ripping and raging and smoking and reading, I could get a good deal of a

holiday out of it.