 Section 1 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. January 6, 1910, Mark Twain goes back. Returns to Bermuda, suffering from indigestion. Samuel M., sick, Clemens, Mark Twain, sailed for Bermuda yesterday. He spent some weeks there late in the year, returning about fifteen days ago to spend Christmas with his daughter, Miss Jean Clemens, at Redding, Connecticut. She died while he was there. It had been in the intention of Mr. Clemens to return to Bermuda with his daughter in April. He denied that his health was in an alarming state. He was simply suffering from indigestion, he said. The length of his stay on the island will depend on how much his indigestion improves there. He may be away for two months. Section 1 January 6, 1910, Mark Twain goes back. Read by John Greenman. Section 2 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. January 15, 1910, to S. L. Clemens. Mark Twain, on sailing to Bermuda, said that this cigar was his only pal. Your only pal, since first you wrote your pals, began to troop your way, and fate has never struck a note of sorrow, and the smiling way of fortune never opened wide that we weren't by your side. Your only pal, why, Mark, you seem to overlook ten million folks who weep when sorrows round you, team. You can't discard us as old jokes. Your tassums never opened wide that we weren't at your side. Your only pal, Sam Clemens, you—when you say that, don't treat us right. Your pals are millions, and they are true until the coming of the night. Mark Twain—Mark Thrice, before you chide old friends who have not died. January 6, 1910, to S. L. Clemens, read by John Greenman. February 6, 1910, was Tom Sawyer, Danish, or American. Why Mark Twain is Charged with Borrowing from Steen Blitcher's Story of The Vicar of Wilby. By Henry G. Leach, Sir, Denmark. Since the Cook episode, the Danes have been keenly interested in everything American, especially American literature. Their latest examination of records and proofs, however, has resulted in a no less startling charge than that Mark Twain has plagiarized one of the Danish classics. Strange to say, Denmark is rather flattered, than angered by the discovery, for American literature is quite the thing just now. None of our classical authors can compete in popularity with Nick Carter, which is offered on the streets as a premium by the Copenhagen newspapers. Mr. Herrick's novels are translated within a year or two of publication. Several of Jack London's books have appeared in Danish editions. The translations of Frank Norris have a wider sale than any Danish author, and Norris is held to be the great American novelist. As for Mark Twain, everyone knows him. Accordingly, when a Danish schoolmaster, Valdemar Thorensen, by name, made the discovery of the alleged plagiarism by Mr. Clemens, the Danish illustrated monthly, Mönst Magazineet, grew quite excited about it. Mr. Thorensen asserts that the plot of Tom Sawyer, detective, was lifted bodily from Blitcher's tail the vicar of Wilby. Steen Steensen Blitcher was a Danish novelist who was born in 1782 and died in 1848. He spent a great part of his life as a country parson in Jutland. By nature he was as much a hunter as a poet and neglected his clerical duties to trap the Moor in search of game. An old painting shows Blitcher in a favourite attitude, gun in hand, on the Moor, three gypsies at his feet. When he came to a lonely farm for the night he gathered the traditions and stories of the ghosts of the place into a short story. The collected novella may be regarded as a saga of Jutus' life. The story of the vicar of Wilby is based on tradition and old documents. Mr. Thorensen gives the following account of his discovery. Last summer I happened to get a hold of a recently translated book by Mark Twain called, after the leading story, Tom Sawyer Optigar, Tom Sawyer, detective. This narrative did not impress me as particularly interesting, but in one way it quickly secured my attention. The further I got into it, the more evident it became that the criminal history, which must always be the foundation for a detective narrative, was in this case a good old acquaintance—Steam Blitcher's novel, The Vicar of Wilby. It was with a certain feeling of displeasure that I made the discovery. On the one hand I could not imagine that an author like Mark Twain, whose bold, invigorating humor had been to me the source of so much pleasure, could be a plagiarist. And on the other hand, the way in which the old Danish novel, with its deep gripping tragedy, was used here for merely superficial fun, must seem to me almost a profanation. On what then do I support the assertion that Mark Twain has borrowed stuff for his narrative from The Vicar of Wilby? I shall rehearse the most important agreements with the greatest brevity, so that every single detail I mention is found in both narratives. A man, in each instance of Vicar, is unjustly accused of murder. The accuser is a rich and purse-proud man who is angry at the clergyman because he has been rejected in his suit to his daughter. He plans revenge, and uses as a tool for this purpose his brother. This brother comes into service at the Pastors, and, abetted by the disgraced whore, does all he can to tease and irritate his master, succeeding only too well. In the end the Pastor, one day, when he has set the fellow to dig, becomes so irritated that he seizes the nearest weapon which falls into his hands, with Blitcher, a spade, with Mark Twain, a stake, and strikes him to the earth with it. Seeing him collapse as though he were dead, the Pastor is frightened and raises him up. But he proves to be no more injured than that he can jump over the fence and run into the forest. The Vicar is imprisoned. People seek to induce him to flee, but he will not withdraw himself from the arm of justice. The prosecutor appears with witnesses. Some have heard the Pastor threaten his life. Others, standing beside some hazel-bushes, saw the said weapon swung into the air and heard it fall with a dull thud. But previously, before the accusation and imprisonment, the brothers have taken the body of another person, whose features have been rendered unrecognizable by violence, put on the servant's clothes, dragged it into the Pastor's grounds, and buried it there at night, on which occasion the cunning scoundrel is attired in the Vicar's green jacket, dressing gown in Blitcher, which he has stolen from the Parsonage. The expedition by night is seen in the moonshine, and the easily recognized garment gives ground to believe it is the Vicar. The fellow confesses at last that the brother has persuaded him by promise of a large sum to play the assigned role thereafter to leave the neighborhood and vanish. Mr. Thoranson concludes that such a collection of coincident details precludes any doubt that Tom Sawyer borrowed its plot from Blitcher. How did Mr. Clemens get the plot? No English translation is known. There is, however, a German translation and the possibility of redactions. We dare not flatter ourselves," says Mr. Thoranson, that Mark Twain could redanish. Accordingly the critic wrote to Mr. Clemens himself and received the following reply from his secretary. King Connecticut, December 9, 1909. Sick. Mr. Valdemar Thoranson. Dear sir, Mr. Clemens directs me to write for him in reply to your letter in regard to the similarity between Tom Sawyer detective and the Vicar of Wilby. Mr. Clemens is not familiar with Danish and does not read German fluently and has not read the book you mention, nor any translation or adaptation of it that he is aware of. The matter constituted in Tom Sawyer detective is original with Mr. Clemens, who has never been consciously a plagiarist. You may therefore deny most authoritatively that this or any other matter that has appeared under Mr. Clemens' name is based upon the work of any other. Very truly yours, I. V. Lyon secretary. Mr. Thoranson expresses his astonishment over this reply, but believes it is honourably and seriously written. He reinforces the striking details employed by the two plots. Is it conceivable that a man, when he has appropriated the story so precisely, not only the main features but many details in themselves inconsequential, for example that it is in digging the grave that the fatal struggle arises, that the witnesses without being able to see the persons see the weapons swan over the hazel bushes, which shut out from them the view, and hear the dull thought of it, that the fellow leaps over the fence and runs into the forest, that the accuser, to look like the vicar, puts on his green coat. It must indeed be green for it stands so in blitter. When he buries the body, is it psychologically possible, I say, that one who remembers the narrative so accurately and completely to these small details, can write all this down with the thought that it is his own original stuff? Mr. Thoranson then seeks to excuse Mr. Clemens by suggesting that a collaborator provided him with a plot which is for him so subservient of matter that he had forgotten where he had obtained it. Another Danish critic, Mr. Hans Hansen, editor of the edition Deluxe of Blitcher, expresses himself more strongly. Blitcher's story, he points out, rests upon an actual event, which has recently been documented, but Blitcher's imagination quite overlaid the facts and the traditions, and Mr. Clemens agrees with Blitcher against these, that Blitcher and Mark Twain should have a common source is quite inconceivable. The matter has excited much attention in Denmark. The Danes are flattered and prouder of their Blitcher. The National Times, with a spice of the Esprit Copenhag, alludes to the discovery as a modest triumph for Denmark. It may be remembered that this is not the first time that the charge of borrowed plots has been brought against Mr. Clemens. Professor Van Dyke of Princeton discovered that the celebrated bullfrog story is an almost exact replica of a Greek Biotian tale. In the Greek tale the frog was forced to swallow stones, while the California frog, more appropriate to the century, was loaded with shot. Mr. Clemens replied with some droll observations on his acquaintance with Greek. He claimed to have the story from Calaveras County. Whatever is the truth in this Danish affair there is no ground to suspect Mr. Clemens of plagiarism. The story can have come to him in many ways. There has been a Blitcher revival in Denmark in recent years, and I suspect Mark Twain had the story from some Danish American. He can, for instance, have smoked a cigar with that amazing storyteller, Mr. Jacob Rees. Indeed, it is not unlikely that the story was printed in America before Tom Sawyer detective. Since the Danish discovery appeared, attention has been drawn to further plagiarisms of the vicar of Wilby, a German romance der Friesenpastor by Dietrich Thieden, has stolen Blitcher's plot. More surprising still, a synopsis of Blitcher's story appeared in the Sunday supplement of a New York newspaper recently under the title Would You Convict on Circumstantial Evidence? It was told as a true story of a murder trial in Denmark. There was no mention of Blitcher's name, but the plot was Blitcher's, not the facts of the old documents. His names and geography were retained, and the whole was practically a translation of Blitcher. While the story appeared too late to have been used in Tom Sawyer detective, it suggests the possibility of predecessors in other Sunday magazines. A Danish American journalist is probably responsible. That an author can forget he has a source is quite possible, psychologically. At this writing I have in mind the case of a boy, fourteen years old, who submitted a story for a prize contest two years ago at Groton School. It was an exceptionally good story and worthy of the first prize, but it had a familiar ring. Suddenly it occurred to one of the masters that the tale was nothing more than a boyish retelling in plain English of Stevenson's Thrawn Janet. A comparison revealed that the stories were identical in details of colour. The boy was examined and declared that he could not read Lowland Scotch, had never heard of Stevenson's story, had never heard the story told. I imagined it all! He was a strictly honest boy. The masters attributed the borrowing to the narrative of a nurse in the child's infancy. His memory had retained the story but obliterated its source. After all we so often forget that there is nothing new under the sun, that Shakespeare was the greatest plagiarist and that the best story is as old as the hills. End of Section 3, February 6, 1910, was Tom Sawyer Danish or American. Red by John Greenman. Section 4 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910 through 1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 15, 1910. Mark Twain back in feeble health. Distinguished author returns from Bermuda in weakened state from heart trouble. Carried off the steamer. Physicians meet him and he is taken immediately to his home at Reading, Connecticut. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, humorist and author, stricken in health, arrived yesterday from Bermuda on the Oceana. He was so ill when the vessel reached her pier in the morning that he could not be removed until the physicians summoned by wireless got to the pier at the foot of West Tenth Street. After an examination they consented to his removal. He was carried from the liner and taken across the city in a coach ambulance. He left on the 3.32 p.m. train for his home at Reading, Connecticut. Mr. Clemens' condition, it is admitted, is serious, but his physicians believe he will improve in the quiet of his country home. He has Anjana Pictoris. The author made the voyage from Bermuda ill in his stateroom. He spent the winter in Bermuda, going there immediately after the sudden death of his daughter. He was accompanied only by Albert Bigelow Payne, the author who has been acting as his secretary. When the Oceana reached her pier, Edward E. Loomis, Mr. Clemens' nephew, and the latter's wife, and Robert Collier, were on hand to meet him. They went at once to his cabin. A few minutes later Dr. Edward S. Quinterd, of 145 West 58th Street, a long-time friend of the author, and Dr. Robert H. Halsey, of 118 West 58th Street, arrived and went to Mr. Clemens' room. The voyage north had not improved the condition of his health. About a week ago he had a severe attack, and from this he did not readily recover. The recent high temperature in Bermuda, according to Mr. Payne, had proved too much for him, and went far toward bringing on the attack. Mr. Payne went to Bermuda about two weeks ago when the news came that Mr. Clemens was failing in health. After the attack of a week ago, the physicians concluded that the salt air was not good for him, and ordered his immediate return to this country. At Mr. Clemens' request it had been planned that he was to return on the Bermudian, which is scheduled to arrive here on Monday. The author and Captain Fraser, the skipper, are old friends. Later it was decided that it would be dangerous to delay his homecoming. Embarking on the Oceana was quite a task for the sick man. The vessel, because of her great draft, cannot go alongside a pier. She anchors in deep water, and her passengers are taken out to her in a tender. Mr. Clemens made the trip in a special tug, and was so weak that he had to be carried on board the Oceana. On Wednesday, when the vessel was passing through the Gulf Stream with a fairly rough sea running, Mr. Clemens had a sinking spell. For a time it is said there was fear that in his weakened condition he would not rally. Mr. Clemens occupied a starboard-state room amid ships. When the steamer got in, his relatives and the physicians found him dressed and lying in his berth, propped up with pillows. The Oceana reached her pier about ten-fifteen a.m., but it was not until afternoon that he was removed. It is said that the excitement of arriving proved a severe strain, and his departure to the station was preceded by another sinking spell. I have made but a superficial examination of Mr. Clemens," said Dr. Quinterd. When he gets home we will make a thorough examination of his heart. He has angina pectoris, which is a dangerous state for him. He looks much better than I expected he would. Mr. Clemens was carried from the Oceana in an invalid chair by two stewards. He was assisted into the coach, and with Dr. Halsey started for the Grand Central. Mr. Clemens appeared to be extremely weak. He had to rest a few minutes in the invalid chair on the pier before he could make the effort of getting into the vehicle. On reaching the railway station a few minutes after three o'clock, Mr. Clemens raised his arms feebly while two station attendants lifted him from the carriage to a wheelchair. They took him directly to a drawing-room car. Out of Section 4, April 15, 1910, Mark Twain back in feeble health. Red by John Greenman. Section 5 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Red by John Greenman. April 16, 1910, Mark Twain holds his own. As is a comfortable day, country air has good effect. Reading Connecticut, April 15, Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, who arrived at his country home here last evening, fatigued from his long journey from Bermuda, and very ill, passed a comfortable day with no appreciable change in his condition, and was holding his own pretty well. A second nurse arrived today. Dr. R. H. Halsey of New York, who accompanied Mr. Clemens here yesterday, remained with him overnight, and returned to New York this morning. The bracing air of the country, it is stated, has had a beneficial effect upon Mr. Clemens' respiratory organs since his arrival here, and much of the distress that accompanied his breathing during the ocean voyage from Bermuda to New York, and after his arrival in New York, has disappeared. April 16, 1910, Mark Twain holds his own, read by John Greenman. Section 6 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 17, 1910, Mark Twain's daughter here. Mrs. Gabrievich and her husband, the pianist, called by author's illness. Mrs. Osip Gabrievich, who was Ms. Clara Clemens, the only surviving daughter of Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, and her husband, the Russian pianist, arrived last night on the American liner New York. Mr. Gabrilevich has not been playing for a year. He and his wife were in Rome when word reached them of the serious condition of Mr. Clemens. That was ten days ago, and since then they have been travelling to reach Mr. Clemens' home at Redding, Connecticut. Before sailing they had been assured by Mr. Clemens' physician that his condition had improved. They were greatly relieved to learn upon their arrival that he had also improved since his return from Bermuda. He had intended, coming to America, to span the summer with Mr. Clemens, said Mr. Gabrilevich. The news that he had been taken ill in Bermuda simply caused a change in plan, and we are here sooner than we had expected. Osip Gabrilevich and Ms. Clara Clemens were married at the Clemens' home on October 6, 1909. April 17, 1910, Mark Twain's daughter here, read by John Greenman. Section 7 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. April 18, 1910, Mark Twain seems better. A rival of daughter from abroad brightens sick man considerably. In Connecticut April 17, according to those in attendance, Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, who is ill at his home, Stormfield, seemed a little improved today. Mrs. Osip Gabrilevich, Dr. Clemens' daughter, who reached New York Saturday from abroad, arrived here today, and her presence seemed to brighten her father very materially. Dr. Robert M. Halsey of New York will remain with his patient until Monday. End of Section 7, April 18, 1910, Mark Twain seems better. Read by John Greenman. Section 8 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. April 19, 1910, Mark Twain improving. Reading Connecticut April 18. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, who is seriously ill with heart disease at his home near here, had a restful night and was brighter and, to all appearances, better today. Dr. Robert H. Halsey, who has been with Mr. Clemens since Saturday, went to New York this morning, seemingly satisfied with the progress Mr. Clemens was making. End of Section 8, April 19, 1910, Mark Twain improving. Read by John Greenman. Section 9 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. April 20, 1910, Mark Twain a little weaker. Reading Connecticut April 19. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, who is here trying to regain his health after the severe attack of heart trouble that prostrated him on the voyage from Bermuda to New York last week, is a little weaker. Dr. Robert Halsey of New York issued a statement tonight as follows. Mr. Clemens is very comfortable tonight and past a quiet day, though he seems to have grown a little weaker. Dr. Halsey will remain with Mr. Clemens. End of Section 9, April 20, 1910, Mark Twain a little weaker. Read by John Greenman. Section 10 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. April 21, 1910, Mark Twain sinking. Author's condition is critical, but he is expected to live through night. Special to the New York Times. Danbury, Connecticut April 20. At eleven o'clock tonight, Samuel L. Clemens, though he had been sinking all day and at one time late in the afternoon was thought to be in a very serious condition, was resting at his residence, Stormfield, in Reading, Connecticut, comfortably enough to assure those in attendance on him that his chances for living through the night were very favorable. His daughter Clara and her husband, Osip Gabrylovich, the pianist, and Alfred Bigelow Payne, the humorous manager and biographer who comprised the household, felt confidence enough to retire for the night shortly before eleven o'clock. Dr. Robert H. Halsey, the heart specialist who has been in attendance, admitted that his patient was in a critical condition, giving his trouble as angina pectoris. Dr. Quinterd was called from New York in consultation during the afternoon, but left this evening. Oxygen was resorted to early in the afternoon to stimulate vitality. Although he was weak on his arrival from Bermuda last Tuesday and had not since recovered his strength, it was not until to-day that his symptoms became alarming. He was noticeably weak this morning and did not respond to treatment as he had previously. As the day went on he became weaker and collapsed this afternoon. He has been almost in an unconscious condition during the afternoon and this evening. He did not show any interest in his surroundings and took no notice of the people around him. Early in the evening he aroused a little and talked for a short time with his daughter. He does not seem to be suffering any pain. The doctors who have been watching, Mark Twain, agree that it is simply a case of how long his wonderful constitution can battle with the malady which is gradually overcoming him. He may die during the night or he may live for several weeks. There is no knowing. End of Section 10, April 21, 1910, Mark Twain sinking, read by John Greenman. Section 11 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910-1919. This limber-vox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 22, 1910, Mark Twain is dead at seventy-four. Mark Twain as printer's devil, England feels his loss. Last visit to Washington and editorial Mark Twain. Mark Twain is dead at seventy-four. End comes peacefully at his New England home after a long illness. Conscious a little before. Carlisle's French Revolution lay beside him. Give me my glasses, his last words. One child with him. Tragic death of his daughter Jean recently did much to hurry his end. Special to the New York Times, Danbury, Connecticut, April 21st. Samuel Langhorn Clemens, Mark Twain, died at twenty-two minutes after six to-night. Beside him on the bed lay a beloved book. It was Carlisle's French Revolution, and near the book his glasses pushed away with a weary sigh a few hours before. Too weak to speak clearly, give me my glasses, he had written on a piece of paper. He had received them, put them down, and sunk into unconsciousness, from which he glided almost imperceptibly into death. He was in his seventy-fifth year. For some time his daughter Clara and her husband, Osip Gavrilovich, and the humorous biographer, Albert Bigelow Payne, had been by the bed, waiting for the end, which doctors Quinterdon Halsey had seen to be a matter of minutes. The patient felt absolutely no pain at the end, and the moment of his death was scarcely noticeable. Death came, however, while his favorite niece, Mrs. E. E. Loomis, and her husband, who is vice-president of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railway, and a nephew, Jervis Langdon, were on the way to the railroad station. They had left the house much encouraged by the fact that the sick man had recognized them, and took a train for New York ignorant of what had happened later. Hopes aroused yesterday. Although the end had been foreseen by the doctors and would not have been a shock at any time, the apparently strong rally of this morning had given basis for the hope that it would be postponed for several days. Mr. Clemens awoke at about four o'clock this morning, after a few hours of the first natural sleep he had had for several days, and the nurses could see by the brightness of his eyes that his vitality had been considerably restored. He was able to raise his arms above his head and clasp them behind his neck with the first evidence of physical comfort he had given for a long time. His strength seemed to increase enough to allow him to enjoy the sunrise, the first signs of which he could see out of the windows in the three sides of the room where he lay. The increasing sunlight seemed to bring ease to him, and by the time the family were about he was strong enough to sit up in bed and overjoyed them by recognizing all of them and speaking a few words to each. This was the first time that his mental powers had been fully his for nearly two days, with the exception of a few minutes early last evening when he addressed a few sentences to his daughter. Calls for his book. For two hours he lay in bed, enjoying the feeling of this return of strength. Then he made a movement and asked in a faint voice for the copy of Carlisle's French Revolution, which he has always had near him for the last year, and which he has read and re-read and brooded over. The book was handed to him and he lifted it up as if to read. Then a smile faintly illuminated his face when he realized that he was trying to read without his glasses. He tried to say, give me my glasses, but his voice failed, and the nurse's bending over him could not understand. He motioned for a sheet of paper and a pencil, and wrote what he could not say. With his glasses on he read a little and then slowly put the book down with a sigh. Soon he appeared to become drowsy and settled on his pillow. Gradually he sank and settled into a lethargy. Dr. Halsey appreciated that he could have been roused, but considered it better for him to rest. At three o'clock he went into complete unconsciousness. Later Dr. Quinterd, who had arrived from New York, held a consultation with Dr. Halsey, and it was decided that death was near. The family was called and gathered about the bedside watching in a silence which was long unbroken. It was the end. At twenty-two minutes past six, with the sunlight just turning red as it stole into the window, in perfect silence he breathed his last. Died of a broken heart. The people of Reading, Bethel, and Danbury listened when they were told that the doctors said Mark Twain was dying of angina pectoris, but they say among themselves that he died of a broken heart. And this is the verdict not of popular sentiment alone. Albert Bigelow Payne, his biographer-to-be and literary executor, who has been constantly with him, said that for the past year at least Mr. Clemens had been weary of life. When Richard Watson-Gilder died, he said, How fortunate he is! No good fortune of that kind ever comes to me! The man who has stood to the public for the greatest humorous this country has produced has in private life suffered overwhelming sorrows. The loss of an only son in infancy, a daughter in her teens, and one in middle life, and finally of a wife who was a constant and sympathetic companion has preyed upon his mind. The recent loss of his daughter Jean, who was closest to him in later years when her sister was abroad studying, was the final blow. On the heels of this came the first symptoms of the disease which was surely to be fatal, and one of whose accompaniments is mental depression. Mr. Payne says that all heart went out of him, and his work, when his daughter Jean died. He has practically written nothing since he summoned his energies to write a last chapter memorial of her for his autobiography. He told his biographer that the past winter in Bermuda was gay, but not happy. Bermuda is always gay in winter, and Mark Twain was a central figure in the gayity. He was staying at the home of William H. Allen, the American consul. Even in Bermuda, however, Mr. Clemens found himself unable to write, and finally relied on Mr. Allen's fifteen-year-old daughter, Helen, to write the few letters he cared to send. His health failed rapidly, and finally Mr. Allen wrote to Albert Vigilot Payne that his friend was in a most serious condition. Mr. Payne immediately cabled to Mrs. Grabrilovich, his surviving daughter, who was in Europe, and started himself on April 2 for Bermuda, embarking with a humorist for the return to New York immediately after his arrival. On the trip over Mark Twain became very much worse and finally realized his condition. It's a losing game, he said to his companion. I'll never get home alive. Mr. Clemens did manage to summon his strength, however, and in spite of being so weak that he had to be carried down the gang-plank, he survived the journey to his beautiful place at Redding. The first symptom of angina pectoris came last June when he went to Baltimore to address a young lady's school. In his room at the hotel he was suddenly taken with a terrible gripping at the heart. It soon passed away, however, and he was able to make an address with no inconvenience. The pains, however, soon returned with more frequency and steadily grew worse until they became a constant torture. One of the last acts of Mark Twain was to write out a check for $6,000 for the library in which the literary coterie settled near Redding have been interested for a year, fares, musicals, and sociables having been held in order to raise the necessary amount. The library is to be a memorial to Jean Clemens and will be built on a site about a half mile from Stormfield at Selick Cross Roads. It is certain to be recalled that Mark Twain was for more than fifty years an inveterate smoker, and the first conjecture of the layman would be that he had weakened his heart by overindulgence in tobacco. Dr. Halsey said tonight that he was unable to say that the angina pectoris, from which Mark Twain died, was in any way a sequel of nicotine poisoning. Some constitutions, he said, seemed immune for the effects of tobacco, and his was one of them. Yet it is true that, since his illness began, the doctors had cut down Mark Twain's daily allowance of twenty cigars and countless pipes to four cigars a day. No deprivation was a greater sorrow to him. He tried to smoke on the steamer while returning from Bermuda, and only gave it up because he was too feeble to draw on his pipe. Even on his deathbed when he had passed the point of speech, and it was no longer certain that his ideas were lucid, he would make the motion of waving a cigar and smiling, expel empty air from under the mustache still stained with smoke. Where Mark Twain chose to spend his declining years was the first outpost of Methodism in New England, and it was among the hills of Redding that General Israel Putnam, of revolutionary fame, mustard his sparse ranks. Putnam Park now encloses the memory of his camp. Mark Twain first heard of it at a dinner, given him on his seventieth birthday, when a fellow guest who lived there mentioned its beauties and added that there was a vacant house adjoining his own. I think you may buy that old house for me," said Mark Twain. Sure would place was the name of that old house, and where it stood Mark Twain reared the white walls of the Italian villa he first named Innocence at Home. But a first experience of what a New England winter storm can be in its whitest fury quickly caused him to christen at a new storm field. Here Mark Twain died. The house had been thus described by Albert Bigelow Payne. Set on a fair hillside with such a green slope below, such a view outspread across the valley has made one catch his breath a little when he first turned to look at it. A trout stream flows through one of the meadows. There are apple trees and gray stone walls. The entrance to it is a winding, leafy lane. Through this lane the Innocence at Home loved to wander in his white flannels for homely gossip with the neighbors. They remember him best as one who, above all things, loved a good listener. For Mark was a mighty talker. Stored with fairy tales for the maids he adored, and racier rudor speech for more stalwart masculine ears. It is a legend that he was vastly proud of his famous mop of white hair, and used to spend the pains of a court lady in getting it to just the proper stage of artistic disarray. The burial will be in the family plot at Elmira, New York, where lie already his wife, his two daughters, Susan and Jean, and his infant son, Langhorne. No date has yet been set, as the family is still undecided whether or not there shall be a public funeral first in New York City. It is probable that Stormfield will be kept as a summer place by Mrs. Gabrilovich, who is very fond both of the house and the country, although her husband's musical engagements make it necessary that she spend a part of each year abroad. Mr. Payne said to-night that Mark Twain had put his affairs in perfect order, and that he died well off, though by no means a rich man. He leaves a considerable number of manuscripts in all stages of incompleteness and, of all characters, many of them, begun years ago, and put aside as unsatisfactory. Mrs. Gabrilovich will aid Mr. Payne in the final decision as to what use shall be made of these. Mark Twain's Career. Long Life, Struggles, and Achievements of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. William Langhorne Clemens was considered the best-known American man of letters. Often he was referred to as the Dean of American Literature. He was known far beyond the boundaries where English is spoken as the greatest humorist using that tongue, if not actually the greatest humorist in satirist living. His famous telegram to a newspaper publishing a report of his death, when happily was untrue, has been quoted and re-quoted almost everywhere. The report of my death, he wired, is greatly exaggerated. The father of Mark Twain was John Marshall Clemens, who migrated from Virginia to Kentucky, and then on to Adair County, Tennessee, when a young man. There he married a young woman named Langhorne, who brought him family prestige and many broad acres. But with a prevalent spirit of unrest among pioneers, the couple crossed over into Missouri, settling at Florida, Monroe County, where, on November 30, 1835, their famous son was born. Mark Twain's life, however, really did not begin until three years later, when the family moved to Hannibal, Marion County. Hannibal has been described many times as a typical river town of that day, a sleepy place filled with drawing, lazy, picturesque inhabitants, black and white. Young Clemens, so the record runs, went to school there, and so also the record runs studied just as little as he could, if he studied it all. He had been painted in that period of his career as an incorrigible truant, roaming the river banks and bluffs, watching the passing steamboats, and listening keenly to the trials that went on in the shabby office, where the Justice of Peace, his father, settled the disputes and punished the misdemeanors of his neighbors. In that period, while the ambition to be a pilot on the Great River burned in him, was stored in his memory the material which in after years crystallized into Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Puddin Henwillson. Mark Twain's school days ended when he was twelve. The father died, leaving nothing behind save the reputation of being a good neighbor and an upright man, and his children at once, being breadwinners. Sam was apprenticed as a printer at fifty cents a week in the office of the Hannibal Weekly Journal, doing as he afterwards said, A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING. After three years, with a capital of a few dollars in his pocket, he became what was then a familiar sight, a wanderer from one printing office to another. Throughout this period he paid his first visit to New York, having been drawn here by stories of a great exposition then in progress. He worked here for a while, then moved on to Philadelphia, and later, obeying always the wandering instinct which finally carried him around the world and into all lands, to nearly all the larger cities of the South and West, including New Orleans. The trip down the river awakened the old desire to be a pilot which had slumbered since the Hannibal days, and his career as a printer was ended. He paid cash and promised five hundred dollars to a Mississippi pilot to take him on as an assistant and teach him the river. He became a pilot and stuck to it until the outbreak of the Civil War, earning two hundred and fifty dollars a month, but chief of all he got here his material for life on the Mississippi. His experience as a Confederate soldier was brief and inglorious. Hardly had he enlisted before he was captured. Released on parole he broke the parole and returned to the ranks, and soon was recaptured. He was in imminent peril, for recognition meant immediate and ignominious execution. But he got away and determined never to take the risk again. He stopped flight only on reaching Nevada, where several letters of his to the Virginia City Enterprise resulted in an offer from the editor of that paper of a place on the staff. From that day forward Clemens earned his living with his pen, with the exception of several excursions into the lecture field to bring in immediate and abundant cash when creditors were urgent and the literary market full. While employed on the Enterprise he used the pen name Mark Twain for the first time, the words being a phrase commonly used by the Ledzman on Mississippi boats to indicate a certain depth of water. At this period also many of his short humorous sketches were written, including notably the Jumping Frog of Calaveras. From Nevada Mark Twain moved out to San Francisco, where after a brief service on the local staff of the call he was discharged as useless. He and Brett Hart were associated in the conduct of the Californian, but both soon deserted the paper to make their fortunes mining if they could. Neither did, and Mark Twain was soon back in San Francisco penniless and ill. This was in 1866. The Sacramento Union sent him to the Sandwich Islands to write a series of letters on the sugar trade, an assignment which this time he filled to the editor's satisfaction and returned restored to health. That winter, however, was one of roughing it for him. He could get little to do as reporter or editor and finally took to lecturing in a small way. He was a success from the start. He spoke in many of the small towns of California and Nevada, earning more than a living and, meantime, writing sketches for eastern papers. He's attracted considerable notice, and in March of 1867 he issued his first book containing the Jumping Frog and other stories. Its reception was so cordial that Mark Twain decided to try his fortunes in the East. On reaching New York he learned that a select excursion was about to start for the Holy Land in the steamer Quaker City. He persuaded the Alto, California, for which he had been writing, to advance him the price of the ticket for this trip, $1,200, to be paid in letters at $15 each. He made the trip, which proved the beginning of his fortune, for Innocence Abroad, his first famous book, had taken shape in his mind before his return. To write the book, however, and to live at the same time was a problem, but Senator W. M. Stewart of Nevada, becoming interested in the project, obtained for him a $6 a day committee clerkship, while the work was farmed out to another man at $100 a month. Innocence Abroad, Instant Success. The book was finished in August 1868, but a publisher was hard to find. At last the American publishing company of Hartford agreed to issue it. Its success was instant and overwhelming. Even after edition was sold in such rapid succession that the presses could not turn them out fast enough, Mark Twain had become a man of note overnight. Among Mark Twain's friends on the Holy Land trip had been Judge Jervis J. Langdon of Elmira, New York, and his two children, Dan, of the Innocence, and Lizzie. Mark Twain fell in love with the latter, and it was said afterward that his desire to be near her led him to accept editorial connection in 1869 with the Buffalo Express. But Judge Langdon, who was rich, did not at first favor the union of his daughter and the nearly penniless journalist, and Miss Langdon twice rejected him. He saw it a wife, as he had saw it a publisher, and his third proposal was accepted. His father-in-law gave him a handsome home in Buffalo, but the young couple remained there but a year, going to Hartford, where they lived for many years, and where Mark Twain did perhaps his most prolific work. In rapid succession appeared Ruffing It in 1870, The Golden Age in 1873, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876, A Tramp Abroad in 1880, The Stolen White Elephant in 1883, and, in the same year, Life on the Mississippi. His works were all issued by the American Company, his first publishers. But desiring larger royalties, Mark Twain determined to become his own publisher, and joined with his nephew in establishing in this city the House of C. L. Webster in Company. Success was immediate, but it did not last. The firm brought out The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, A Kinetic at Yankee and King Arthur's Court in 1889, The American Claimant in 1892, Puddin Head Wilson in 1893, and Tom Sawyer Abroad in the same year. His fortune swept away. Two years later the firm failed, and Mark Twain's fortune was swept away. With courage, as unbroken as when he could not get a job as a reporter in San Francisco many years before, he again took to the lecture field to regain his fortunes. He received generous offers to go on tour, and everywhere was greeted by large and enthusiastic audiences. He made a new fortune, paid his debts, as Sir Walter Scott had done, and left the publishing business to others while he worked as hard at his desk as ever. In 1896 appeared the personal recollections of Joan of Arc, more traps abroad, and, following the Equator in 1897, and the man who sick corrupted Hadley Berg, 1900. After an extended trip to Europe he published in 1902 a double barrel detective story, and in recent years besides writing frequently for magazines, particularly the Harper Publications, the Harper Brothers having been his publishers for the last decade or more, he had been engaged with Albert Bigelow Payne, his literary assistant, in writing his autobiography. Much of it has already been published. It was estimated three years ago that he had written 250,000 words, and was still turning out something like one thousand a day when he worked. Mark Twain outlived most of his family, his wife died some years ago, and on the morning before Christmas last year his daughter, Miss Jean Clemens, was drowned in a bathtub in their home at Reading Connecticut. Broken himself in health and utterly crushed by this sudden affliction, he wrote on that day, "'She was all that I had left,' except Clara, who married Mr. Gabrilovich, lately, and has just arrived in Europe.' In 1905 Mark Twain celebrated his 70th birthday with a notable gathering of literary folk. Two years later he was honored by Oxford University with the degree of Doctor of Laws. Though in his younger days he was a great traveller, and was known personally to nearly all the crowned heads of Europe, of late years he had confined his journeys chiefly to Bermuda, whether he was often accompanied by one of his best friends, the late H. H. Rogers, as long as he lived. In nearly all his public appearances in the last five years he had worn white flannel, and even had a dress suit, claw hammer, and all made of this soft white material, whose evident cleanliness appealed so strongly to him. TWAIN AS PRINTER'S DEVIL His own stories of his exploits in boyhood as acting editor. One of the most interesting of all Mark Twain's books or series of personal sketches relate to the crucial but happy-go-lucky period of his life. At twelve he began on his own account. He has told this characteristic story of his first literary venture when the devil got out the paper. I was a very smart child, at the age of thirteen, an unusually smart child, I thought, at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in the community. It did indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was a devil in a printing office, and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had me on his paper, the weekly Hannibal Journal, two dollars a year in advance, five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and unmarketable turnips, and on a lucky summer day he left town to be gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try. Higgins was the editor on the rival paper. He had been jilted, and one night a friend found an open note on the poor fellow's bed in which he stated that he could no longer endure life, and had drowned himself in Bear Creek. The friend ran down there and found Higgins wading back to shore. He had concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it for a few days, but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this was a fine opportunity. I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wood type with a jackknife, one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into the creek in his shirt with a lantern sounding the depth of the water with a walking stick. Next I gently touched up the newest stranger, the lion of the day, the gorgeous Journeyman Taylor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of the first water, and the loudest dressed man in the state. He was an invaderate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy poetry for the journal about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed to Mary in H. Blank L, meaning to marry in Hannibal, of course. But while setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel with what I regarded as a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and I compressed it into a snappy footnote at the bottom thus. We will let this thing pass just this once, but we wish Mr. J. Gordon-Runnels to understand distinctly that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth, when he wants to commune with his friends in H. Blank L, he must select some other medium than the columns of this journal. The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing to attract so much attention as those playful trifles of mine. For once the Hannibal journal was in demand. A novelty it had not experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped in with a double-barreled shotgun early in the forenoon. When he found that I was an infant, as he called me, that had done him the damage, he simply pulled my ears and went away. But he threw up the situation that night and left town. Associate Editor of Morning Glory On the advice of a physician, Mark Twain said he went south shortly after his week as devil and editor-in-chief in one, landing finally as Associate Editor on the Morning Glory and Johnson County War Hoop, Tennessee. He gave this description of his chief. When I went on duty, I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half-buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with cigar stubs and old soldiers, and a stove with its door hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long black cloth frock coat on and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and checkered neckerchief with ends hanging down. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the spirit of the Tennessee press. I wrote as follows. The editors of the semi-weekly earthquake evidently labor under a mistaken apprehension with regard to the Rally-Hack Railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave buzzardville off to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction. I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction. Thunder and lightning, he exclaimed, do you suppose I am going to speak of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen." While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window and marred the symmetry of my ear. Ah, said he, that is that scoundrel Smith of the Moral Volcano. He was due yesterday, and he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot through the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was taking a second chance, and he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger was shot off. Now, here's the way this stuff ought to be written, said the chief editor. I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and inter-lineations, till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had one. It now reads as follows. The inveterate liars of the semi-weekly earthquake are evidently endeavouring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people, another of their vile and brutal falsehoods, with regard to the most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Rallyback Railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side originated in their own fulsome brains, or rather, in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cow-hiding they so richly deserve. McTwayne says he had written this way of the editor of an esteemed contemporary. John W. Blossom Esquire, the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battlecry of Freedom, arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House. His chief editor changed it to read, "'That ass, Blossom, of Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battlecry of Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.' "'Now that is the way to write,' he said, peppery and to the point. Mush and milk journalism gives me the phantods.' Blow to his friends here. New York editors and authors extoll the man and the writer. The news of Samuel L. Clemens' death shocked all his friends and literary associates with its suddenness. Although it had been known that he was in a serious condition, no one seemed to expect that his illness would terminate fatally so soon. F. Hopkinson Smith, who has known Mr. Clemens for thirty years ever since, in fact, the great humorist first came to this city and lectured at Cooper Union, was dining at the home of Mr. and Mrs. George Clark at 1027 Fifth Avenue when he first heard of Clemens' death. "'It does not seem possible that Sam is dead,' said Mr. Smith. We had been friends ever since he first came from San Francisco and gave his readings of the jumping frog on the lecture platform. He had the kindest heart in the world. The reading public knew him more for his humor, but his friends knew him as a big-hearted human man. His attitude toward everyone was the kindest. In life and in art it was always the human that appealed to him most. The humor of his books was the real, the genuine humor. Humor to be lasting must be clean. Clemens' humor was essentially clean. It will be lasting for that reason. It was the humor of human nature. There was never anywhere in it any double entendre. It was always kindly. It never ridiculed anyone. It never made fun of the littleness of men. Twain did not make fun of Tom Sawyer painting the back-yard fence. He brought out the human note in the boy, and that's what makes us always remember that passage with joy, and read it over and over." From George M. Harvey of Harper and Brothers, who was Mr. Clemens' publisher, is abroad, but Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper's, at his home in Mettuccio, New Jersey, last night spoke with a motion of the man who had been not only a contributor, but a friend. "'In Mr. Clemens' death I have lost a dear friend,' Mr. Alden said, "'I feel a deep sense of personal loss, and I can't express my sense of the loss to literature. As for our personal relations they were much more than those of editor and contributor. Nobody could tell anything about Mark Twain better than he could tell it himself, or indeed half so well. He has always been writing his autobiography. I have always believed that literature has lost much by not having had more of his imaginative creations on a higher plane. More works like Joan of Arc, for example." Mr. Alden has published his personal recollections of Mr. Clemens in the Book News Monthly for April. Mark Twain was, with one exception, the best known American of his time, and without exception, outside of Poe and the New England School, he was our most distinguished writer, said Robert Underwood Johnson of the century. He had the singular distinction of having, so to speak, naturalized American humor in many lands. This, it seems to me, was due to the fact that his humor was not greatly dependent on difficult dialects, but on large underlying ideas, and on a keen appreciation of human nature, and on a skillful use of the incongruous. In dramatic effect, in surprise, and in climax, he was unequaled and inexhaustible. I think that these things are likely to give more than usual permanency to his writings. We have outgrown many once popular humorists, but I can't conceive of a generation of readers to whom, on the whole, his work will not be of enjoyable interest, while, literally, he has added to the gaiety of nations and made us all his debtors, he has also, in his serious work, revealed an admirable and tender sympathy for children, and a chivalry toward the oppressed. So much has he become a part of our lives that it is difficult to think of a world without Mark Twain. His countrymen's tributes express deep sense of what Mark Twain means to Americans. Mark Twain's death has meant to Americans everywhere and in all walks of life what the death of no other American could have meant. His personality and his humor have been an integral part of American life for so long that it has seemed almost impossible to realize an America without him. Something of this feeling is expressed in the tributes to his memory which, following hard upon his end, have come from all parts of the country. Some of these tributes are printed below. William Lyon Phelps, Professor of English Literature at Yale University. The death of Mark Twain is a very great loss to American letters. I regarded him as our foremost representative in literature at the present day. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, his two masterpieces, will live for many years as illustrative of a certain phase of American life. Colonel Thomas Wentford Higginson in Boston. It is impossible to exaggerate the loss to the country. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, now in her 91st year in Boston, the news of Mark Twain's death will be sad to many people. He was personally highly esteemed and much beloved, a man of letters, and with a very genuine gift of humor and of serious thought as well. Hamlin Garland, novelist in Chicago. Mark Twain's death marks the exit of a literary man who was as distinctly American as was Walt Whitman. The work of most writers could be produced in any country, but I think we, as well as everybody in foreign lands, will look upon Twain's work as being as closely related to this country as the Mississippi River itself. We who knew him personally hardly need to speak of him as a man, for all the world knew him. No one ever heard him speak without being inspired, and no one ever saw him without being proud of him. George Aid of Kentland, Indiana. I read every line Twain wrote, for he was a kind of literary God to me. His influence has already worked itself into the literature of our day. We owe much of our cheerfulness, simplicity, and hope to him. Most of all, Twain grew old beautifully, showing his simple, childlike faith for ultimate success throughout all his adversities. Booth Tarkenton at Indianapolis. He seemed to me the greatest prose writer we had, and beyond that a great man. His death is a national loss, but we have the consolation that he and his genius belong to and were of us. Charles Major at Indianapolis. He created a new school of humor, the purpose of which was not only to be funny, but to be true. He could write nothing that he did not at least feel to be true. All that he wrote was half fun and whole earnest. James Whitken Riley. The world has lost not only a genius, but a man of striking character, of influence, and of boundless resources. He knew the human heart, and he was sincere. He knew children, and this knowledge made him tender. England feels his loss. Only Tolstoy's death could be more regretted, says London Paper. London April 22. The British public followed the reports of Mark Twain's last illness with deepest sympathy, and the news of his death will be felt as a national loss. All of the London newspapers publish extended sketches of his career with portraits and reminiscences, especially recalling his last visit to England in 1907, when Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, presiding at the Pilgrim's Dinner, paid an eloquent tribute to Mark Twain as a man Englishmen delighted to honor. The news of his death arrived too late for editorial comment on the papers. The Morning Post's obituary says that he enjoyed a popularity in Great Britain rarely exceeded by any American man of letters. The Daily Mail says that it is no exaggeration to say that Mark Twain was the greatest humorist the modern world had known. With the exception of Tolstoy, says the morning leader, probably there is no writer whose death would rouse more universal emotions of respect and regret. Mark Twain's death leaves a blank in the purely human literature. Huckleberry Finn Talks. Original of character calls Mark Twain greatest American literary figure, special to the New York Times, Paris, Missouri, April 21st. The old days are passing, the men who made them are gone, and even the long sweep of the majestic Yellow River seems to have dwindled and lessened. The noise of its traffic, the music of its many deep-throated voices are practically no more. The man who caught them and froze them into human words for the delight of the world is dead. So spoke B. C. M. Farthing, friend and schoolmate of Mark Twain, and the original Huckleberry Finn, when told to-night of the death of his boyhood friend and companion. I can't talk to you about it, he said. For all that I might say would be construed either as boasting intimacy with the greatest literary figure the nation has ever produced, or as an effect to gain cheap notoriety. I desire neither. I can see the gray-haired man who died at Redding today as he stood at the window of the old Hannibal Courier office fifty years ago. His sleeves rolled up, leaning on his case, bargaining with me and his younger brother Henry for a might of a boat that lay down at the river's edge. I can see the shock of hair and the quizzical gray eyes and the kindness, yet with all the shrewdness that shone from them. The racial love of adventure was in him and the spirit of the river fanded into flame. Next Visit to Washington Humorist invited Cannon to luncheon, which neither ever ate. Washington April 21. On the occasion of his last visit to the national capital, which was in December 1906, Mark Twain appeared in the halls of Congress on a cold day dressed in a suit of cream-colored flannel. When asked why he was wearing white on such a day, the aged humorist replied, "'This is not a suit. It is a uniform. It is the uniform of the American Association of Purity and Perfection, of which I am President, Secretary, and Treasurer, and the only man in the United States eligible for membership.'" Going further on his costume, Mr. Clemens declared that, when a man was seventy-one years old, he had a right to dress in the fashion that conformed most to his comfort and enjoyment. "'I prefer light clothing and colors,' he added, like those worn by the ladies at the opera." He said men's clothing, especially evening dress, was abominable. It was in favor of a change in the copyright laws that Mark Twain made his last appearance in Washington. Other literary celebrities also were here. Mr. Clemens appeared before the Joint Committee on Copyright, and spoke in favor of extending the life of a copyright from forty-two years to the life of the author and fifty years beyond. "'I think that ought to satisfy any reasonable author,' he told the committee, "'because it will take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves.'" Appearing at Speaker Cannon's office to seek advice in regard to the copyright bill, Mr. Clemens, who had arrived on the scene early in the day, was told by the Speaker Secretary that the Speaker had not yet reached the capital. "'Well, when he comes, will you present to him this letter?' asked the humorist. When the Speaker arrived he read the letter, which was to the effect that, during a long and busy life the author had not bothered Congress much, wherefore he thought he should be given a vote of thanks by Congress. With a twinkle in his eye the Speaker looked up from the letter and said, "'Well, Mark, I would like to admit you to the floor of the house, but I cannot even entertain a motion to that effect.'" But Mr. Cannon did even better for Mr. Clemens. He gave him the use for several days of his private office, wither nearly all the members of Congress flocked as soon as they learned that Mark Twain was holding an informal reception there. A few days later he said to Mr. Cannon, "'I would like to become better acquainted with you and wish you would take lunch with me to-morrow.'" "'But I don't eat lunch,' replied Mr. Cannon. "'So much the better.'" "'Neither do I,' was the retort. "'Well, let George Harvey eat the lunch while we smoke and talk.'" And this program was followed. Editorial Mark Twain That Samuel L. Clemens was the greatest American humorist of his age nobody will deny. Posterity will be left to decide his relative position in letters among the humorists of English literature. It is certain that his contemporary fame abroad was equal to his fame at home. All Europe recognized his genius, the English people appreciated him at his own worth, and the University of Oxford honored him with a degree. His writings commanded a higher price in the market than those of any other contemporary whose career was solely devoted to literature. His public was of enormous extent. From the jumping frog to the diary of Adam everything that came from his pen was eagerly read and heartily enjoyed by multitudes. Much that he wrote has already been forgotten inevitably and in spite of definitive editions and the admirably practical management of his business in the later years of his career. But nearly all that Jonathan Swift, Fielding, Stern and Smollett wrote has been forgotten, though their fame resting on a few books still lives. Artemis Ward, Mark Twain's greatest predecessor as a national jester, is now little more than a name. NASBE belonged exclusively to the Reconstruction period. For any American humorist writer it would be fit to compare with Mark Twain, we must go back to Washington Irving. But the author of Nickerbocker's Ironical History and the Sleepy Hollow legend did not surpass in those denotements of the humorous genius, the author of The Adventures of a Cub Pilot on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn. Indeed it is hard to say that Irving ever surpassed Clemens. Without belittling the first great American prose writer we are compelled to doubt if posterity will name him in the same breath with the humorist who has just passed away. The innocence abroad and a tramp abroad are likely to be remembered among the great travel books of all time. Full of the audacity, the wild exaggeration and violent contrasts which distinguish the national humor they are equally remarkable as the voracious record of fresh impressions on a fertile and responsive mind. Mr. Clemens's more serious works, such as The Prince and the Pauper, an incursion into the field of historical romance, a Yankee at the court of King Arthur and Joan of Arc have been read by multitudes with great delight. He has been quoted in common conversation oftener perhaps than any of his fellow countrymen, including Benjamin Franklin and Lincoln. He has been honoured by misquotation, too, and the humorous sayings of the ancients have been attributed to him, though he never borrowed. His wit was his own, and so was his extravagance, and his powers of observation never failed him. We have called him the greatest American humorist. We may leave at an open question whether he was not also the greatest American writer of fiction. The creator of Mulberry Sellers and Puddin Head Wilson, the inventor of that Southwestern feud in Huckleberry Finn, which, with all its mildly imaginative details, is still infused with rare pathos, has certainly an undying vitality. An emotional and quite unconventional sort of man, Clemens was, whose early life was a hard struggle for existence. He obtained his education where he could get it. Presumably his faults were as large as his merits. Intellectually he was of Herculean proportions. His death will be mourned everywhere, and smiles will break through the tears as remembrance of the man's rich gift to his era comes to the mourner's minds. However his work may be judged by impartial and unprejudiced generations, his fame is imperishable. End of Section 11, April 22, 1910. Mark Twain is dead at seventy-four. Twain, as printer's devil, England feels his loss. Last visit to Washington, and editorial, Mark Twain. Red by John Greenman. Section 12 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 6, 1910 through 1919. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. April 23, 1910. Mark Twain's last book. Mark Twain and Haley's Comet. Editorial, Mark Twain. Mark Twain's body to be here to-day. Mourned in many lands. Tribute to Twain by his home folk. Mark Twain's last book. Many a great man on his death-bed has called for a favorite book. Sedate biographers are apt to regard such whims as unimportant. Tennyson's son records that the poet called for his Shakespeare, while he was dying, and passed away with the open book on the bed. To what play, or what favorite passage, in a play he had turned in that last hour we shall never know. William Morris, when he died, had been turning over the leaves of a rare old book, Sacred History and Lives of the Saints, richly illustrated with a thousand or more illuminated prints and many ornamentations. The choice in both cases was wholly understandable. The dying thoughts of these two men were not out of their usual mental current. Mr. Clemens had called for Carlisle's French Revolution. To what episode in that tumultuous aggregation of epithets, that collection of strangely uncouth but often splendidly forcible descriptive passages, did his mind revert in his last hour? It may seem an odd book for a dying man to think about, but there are moods to which it appeals strongly. The whole sum of human life is between its covers. It sets forth, as well as other great books, the vanity of worldly glory, the need of charity. Clemens was a strong man, and one of just principles, on the whole, with a heart full of sympathy. It is interesting to know that he often must have found mental refreshment and consolation in that greatest of the works of another strong and emotional man. Mark Twain and Haley's Comet To the editor of The New York Times I wish to draw your attention to a peculiar coincidence. Mark Twain born November 30, 1835. Last perihelion of Haley's Comet, November 10, 1835. Mark Twain died April 21, 1910. Perihelion of Haley's Comet, April 20, 1910. And so appears that the lifetime of the great humorist was nearly identical, the difference being exactly fifteen days, with the last long year of the great comet. R. Friderici, Westchester, New York, April 22, 1910. Editorial. Mark Twain. Like every man who attains much note in the world of letters, Mr. Clemens was of a nature far from simple, was a compound of quite disparate qualities. But the compound with the passage of time became a blend, and the fiery intoxicant of the early years manifested itself only as an invigorating stimulant with a flavor almost bland. Of the great mass of his writing, the portion that is most widely known, that won its way to the most widely different readers, and gave him two fortunes in succession, and a fame that is practically universal, and may be measurably enduring, the spirit was the spirit of mischief. He wrote, as in the shifting associations of his wandering youth, he talked, plotted, and acted with one pretty constant aim to make fun of the men and things about him that lent themselves to that sport of pursuit. In general it was harmless enough, and as he grew older it became kindlier. But to the last there was always a keen, avid, sometimes slightly unfeeling love of ridiculing whatever and whomever he could make ridiculous. There was in it the temperament of the practical joker, and as his reminiscent conversation was apt to be full of stories of practical jokes, so his beginnings in literature were crowded with them. The innocence abroad was a catalogue resené of them, teeming and reeking with ridicule as Munchhausen's travels with a marvellous, or the odyssey with cunning. The ridicule was, however, the work of an undoubted genius, of a mind of extraordinary vigor, and a fancy as original as it was fertile. It would have paled long ago had not this been true. No common intellect could have sustained for half the time, or through half the great output, even the attention much less the admiring enjoyment of readers which he commanded whenever he chose to write. We recall hardly a parallel in literary history for a continuous vogue so lasting for a work of like character. In that regard mutates montandis. One is tempted to a comparison with Rabelais. But the writings of our American satirist and humorist, Twain was distinctly both, had no thread of continuity running through them, were not parts of an elaborate whole, and were written for an unlearned and uncritical mass of cursory and habitually indifferent readers. Their sustained fascination was the more remarkable. Of course it is easy to say that this fascination was due to the author's faculty for putting things in a surprising fashion for what one of his critics calls a skillful use of the incongruous. But that faculty, in the degree that Mark Twain had it, was in itself a gift of genius, and it was unquestionably inborn. Doubtless it was developed by his long use of it, but it was not and could not have been acquired any more than Turner's sense of color or Dommier's synthetic drawing. Much of the work that has won such extraordinary fame may be classed as grotesque, but the contrast that made it so was perpetually varying, fresh, impressive and imposing. It is idle to try to analyze a gift so rare, but it is permitted to suggest that much of its charm was due to the half-wayward, rarely formulated, but very real moral earnestness that found expression beneath, and almost in spite of, the ceaseless mockery. This side of Mr. Clemens' nature he made few attempts distinctly to embody in his writings, and these were not very well understood. They were caviar to the general, and did not directly appeal to the vast audience he had collected. But it was a side of his nature not to be ignored and, in its essence, worthy of sincere and delicate respect. There is a touch of the pathetic in its consideration. It is so little in obvious harmony with the body of his writings. But it existed, and with it went a gift, also little recognized and irregularly, perhaps whimsically manifested, that of poetic imagination and aspiration. It is by no means inconceivable, had he sprung from cultured stock, been trained in letters, and pursued his career amid literary associations, incentives, criticism, and encouragement, that he might have been an imaginative writer, romanticist, dramatist, even poet, of extraordinary attainment. His degree of Doctor of Letters from the ancient University of Oxford was not, in his actual statement of achievement, misdirected, but it may be held to be a recognition of unusual gifts in practice imperfectly developed and partly atrophied. Time, with its winnowing, may yet bestow on our great humorist a recognition not freely accorded in life. Mark Twain's body to be here today. Friends will attend simple services in Brick Presbyterian Church. Burial in Elmira. Fortune for daughter. Publisher believes it will be large. Death of author is mourned in many lands. Special to the New York Times. Reading Connecticut, April 22. New York friends of Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, will have opportunity to pay their respects to his memory tomorrow afternoon. His body is to arrive at the Grand Central Station on the Pittsfield Express at noon, and at four o'clock simple funeral services will be held in the Brick Presbyterian Church at Fifth Avenue and 37th Street. At these, relatives and as many of Mr. Clemens's friends as possible will be present. Afterward the body will be taken to Elmira, New York, where after another simple service it will be buried beside those of his wife and children. Jarvis Langdon, nephew of Mr. Clemens, said this afternoon that if Mrs. Gabrilevich, the only surviving member of the immediate family, had consulted only her own wishes, there would have been no public funeral, but only a simple service at Elmira. When arrangements were discussed, however, she said she felt that her father belonged to the public to a large extent, and that the public had certain rights in regard to him at a time like the present. She therefore consented to a semi-public service in New York. Albert Bigelow Payne, one of Mr. Clemens's literary executors, left on the early morning train for New York to consult E. E. Loomis, one of the trustees of the will, and the firm of Harper and Brothers, who have the public services in charge. When he returned at five o'clock he announced that final arrangements had been made. He said the coffin had been chosen, a severely plain one of mahogany. F. E. Duneca, of the publishing firm, completed the arrangements for the funeral. The Journey to New York. The body will be taken to the West Reading Station at ten o'clock tomorrow morning and placed on board the Pittsfield Express. It will be accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Gabrilevich, Mr. Payne, and servants who have been in Mr. Clemens's service for many years. All business will be suspended in this vicinity, and the villagers and farmers from the surrounding hills will assemble. On the arrival of the body in New York it will be taken to the Brick Presbyterian Church. The church service will consist of little more than a brief address by Dr. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton, and there will be no pallbearers. There will probably be no music. At the conclusion of the services the body will be taken to Elmira, New York, in Lake Forest, the private car of E. E. Loomis, Vice President of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. Services will be held at the home of General Langdon and the Reverend Joseph H. Twitchell of Hartford, a lifelong friend of Mr. Clemens, will make an address. Late to-day the body was prepared for burial and dressed in the white cashmere which Mr. Clemens so constantly wore in the later years of his life. It lies in his many windowed room on the second floor. Some of the persons of the neighborhood were permitted to see the body to-day. Fortune Left to Daughter According to Albert Bigelow Payne the will is to be read in about a week. He believes that Mrs. Gabrylovich will be the sole heir and will be asked by a courtesel to make provision for some of the older servants. Katie Leary has been housekeeper for twenty- nine years. The trustees are E. E. Loomis, Jarvis Langdon, and Z. S. Freeman of the Liberty National Bank. The house was not barred and shuttered to-day, but looked cheerful in the spring sunshine, as Mr. Clemens would have wished it. The doors and windows downstairs were wide open, and the sunlight was allowed to flood in. All the windows of his room were open, and breezes played through their curtains. The whole atmosphere was strikingly typical of the genial man who had made a dwelling there. After the suspense and anxiety of the week, the worn-out watchers spent the day in rest. Mr. and Mrs. Gabrylovich remained in their apartments all day. The nephew, Jarvis Langdon, was about the house during what was necessary. During the day so many telegrams of sympathy poured in that the telegraph operator, in the little station at Redding, used up all his forms. Some of the more prominent names represented were President Taft, ex-President Roosevelt, William Dean Howells, H. M. Alden, Melville E. Stone, William Milliken Sloan, Robert Underwood Johnson, Archdeacon J. Townsend Russell, W. R. Co., Brander Matthews, Frank A. Muncie, Henry Watterson, George Barr McCutchen, George W. Cable, Walter Scott, Lynn Roby Meeking, and Captain Horace E. Bixby, the Mississippi pilot who fifty years ago taught Mark Twain the river. A message was received from the authorities of Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain's boyhood home, asking that his body be taken there for burial. Mrs. Gabrylovich in reply said that as the family burial ground was in Elmiron, New York, it was thought best that the body be taken there. A Prayer Not Yet Published Dan Beard, the artist and naturalist who lives only a half a mile from Stormfield, was a caller. He went to leave his own and his wife's cards. Afterward he grew reminiscent and sitting on a large rock where he said Mark Twain had often sat. He told a few stories of the dead author. He said Mark Twain had shown him one day a draft of a prayer. Mr. Beard was much impressed and asked the author why he did not publish it. Ah! said Mark Twain. That must not be published until after my death. While a man is alive he cannot speak the truth, but when he is dead it is different. Then he went on to tell, in his peculiar drawl, I showed this to my secretary, and she said, Do not publish it, it is blasphemy. I showed it to my daughter. Father, she said, Do not publish it, it is blasphemy. Then in despair I showed it to my butler. He said, Mr. Clemens, do not publish it, it is blasphemy. So I added four lines, and then they were all satisfied. Mr. Beard told a recent experience the humorist had confided to him. He was walking up Fifth Avenue when a little girl about ten years old slipped her hand in his and started to match his stride. I'm awful glad to see you, she said. Are you? said he. That's very nice. Yes, she answered. I knew you right away. They continued to the next corner, chatting. He, proud that he could be so well known that a little girl like this could pick him out. Suddenly a horrible thought struck him and he stopped. Who am I? he asked, turning round. Why? answered his companion. Buffalo Bill, of course! An effort was made to get the text of the prayer mentioned by Dan Beard, but Mr. Payne said he did not know of the manuscript. Mr. Payne is one of Mark Twain's literary executors, there being another. And in many lands. Germans ranked him next to Bush, his works in Chinese. Special cable to the New York Times. Berlin, April 22. Mark Twain's death has been widely and sympathetically noted in Germany, where his works have been outranked in popularity only by those of the Fatherland's own humorist, Wilhelm Bush, whom the deceased American most resembled. All of Mr. Clements's books were translated into the language which he ridiculed so brilliantly. His celebrated onslaught on the tongue wherein Goethe and Schiller contrived to sing has been enjoyed by Germans almost as much as Americans. During one of Mr. Clements's sojourns in Berlin fifteen years ago he attended a course of lectures on the history of German literature in the classes of Professor Erich Schmidt, now Lord Rector of the University, who will be Mr. Roosevelt's host on May 12th. Speaking to the writer of this dispatch in London ten years ago, Mr. Clements was asked what he considered his best story, and said, Huckleberry Finn, undoubtedly! The same summer I learned that Sir Chichen Leifernlue, then the Chinese minister to London, was engaged in translating a set of Mr. Clements's works into Chinese. EXPRESSIONS OF REGRED IN GREAT BRITON ON THE DEATH OF MARK TWAIN ATTAIN ALMOST TO THE DEMENTIONS OF A NATIONAL TRIBUTE TO THE MAN, AS THE DAILY MAIL SAYS, whose humour was, like his honour, clean and of good intent, and another rich contribution to the common heritage of the English-speaking nations. The Times says, Mark Twain is dead, and no one will ever make his jokes again, for they were the result of his particular character and particular experience. Berlin, April 22. Extended appreciations of Mark Twain appear in today's journals. The local Anzeiger says, not only English-speaking peoples, but the whole world of culture grieves that he has gone. The Berliner Zeitung Amitag, in a two-column estimate of Mr. Clements's work, expresses the opinion that the American author was loved in Germany more than is the whole body of French and English humorists, because his humour turned fundamentally upon serious and earnest conceptions of life. The paper says that the American works most widely read in Germany are probably those of Emerson and Mark Twain. The Taggeblatt says, among the humorists of the nineteenth century, Mark Twain was the most successful, because he employed all the means of skillful conqueror, swift attack, surprise, and finally the moderation of a humane conqueror. He surprises, seizes, and overwhelms, but hurts nobody. Disturbs nobody's peace. The Deutsche Tages Zeitung has this to say of Mr. Clements. None equal him in embodying the typical Yankee qualities, especially Yankee humour, which is too grotesque for the German taste. The Croy's Zeitung comments, Mark Twain probably was the most popular American author, and he was also popular in Europe, where the grotesque boldness of his humour received unstinted admiration. He was received everywhere in Europe as the prince of humorists. The Burson Courier describes Mr. Clements as, America's classic humorist. And the Burson Zeitung says, we can well call him a great benefactor to humanity, for who has given our serious, anxious age so many hours of innocent mirth? The American Chaucer is the evening standard's estimate of Mark Twain's position in literature. Today the paper says, like Chaucer he kept a hospitable heart for what was good and healthy. Since the death of Charles Dickens no writer of English has been so universally read, and at the moment of his death Mark Twain was known as only one other living writer was known. Mark Twain and Count Tolstoy are inheritors of worldwide fame. Rome, April 22. The whole press of Rome gives much space today to the death of Mark Twain, recalling the months he spent in Italy, the death of his wife at Florence, and the recent visit to Rome of his daughter Clara and her husband, Osip Kabilievich, on their honeymoon. Vienna, April 22. Intelligence of the death of Mark Twain was received with universal regret in this city, where he had numerous friends and acquaintances. The newspapers published lengthy obituary notices and recall incidents of his residence here in the winter of 1897-98. Roosevelt is grieved. Mark Twain's achievements a reason for national pride. Paris, April 22. Former President Roosevelt was greatly pained to hear of the death of Mark Twain. It is, with sincere grief, that I learned of the death of this great American author, he said. His position, like that of Joel Chandler Harris, was unique. Not only in American letters, but in the literary of the world. He was not only a great humorist, but a great philosopher, and his writings form one of the assets in America's contribution to the world of achievement, of which we have a right as a nation to be genuinely proud. In the Pigskin Library, which Mr. Roosevelt carried through the jungles of Africa, were two of the late author's books, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. And Mr. Roosevelt says that he read both of them several times, and always with the greatest interest. His Estate. Probably Large. Publisher says Mark Twain's income in late years was enormous. Mark Twain's royalties from books, which have sold in larger number than the works of any other American author, left him at his death a wealthy man. A member of the firm of Harper and Brothers, who for ten years have been his publishers, discussed his books and royalties yesterday afternoon. There have been published in America, of Mark Twain's books, he said, about five million or five million five hundred thousand copies. And these do not take into consideration publications abroad, which have been made in many languages. While we do not care to announce the figures Mr. Clemens received for his stories that appeared in our magazines, still it may be said that his royalties were larger than those of any other contemporaneous author. And that his books had a larger sale, even in the last year, than any other writer of the period. Mr. Clemens' income of late years was enormous, and he always had large sums of ready money at his command. It is hardly probable that with such intimate friends as the late H. H. Rogers to advise him, he failed to invest this money wisely and to his advantage. A short time ago Mr. Clemens desired to have his books a part of every household library and entered into a contract with us to publish them at twenty-five dollars for a set of twelve volumes. He received only a small royalty on this edition, but its sales astonished both himself and us, and we had counted on something extraordinary too. Mr. Clemens' books will sell for years to come, both in this country and abroad, as he is more highly rated in Europe than he is in his own country. There he has counted a great philosopher, while here he is known at present chiefly as a humorist. Mark Twain of long ago. One old friend says he was almost eighty years old. Salt Lake City, April 22nd. Mark Twain lacked only seven months and nine days, a four-score years of age, said Judge C. C. Goodwin, a veteran editor in commenting on the death of the humorist. Judge Goodwin was one of the brilliant company who gathered at the Comstock load in the old days. I know he said that he was only seventy-five, continued the Judge, but when we were in Virginia City, Nevada, Mark was older than I was, and I am seventy-eight. Here is the record of it. He opened a book of biographies by Amelia J. Carver, published in 1889. There it was, Samuel L. Clemens, born November thirtieth eighteen-thirty. I did not go on the Virginia City Enterprise until Clemens left it, said Judge Goodwin, but I never ceased to hear from him. He first wrote a burlesque Fourth of July oration, which was published in Aurora, Nevada paper. As I remember it, it began, I was sired by the great American eagle and born by a continental dam. This pleased Joseph T. Goodman, editor of the Virginia City Enterprise. He wrote to Clemens, telling him that if he were not making more than the Enterprise was paying, he would be welcomed to the staff of the paper. One day a man came into the editorial sanctum. He wore a dilapidated hat, jeans, a hickory shirt, and carried a roll of blankets. That was Mark Twain's entrance into literature. Except for his experience on the Enterprise, it is doubtful if he would ever have been known as a genius. The following edited article contains only reference to Mark Twain. Tribute to Twain by his home folk. His writing is clean because he was clean. The toast of the Missourians. A forerunner of reform. The Gilded Age, an up-to-date story of grafters, says ex-Governor Folk F. Hopkinson Smith's eulogy. The men and women in New York who come from Missouri, the state that produced Mark Twain, held their annual dinner last night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and almost every speaker paid a tribute to the great humorist. F. Hopkinson Smith said that he had been asked to attend the dinner and say something about Mark Twain because he was from Virginia, the state that gave birth to Twain's father. Tonight there lies cold in death, almost within the sound of my voice, went on Mr. Smith, a clean-minded man, whose pen stood for all that is beautiful in literature. There was never a line from his pen that left a sting. There was nothing bitter, no sarcasm, no irony, no so-called mud-slinging, and that, too, in an age when misjudging is rampant, there was not a sentence he wrote which the purest of women could not read with pleasure, because he was clean, therefore none of his output could be otherwise. I ask, Mr. President, that we rise and drink a silent toast to the memory of Mark Twain. The suggested was acted upon with alacrity. We mourn tonight the death of Missouri's most famous son, said ex- Governor Joseph W. Folk. He had a deeper insight into nature than any author in the last century, not accepting Dickens himself. The Gilded Age, he wrote twenty-five years ago, describes the ways and doings of grafters better than any book written in recent years. His works have made millions of lives brighter, and the world is better for his having lived in it. Mark Twain as a Reformer. Ex-Governor Folk thought that Mark Twain's works had marked the beginning of the great reform movement that has been sweeping over this country, and is still doing its work of regeneration. After the Civil War he went on, people were busy trying to adjust their business and household affairs, and there was full opportunity for the sowing of the seed of corruption and their growth. Then the people, of whom the majority is always honest and straight, saw what had happened, whereupon there was a beginning made to clean out the houses of government. End of Section 12. April 23, 1910. Mark Twain's last book. Mark Twain and Haley's Comet. Editorial Mark Twain. Mark Twain's body to be here today. Mourned in many lands, and Tribute to Twain by his home folk. Read by John Greenman.