 The New York Times, April 22, 1910, Front Page, Mark Twain is Dead at seventy-four. Red for LibriVox.org by Esther. And 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. Surviving Child with Him. Tragic death of his daughter Jean recently did much to hurry his end. Danbury, Connecticut, April 21, Samuel Longhorn Clemens. Mark Twain died 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. Two weeks 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 Kerberlewitz, and the humorous biographer Albert Bigelow Payne, had been by the bed waiting for the end, which Dr. Quintard and 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. Looms, and her husband, who is vice-president of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Amp, 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 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 bases 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 clashed 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 was 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 of movement, asked in a faint voice for a 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 eliminated 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 nurses bending over him could not understand. Then 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 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. Quintard, 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 and broken. 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 doctor said Mark Twain was dying of angina pectoris. But they say among themselves that he died of a broken heart. And this is a verdict not of popular sentiment alone. Albert Bidgelow Payne, his biographer-to-be and literary-executor, who has been constantly with him, said that for the last 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 gayatee. He was staying at the home of William H. Allen. 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 Bigelow Payne that his friend was in a most serious condition. Mr. Payne immediately cabled to Mrs. Brebelewitz, his surviving daughter, who was in Europe, and started himself on April 2 for Bermuda, embarking with the 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 Reading. 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 there 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 courtry, settled near Reading, 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 Gene Clemens and will be built on a site about half a mile from Stormfield at Crossroads. 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. Housley said to-night that he was unable to say that the Angina Pectoris from which Mark Twain died wasn't anyway related to nicotine poisoning. Some constitutions he said seemed immune from 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 past the point of speech, and it was no longer certain that his ideas were held, he would make the motion of waving a cigar, and smiling, expell 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 Reading that General Israel Putnam of revolutionary fame mustered his sparse ranks. Putnam Park now encloses the memory of his camp. Mark Twain first heard of it at the dipper given him on his seventeenth 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. Sherwood 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. Where 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 as 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 grey stone walls. The entrance to it is a winding lane. Through this lane the Innocence at Home loved to wander in his white flannels for homely gossip with the neighbours. They remember him best as one who above all things loved a good listening. For Mark Twain was a mighty talker, stored with fairy-tales, for little maids he adored, and, ruder speech for more masculine ears. It is a legend that he was vastly proud of his famous mock 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 Langhorn. No date has yet been set, as the family is still undecided whether or not there should be a public funeral first in New York City. It is probable that Stormfield will be kept as a summer place by Mrs. Gabrie Lowitz, 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. Paine 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. Gabrie Lowitz will aid Mr. Paine in the final decision as to what use shall be made of these. Mark Twain's Career Long life struggles and achievements of Samuel Langhorn Clements Samuel Langhorn Clements 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 humorous and satirist living. His famous telegram to a newspaper, publishing a report of his death when happily it was intrigue, 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 Clements, who migrated from Virginia to Kentucky, and then on to Adair County, Tennessee, when a young man. There he married a young woman named Langhorn, who brought him family prestige and many broad acres. But with the prevalent spirit of unrest among pioneers, the couple crossed over into Missouri, settling at Florida Monroe County, where their famous son was born. Mark Twain's life, however, really did not begin until 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. John Clements, so the record runs, went to school there, and so also the record runs, studied just as little as he could, if he studied at all. He had been painted in that period of his career as an incorrigible truant, roaming the river-banks and bluffs, watching the passing steam-boats, and listening keenly to the trials that went on in the shabby office, where the justice of the 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 Puddinhead Wilson. Mark Twain's school days ended when he was twelve. The father died, leaving nothing behind, saved the reputation of being a good neighbor and an upright man, and his children at once became 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. About 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 hands 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 in cash and promised five thousand 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. Finally 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, but with the exception of several excursions. 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. Then he and Bret 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 blank. The Sacramento Union sent him to Sandwich Islands to write a blank of letters on the sugar trade an arrangement 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. These 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 secret excursion was about to start for the Holy Land in the steamer Quaker City. He persuaded the Alta California, for which he had been writing, to advance him the price of the ticket for this trip. To be paid in letters at fifteen dollars each. He made his 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 six dollar a day committee clerkship while the work was farmed out to another man at a hundred dollars a month. It's a broad, 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. Addition after addition 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 to wife as he saw to 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, where Mark Twain did perhaps his most work. 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 hard at his desk as ever. In 1896 appeared the personal recollections of Joan of Arc. More tramps abroad, and, following the equator in 1897, and the man who corrupted Hadleyburg, 1900. After an extended trip to Europe he published in 1902 a double-barreled 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 Bigelopayne, his literary assistant, in writing his autobiography. Much of it has already been published. It was estimated three years ago that he had written two hundred and fifty thousand words, and was still turning out something like a thousand a day when he worked. Twain had 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 ahead left, except Clara, who married Mr. Gebirovich, lately, and has just arrived in Europe. In 1905 Mark Twain celebrated his seventieth birthday with a notable gathering of literary folk. Two years later he was honoured by Oxford University with a 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 journey 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 and boyhood as acting editor. One of the most interesting of all Mark Twain's books, or series of personal sketches related to the crucial but happy-go-lucky period of his life. At twelve he began his own account. He has told this characteristic story of his first literary venture when the devil got the paper. I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen, and 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 waiting back to the 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 and graved 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. First I gently touched up the newest stranger, the lion of the day, the gorgeous journeyman-tailer from Quincy. He was a simpering cox-comb of the first water and the loudest dressed man in the state. He was an invertebrate 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. 1, meaning to Mary 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 humour, 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. 1, 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. Hagen dropped in with a double-billed shotgun early in the afternoon. When he found that it was an infant, as he called me, that had done him the damage, he simply pulled my ears and went away, and 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 a devil, an editor and chief in one, landing finally as Associate Editor on the Morning Glory in Johnson County, 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 necked kerchief with ends hanging down. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the script of the Tennessee Press. I wrote as follows. The editors of the semi-weekly earthquake evidently labor under a mistaking apprehension with regard to the Ballyhack 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 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'm 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 erasers and interlinations till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now reads as follows. The inverterate liars of the semi-weakly earthquake are evidently endeavouring to palm off a noble and chivalrous people, another of their vile and brutal falsehoods, with regard to the most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack 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 regarded as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses, the cow-hiding they so richly deserve. Mark Twain 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 fan-tuds. 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. E. Hopkinson Smith, who has known Mr. Clemens for thirty years ever since, in fact the great humours first came to the 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 humour, 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 humour of his books was the real, the genuine humour. Humour to be lasting must be clean. Clemens' humour was essentially clean. It will be lasting for that reason. It was the humour 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 littleest of men. Twain did not make fun of Tom Sawyer painting the backyard 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. Colonel George M. Harvey of Harper and Amp Brothers, who was Mr. Clemens' publisher, is abroad, but Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper's, at his home in Mautuchin, New Jersey, last night, spoke with emotion of the man who had been not only a contributor, but a friend. Mr. Clemens' staff 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 are 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 towards 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 Wentworth of Higginson and Boston. It is impossible to exaggerate the loss to the country. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, now in her ninety-first 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 with a very genuine gift of humor and of serious thought as well. Hand in 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 at 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 Tarkington 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 Whitcomb Riley The world has lost not only a genius but a man, a 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. End of article This recording is in the public domain. From the New York Times, April 22nd, 1910 Recorded for LibriVox.org by Lindeloo That Samuel L. Clemens was the greatest American humorist of his age. Nobody will deny. Busterity will be left to decide his relative position and 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 as 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 an 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 additions in 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 through their fame, resting on a few books, still lives. Artemus Ward, Mark Twain's greatest predecessor as a national jester, is now a little more than a name. NASBY belonged exclusively to the reconstruction period. For any American humorous writer it would be fit to compare with Mark Twain. We must go back to Washington Irving. But the author of Niggerbocker'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 Cup 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 a humorist who has just passed away. 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 a voracious record of fresh impressions on a fertile and responsive mind. Mr. Clemens' more serious works such as The Prince and the Pauper and Encouraging 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 honored by misquotations, too, and the humorous sayings of the ancients that 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 it an open question whether he was not also the greatest American writer of fiction, the creator of Mulberry Cellars and Putinhead Wilson, the inventor of that southwestern feud in Huckleberry Finn, which with all its wildly 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 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 mourners' minds. However his work may be judged by impartial and unprejudiced generations, his fame is imperishable. End of article. His recording is in the public domain. Austrian Emperor to Take Command at Vienna Headquarters from the New York Times July 29, 1914 Read for Libervox.org by James Smith Austrian Emperor to Take Command at Vienna Headquarters War Fever at Capital Crowds cheer outbreak of hostilities and demonstrate at friendly embassies Outbreak of food riots Prices soar as hostilities are declared and the government steps in to regulate them Manifesto from Emperor Forced to grasp the sword He says to defend the honor of his monarchy France fears a great war Army moves to the frontier Belief in Paris that Russia will not desert Serbia Special cable to the New York Times Vienna July 28 Upon the issue of the formal declaration of war against Serbia today Emperor Franz Josef gave orders for the removal of the summer court from Issel to the capital His entourage tried to persuade him that Vienna air would not suit him but the aged emperor replied I do not want the air of Vienna I want the atmosphere of headquarters The opening of the war has caused the imposition of all kinds of restrictions upon public business All the railways of course are under military control and the telegraphs are being reserved entirely for the service of the state The hope is still entertained here that the war will be confined to Austria, Hungary and Serbia The report that Russia and France have intervened in Vienna is incorrect In official circles here it is maintained that any action by those powers must be supported by the third party of the Triple Entente, namely Great Britain It is known that Great Britain and France do not want a European war Peace among the Great Powers or war among the Great Powers must depend on the action of St. Petersburg At the Foreign Office here it is freely stated that now that war has begun Austria, Hungary will be bound to no more conditions such as sheep are pounded prior to the outbreak of hostilities Food prices up in Vienna There was an abnormal rise in the price of provisions today which caused great indignation on the part of the public who flocked to the markets to lay in stores in anticipation of a possible scarcity Vegetables in many cases traveled in price Feeling ran so high that in many instances stallkeepers in the marketplace were mobbed or assaulted and the police had to be called out to restore order The authorities declare that the sudden increase of provisions in vegetables is totally unwarranted A permanent committee appointed to deal with the question of provisioning the country sat today to discuss the regulation of prices in order to prevent the public being cheated A similar meeting with the same object was also held in the diet It was officially asserted that there was no reason for apprehension with regard to the food supply and that it was needless for citizens to start the accumulation of stores of provisions The only effect of such procedure it was added would be to still further raise prices Official arrangements have been made to take care of families of reservists called to the colors In the event of a reservist being killed or reported missing an allowance of about 25 cents per day for each adult and 12.5 cents a day for children will be continued for 6 months End of article This recording is in the public domain