 Section I of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900-1906 This is a LibriVox recording, read by John Greenman. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Mark Twain in the New York Times, July 7, 1900, two speeches, made in London by Mr. Chote and Mark Twain at a dinner to Sir Henry Irving. An event of literary as well as dramatic interest was the welcome home dinner given in London to Sir Henry Irving on June 9 at the Hotel Savoy on his return from his American tour. Mr. R. Doerle Cart was the Chairman of the occasion, on his immediate right at the dinner being the guest of the evening, and on his left the Honourable Joseph H. Chote, United States Ambassador. At the tables which were beautifully decorated with flowers, some fashioned to represent the Union Jack, and others formed into the stars and stripes, sat, among others, Sir L. Alma Tadema, Sir John Tenial, Mr. Pinero, Bret Hart, S. L. Clemens, Mark Twain, Anthony Hope Hawkins, Sidney Grundy, E. A. Abbey, Henry Arthur Jones, and Lawrence Irving. In reply to a toast to our American visitors, Mr. Chote said, I feel very proud to have been called upon to speak for the American visitors, who are so numerous and so noted at this hospitable board. I think I can say for them that they all feel very proud in having the honour to be here tonight, to unite in honouring our distinguished guest. Across the Atlantic they are listening at this moment, wondering whether you will be able to give him as hearty and as warm hearted a welcome, as they gave him a Godspeed, when he left their shores. We take great pride in congratulating him upon his worldwide fame and his success, which every year is outstripping itself. We are delighted to hear, too, from his own lips, authenticated by the emphatic declaration of the Lord Chief Justice of England, that this last triumph for his has been his best. Really this time he has surpassed all former experiences, and has discovered, made his own and brought home, the golden fleece. It was a veritable voyage of the Argonaut. I shall not follow the analogy too closely, but in this expedition of his there was a very close resemblance. He was accompanied by an enchantress, whose name he has mentioned, who helped him to soothe, to subdue, to captivate everybody whom he encountered. He found a worthy ship, he filled it with a noble crew of noble actors, and he penetrated to the heart of our great continent, where this wonderful treasure was hidden, and made it his own. How has he been able to achieve this mighty conquest? There is an old Spanish proverb which explains it fully. He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies along with him. That is exactly what Sir Henry Irving has done. No matter what treasure or reward we heap upon him in our country and in yours, he always gives us more than our money's worth. How much treasure he brought away I am unable to certify. I know that the withdrawal of so much made a serious disturbance upon the New York stock exchange and caused a perceptible contraction of the currency on our side of the water which occasioned a momentary panic in all our centres of trade. The spare overcame our people until he promised to return again next year, and then everybody once more felt happy at the prospect. He gives more than he takes away, because he does so much to elevate popular taste and judgment and to raise the standard of the stage, and in raising the moral tone of the stage necessarily raises with it the moral tone of the audience. I would like to put Sir Henry on the stand and hear his view as to the relative capacity of these two great peoples for enthusiasm. When I first came to reside among the English people, I had supposed from the account they gave of themselves that they were a cold and unimpassioned people, unwilling to give way to their feelings, and that when an occasional ebullition of enthusiasm broke out on our side of the water they said, That is quite American, you know. But that was before certain recent events which have shown them in their true colours before the relief of Ladysmith and Maffeking, in other words before the relief of London. When these wonderful events happened they went as wild as human nature could let them go. Never do I recollect, never have I heard in our history of such a wild outbreak of the human spirit as occurred on those two nights in London. It recalled the enthusiasm on the other side of the water when events made our experiment in self-government a final, an absolute, and a perpetual success. I hope that what I have read in the papers is untrue, and that Sir Henry will keep visiting our people for many years to come. Mr. S. L. Clemens, Mark Twain, in proposing the toast of the drama, said, I find my task a very easy one. I have been a dramatist for thirty years. I have had an ambition in all that time to overdo the work of the Spaniard who said he left behind him four hundred dramas when he died. I leave behind me four hundred and fifteen, and am not yet dead. The greatest of all the arts is to write a drama. It is a most difficult thing. It requires the highest talent possible and the rarest gifts. No, there is another talent that ranks with it, for anybody can write a drama. I had four hundred of them. But to get one accepted requires real ability, and I have never had that felicity yet. But human nature is so constructed, we are so persistent, that when we know we are born to a thing, we do not care what the world thinks about it. We go on exploiting that talent year after year as I have done. I shall go on writing dramas, and some day the impossible may happen, but I am not looking for it. When writing plays, the chief thing is novelty. The world grows tired of solid forms in all the arts. I struck a new idea myself years ago. I was not surprised at it. I was always expecting it would happen. A person who has suffered disappointment for many years loses confidence, and I thought I had better make inquiries before I exploited my new idea of doing a drama in the form of a dream. So I wrote to a great authority on knowledge of all kinds, and asked him whether it was new. I could depend upon him. He lived in my dear home in America, that dear home dear to me through taxes. He sent me a list of plays in which that old device had been used, and he said there was also a modern list. He travelled back to China, and to a play dated 2,600 years before the Christian era. He said he would follow it up with a list of the previous plays of the kind, and in his innocence would have carried them back to the flood. That is the most discouraging thing that has ever happened to me in my dramatic career. I have done a world of good in a silent and private way, and have furnished Sir Henry Irving with plays and plays and plays. What has he achieved through that influence? See where he stands now on the summit of his art in two worlds, a position unchallenged, and it was I who put him there, that partly put him there. I need not enlarge upon the influence the drama has exerted upon civilization. It has made even good morals entertaining. I am to be followed by Mr. Pinero. I conceive that we stand at the head of the profession. He has not written as many plays as I have, but he has had that God-given talent, which I lack, of working them off on the manager. I couple his name with this toast, and add the hope that his influence will be supported in exercising his masterly handicraft in that great gift, and that he will long live to continue his fine work. End of Section 1, July 7, 1900, two speeches made in London by Chote and Twain, read by John Greenman. Section 2 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. Part 13, 1900, Mark Twain's Homecoming, and The Hero as Man of Letters. Mark Twain's Homecoming, payment of his debts, though not legally liable for them all, a five year's absence, no plans yet to do him honour. Ere this the minnehaha may have poked her nose into her New York dock, and the doyen of American letters, Mark Twain, been landed together with his baggage, with which, according to a letter he recently wrote to Secretary Gage, the steamer would be loaded. It is a little over five years since Samuel L. Clemens left his native land, inspired by a loft emotive to which the history of literature cannot show a parallel. Six years ago the publishing firm of Charles L. Webster and Company, of which Mr. Clemens was the financial backer, failed, owing a little over two hundred thousand dollars. At the time it was known that the author was heavily involved, and that he would practically have to begin life over again, as the saying goes, but what was not even then suspected was that Mr. Clemens had assumed responsibility for all the firm's debts. This was made known later in a statement issued to the American public just before he sailed westward from Vancouver in August 1895. It has been reported that I sacrificed for the benefit of the creditors the property of the publishing firm whose financial backer I was, and that I am now lecturing for my own benefit. This is an error. I intend the lecturers as well as the property for the creditors. The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brain, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency and start free again for himself. But I am not a businessman, and honour is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less than one hundred cents on the dollar, and its debts never outlaw. I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital I furnished. If the firm had prospered, I should have expected to collect two-thirds of the profits. As it is, I expect to pay all the debts. My partner has no resources, and I do not look for assistance from him. By far the largest single creditor of this firm is my wife, whose contributions in cash from her private means have nearly equaled the claims of all the others combined. She has taken nothing. On the contrary, she has helped, and intends to help me to satisfy the obligations due to the rest. It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that, as a legal discharge and trust to my honour, to pay the other fifty percent as fast as I can earn it. From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I am confident that if I live I can pay off the last debt within four years, after which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and unencumbered start in life. I am going to Australia, India, and South Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the great cities of the United States. I meant, when I began to give my creditors all the benefit of this, but I am beginning to feel that I am gaining something from it too, and that my dividends, if not available for banking purposes, may be even more satisfactory than theirs. And now the bravest author in all literature has returned, not only with debts paid, not only with the sublime consciousness that he has requited a self-imposed moral obligation, but with the contentment, and it may be the pride, that such are the present unencumbered royalties from his books that if he were never to put pen to paper again, or never again stand upon the lecture-platform, he could pass the rest of his life far removed from the strain of affairs and the martyrdom of financial distress. In commenting upon this fine example of the very chivalry of probity, the London News has dwelt lovingly upon the closing words of what may go down to history as Mark Twain's Vancouver Manifesto, and said, The last touch is very fine, both as literature and as feeling. He has gained something, and that is the esteem of all men of honour throughout the world. This act is the best of all critical commentaries on the high moral teaching of his books. He needs all the encouragement of sympathy. He has paid his debts, but he has still to make another fortune, and he is sixty-three. Mark Twain did not return to lecture in the United States as he had expected. His itinerary in the Far East, however, was practically carried out as he had at first planned, a permanent record of which may be considered to exist in following the equator. But old Europe was loosed apart with one whom, from afar, it had regarded purely as a humorist, but who on near approach proved to be a finished man of letters, one in whom humor had gradually become a means, and not an end. About three years ago Mr. Clemens took up his abode in London, and thence would run over to the continent whenever his interests, or, let us say, those of his creditors, demanded his presence there. In this way he spent nearly a year in Italy, and a winter divided between Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Everywhere a most cordial welcome was extended to him, not only by men of his profession, journalists, and men of letters, but by royalties as well. Someday he may write out for us his impressions of the German Kaiser, or his conversations with the late King Humbert, and with the Emperor Francis Joseph. In Vienna he lingered long. There no literary or artistic function was complete without him. On one occasion, on being entertained by the Vienna Press Club, to the surprise of its members, he spoke in German, discoursing with sparkling philosophy upon the terrors of German syntax. This speech, so rich in humor, yet with also logical and analytical as to receive serious consideration from German savants, was reprinted in the original, or in translation, throughout the world. It was the same in London, where he appeared before the parliamentary committee on copyright, and in one humorous discourse, interspersed with queries and answers, accomplished more practical results for British letters than had been achieved by the lengthy and learned arguments presented by his English brethren of the pen. Besides the lectures that occupied a considerable part of his European sojourn, articles and sketches have from time to time appeared in American and English magazines, showing that his pen has not been idle. Some of these have just appeared in book form under the title of The Man That Corrupted Hattenberg. So great has been the demand for him over there, and so indispensable has been his presence, that a record of his London sojourn alone would prove a most fascinating volume. Possibly the last words that he addressed to a British public before sailing were those uttered on the occasion of opening a reading room at Kenzel Rise London. The ceremony took place on the Saturday preceding his departure for America. Here is an account of the event, reproduced from the report in the London papers. Mark Twain formally declared the room open, and said he thought it a superbly good idea that the legislature should not compel a community to provide itself with intellectual food, but give it the privilege of providing it for itself, if it so desired. If it was willing to have it, it would put its hand in its pocket and bring out the penny rate. He thought it a proof of the moral financial and mental condition of the community, if it would tax itself for its mental food. A reading room was the proper introduction to a library, reading up through the newspapers and magazines to other literature. He did not know what they would do without the newspapers, and instanced his experience in obtaining news in the Sandwich Islands and San Francisco. He referred to the rapid manner in which the news of the Galveston disaster was made known to the world, which reminded him of an episode that occurred fifteen years ago, when at church at Hartford. The clergyman decided to make a collection for the survivors, if any, of a similar disaster, but did not include him in the leading citizens who took plates round. He complained to the Governor of the want of financial trust in him, and he replied, I would trust you myself if you had a bell punch, one of those articles used to protect bus and train companies against conductors. In reply to a vote of thanks he said he liked to listen to compliments. He endorsed all Dr. Crone, the mover, said about the Union of England and America. Mr. Irwin Cox, the seconder, had alluded to his norm de plume, which he was rather fond of. A little girl wrote him from New Zealand the previous day, stating that her father said his proper name was not Mark Twain, but Clemens. She knew better because Clemens was the man who sold the patent medicine. She liked the name of Mark, why Mark Antony was in the Bible. He replied to her that he was glad to get that expression from her, and as Mark Antony had got into the Bible, I am not without hopes myself. Mark Twain returns to America bearing with him the evidence of many distinctions and honors. Most of the leading associations and societies of merit on the Continent have taken him unto themselves. But how lightly he wears these decorations was once betrayed by him to a friend who had congratulated him on receiving the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Few escape it, he remarked simply. It is doubtful if any of his Continental friends and admirers knew anything about the great task he was working out among them, to have told them would have been like revealing a domestic secret to a public that had no business to know it. It was therefore simply because of his mental attributes that they found pleasure in honoring him. There is more for Americans to honor in him than this, for he took us into his confidence at the very beginning. He told us about the task he had undertaken to perform. There was not an American heart which did not bid him Godspeed when he set out upon his mission five years ago. Now that he has overcome all obstacles, and has triumphantly accomplished the work he believed he ought to do, some peculiar recognition of this fact should come to him from Americans—something that should appeal to Samuel L. Clemens the man, rather than to Mark Twain the literature. Just what form this recognition should take is doubtful, for the case, as we have said, has no exact precedent. No attempt should be made to rival, even in significance, the decorations that have been bestowed upon him by the old world. They are things apart. A dinner, with a memorial of welcome, would perhaps be the most satisfactory and appropriate form of recognition. An extended inquiry among writers and publishers of this city has failed to reveal the presence of any plans for this purpose. Everybody, however, recognizes the appropriateness of such a demonstration and expresses the hope that one might be made. So much goodwill and friendliness should not be allowed to spend itself in isolated expression. It should be molded into some common and distinctive form. The question is, who will do the molding? The material is ready. No time should be wasted. Why not the author's club? End of Mark Twain's Homecoming. The Hero as Man of Letters 1. Mark Twain No American returning from a sojourn abroad has ever received a heartier welcome than that which awaits Mark Twain. As an author, he has longed down the invidious reputation of a mere maker of jokes which never should have attached to him, since even in his earlier, though perhaps not in his earliest works, there were, to the observant, the signs of serious powers. Since then he has had the right to echo Horace's question, What forbids to speak the truth in laughter? But since Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Joan of Arc, nobody whose opinion is worth taking has ever presumed to treat their author as a mere drole. Upon both sides of the Atlantic, his claim is established as one of the first of living writers of the English language. But it is not merely, perhaps it is not mainly, as an author that his countrymen have now most reason to be proud of him, it is as an American who has shown that the American standard of honor goes far beyond the standard set by the law. Many acts of commercial honor have been done by Americans, which showed as high and scrupulous a sense of what was due from man to man, as the assumption by Mr. Clemens of debts for which he was not legally liable. But the conspicuousness of the position of a popular author makes his example, in such a matter, more useful for edification to his own countrymen, and far more valuable to them as a vindication of the national character abroad. No foreigner will be apt to repeat without shame the old sneers at Yankee sharp practice, who remembers this signal exhibition of that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor which feels a stain like a wound. This is not the first example that has been given of this chivalric sensibility, George William Curtis hampered himself through his early manhood by carrying the burden of debts contracted in his youth, which not the law but his own self-respect compelled him to assume. The very famous case of Sir Walter Scott is not quite parallel, Scott did indeed, as his creditors acknowledged, make unparalleled exertions to pay his debts, and did pay two hundred thousand dollars of them in two years. But they were legally, as well as morally, his debts, and they had been incurred in large part through his own extravagance. It would be an ungracious task to pick flaws in a fine piece of behavior, as Scott's undoubtedly was, and we are not attempting it. But the ideal of behavior which Mr. Clemens has exemplified is so exemplary, precisely because it has shown that, as he himself has said it, honor is a harder task-master than the law. In spite of his unparalleled exertions, Scott died in debt, and his estate was not free for fourteen years afterward, while to Mr. Clemens has been granted the boon of seeing the success of his exertions. Like Longfellow's village Blacksmith, he looks the whole world in the face, for he owes not any man. It is to be expected that the pride and admiration of his fellow craftsmen will arrange some suitable public expression for itself. Why should not the authors' club take up this matter? No welcome its members can give him will be too warm to express the pride and admiration that are shared by all his countrymen. End of The Hero as Man of Letters. October 13, 1900. Read by John Greenman. Section III of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part IV. 1900-1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. October 16, 1900, Mark Twain home again. Writer reaches America after his prolonged stay abroad, greeted by many friends, talks freely of his travels, his experiences, and his triumphs, in the best of health. Mark Twain returned to America yesterday on the Atlantic Transport Line Steamship Minnehaha. As is well known, Mark Twain registers at hotels and signs checks under the name of Samuel M. Clemens. But it was the writer and lecturer Mark Twain who attracted to the peer so many friends and associates of former days. Mr. Clemens never looked better, was in a splendid humour, and greeted his friends with the most affectionate cordiality. As soon as the author had finished with the salutations of his friends, he was surrounded by a large number of newspaper men, and asked for a story of what he had been doing during all the nine years of his absence from his native land. Now that's a long story, but I suppose I must give you something, even if it is in a condensed form, he said. I left America June 6, 1891, and went to Ex-Leban, France, where I spent the fall and winter. After that I went to Berlin, where I lectured, giving readings from my works. After this my next stop was the Riviera, where I remained for three months, going from there to the Baths near Frankfurt, where I remained during the Cholera season. Most of 1892 I spent at Florence, where I rented a home. While there I wrote Joan of Arc, and finished up Putinhead Wilson. For the next two years I was in France. I can't speak French yet. In the spring of 1895 I came to the United States for a brief stay, crossing the Continent from New York to San Francisco, lecturing every night. In October of that year I sailed from Vancouver for Sydney, where I lectured, or more properly speaking gave readings from my works to the English-speaking people. I also visited Tasmania and New Zealand. This was at the time of the famous Venezuelan message of President Cleveland, and it did my heart good to see that the animosities engendered by that message did not affect the affection of a people in a strange land for me. I then proceeded to India, lecturing in Ceylon, Bombay, and Calcutta. I then sailed for South Africa, arriving at Delagoa Bay in April 1896. In South Africa I visited Kimberley, Johannesburg, and finally Cape Town. I met Ong Paul. I had heard and read all about him, hat, beard, frock coat, pipe, and everything else. The picture is a true likeness. At this time the Jameston Raiders were in jail, and I visited them and made a little speech trying to console them. I told them of the advantages of being in jail. This jail is as good as any other, I said, and besides, being in jail has its advantages. A lot of great men have been in jail. If Bunyan had not been put in jail he would never have written Pilgrim's Progress. Then the jail is responsible for Don Quixote, so you see being in jail is not so bad, after all. Finally I told them that they ought to remember that many great men had been compelled to go through life without ever having been in jail. Some of the prisoners didn't seem to take much to the joke, while others seemed much amused. All this time my family was with me, and after a short stay at Cape Town we took a steamer for Southampton. On arriving in England we went to Guilford, where I took a furnished house, remaining two months, after which for ten months our home was in London. All this time I was lecturing, reading, or working hard in other ways, writing magazine stories and doing other literary work. After London came Vienna, to which city we went in September, 1898, remaining until May of the following year, in order to allow one of my daughters to take music lessons, from a man who's spelled his name Leshetitsky. He had plenty of identification, you see, and with all seemed to be a pretty smart fellow. After Vienna, where by the way I had a lot of fun watching the Reichsrat, we returned to London, in which city, and Sweden, we have been until our departure for home some days ago. Now I am home again, and you have got the history of a considerable part of my life. Well, everybody's glad you are back, which you know, of course. They gave you the courtesy of the port, didn't they? An intensely interested listener remarked. Yes, I wrote to Secretary Gage, telling him that my baggage was on a 16,000 ton ship, which was quite large enough to accommodate all I had, which, while it consisted of a good many things, was not good enough to pay duty on, yet too good to throw away. I accordingly suggested that he write the customs people to let it in, as I thought they would be more likely to take his word than mine. How about your plans?" he was asked. I am absolutely unable to speak of my plans, he replied, in as much as I have none, and I do not expect to lecture. At this point the question of anti-imperialism was broached, someone asking, How are you on expansion? Are you for the President? Or are you with those that style themselves anti-imperialists? Yes, as near as I can find out, I think that I am an anti-imperialist. I was not, though, until some time ago, for when I first heard of the acquisition of the present Pacific possessions, I thought it a good thing for a country like America to release those people from a bondage of suffering and oppression that had lasted 200 years. But when I read the Paris Treaty I changed my mind. You're going to vote for Mr. Brian, then, are you? was the query put to him by another bystander. No, I am a mugwump. I don't know who I am going to vote for. I must look over the field. Then, you know, I've been out of the country a long time, and I might not be allowed to register. You're still a citizen of the United States, are you not? Interposed a member of the party. Well, I guess I am. I've been paying taxes on this side for the last nine years. I believe, though, a man can run for President, laughingly inquired Mr. Clemens, without a vote, can't he? If this is so, why, then, I am a candidate for President. Dropping anti-imperialism, Mr. Clemens made the plea that he had been away so long that he really knew very little on the subject, as all of his information had practically been gleaned from foreign papers. Someone in the crowd asked him about his autobiography, that is to be published one hundred years hence. It is true, I am writing it, he said. That's not a joke, is it? No, I said it seriously. That's why they take it as a joke. You know, I never told the truth in my life that someone didn't say I was lying, while, on the other hand, I never told a lie, that somebody didn't take it as a fact. Well, it's not wrong, anyway, to tell a lie sometimes, is it? Was a question someone asked in a very conciliatory way. That's right, exactly right. If you can disseminate facts by telling the truth, why, that's the way to do it. And if you can't, except by doing a little lying, well, that's all right, too, isn't it? I do it. Mr. Clemens had become very restless by this time, and the many friends surrounding him on the pier managed to rescue him from the clutches of the newspaper men, who had been firing questions at him since he first appeared on the pier. I'll see you again. I'll be at the Erlington all the winter. I am not going to Hartford till next year. And with a pleasant nod of the head, the famous writer, accompanied by his friends, began a search for his baggage. End of Section 3 October 16, 1900 Mark Twain Home Again. Read by John Greenman. Section 4 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. October 18, 1900. Bazaar for Galveston Orphans. Mark Twain closes the benefit, net receipts estimated at $25,000. The bazaar for the benefit of the homeless Galveston orphans, which began Monday night in the Waldorf Astoria, was closed last night by Mark Twain. The attendance was the largest of the three evenings. Mr. Clemens, in closing the bazaar, spoke for about ten minutes. Some of the people present were Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. George J. Gould, Mrs. Joseph H. Chote, Mrs. C. H. Postley, Mrs. W. D. Dinsmore, Mrs. Walter Peckham, Mrs. Clarence A. Henrich, Mrs. Helen M. Gould, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Herman Ulrich, Mrs. Sydney J. Smith, Mrs. Edwin R. Lidew, Mrs. H. McKay Twombly, Mrs. Richard Dellefield, Mrs. H. F. Dimmick, Mrs. Seth Lowe, Mrs. Edwin Gould, and Mrs. Timothy L. Woodruff. The management of the bazaar estimated the net receipts for the three nights at between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand dollars. It will be some days before the exact amount can be learned. Until the accounts are closed, an office will be maintained in the Waldorf Astoria. End of Section 4, October 18, 1900, Bazaar for Galveston Orphans, Red by John Greenman. Section 5 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900-1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Red by John Greenman. October 20, 1900, Mark Twain and Grant, Major Ponds Tribute. After an absence of five years, Mr. S. L. Clemens, Mark Twain, returns to his home from a tour around the world to pay his debts. He is accompanied by his wife and family. On the fifteenth of July, 1895, he began his tour in Cleveland. The great music hall there gave him a send-off with an audience of over three thousand people who packed the building on a mid-July night with a mercury in the nineties. He had been very ill, subject to many annoyances from being dragged from a sick bed to appear in supplementary proceedings in New York the day before starting, and suffering from a huge carbuncle that had kept him confined to his home for seven weeks. In my announcement of the tour across the Continent, Mark suggested to me that traveling around the world was nothing as everybody did that, but what he was traveling for was unusual. Everybody didn't do that. From Cleveland he went by the steamers Northland and Northwest to Duluth, Minnesota, and St. Paul and Winnipeg, and over the great northern route to Puget Sound, Vancouver, and Victoria, British Columbia, where he sailed on the twenty-first day of August by steamship Warrimoo for Australia, having delivered twenty-four lectures in twenty-two cities. It was not until we reached Great Falls, Montana, halfway across the Continent that Mark was able to leave his hotel, except as he was driven to and from the lecture hall, or took a short walk. But a greater exhibition of courage and determination I never witnessed than in these struggles from day to day, to carry through the work he had planned for ridding himself of the bondage of debt. At Seattle he was interviewed by his nephew, Mr. Samuel Moffat, of the San Francisco Examiner, when he gave himself four years to make money enough to pay his debts. Two years from that time he wrote me from Lucerne, Switzerland, that he was now satisfied that those debts would be paid off a year earlier than the prophecy and without any further help from the platform, and that he was now a cheerful man, that he had managed to pull through the lecture campaign, although from the first night in Cleveland to the last one in Cape Town it had been pretty hard work, that he believed that in Cape Town he stood on a platform for the last time. Later I wrote, offering him ten thousand dollars if he would deliver ten lectures on his return home this autumn. He replied that no terms I could offer would remove his prejudice against the platform. He had lectured once in Vienna and once in Budapest for fun, not for money, that he liked to talk for nothing about twice a year, but talking for money was work, and that takes the pleasure out of it. I consider Mark Twain one of the greatest geniuses of our time. I think I know him better than he is known to most men, wide as his circle of acquaintances, big as his reputation is. He is as great a man as he is a genius to tenderness, and sensitiveness are his two strongest traits. He has one of the best hearts that ever beat. One must know him well, fully to discern all of his best traits. I sometimes think that he fights shy of having it generally suspected that he is kind and tender-hearted, but many of his friends do know it. He possesses some of the frontier traits, a fierce spirit of retaliation and the absolute confidence that lifelong partners in the western sense develop. Injure him, and he is merciless, especially if you betray his confidence. General Grant and Mark Twain were the greatest of friends. C. L. Webster and company, Mark Twain, published General Grant's memoirs. Yet how like and unlike are the careers of the soldier and citizen. Grant, poor, a tanner, a small farmer selling cordwood for a living, with fewer prospects for rising than any ex-west pointer in the army, then the greatest military reputation of any age, twice president of the United States, the most honored guest of peoples and rulers who ever made the circuit of the earth. Mark Twain, a printer's apprentice in a small Missouri River town, then a tramping jure printer, a Missouri River roustabout, guarding freight piles all night on the levee for pocket money, a river pilot, a rebel guerrilla, a reporter in a Nevada mining town, then, suddenly, the most famous author of the age, a man of society, the most aristocratic clubs of America and all around the civilized globe flung open to him, adopted with all the honors into one of the most exclusive societies on this continent, the favored companion of the most cultivated spirits of the age, welcomed abroad in all courts almost as a crowned head. Peace has its victories, etc. There is indeed another parallel between Grant and Twain. Grant found himself impoverished two years before his death, when was left to him the most heroic part of his life work to write his memoirs while he knew he was dying, for which, through his publishers, C. L. Webster and Company, Twain, his family received nearly five hundred thousand dollars, that firm failed in 1894, leaving liabilities to the amount of eighty thousand dollars over and above all it owed for Mark to pay, and which he has earned with his voice and pen in a tour around the world, paying every creditor in full, in one year less time than he calculated when he started in Cleveland on July 15th, 1895. Yes, there is a parallel between the two great heroes, more like than unlike. It is an enviable homecoming this most popular writer in the English language is having J. B. Pond. End of Section 5, October 20th, 1900, Mark Twain and Grant, Major Pond's tribute, read by John Greenman. Section 6 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. October 27th, 1900, Mark Twain's Imperishable Characters. It might seem that one of the great tests of an author's success, and especially of a writer of stories, is whether his characters are sufficiently well differentiated and clearly enough drawn to become stock allusions, to form part of familiar conversation, his people being so widely known and loved that the slightest reference to them is at once understood. If this is a true test of a book's or a writer's real value, it is easy to see that many and otherwise charming work fails to pass this ordeal, for the characters in fiction that will live and be known and quoted, and so become, in a fashion, part of our common daily lives, are all too few. Mark Twain has certainly succeeded in giving us a few imperishable characters, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer being far more real to us than most of the actual boys of our acquaintance, and we hardly need Mr. Clemens' assurance that the one was drawn from life, while the other is the sort of composite picture of three boys of his acquaintance. His book being intended for grown-up children quite as much as for boys and girls, he has succeeded admirably in reminding us of what we were and how we felt, and thought, and talked in our own early days. It might seem that a certain boy, Tommy, whose strongest characteristic was sentimentality, might almost have been suggested by Tom Sawyer's adventures in Sherwood Forest. The den, and its association being far from an actual copy, but just possibly suggested by it, both Tom's being extremely fertile in finding a way. What could be finer than the Village School exhibition with its wig story, unless indeed it is our own favorite portion of Tom's adventures where a Saturday's task of thirty yards of board fence, nine feet high, to whitewash, was turned from an endless task into a glorious achievement by Tom's ingenuity. For by the most skillful management did he not contrive to make the boys think such work and honor rather than a task, so that when the middle of the afternoon arrived, Tom was literally rolling in wealth, derived from the boys whom he had allowed to do his work upon payment of all sorts of treasures. But while we are disposed to linger over Tom's charms, perhaps unduly, he is only one of the characters whom Mark Twain has given us, which are sure of immortality. Colonel Sellers, feeding his family on expectations, is equally fine. Who can forget the apparently cheerful fire which the accidental opening of the stove door revealed to be a candle burning behind the mica, or the plain family dinner, an abundance of clear fresh water and a basin of raw turnips, early makings imported by the Colonel himself, or all the other meals described which were far from sumptuous, but so talked up by the Colonel as to seem veritable feasts, this article having been sent him by some titled personage. The guest being told to sip the coffee, which had seemed horrible, slowly, so that none of its delicious flavor should escape him. The bread from corn, which could be grown only in one favored locality, and so on, until one might fairly think they were having a most exquisite feast. The Saltlick Branch Railroad, too, is inimitable, and best of all, is that, thanks to the powerful way in which Colonel Sellers himself is drawn, and especially his great faith in himself and his own schemes, he is able to renew and keep at a high level the belief of his family, his friends, and we might almost add, his readers, in all his big undertakings, regardless of their usual fate. The innocence abroad is probably considered one of, if not quite the best of all, Mark Twain's books, but it has never been among our own favorites, the one character standing out prominently and unforgettably being his poet, who would insist upon writing poetry upon all and every occasion, giving copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotelkeepers, Arabs, Dutch, to everybody, in fact, who will submit to the genuine inflection. The oracle and the interrogation point are interesting members of the Quaker City expedition to read about, but they do not become numbered among our friends, as do Tom, and the always delightful Colonel. Roughing it is a charming picture of vagabondizing, and represents a phase of our early history which has long since passed, so that this, and others of Mark Twain's western sketches, will come to have a historical value quite apart from the interest of his treatment. In this book will be found characteristic pictures of half-breeds, as, for instance, where the Indian who had been hired for a day's washing lighted a fire in a stove in the oven of which several cans of rifle powder had been hidden, and after the explosion which followed, sending even portions of the shed 200 feet, calmly looked on and remarked, Stove, heap, gone! and resumed his washing. The prince and the pauper seem as never to have received quite the attention it merits. The tale is charming in itself and in its treatment, while the lessen it conveys of the power of circumstances, environment, and even clothes, is an extremely valuable one. It is impossible to attempt to touch upon Mr. Clemens' later work, but a careful examination of his books will show other portraits to add to the gallery in which hang Tom, Huck Finn, and our beloved Colonel Sellers. The man who has given us these three imperishable creations might well rest satisfied with his additions to American literature had he done nothing else. End of Section 6, October 27, 1900, Mark Twain's Imperishable Characters, read by John Greenman. Section 7 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. November 13, 1900. Reception to Mark Twain. Humorist entertained at the New York Press Club. Three speeches were made by Mark Twain at the reception that the New York Press Club tendered him last night. Among the other speakers were Joseph I. C. Clark, the playwright, John W. Keller, Commissioner of Charities, and Colonel Abraham Gruber. To attend the reception, they were gathered together, such a crowd as the newspaper men had never had in their club rooms before. After Mr. Clemens had been introduced by the President of the Club, Colonel William L. Brown, in terms of the warmest eulogy, he arose and said, Gentlemen, your Chairman has presented me with compliments. I have often said that I felt like using a gun on anybody who treated me that way, but as I haven't the gun, I'll just give the Chairman a dose of his own medicine. I ask you to look at him, pointing at Colonel Brown. You behold, an old, old man, his features would deceive you. Apparently he is a person heartened to everything, a man dead to all honest impulses, one who has committed all kinds of unimaginable crimes, and yet these features belie themselves. Instead of leading a life of wickedness, he began in a Sunday school, and will end there. This man really has all the known virtues, but he practices them secretly. Gentlemen, you know him too well for me to further prolong this introduction. The speaker paused abruptly at this point and took his seat, which the audience, in an uproar of laughter, looked at Colonel Brown to see if he would successfully turn aside the joke on him. The Colonel did very well, simply saying that he had not known before that his friend, Mark Twain, was such a good judge of human nature. Then he introduced, as the next speaker, Joseph I.C. Clark, the playwright. When Mr. Clark had concluded, the guest of honour arose again and said, I get up this time without invitation, in order to defend myself. Colonel Brown, you need it, you need it. Yes, continued the speaker, and there are others, older than I, that need it more. What I was going to say was this, I don't mind slanders. The facts are what I object to. I don't want any of my true history getting abroad. I appeal to you, journalists, to keep it from the public. In saying good night, Mr. Clemens said, I shall have to leave you. I am old, cries of no, no. I have reformed. No, no. I am respectable now. I wasn't once upon a time. Now I must protect my good name. Before I go, however, I want to say one thing. There was a man here tonight that said that he had never read any of my books. That hurts me. And he seemed to be intelligent too. But he was not. Mr. Keller is the intelligent man. He said he had read all of my books. He fairly oozes intelligence. November 16, 1900, authors honor Mark Twain. At reception given to him he protests, he is not a monument of all the virtues. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, was the guest of the Society of American Authors at a reception given at Delmonico's last night. A number of prominent literary people met Mr. Clemens, his wife and daughter. The guest of the evening was introduced to the members of the Society by Rastus S. Ransom, and in replying to the address of welcome, Mr. Clemens said, It seems a most difficult thing for any man, no matter how well prepared, to say anything about me that is not complementary. Sometimes I am almost persuaded that I am what the Chairman says I am. As a rule the Chairman begins by saying something to my discredit, and he feels that he is clear off the track, and that he is really not telling the truth, and then he begins to compliment me. Nothing bites so deep down as the facts of a man's life. The real life that you live and I live is a life of interior sin. Everyone believes I am just a monument of all the virtues. Someday there will be a Chairman who will be able to give the true side of my character. I thought I had met such a Chairman the other night at the press club, but when he said that he had never read any of my books, I knew he was a liar. Following Mr. Clemens' speech a number of letters of regret were read. Secretary of State John Hay, in expressing his regrets that he would be unable to present, wrote, Mr. Clemens has long done his country honor throughout the world, and nothing we can do for him will settle the debt we owe him. Among those present were W. O. Stoddard, Elliot Danforth, Isaac K. Funk, Mrs. Theodore Sutro, the Reverend Thomas R. Slicer, Colonel Richard Henry Savage, Edward W. Bach, John G. Carlyle, Kenyon Cox, General Klaus, Count Lafayette, General Stuart L. Woodford, the Reverend E. Walpole Warren, John Kendrick Bangs, and Edgar Saltis. End of Section 8, November 16, 1900, Authors, Honor, Mark Twain, read by John Greenman.