 Section 87 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 9, 1905. A talk with Mark Twain's cat, the owner being invisible. Mark Twain had lost his cat. Consumed with an attack of wanderlust, Bambino had fled from home and roamed for a day and a half. The humorist had offered a reward of five dollars. Then his secretary, Miss Lyon, had met Bambino on University Place and hailed him home. It was all in the papers. Failing to understand why it shouldn't be in the papers some more, a woman from the Times had called at the Clemens Mansion, 21 Fifth Avenue. A man with China blue eyes and a white waistcoat opened the door for her. He opened it just halfway. Upon her request to see Mr. Clemens, he gave a start of surprise, frowned and said, Mr. Clemens is asleep. It was then one-thirty in the afternoon. When can I see him? asked the woman. I will find out, said the servant, and shut the door upon her while he did so. Fine by he reopened it. He may see you, he told her, if you come back at five o'clock. It was a beautiful, sun-shiny day, but the woman went home, stayed indoors to rest up for this interview, and at five o'clock again sauntered toward the Clemens Mansion. The same man appeared. He wore the same waistcoat. He had likewise the same blue eyes. Mr. Clemens is not in now, he said, but his secretary might see you. Very well, responded the woman, and stood outside the shut door once more while he searched for the secretary. As she gazed upon Fifth Avenue, gay in the sunshine with automobiles and carriages, and people enjoying themselves, she wondered vaguely if thieves were in the habit of infesting the Clemens Mansion, if that was the reason they were so particular about the door. Then it opened cautiously, and the servant said, You may come in. Precious privilege. The woman went in and stood in the hall as if she were a book agent. There were chairs, but she was afraid to sit down. Presently the secretary, a nice little woman with brown eyes and old-fashioned sleeves, came down the stairs and asked her what she wanted. I want to see Mr. Clemens about the cat, replied the woman. Mr. Clemens never sees anybody, I mean any newspaper people, besides he is not at home. Then, said the woman, may I see the cat? Yes, nodded the secretary, you may see the cat. And she ran lightly up the long stairway and came down soon with Bambino in her arms, a beautiful black silent cat with long velvety fur and luminous eyes that looked very intelligently into the face of the woman. The secretary and the woman then sat down on a bench in the hall and talked about the cat. The cat listened, but said nothing. We were terribly distressed about him, cooed the secretary. He is a great pet with Mr. Clemens. He is a year old. It is the first time he has ever run away. He lies curled up on Mr. Clemens' bed all day long. Does Mr. Clemens breakfast at five o'clock, tea and dine on the following day? asked the woman. Oh no! He does all his writing before he gets up. That's why he gets up at five o'clock. Bambino always stays with him while he writes. I should consider it a great privilege, smiled the woman, to breathe the same atmosphere with Mr. Clemens for about three minutes. Don't you think if I came back at seven you might arrange it? Well, I will try, promised the secretary kindly. At seven, therefore, the woman toiled up the dark red steps and rang the bell. The china-eyed man with the white waistcoat opened the door, disclosed one eye and the half of his face, said abruptly, Mr. Clemens doesn't wish to see you and slammed the door. The woman walked slowly down the red steps and looked up Fifth Avenue, wondering whether she would walk home or take a car. Fifth Avenue was very beautiful, purplish in the dusk, it was gemmed with softly gleaming opalescent electric balls of light. It was, moreover, admirably bare of people. She concluded to walk home. She was about to start forward when she became aware of a furry gentle something rubbing against her skirts. She looked down and there was Bambino, purring at her, looking up at her out of his luminous cat eyes. The man at the door had shut him out, too. She took him in both hands and lifted him up. He nestled against her shoulder. I don't like to prejudice you against the people you have to live with, Bambino, she said. It seems they will make you live with them, but they weren't so nice, were they? They might have told me at the start he wouldn't see me. They needn't have made me lose all the sunshine of today. You can't bring back a day, and you can't bring back sunshine. You wouldn't have treated me like that, would you? Bambino purred musically in his earnest assurance that he would not. I suppose you heard it all, she went on, and you sympathized with me. You are awfully tired, yourself. I can see that. If you were a Parisian cat, we'd call it on me. That expresses it better, but we'll let it go at tired. You are, aren't you? Or you wouldn't have run off? Bambino sighed wearily and half closed his eyes. It's pretty rarefied atmosphere, I imagine, for a cat, she reasoned. I don't blame you for wanting to get out with the common cats and whoop it up a little. Any self-respecting cat would rather run himself in a gutter or walk the back fence than sit cooped up the live-long day with a humorist. You can't tell me anything about that. It's a deadly thing to see people grind out fun. I used to know a comic artist. I had to sit by and watch him try to match his jokes to pictures. She clasped Bambino closer and caught her breath in a sigh. I don't blame you one bit for running off, she reiterated. I can imagine what you must have suffered. Shall we walk along a little on this beautiful street that's so wide and empty now of people? Politely. I get as tired as you do sometimes of people, Bambino. They are not always so nice. There are a lot of times that I like cats better. Bambino curled himself up in her arms and laid an affectionate paw on her wrist by way of rewarding her. She walked on, fondling him. I've the greatest notion, she confided presently, to run off with you and paralyse them. It would serve them right. How would you like that, Bambino, to come and live with me in my studio? Bambino raised his head and purred loudly against her cheek to show how well he would like it. Now, I want to tell you exactly how it will be. I want to be perfectly fair with you. If you come with me, you must come with your eyes open. Maybe you won't have half as soft a bed to lie on, but you won't have to lie on it all day long. I'll promise you that. In the first place it masquerades as a couch full of pillows in the daytime, and in the second place I've got to get out and hustle if I want to eat. Not that I mind hustling. I wouldn't stay in bed all day long out of the sunshine if I could, and you may have as much to eat either. But if you get too hungry there are the goldfish, and the canary wouldn't make half a bad meal. I am pretty fond of both, but I am reckless to-night somehow. You'll be welcome to them," Bambino licked his chops preparatorily. "'There are a good many little things you are apt to miss. The studio isn't as big as a house by any means, but you'll have all outdoors to roam in. I'll trust you are coming home of nights because you'll like it there," she concluded confidently. "'And you'll be ridder the man at the door for good and all. Tell me now, doesn't he step on your tail and seek the mice on you when they are all away?' Bambino groaned slightly, but he was otherwise noncommittal. I knew he did. He looks capable of anything. He's not as wise as he looks, though. He may not know it, but I push the pen for the tallest newspaper building in the city, the tallest in the world, I think. I'll take you up to the top of that building of mine and let you climb the flagpole. Then, if there should happen to be another cat on the flat-iron building, there'd be some music, wouldn't there, for the rest of the city? And they couldn't throw that flat-iron at you anyway, could they? Want to go?" Bambino put both paws around her neck and purred an eloquent ascent. "'You talk less than anybody I ever interviewed,' remarked the woman, "'but I think I know what you mean.' She pressed his affectionate black paws against her neck and hurried up the avenue, looking back over her shoulder to see that nobody followed. She almost ran until she got to the bridge over the yawning chasm near 16th Street. Then she stopped. Bambino looked anxiously up to see what was the matter, but turned deliberately around. Bambino gave a long-drawn sigh. He looked appealingly up at her, out of his luminous eyes. "'I reckon I won't steal you, Bambino,' she concluded sadly. "'I'd like to, but it wouldn't be fair. In the morning he'd be sorry. Maybe he couldn't work without you there, looking at him out of your beautiful eyes. You don't have to hear him dictate, too, do you, Bambino? If I thought that. But no. There is a limit. He's had his troubles, too, you know. He's bound to be a little lenient. The goose hasn't always hung so high for him. Of course you don't remember it, but he had an awful time establishing himself as the great American humorist. Couldn't get a single publisher to believe it. Had to publish his Innocence Abroad himself. Just said to the American public, Now you've got to take this. It's humor. And made them take it. Held their noses. That was a long time ago. Couldn't do it today. Not with Innocence Abroad. The American public is getting too well educated. Whoever reads Innocence Abroad now. Not the rising generation. You ask any boy of today what is the funniest book, and see if he doesn't say Alice in Wonderland. Still, for an old black date book that wasn't half bad. He has never written anything better. It must give him the heartache to see it laid on the shelf. I suppose you must hear these things discussed but not this side of them perhaps. No. Naturally no. They don't make you read their books. They can't. But you must have to hear about them. Life is hard. But I must take you back. We mustn't do anything at all to hurt his feelings. Bambino was fairly limp with disappointment. He had set his heart on the top of the Times Building flagpole. He had almost tasted the canary to say nothing of the goldfish. He hadn't the heart to purr any longer. His paws fell from the woman's neck. She had to carry him like that, all four feet hanging lifeless, his head drooping. And there's another thing, Bambino, she continued as they went along. I don't want anything I said about his having to establish himself as a humorist to disillusion you or make you more dissatisfied than you are. All humorists are like that. They have to establish themselves. Why, wasn't I in London when that good-win produced his cow-boy and the lady at dailies? Couldn't I hear people he had planted all over the audience that first night explaining that he was a humorist and the play was intended to be funny? Certainly. But it didn't work that well. Those English people are more determined than we are. They wouldn't stand for it. He had to take the play off. Your master happened to catch us when we were young and innocent. He deserves a lot of credit for bamboozling us. You ought to admire him for it. I do. They were nearly home by now. Bambino managed to emit another purr. It was like a whimper. Don't you cry, Bambino, she soothed. We all have our troubles. You must be a brave cat and bear up under yours. And she tiptoed up the red steps and set him at the door where they could find him when they missed him. He sat there, a crumpled, black, discouraged ball, his eyes following her, hungrily. She ran back to him. Bear up under it the best you can, Bambino," she implored. But if it gets so you can't stand it again, you know where to find a friend. There was a sound of approaching footsteps in the hall. She pressed her lips to Bambino's ear, whispered her address to him, and fled. End of Section 87. A Talk with Mark Twain's Cat. The Owner Being Invisible. Read by John Greenman. Section 88 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part IV. 1900–1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. May 15, 1905. Merciful Mark Twain writes to Mamed Girl. Wouldn't break railway officials' necks, only legs. Sympathy for the invalid. Miss Sinchimer was hurt in newer grade-crossing disaster. Humorist sends her a book. Special to the New York Times. Newark, New Jersey, May 14. Mark Twain has written a sympathetic letter to Miss Madeline Sinchimer of this city, who is an invalid as the result of the Clifton Avenue grade-crossing accident of more than two years ago, in which nine pupils of the Newark High School lost their lives. The letter is as follows. Dear Miss Madeline, you're good and admiring, and affectionate brother has told me your sorrowful share in the trolley disaster which brought unaccustomed tears to millions of eyes, and fierce resentment against those whose criminal indifference to their responsibilities caused it, and the reminder has brought back to me a pang of that bygone time. I wish I could take you sound and whole out of your bed and break the legs of those officials and put them in it to stay there. In my spirit I am merciful and would not break the necks and backs also, as some who have no feeling. It is your brother who permits me to write you this line, and so it is not an intrusion, you see. May you get well and soon. S. L. Clemens Mr. Clemens also inscribed this characteristic line in one of his books which he sent to the sufferer. One of the most remarkable differences between a lie and a cat is that the cat has only nine lives. Truly yours, Mark Twain. Miss Cinsheimer will never fully recover from the effects of her injuries, and was removed Thursday from her home, 254 Fairmont Avenue, to the Orthopedic Hospital in Philadelphia. End of Section 88, May 15, 1905, Merciful Mark Twain writes to Mamed Girl. Red by John Greenman. Section 89 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. August 20, 1905. Mark Twain ill of gout. Humorist now is recovering rapidly at Norfolk, Connecticut. Special to The New York Times. Winstead, Connecticut, August 19. Samuel Clemens, known throughout the world as Mark Twain, humorist and novelist, is recovering from a severe attack of gout at Edgewood, a cottage in Norfolk, rented for the season by Miss Clara Clemens, daughter of Mr. Clemens. Mr. Clemens was attacked one week ago today. He is still confined to his bed, but his speedy recovery is anticipated. Dr. Ward Quinterd of New York, a summer resident of Norfolk, is attending Mr. Clemens, who hoped to be able to leave Norfolk next week. Mr. Clemens was obliged to send his regrets on Tuesday to Mr. and Mrs. Bridgeman, who had arranged a dinner at their home, Fox Hill, in his honor. Mr. Clemens is past seventy years of age. End of Section 89, August 20, 1905, Mark Twain ill of gout. Read by John Greenman. Section 90 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. September 10, 1905. Twain's tribute to envoys. Mark Twain, who was unable to attend the dinner given to the Russian envoys at the Metropolitan Club Thursday, sent a characteristic letter explaining his absence. He wrote, I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad to meet these illustrious magicians who come here equipped with nothing but a pen, and with it have divided the honors of the world. It is fain to presume that in thirty centuries history will not be done admiring these men who attempted what the world regarded as the impossible and achieved it. Mark Twain. End of Section 90, September 10, 1905, Twain's tribute to envoys. Section 91 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. November 4, 1905. Independence warm-up for Ivins and Jerome. Edited to include only portions relevant to Twain's telegram. Independence warm-up for Ivins and Jerome. Majority candidate pledges strict civil service rules. Woodford and Abbott talk. Mark Twain couldn't be present but hopes to be able to vote three times. Cooper Union was crowded to the doors last night at the Independent Citizens Mass Meeting to hear William M. Ivins, the Republican candidate for mayor, and other speakers who advocated his election, and that of William Traver's Jerome, for district attorney. These were the Reverend Dr. Lyman Abbott, General Stuart L. Woodford, and Arthur von Bryson. Letters were read from Seth Lowe and Richard Watson-Gilder, while Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, sent this telegram. I believe in Ivins and Jerome, and hope to be allowed to vote my whole strength for them, that is to say, once as Clemens, and twice as Twain. Mark. End of Section 91, November 4, 1905. Independence warm-up for Ivins and Jerome. Read by John Greenman. Section 92 of Mark Twain in the New York Times. Part IV. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. November 24, 1905. Mark Twain dinner. Authors to celebrate his 70th birthday at Delmonicoes. There will be a notable gathering of authors at the dinner to be given by George Harvey to celebrate the 70th birthday of Mark Twain at Delmonicoes on December 5. The party will comprise fully one hundred and fifty. Among those who have signified their intention of being present are Long List of Potential Participants Deleted. End of Section 92, November 24, 1905. Mark Twain dinner. Read by John Greenman. Section 93 of Mark Twain in the New York Times. Part IV. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. November 26, 1905. Mark Twain a humorous confession. Interview by A. E. Thomas. On the eve of his 70th birth anniversary he admits he never did a day's work in his life. Whatever he has done he says he has done because it was play. Sage advice to fellow humorists and others. A word in defense of the English as to summer homes. Mark Twain will be seventy years old on Thanksgiving Day and he has never done a day's work in his life. He told me so himself sitting in one of the cheerful spacious rooms of the old-fashioned stately New York house which he will probably call his city home as long as he lives. I probably started upon hearing this unlooked for statement from the lips of the good gray humorist, for he repeated emphatically, No, sir, not a day's work in all my life. What I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, Blessed is the man who has found his work? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you he says his work not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great. To me he who saw him standing there, straight and virile, in the clear, uncompromising light of the early winter afternoon, it seemed that there must be years of good, hard, joyous play left yet in the prince of American humorists. Nor can we bring ourselves to dub him the dean of American humorists either, because that has about it a certain suggestion of decrepit age, and nothing is less suggestive of the Mark Twain of today than decrepitude. Straight and spare as a New England pine, his great mane of thick white hair falling shaggily back from his brow, his thin, mobile upper lip, covered with a heavy drooping mustache that is yet only shading toward grayness, his eyes always clear, now reflective and now flashing with the fire of the thoughts that leap like lightning behind them, though the words fall from the lips in that deliberate drawl which tens of thousands will never be able to forget so long as memory has ears, his face unlined, and his cheeks touched with a ruddy glow, and only about the corners of his eyes the little tell-tale crow's feet that seventy years have scratched there. Nobody who saw him thus could ever possibly think of Mark Twain as old. Now there is nothing of the last leaf effect about Samuel L. Clemens. I'm glad you came to see me today, as I'm up and about, which I shouldn't have been if I had been doing anything of consequence. You're surprised at that, are you? I admitted that I didn't understand. Well, he went on slowly. I've found that whenever I've got some work to do—you mean play, of course, I've entered? Well, of course, of course. But we're all slaves to the use of conventional terms, and I'll stick to them to avoid confusing you. Whenever I've got some work to do, I go to bed. I got into that habit some time ago, when I had an attack of bronchitis. Suppose your bronchitis lasts six weeks. The first two, you can't do much, but attend to the barking and so on. But the last four I found I could work if I stayed in bed, and when you can work, you don't mind staying in bed. I liked it so well that I kept it up after I got well. There are a lot of advantages about it. If you are sitting at a desk, you get excited about what you are doing, and the first thing you know, the steam heat or the furnace has raised the temperature until you've almost got a fever, or the fire in the grate goes out, and you get a chill. Or if somebody comes in to attend to the fire, he interrupts you and gets you off the trail of that idea you are pursuing. So I go to bed. I can keep an equitable temperature there without trying to go on about my work without being bothered. Work in bed is a pretty good gospel, at least for a man who's come, like me, to the time of life when his blood is easily frosted. This was queer talk from those virile lips. The only frost you can perceive about Mark Twain is in his hair, and that is a crisp invigorating frost, like that of a sparkling November morning. Well, Mr. Clemens, I said, what you say about work and play may be true, but a good many people who think that the immense amount of labor you went through to pay the debts of the publishing house of C. L. Webster and Company, after that firm went to Smash, was entitled to be called by the name of Hard Work. Not at all, retorted Mr. Clemens very seriously. All I had to do was write a certain number of books and deliver a few hundred lectures. As for travelling about the country from one place to another for years, the nuisances of getting about and bad hotels and so on, those things are merely the incidents that everyone expects to meet in life. The people who had to publish my books, the agents who had to arrange my lecture tours, the lawyers who had to draw up the contracts and other legal documents. They were the men who did the real work. My part was merely play. If it had been work, I shouldn't have done it. I was never intended for work, never could do it. Can't do it now. Don't see any use in it. It occurred to me to ask Mr. Clemens to tell the secret of the vital hold he has had for years upon the most intelligent people of the English-speaking world, a grip upon the public mind such as no mere humorist has ever held or ever could hold. Well, he answered, I know it is a difficult thing for a man who has acquired a reputation as a funny man to have a serious thought and put it into words and be listened to respectfully. But I thoroughly believe that any man who's got anything worthwhile to say will be heard if he only says it often enough. Of course, what I have to say may not be worth saying. I can't tell about that. But if I honestly believe I have an idea worth the attention of thinking people, it's my business to say it with all the sincerity I can muster. They'll listen to it if it really is worthwhile, and I say it often enough. If it isn't worthwhile, it doesn't matter whether I'm heard or not. Suppose a man makes a name as a humorist. He may make it at a stroke, as Brett Hart did, when he wrote those verses about the heathen Chinese. That may not be the expression of the real genius of the man at all. He may have a genuine message for the world. Then let him say it, and say it again, and then repeat it, and let him soak it in sincerity. People will warn him at first that he's getting a bit out of his line. But they'll listen to him at last, if he's really got a message, just as they finally listen to Brett Hart. Dickens had his troubles when he tried to stop jesting. The sketches by Boz introduced him as a funny man. But when Boz began to take him seriously, people began to shake their heads and say, that fellow Boz isn't as funny as he was, is he? But Boz and his creator kept right on being in earnest. And they listened after a time, just as they always will listen to anybody worth hearing. I tell you, life is a serious thing, and, try as a man may, he can't make a joke of it. People forget that no man is all humor, just as they fail to remember that every man is a humorist. We hear that marvelous voice of Sembrek, a wonderful thing, a thing never to be forgotten. But nobody makes the mistake of thinking of Sembrek as merely a great unmixed body of song. We know that she can think and feel and suffer like the rest of us. Why should we forget that the humorist has his solemn moments? Why should we expect nothing but humor of the humorist? My advice to the humorist who has been a slave to his reputation is never to be discouraged. I know it is painful to make an earnest statement of a heartfelt conviction and then observe the puzzled expression of the fatuous soul who is conscientiously searching his brain to see how he can possibly have failed to get the point of the joke. But say it again, and maybe he'll understand you. No man need be a humorist all his life. As the patent medicine man says, there is hope for all. You are far from being a bad man, go and reform, thought I, reminiscently of the man that corrupted Hadleyburg. The quality of humor, Mr. Clemens went on hurriedly for him, is the commonest thing in the world. I mean the perceptive quality of humor. In this sense every man in the world is a humorist. The creative quality of humor, the ability to throw a humorous cast over a set of circumstances that before had seemed colorless, is of course a different thing. But every man in the world is a perceptive humorist. Everybody lives in a glass house. Why should anybody shy bricks at a poor humorist or advise him to stick to his trade when he tries to say a sensible thing? Even the English, I suggested. The English don't deserve their reputation, insisted Mr. Clemens. They are as humorous a nation as any in the world. Only humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation, this superstructure is to him merely a freak, like the flat iron building without any visible means of support. Something that ought to be arrested. You couldn't, for example, understand an English joke, yet they have their jokes plenty of them. There's a passage in Parkman that tells of the home life of the Indian, describes him sitting at home in his wigwam with his squaw and papooses, not the historical toy Indian with whom we are familiar, who we wouldn't make a jest for his life or notice one that anybody else made, but the real Indian that few white men ever saw, simply rocking with mirth at some tribal witticism that probably wouldn't have commended itself in the least to Parkman. And so you see the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It says, free is salvation, and I am afraid far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year, without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant. Mr. Clemens doesn't mind being seventy years old, but he isn't especially gay about it. When our anniversaries roll up too high a total, he said, we don't feel in a particularly celebratory mood. We often celebrate the wrong anniversaries and lament the ones we ought to celebrate. This particular anniversary finds him domiciled within sight of the Washington Arch in one of those dignified old mansions of Lower Fifth Avenue that have set their kindly patrician old faces sternly against the marauding march of skyscrapers and business loft and hotel. Everybody knows that Hartford was for many years his home, though in the summer intervals various mountain or seaside cottages got in some of their dread work, while so recently as a summer or two ago an Italian villa added strange new items to the sum total of his domiciliary experiences. His latest solution to the summer question is Dublin, New Hampshire. There he was last summer, and there he hopes to be again. His own account of how he reached so satisfactorious solution is entertaining and may be instructive. Yes, he said, I have tried a number of summer homes here and in Europe together each of these homes had charms of its own, charms and delights of its own, and some of them, even in Europe, had comforts. Several of them had conveniences too. They all had a view. It is my conviction that there should always be some water in a view, a lake or a river, but not the ocean, if you are down on its level. I think that when you are down on its level it seldom inflames you with an ecstasy which you could not get out of a sand flat. It is like being on board ship over again. Indeed it is worse than that, for there's three months of it. On board ship one tires of the aspects in a couple of days and quits looking. The same vast circle of heaving humps is spread around you all the time with you in the center of it and never gaining an inch on the horizon, as far as you can see one, for variety a flight of flying fish, a flock of porpoises throwing somersaults afternoons, a remote whale spouting sundaes, occasional phosphorescent effects at nights. Every other day a streak of black smoke trailing along under the horizon. On the single red letter day the illustrious iceberg. I have seen that iceberg 34 times in 37 voyages. It is always that same shape. It is always the same size. It always throws up the same old flash when the sun strikes it. You may set it on any New York doorstep of a June morning and light it up with a mirror flash and I will engage to recognize it. It is artificial and it is provided and anchored out by the steamer companies. I used to like the sea but I was young then and could easily get excited over any kind of monotony and keep it up till the monotonies ran out. Last January when we were beginning to inquire about a home for this summer, I remembered that Abbott Thayers had said three years before that the New Hampshire Highlands was a good place. He was right. It is a good place. Any place that is good for an artist in paint is good for an artist in morals and ink. Brush is here too. So is Colonel T. W. Higginson. So is Raphael Pumpelly. So is Mr. Secretary Hitchcock. So is Henderson. So is Lernad. So is Sumner. So is Franklin McVeigh. So is Joseph L. Smith. So is Henry Copley Green. And I am not occupying his house, which I am doing this season. Paint, literature, science, statesmanship, history, professorship, law, morals. These are all represented here. Yet crime is substantially unknown. The summer homes of these refugees are sprinkled a mile apart among the forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm and smooth country roads, which are so empowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight in there and comfortable. The forests are spiderwebbed with these good roads. They go everywhere. But for the help of the guideboards, the stranger would not arrive anywhere. The village, Dublin, is bunched together in its own place, but a good telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliers. If you spell it right, it's witty. The village executes orders on the Boston plan, promptness and courtesy. The summer homes are high perished, as a rule, and have contending outlooks. The house we occupy has one. Manadnaka, soaring double-hump, rises into the sky at its left elbow. That is to say, it is close at hand. From the base of the long slant of the mountain, the valley spreads away to the circling frame of hills, and beyond the frame the billowy sweep of remote, great ranges rise to view and flow, fold upon flow, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unworldly, to the horizon, fifty miles away. In these October days, Manadnaka and the valley and its framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are sumptuously splashed and mottled, and be torched from skyline to skyline, with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish. And when they lie flaming in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the spectator physically. It stirs his blood, like military music. These summer houses are commodious, well built and well furnished, facts which sufficiently indicate that the owners built them to live in themselves. They have furnaces and wood fireplaces, and the rest of the comforts and conveniences of a city home, and can be comfortably occupied all year round. We cannot have this house next season, but I have secured Mrs. Upton's house, which is over in the Law and Science Quarter, two or three miles from here, and about the same distance from the art, literary, and scholastic groups. The Science and Law Quarter has needed improving this good while. The nearest railway station is distant, something like an hour's drive. It is three hours from there to Boston over a branch line. You can go to New York in six hours per branch line if you change every time you think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take the trunk line next day. Then you do not get lost. It is claimed that the atmosphere of the New Hampshire Highlands is exceptionally bracing and stimulating, and a fine aid to hard and continuous work. It is just a claim, I think. I came in May and wrought thirty-five successive days without a break. It is possible that I could not have done it elsewhere. I do not know. I have not had any disposition to try it before. I think I got the disposition out of the atmosphere this time. I feel quite sure, in fact, that that is where it came from. I am ashamed to confess what an intolerable pile of manuscript I ground out in the thirty-five days, therefore I will keep the number of words to myself. I wrote the first half of a long tail, the adventures of a microbe, and put it away for a finish next summer, and started another long tail, the mysterious stranger. I wrote the first half of it, and put it with the other for a finish next summer. I stopped then. I was not tired, but I had no books on hand that needed finishing this year except one that was seven years old. After a little I took that one up and finished it. Not for publication, but to have it ready for revision next summer. Since I stopped work I have had a two-month holiday. The summer has been my working time for thirty-five years. To have a holiday in it, in America, is new to me. I have not broken it, except to write Eve's Diary and A Horse's Tale, Short Things Occupying the Mill, Twelve Days. This year our summer was six months long and ended with November and the flight home to New York, but next year we hope and expect to stretch it another month and end it the first of December. End of Section 93, November 26, 1905, Mark Twain, A Humorous Confession, interviewed by A. E. Thomas, read by John Greenman. Section 94 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. November 28, 1905, Mark Twain, The President's Guest. Washington, November 27. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, was a guest of President and Mrs. Roosevelt at a luncheon today. Invited to meet Mr. Clemens were Secretary Bonaparte, Attorney General Moody, and John Temple Graves. The call of Mr. Clemens upon the President was purely social. End of Section 94, November 28, 1905, Mark Twain, The President's Guest, Read by John Greenman. Section 95 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 6, 1905, celebrate Mark Twain's 70th birthday. Fellow workers in fiction dine with him at Delmonico's. Hear why he lived so long, and how they, if they resemble him, may reach seventy-two. Roosevelt sends congratulations. Mark Twain, the greatest of living humorists and the uncrowned king of American letters, whose standing joke among his intimate friends is the pretension that his real name is Samuel L. Clemens, celebrated his 70th birthday last night. Or perhaps it would be more proper to say that others did it for him. Mark Twain himself being too busy making a speech. There were one hundred and seventy of his friends and fellow craftsmen in literature gathered in the red room at Delmonico's for the celebration. Barring a half-dozen or so, all were guaranteed to be genuine creatures of imaginative writings, or illustrators of such writings. The guarantee was furnished by Colonel George Harvey, editor of the North American Review, who was the host of the evening as well as the chairman. Even the presence, as the guest of honor of the world's foremost fund-maker, could not drive away the serious reflection that never before in the annals of this country had such a representative gathering of literary men and women been seen under one roof. They were representative in every conceivable respect, even geographically. There was no corner of this country with a literary crop of its own that did not have at least one favorite son or daughter present. The far north and the extreme south, the New England states and the Pacific slope, all sent delegates. Many women there. A particular feature of the dinner was the strength of the feminine contingent. There were fully as many women there as men, and they were not present as mere appendages of their husbands, but as individuals representing the art of imaginative writing no less than the men. An observer looking over the host of diners after having scanned the list of guests and noticed that every feminine name in it was familiar to all readers, could not but wonder that the women he found corresponding to those names were all young and pretty. The whole gathering did not seem to include half a dozen women with streaks of gray in their hair. All men as well as women showed by word and manner and act that they looked upon the chief guest as the master. The greeting, when he rose to speak, was one which might have tickled the vanity of the vainest of political adventurers. No one thought of measuring the duration of the applause and the cheering, however, because everybody, including the reporters, were too busy swelling the volume of that ovation. Unintroduced, as it seemed most befitting, Mr. Clemens rose to respond to the toast proposed to him by his fellow veteran in the literary service, William Dean Howells. It would be difficult to pick a more critical audience, and yet as the great humorous talked on in his characteristic inimitable drawl, the men and women present laughed until their laughter turned into groans. Yet a strain of melancholy ran perceptibly through the speaker's sentences. Toward the end it gained predominance, and the last words were spoken with a voice quivering with emotion. To those who listened the man appeared younger than ever, and when he pretended to look down upon really old men with scorn, his attitude was thought more than a clever conceit. The character of the occasion caused Mr. Clemens to hark back to other birthdays, of which he admitted having had a great many, and his reminiscences concerned, in particular, the first of them all. Between this and the last one, so far, he drew an inferred comparison. The comparison was entirely in favour of the seventieth, his first birthday. I remember that first birthday well, he began. Whenever I think of it, it is with indignation. Everything was so crude, so unesthetic. Nothing was really ready. I was born, you know, with a high and delicate aesthetic taste. And then, think of it, I had no hair, no teeth, no clothes. And I had to go to my first banquet like that. And everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little hamlet in the back woods of Missouri, where never anything happened at all. All interest centred in me that day. They came with that peculiar provincial curiosity to look me over, and to see if I had brought anything fresh in my particular line. I was the only thing that had happened in the last three months. And I came very near being the only thing that happened there in two whole years. They gave their opinions. No one had asked them, but they gave them, and they were all just green with prejudice. I stood it as long as—well, you know, I was born courteous. I stood it for about an hour. Then the worm turned. I was the worm. It was my turn to turn. And I did turn. I knew the strength of my position. I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure person in that camp. And I just came out and told them so. It was so true that they could make no answer at all. They merely blushed and went away. Well, that was my cradle song. And now I am singing my swan song. It is a far stretch from that first birthday to this, the seventieth. Just think of it. Twain recipe for a long life. The seventieth birthday. It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity. When you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation, and stand unafraid, and unabashed upon your seven-terrorist summit, and look down and teach unrebuke'd. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining old age. When we examine the program of any of these garrulous old people, we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us. I will offer here as a sound maxim this, that we can't reach old age by another man's road. I will now teach, offering my way of life to whomever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman for seventy years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but they are not. I am not here to deceive. I am here to teach. He goes to bed sometimes. We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden. Presently they petrify. Then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up, and that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with, and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity. In the matter of diet, which is another main thing, I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince pie after midnight. Up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup till seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me. Headache people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and I wish to urge upon you this, which I think is wisdom. But if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. And smokes in bed. I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restrictions as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke. I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven. Ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep. I wake up in the night sometimes once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me, that if I should break it, I should feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got. Meaning, the chairman, if you've got one, I am making no charges. I will grant here that I have stopped smoking now and then for a few months at a time. But it was not on principle. It was only to show off. It was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits, and couldn't break my bonds. Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me. I have always bought cheap cigars, reasonably cheap at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel. But my taste has improved latterly, and I pay seven dollars now. Six or seven? Seven, I think. Yes, it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking parties at my house, but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? Raised on nine barrels of cod liver oil. As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink, I like to help. Otherwise I remain dry, by habit, and preference. This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. You let it alone. Since I was seven years old, I have seldom taken a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did. It was for economy. My father took a drugstore for a debt, and it made cod liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipacac, and such things. Because I was the pet. I was the first standard oil trust. I had it all. By the time the drugstore was exhausted, my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. Never exercised. I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is lonesome, and it cannot be any benefit when you are tired. I was always tired. I desire now to repeat and emphasize that maxim. We can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. I have lived a severely moral life, but it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to recommend it. Very few would succeed. You have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals, and you can't get them on a margin. Morals are an acquirement, like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis. No man is born with them. I wasn't myself. I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that. The world before me. Not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. His first moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the—I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and can keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and chatecoise, and world's fares, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last, and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that moldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't had any exercise. But I worked her hard. I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature, beyond belief, and served me well, and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years. Then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at, and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her. Ah, pathetic skeleton as she was. I sold her to Leopold, the pirate king of Belgium. He sold her to our Metropolitan Museum. And it was very glad to get her. For, without a rag on, she stands fifty-seven feet long, and sixteen feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. JOYS OF BEING MORAL Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes. And the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian. I mean, you take THE sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Oh, dear sir, I wish you wouldn't look at me like that. Three score years and ten. It is the scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties. For you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase. You have served your term well or less well, and you are mustered out. The previous engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever. On this side of the grave you will never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night and winter, and the late homecoming from the banquet, and the lights and the laughter through the deserted streets, a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping, and you must creep in a tiptoe, and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe. You can never disturb them more if you shrink at thought of these things. You need only reply. Your invitation honors me and pleases me, because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy. Seventy, and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier number seventy, you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart. Guest of Honor led to dinner. The dinner began at eight o'clock. Soon before that hour the guests began to gather in the parlor adjoining the red room. In the corridor outside, place had been prepared for an orchestra of forty directed by Nahan Franco. When the march, serving as a signal for the procession to the dining room, was played, Mr. Clemens led the way with Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on his arm. The couples that followed would have attracted attention wherever they were seen and recognized. Colonel Harvey led Princess Trebettsgoi, who once was Amelie Rives, and still writes under that name. Andrew Carnegie and Agnes Replier, the essayist, followed side by side. After them came John Barrows and Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, who was the first author from whom Henry Mills Alden received a contribution after becoming editor of Harper's Monthly more than forty years ago. The Reverend Dr. Henry Van Dyke escorted Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, while Bliss Carmen, the poet, led Mrs. Ruth McEnnery Stewart. While the dinner was in progress the guests, one table at a time, went out into another room and had their pictures taken in groups. The pictures will form the most conspicuous feature of an album, which is to be given to Mr. Clemens as a souvenir of the occasion. Souvenir's Plaster Busts The menu was printed within a circle of pen and ink sketches by Leon Barrett, showing the guest of honor at the successive stages of his long and varied career, as printer, as Mississippi pilot, as gold miner in the far west, as editor in the same adventurous region, as world traveller, and finally as a lecturer pronouncing to empty benches the maxim, be good and you will be lonesome. Toward the end of the dinner the Souvenir's were brought in. They were plaster of Paris busts of Mark Twain, about a foot high and excellently modeled. When the distribution had been completed there were just 171 Mark Twains in the room, including the original. Colonel Harvey's first act as toastmaster of the evening was to call on Miss Cutting, president of the Vassar College Alumni Association, to read this letter which had been received from President Roosevelt. The President's Letter November 28, 1905 My dear Colonel Harvey, I wish it were in my power to be at the dinner held to celebrate the 70th birthday of Mark Twain. It is difficult to write of him by his real name, instead of by that name which has become a household word wherever the English language is spoken. He is one of the citizens whom all Americans should delight to honor, for he has rendered a great and peculiar service to America, and his writings, though such as no one but an American could have written, yet emphatically come within that small list which are written for no particular country, but for all countries, and which are not merely written for the time being, but have an abiding and permanent value. May he live long and year by year, may he add to the sum of admirable work that he has done. Sincerely yours, Theodore Roosevelt. The reading of the letter was the cause of prolonged applause. Howells Toasts Twain Colonel Harvey called next on William Dean Howells as the person in all the world best fitted to propose the health of the guest of the evening. Previously Colonel Harvey had referred to Mr. Clemens as a man who, first of all, had the friendship of the whole world, and then, in a peculiar degree, the friendship of the few. He made special mention of Henry H. Rogers and the Reverend Joseph H. Twitchell as two of Mr. Clemens' most intimate friends, who, although not men of letters, were present and occupied seats at the table with the principal guest. Mr. Howells declared that the thought of Mark Twain always threw him into poetic ecstasy, and whenever he had to make a speech in honor of the humorist, it seemed to shape itself naturally into meter and rhyme. This was the case three years ago, he said, when Mr. Clemens was a comparatively young man of sixty-seven. Then I composed what I called a double-barreled sonnet. Mr. Howells explained, This time, thinking of the psalmist's age limit, I wanted to try a psalm, but this time too I had to fall back on the Shakespearean sonnet. But please notice that the sonnet is twice as long as Shakespeare used to make them, and, for good reason, Shakespeare, you know, has been improved upon since he died. Nowadays Shaw is writing plays that are twice as good as those of Shakespeare, and I am writing sonnets twice as long as his. Mr. Howells then read his sonnet, which, after comparing the effect of the American joke on a traveler from the Old World with that made by a skyscraper, ended with this sextet. The lame dance with the light in me, my mirth reaches the deaf untrumpeted, the blind, my point can see. I jolly the whole earth, but most I love to jolly my own kind. Joke of a people great, gay, bold and free, I type their master mood, Mark Twain made me. England sends greetings. After the uproar which followed the completion of Mark Twain's reply to the toast given by Mr. Howells had died out, Colonel Harvey read this cablegram received from London. The other signed, send Mark Twain heartiest greetings on his 70th birthday, and cordially wish him long life and prosperity. So William Hansen, T. Anstey Guthrie of Anstey, Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate, The Right Honourable Arthur Balfour, J. M. Barry, Augustine Burrell, K. T., The Right Honourable James Bryce, Sir Francis Bernard, Editor of Punch, Gilbert Chesterton, Chetan Collins, W. L. Courtney, Austin Dobson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W. S. Gilbert, Edmund Goss, Francis Carruthers, Gould, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Hope, W. W. Jacobs, Rudyard Kipling, Ian McLaren, The Reverend John Watson, W. H. Malick, George Meredith, Henry Norman, M. P., Sir Gilbert Parker, Sir John Tenniel, The Illustrator, Sir George Arthur Travellian, Historian, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, William Watson, Theodore Watts Dunton, Israel Sanguil, Toshnitz, More poetic tributes. Letters of regret were read from Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and Joel Chandler Harris, both of whom had planned to be present. Dr. Mitchell ended his message of felicitation with this quatrain in honour of the chief guest. So large the joy your pen has given to match it, one might try in vain, but what one man could never do is easily done by twain. Among others who read or sent greetings in rhyme were Amelia E. Barr, Wilbur D. Nesbitt, Virginia Fraser Hoyle, John Kendrick Bangs, and Henry Van Dyke. Tales the Others Told Professor Brander Matthews, Andrew Carnegie, George W. Cable, Richard Watson Gilder, Rex E. Beech, and Irving Batchelor were among the other speakers. Mr. Carnegie won great applause with his scotch drolleries. He extolled Mr. Clemens for his sincerity, and said he was a lion of his day. George W. Cable recalled days more than twenty years ago when he and Mark Twain were on the Mississippi together. He told many anecdotes that were new and interesting. He told of a mutual friend who, on meeting Mark Twain for the first time, had prepared something nice and appropriate to say when he shook hands with the humorist. This friend had read all his works, but the only one he could recall when it came to shaking hands was his heathen Chinese, and so he quoted it at length. Hamilton W. Mayby said that Mark Twain had written a biography, or an autobiography, of Adam and Eve, and every other person of scriptural or historic fame. Mr. Mayby thought his masterpiece was yet to come, and it should be called The Diary of the Devil. At this, Mark Twain doubled up over the nearest bust of himself. End of section 95, December 6, 1905, celebrate Mark Twain's 70th birthday, read by John Greenman. Section 96 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, part 4, 1900 through 1906. This Libervox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. December 19, 1905, Mark Twain speaks, after Bernhardt, acts. Jewish benefit audience enjoys an unusual double bill. Three thousand dollars for the relief fund. Humorist says he and the actress are two of the youngest persons alive. The benefit matinee for the Jewish sufferers in Russia, which was given at the casino yesterday afternoon, drew a big crowd from the professional and social worlds. Among those who helped entertain it were Sarah Bernhardt and Mark Twain. During the hour, just after luncheon, the lobby of the theatre looked as if a green room reception for all New York were in progress. Well-known actresses in their prettiest afternoon gowns sold programs and flowers at fancy prices. The prices, however, were no more objectionable than the smiles that went with them, and this feminine lobbying proved a popular and profitable device. Each well-known actor was besieged as he entered with friendly demands upon his patience and pocketbook. Jacob Adler, who came a little late, could hardly force his way into the theatre through the crowd of young women, each of whom insisted upon selling him a program and a rose. Inside the theatre, boxes, orchestra, and balconies were filled to their utmost capacity. Among the actors and actresses who volunteered their services were Kate Condon, Kitty Cheetham, and Chauncey Olcott, who sang, August Van Bienet, cellist, Ylke Palmey, in Hungarian dances, Henry Miller and Martha Waldron in Frédéric Lemaître, and Margaret Anglin, and her company in the third act of Zira. Sarah Bernhardt presented for the first time the Winnack play in French, Les Carpolettes, by Miss G. Constant Lunsbury, an American woman who spends most of her time in Paris. The play was given with the following cast. The piece is a dainty little production in which an 18th-century marquis, destined by his father to marry a fiancée whom the young man has never seen, falls in love with a fragonnard portrait of a young girl in a swing. In seeking the saline of his father's choice, the youth, after a bit of mystification, finds that his unknown fiancée is the original of his beloved fragonnard. Mark Twain, who followed Mademoiselle Bernhardt, spoke of the wonderful French language which he always felt as if he were just going to understand. Mademoiselle Bernhardt is so marvelously young, he added. She and I are two of the youngest people alive. Then the humorist told a story of how when Mademoiselle Bernhardt was playing in Hartford some years ago, three charitable old ladies decided to deny themselves the pleasure of seeing the great actress and to send the money instead to some needy friends. And the needy friends, concluded Mr. Clemens, dryly, gratefully took the money and bought Bernhardt tickets with them. Both Mr. Clemens and Mademoiselle Bernhardt received warm welcomes. Among those in the boxes were Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Schiff, Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Guggenheim, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Guggenheim, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson Garot, Mademoiselle Bernhardt, Ms. Margaret Anglin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lehman, Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, and Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Adler. Ilke Palme, Ruth Vincent, Kitty Gordon, Josephine Jacoby, Violet Holes, Isabel Urquhart, and Annette Cohn were among those who distributed programs and flowers in the foyer. About three thousand dollars was realized from the performance. Ms. Anglin was asked by Mademoiselle Bernhardt after the benefit if she would appear with her in Materlinks, Palaeus, and Milisande. Ms. Anglin expressed her pleasure at the invitation, and it is said some arrangement may be made for a performance of the play in French after the Bernhardt Road Tour. A special matinee performance of La Tosca by Mademoiselle Bernhardt is announced for Friday afternoon at the Lyric Theatre. End of Section 96, December 19, 1905, Mark Twain speaks after Bernhardt acts, read by John Greenman. Section 97 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LimberVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. December 22, 1905, Joan of Arc appears to startle Mark Twain. Surprise, prepared for him by Society of Illustrators. Their guest at dinner. Andrew Carnegie shares the honors of the evening with the humorist. Many noted guests. Mark Twain was the guest of honor at a dinner, given last night at the Aldine Association by the Society of Illustrators. All the well-known magazine and newspaper artists were present, while other distinguished guests included Andrew Carnegie, Sir C. Purden-Clark, Casper Whitney, Robert Collier Jr., Norman Hapkard, Alphonse Mouca, Arthur Scribner, and Thomas A. Janvir, Frederick Remington, Henry S. Fleming, and Daniel Beard were on the reception committee. It had been arranged that when the humorist arose to speak, Miss Angerston, a well-known model, was to appear in the garb and with the simple dignity of Jean d'Arc, his favorite character in all history. He was on his feet as Jean d'Arc entered the room. She wore the armor of the French heroine, and her hair and face made a strangely appealing picture. The face of the humorist, which had been wearing its company smile all night, suddenly changed. He had every appearance of a man who had seen a ghost. His eyes fairly started out of his head, and his hand gripped the edge of the table. Jean d'Arc presented him with a wreath of bae. He merely bowed with his eyes fixed on the girl's face. They followed her as in reverent silence she passed out, followed by a little boy in suitable costume, bearing a banner over her head. Then Mark Twain spoke. His voice was broken, and his words came slowly. There's an illustration, gentlemen. A real illustration, he said. I studied that girl, Jean d'Arc, for twelve years, and it never seemed to me that the artists and the writers gave us a true picture of her. They drew a picture of a peasant. Her dress was that of a peasant, but they always missed the face, the divine soul, the pure character, the supreme woman, the wonderful girl. She was only eighteen years old, but put into a breast like hers, a heart like hers, and I think, gentlemen, you would have a girl like that. The humorous looked toward the door, and there was absolute silence, puzzled silence, for many did not know whether it was time to laugh, disrespectful to giggle, or discourteous to keep solemn. The humorous realized the situation, turning to his audience he came out of the clouds and said solemnly, but the artists always paint her with a face like a ham. The rest of his discourse was taken up with reminiscences of Jack, one of the figures in his Innocence Abroad. He told much that was new about Jack, but it was all tinged with the melancholy that has come to Mark Twain these days. What was his name now? He asked. I can't remember names these days. Seventy years is a long time, gentlemen. You know the man I mean, the fellow that crossed the Holy Land in the first stage coach. Come now, some of you must remember. I can't think it. Was it Robespierre, or John the Baptist, or Ben Franklin, who invented the guillotine? Why, yes! he suddenly cried. It was Carnegie's uncle. What was I thinking about? Mr. Carnegie and I got it all straightened out one day. It was his uncle who first crossed the Jordan in a stage coach. Don't try to deny it now. You admitted it when I fished up that family tree. I admit it, said Mr. Carnegie from his right. It's wonderful, Mark, how names do slip one. Yes, said Mark Twain. Well, I remember how your uncle got up on the end of that old stage coach at the Jordan Ford and said he felt moved to speak. He said with tears in his voice how this was the Jordan, how yonder was the illimitable desert over three hundred miles wide over which Moses and his people had toiled for forty years to this spot. This spot hallowed in all history. And it was here that Jack interrupted and said, Moses, who, uncle? And your uncle said that it was Moses the poet, Moses the lawyer, the warrior, the guide, who had guided his people for forty years over that three hundred miles of dreary sand. And, Mark Twain added, your uncle always said that it would have taken only thirty-six hours if they'd left out holidays. Mr. Carnegie's speech made a real hit, he said in part. I wished I were young enough to be a fellow student, but if you'll just count me in for tonight I'll try to behave myself. All my life I've had this streak of bohemianism in me. You can't tell how hard I tried to know Irving and dear old Joe Jefferson. I knew Bret Hart and Josh Billings—oh, Josh, Josh—and don't you young fellows think for a moment that I'm not used to high society? But the dearest of all acquaintances, after I'd scraped and bowed to get it, is—his hand fell on Mark Twain's shoulder—is Mark. It is a great thing to be able to say you have a friend like this, and I remember how mad Josh Billings was because he did not meet Matthew Arnold when I received him at my house. However, he met him later, and I thought the apostle of sweetness and light would like to hear how Josh lectured and got his audiences. Well, said Josh Billings, people want to know about the little things, all about them. If I told them the story of Jonah and the whale, they'd want to know every detail. I told them all I knew, which was more in the whale or Jonah ever knew. Then they wanted to know what Jonah was doing in the whale's society. It was society I started to speak about. But there's one literary mystery I want to see cleared up tonight, said Mr. Carnegie. It has been rumored that I am an author. I am—I will confess it now that I held Mark Twain's affidavit, his signature—that I am the joint author of Puddin Head Wilson. I can prove that the following passage was taken bodily from the lips of Andrew Carnegie. The fool who'll saith in his heart, Do not put all your eggs in one basket. But the wise man exhorteth thus, Put all your eggs in one basket, Then watch the basket. He took that from me. Mr. Carnegie sat down amid roars of laughter. He had outwitted Twain himself. Other speakers of the evening were Rolo Ogden, editor of the Evening Post, Sir Pertin Clark, and others. Sir Pertin spoke of dead artists whom Mark Twain may have influenced. He said that in England there were illustrated papers before there were illustrators, and that they had been a disreputable lot. The illustrators, carefully making wood cuts from the old masters for the comic sheets, and illustrating continued stories so that their employment had to last. He created much amusement. End of Section 97, December 22, 1905, Joan of Arc appears to startle Mark Twain, read by John Greenman. Section 98 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 3, 1906, Patrick's Fight for Life. Mark Twain signs his petition for clemency, New Council engaged. Each day sees additional names of well-known citizens added to the petition to be forwarded to Governor Higgins asking clemency for Albert T. Patrick, the lawyer now under death sentence at Sing Sing for the murder of William Marsh Rice. His death is fixed for the week of January 22nd. As the time approaches for the carrying out of the sentence, Patrick, according to those who have seen him in the last few days, seems to have lost some of his equanimity which has characterized his attitude in the three years or more he has occupied a cell in the death-house at Sing Sing. He seems to be undergoing a terrific mental strain, fully realizing that desperate efforts on his own part and the part of his friends may save him from the chair. The condemned man, as a result of the illness of David B. Hill, his counsel in this emergency, has retained A. C. Shenston and ex-Senator Lindsay to make the final legal fight. When his wife called at the prison yesterday he gave her some urgent instructions and she hurried away to consult his new counsel. It is said that Patrick will now apply for a writ of error to the Supreme Court. If it is granted, the writ will act as a stay. In the event of its being refused, it is said that he will ask the Governor for a stay of 30 days in which to prepare an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Among the latest names added to the petition are those of Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, Dr. W. Gilman Thompson of the Cornell Medical College, Dr. John A. Wyeth, Dr. L. Bolton Bangs, Consulting Surgeon to St. Luke's Bellevue, St. Vincent's and St. Mark's Hospitals, Dr. Austin Flint, Professor of Physiology in the Cornell Medical College, and David Bolasco. End of Section 98, January 3, 1906, Patrick's Fight for Life, read by John Greenman. Section 99 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 4, 1906, Players Dine, Mark Twain. Becoming an honorary member, he reads The Jumping Frog. The Players dined Mark Twain last night in their clubhouse in Gramercy Square and made the Dean of American Humorists an honorary member. Richard Watson Gilder and Frank Millet made speeches over the acquisition of the new honorary member, and then Mr. Clemens responded with a speech which so delighted his hosts that he was compelled to give an encore. For the encore he read The Jumping Frog, to the great delight of the members of the club. Telegrams of regret, real regret, were read from Augustus St. Godin's, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and others. End of Section 99, January 4, 1906, Players Dine, Mark Twain, read by John Greenman. Section 100 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. Mark Twain at the show, laments that he cannot dictate as fast as motor salesmen talk. Mark Twain was an interested visitor at the automobile show in Madison Square Garden yesterday afternoon. He was the guest of sales manager R. D. Chapin at the Oldsmobile booth. As the popular writer walked slowly down the broad aisles, commenting upon the splendid machines on exhibition, he was followed by a curious crowd. Mr. Clemens, however, did not purchase a motorcar, but he promised to come again and take a ride in one of the demonstrating machines to-morrow. I dictate each day about four thousand words, he said, and I find it a hard day's work. If I could talk as rapidly, however, as some of these automobile salesmen do, I could dictate a great many more words and consequently make more money. Colonel John Jacob Astor was present and purchased three more Cadillacs. They will be shipped south for his use this winter. End of Section 100, January 17, 1906, Mark Twain at the show, read by John Greenman. Section 101 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 18, 1906, for a monument to Fulton. Association formed to plan for a centennial in 1907. Next year is the centenary of the sailing of Robert Fulton's Clermont from New York to Albany. A meeting was held yesterday afternoon at the Waldorf Historia to form an association to erect a monument to the inventor. General Frederick D. Grant was in the chair. Hugh Gordon Miller was secretary, and among those present were Robert Fulton Cutting, great nephew of the inventor, Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, Andrew F. Burley, Colonel John A. Shepard, Colonel H. O. L. Heistand, and Colonel Albert A. Pope. The Battery, or some place on the Hudson, was suggested in the talk over a site for the monument. The names of J. Pierpont Morgan, Lyman E. Gage, and Jacob H. Schiff were mentioned as among the possibilities for treasurer. Subscriptions are to be solicited from every part of the United States and from other countries. End of Section 101, January 18, 1906, for a monument to Fulton. Read by John Greenman. Section 102 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 21, 1906, Mark Twain pays for fun. Has no personal property here, but stands a tax on five thousand dollars. Mark Twain, yesterday, consented to pay taxes on five thousand dollars worth of personal property, despite the fact that he had just told the tax commissioners that he did not own any personal property here. Mr. Clemens had received notice of assessment on twenty-five thousand dollars of personal property and on a like sum as executor of the estate of Mrs. Clemens. He told President O'Donnell of the tax board that his wife's estate had all been settled and that therefore he did not owe the city anything on that estate as it no longer existed. He also said that he did not own any personal property in the city subject to taxation. Just for the humor of the situation, however, I am willing to pay on five thousand dollars if the city needs the money, he said. His consent for that sum was taken by President O'Donnell. End of Section 102, January 21st, 1906, Mark Twain pays for fun. Read by John Greenman.