 VII—Holland House pictures shipped to Hartford, Connecticut. Modeling Twain Home—Hartford Mansion Holland House Pictures, shipped to Hartford, Connecticut. Following the sale of furnishings of the old Holland House at 30th Street and Fifth Avenue, the doors and bathroom fixtures are now being removed and shipped to Hartford, Connecticut. They are to be used in remodeling the former residents of Mark Twain into small apartments, and will also go toward equipping a $1,500,000 apartment building which will be erected on part of the old Clemens estate. Most of the 2,000 doors in the old hotel are being shipped to Hartford. The purchase includes the hinges, brass knobs, and door jams. Each set, it was said, would cost $25 to reproduce. The purchase price is $3. The 160 bathtubs have been bought for $15,000. End of Section 1. March 7, 1920. Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 7, 1920 through 1924. March 21, 1920. Topics of the Week. Changing Humor. Editorial related to Van Wick Brooks. It has not needed the careful retrospective estimate that a great writer's death usually brings to his works, for the reading public to have come to the conclusion years ago that Samuel L. Clemens measures up to a vastly more complex figure in literature than the mere funny man that his first and amazingly popular achievements in authorship seem to make him. Such books as his Joan of Arc, or The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg, give evidence enough of the deep vein of seriousness underlying some of his work, and that is present more or less remotely it is true, in practically all of it. We think of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as irresistibly funny books, and so they are, but not throughout. The serious Mark Twain is in them too, even if not quite so unmistakably present as in that mordant satire, the mysterious stranger, or that gloomiest of philosophical essays, what is man? Thankful, should we be, too, that this vein of seriousness was richly overlaid with the grace of laughter, even though that laughter does not seem quite so spontaneous and natural as in the days when we were fairly rolling over with the mirth of innocence abroad, laughing at the gilded age, books that, if they make us laugh at all today, make us laugh at them, not with them. But now there comes Mr. Van Wick Brooks, who emphasizes and elaborates this view of Mark Twain's genius with a novel and fascinating theory, which he develops in an article appearing in this month's dial, to the effect that Clemens was a humorous purely through force of circumstance, that by inclination, nature, and to a certain extent by environment and upbringing, he was a satirist, a sort of speechless hamlet, oppressed by the world's miseries, or a deanswift, lacking the courage or the opportunity to flay mankind for its frailties. Thus Mr. Clemens appears as a man who failed to give to the world, through intermittent elusive flashes, the real truth that was in him, and who forced himself instead to play the part of a buffoon throughout his literary career, a part that, in his secret heart, he most abhorred. We call this theory fascinating because of the dramatic picture it leaves in the mind of a great literary genius who condemns himself to a sort of Jekyll and Hyde existence, who deliberately takes upon himself the role of international fund-maker, when he would far rather have drowned the stage in tears. There is always a strong appeal in that perennial story of the famous clown who made the galleries roar with his ridiculous antics, while his own melancholy thoughts were with his wife, dying alone in her desolate home. In all of us there is enough of the feeling for melodrama aroused to appreciate the pathetic life-tragedy back of that sort of situation, and when somebody tells us, paralleling this old-time story, that one of the world's favourite humorists was accustomed to laugh when he was really in a black mood, just the reverse from laughter, we are attracted by the idea and are more than half inclined to believe it before weighing the proof. Moreover, Mr. Brooks does furnish an abundance of proof in support of his theory, so much so indeed that few of us reading his article on the subject will come away without a considerably revised opinion as to Mark Twain's genius. Mr. Clemens started his literary career writing for and as a part of American pioneer life. Circumstances threw him, during his early impressionable years, into the rough, uncultured environment of the western mining camps, and it was there, in defence practically of his own sensitive nature and longing for some kind of expression, however remote, of his artistic life, that he became the creator of an exaggerated humor that won him instant fame and that he was compelled to keep on creating, much as he despised it, to the end of his career. Here we have the psychogenesis of Mark Twain's humor, an outlet of some kind that prodigious energy of his was bound to have, and this outlet, since he had been unable to throw himself whole-heartedly into mining, had to be one which, in some way, however obliquely, expressed the artist in him. That expression, nevertheless, had also to be one which, far from outraging public opinion, would win its emphatic approval. Mark Twain was obliged to remain a good fellow in order to succeed, in order to satisfy his inordinate will to power, and we know how he acquiesced in the suppression of all those manifestations of his individuality, his natural freedom of sentiment, his love of reading, his constant desire for privacy that struck his comrades as different or superior. His choice of a pen-name, indeed, proves how urgently he felt the need of a protective colouration in this society where the writer was a despised type. Too sensitive to relieve himself by horse-play, he had what one might call a preliminary recourse in his profanity, those scorching, singing blasts he was always directing at his companions, and that this, in a measure, appeased him, we can see from Mr. Payne's remark that his profanity seemed the safety valve of his high-pressure intellectual engine, blank, when he had blown off he was always calm, gentle, forgiving, and even tender. We can best see his humour, then, precisely as Mr. Payne seems to see it in the phrase, men laughed when they could no longer swear, as the expression, in short, of a psychic stage one step beyond a stage where he could find relief in swearing as a harmless, moral equivalent, in other words, of those acts of violence which his own sensitiveness and his fear of consequences alike prevented him from committing. By means of ferocious jokes, and most of Mark Twain's early jokes are of a ferocity that will hardly be believed by anyone who has not examined them critically, he could vent his hatred of pioneer life and all its conditions, those conditions that were thwarting his creative life. He could, in this vicarious manner, appease the artist in him, while at the same time keeping on the safe side of public opinion the very act of transforming his aggressions into jokes rendering them innocuous. Then what made it a relief to him made it also popular. The atmosphere of the mining-camp does indeed pervade the typical Mark Twain humour, a humour that finds its effect, that makes its point, in some grotesque bit of exaggeration. It was burlesque as a rule, the kind of humour that is least akin to nature that usually springs on the contrary from a distortion of nature, and as Mr. Brooks points out, during that epic of industrial pioneering, blank, the whole country was as thirsty for humour as it was for ice-water, and as a result Mark Twain's humour fulfilled during its generation a national demand as universal in America as the demand fulfilled in Russia by Dostoevsky, and France by Victor Hugo, in England by Dickens. But it was distinctly a forced humour. Mark Twain was not alone in using it. On the contrary, it was shared by a whole school of pioneer fund-makers recalled by Mr. Brooks, Artemis Ward, Orpheus C. Kerr, Petroleum V. Naspy, Dan Dequill, Captain Jack Downing, etc., and today how the national feeling for fun has changed, irresistibly funny, as these writers all were, with Mark Twain at their head fifty years ago, how doleful is most of their humour today. When Mr. Drinkwater's Lincoln gives the historic reading from Artemis Ward at a cabinet meeting, how many of his twentieth-century audience find food for laughter in what this famous fund-maker of the fifties and early sixties had to say. But it was just the kind of humour that could best lighten the tragic burden borne by the martyr president. If it has lost the secret for producing laughter, it is because we, not Artemis Ward, have changed. Most of the world's humour, indeed, especially if it is borne of a transient national mood, comes distinctly to an age, and not to all time. And that is why perhaps the humour of Mark Twain does not bulk so large with us today as the satirical, serious side of his work, for it is very certain that his work has its deep, serious side, and that this reveals, as Mr. Van Wickbroek's claims, more of the real Mark Twain than the side given up to laughter and literary horseplay. End of Section 2, March 21, 1920, Changing Humour, Editorial related to Van Wickbroek's, read by John Greenman. Section 3 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 4, 1920, Mark Twain, Editorial related to Gamaliel Bradford, and Mark Twain's Hartford Home, letter to the editor. Mark Twain. It was William D. Howells who said of his friend Mark Twain that he will be remembered with the great humourists of all time, with Cervantes, with Swift, or with any others of his company. None of them was his equal in humanity. In an intimate study of Mark Twain in the April Atlantic monthly, Gamaliel Bradford dissents. It is true, he says, that Mark Twain court-fined the laughable element in everything, true that he had that keen sense of melancholy, which is inseparable from the richest comedy. Mr. Bradford goes on to say, to justify his opinion, that his subject should not be classed with the great humourists of the past. Somehow, in Mark, the humour and the pathos are not perfectly blended. The laughter is wild and exuberant as Hart can desire, but it does not really go to the bottom of things. Serious matters, so-called serious matters, are taken too seriously, and under the laughter there is a haunting basis of wrath and bitterness and despair. It is declared by this critic, who is an admirer of Mark Twain, that he was a superficial thinker and seemed like a man discovering things which are perfectly well known to trained thinkers, treating them with such spirit and interest as to convey the impression to casual readers that he had tapped a source of originality. There was no resisting his vivacity, his ingenious extravagance, and a style as versatile as it was vigorous, convinced and charmed. There will be many to agree with Mr. Bradford that Mark Twain in early years, let the great problems alone, did not analyze, did not philosophize, content to extract immense joviality from the careless surface of life, and not to probe further. Can it be disputed that much of the jesting of Mark's youthful days is so trivial that it distinctly implies the absence of steady thinking on any subject. A good deal of old times on a Mississippi, roughing it and innocence abroad, is the broadest, the most extravagant farce, which Paul's on later reading, when Mark Twain does not seem so funny as he was at first, and yet there were no bounds to his efforts to amuse, he did not have that reserve of the great humorists which makes their finest passages immortal. Mr. Howells is probably right in claiming for Mark Twain superior humanity, in the sense that he mingled with all kinds of people, understood them, their good qualities, their individual characteristics, their foibles, and their frailties. He liked, but he also hated. He was a man of strong feelings, although he preferred to be thought flippant, except by his friends, who could never admire and esteem him enough. What could be more human and self-revealing than Mark's summing up of himself? I have been an author for twenty years, and an ass for fifty-five. Who could fail to love a man of jest and sage-ness for such an avowal, knowing that the depreciation was as unjust as it was sincere? Friends of Mark Twain, who knew the man as well as the author, will perhaps be offended by the searching candor of Gamaliel Bradford, but they will have to set off against his sometimes caustic judgments, which, however, are always friendly, such tributes as this. Few human beings ever lived who had a nicer conscience and a finer and more delicate fulfillment of duty. Again, says this critic, human tenderness and kindliness and sympathy have rarely been more highly developed than in this man who questioned their existence. It hardly seems necessary to have said that Mark Twain's place is not with the great, broad, sun-shiny laughers, lamb, Cervantes, and the golden comedy of Shakespeare, but with the satirists Molière, Ben Johnson and Swift, who had their dark moments and railed against the world. If Mark Twain was not one of the greater humorists and a philosopher of the first class, he was undeniably and always a fun-maker and, just as surely, a moralist. But it can never be said that he was not a true painter of contemporary life and a lover of his kind. One has only to turn over again the leaves of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to know this and always maintain it. His fame will rest upon these two books, and it will be permanent. Mark Twain's Hartford Home To the Editor of The New York Times In the Hartford Courant of March 30 there appeared on the first page protests from people of national reputation, blank, over the threatened destruction of Mark Twain's home in Hartford, a literary and historic landmark which the Society of Connecticut Artists is doing its utmost to save. Letters from every quarter of the country are daily swamping the Society's headquarters at 92 Pratt Street, showing that a storm of indignation has been aroused by the proposed desecration. It seems particularly fitting that this plan should be carried out successfully. We have few enough memorials of great artists and thinkers. Of Mark Twain there is the one at his birthplace, Hannibal Mazura, but it is said that the house called Stonyfield at Redding is falling into ruin. It is very likely that many may agree with President G. L. McIntosh of Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, who wrote, I think this is a worthy effort. We are too carefree in this country in preserving our ancient landmarks. This movement is being led by Nuncio Vajana, Secretary of the Society of Connecticut Artists. It has point now, aside from the danger of the destruction of the charming Twain and home, for November 30th will be the 85th anniversary of the birth of Twain, and this year is also the 10th anniversary of his death. And perhaps Twain's, a Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, would be a sufficient reason for the preservation of the Hartford House. The best reason of all, though, is Mark Twain's lasting power to win our first and second year high school pupils, especially those of foreign or limited background, to an enjoyment of books and even of libraries. For these reasons this project seems an admirable plan to cultivate our appreciation and reverence, and as one means for keeping fresh the memory of Mark Twain, who still helps to keep the world young. As a practical way of realizing such a project, would it not be feasible for the Society of Connecticut Artists to ask United States Commissioner Klaxon to request the cooperation of all the State Commissioners of Education in setting a Mark Twain Memorial Week with a program of appropriate topics leading to a penny or more drive in each school, the funds from which to be the gift of the children of the United States for the future school children? John L. Foley, New York, March 29, 1920. End of Section III, April 4, 1920, Mark Twain, an editorial, and Mark Twain's Hartford Home, a letter to the editor, read by John Greenman. Section IV of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 6, 1920. Mark Twain's House. Poem about Hartford Mansion. Lo! men foregain would tear his homestead down, the home of him who touched the heart of youth to leaping laughter at his living truth. Now Tom and Huck, the prince and pauper frown, the Yankee to King Arthur cries, Forsooth, my modern fellows do but show the tooth! John smiles wise in a blue-silvered gown. He needs no bronze or stone memorial. His art brought down a white undying fire to shine on time and gleam through this gray day. Yet we will keep his home a sign to all of our deep debt to him, whose high desire found lusty joy along the common way. John L. Foley. End of Section IV, April 6, 1920. Mark Twain's House. Poem about Hartford Mansion. Read by John Greenman. Section V of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 18, 1920. Mark Twain Memorial. To the editor of the New York Times. The Hartford Current recently printed an excellent account, verbatim, of two real estate speculators dictating to Nuncio Viana, secretary of the Society of Connecticut Artists, about their selling Mark Twain's Hartford home for $245,000, more than they paid for it. They are not caring for the great American humorist and they are not courting public opinion. The reporters who were in the studio to record the results of the Connecticut Artists' annual prize competition heard easily over a low dividing paperboard partition and revealed a shocking disregard of the real estate men for Mark Twain, for art, and the public altogether. Since then the reaction they provoked under the constant leadership of the Hartford Current has aroused a nationwide protesting public with telling effect. These results may be summarized as follows. One, that the Connecticut State Part Commission has the legal power under the right of eminent domain to condemn the Twain property as a historic site. Two, that a public hearing on Monday, before that commission, at Hartford, Governor Marcus Holcomb condemned in scathing terms these speculators, adding that the court would not be cautious about considering technical rights concerning them. And three, that the Governor said, the first thing is to get your contributions, blank, sufficient, to meet whatever expenditure you may need. Further, in making practical the plan I suggested in my letter to the New York Times of April 4th for securing such funds, the United States Commissioner, P. P. Claxton, told me here last night that he would be willing to sponsor or to aid under proper auspices, a plan to cooperate with the state commissioners in the nation for a Mark Twain week, culminating in a gift from American school children of a penny or more to preserve Mark Twain's Hartford home for the children of the future. John L. Foley, New York, April 17, 1920. End of Section 5, April 18, 1920, Mark Twain Memorial, read by John Greenman. Section 6 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. May 17, 1920. Topics of the Time. Coercion can be applied. A decidedly curious situation has been created, and a delicate legal question is raised, by an inquiry recently addressed to the Attorney General of Connecticut by the Park Commission of the State. What the commissioners wanted to know was whether they could condemn and take over under their power of eminent domain the house and grounds in Hartford where Mark Twain lived, and turn the estate into a permanent memorial of the dead writer. It seems that the present owners of the property demand for it a price which the members of the Mark Twain Memorial Association consider unreasonably high, and this is evidently the belief, too, of the Hartford current, for that paper characterizes those owners in severe terms, for the little regard they have shown for the carrying out of a plan, the execution of which would be a cause of keen satisfaction all over the country. As evidently, the Attorney General is in sympathy with the purposes of those who are trying to preserve in its present condition a place with which are linked so many fine associations and to prevent the erection on the land of a group of big apartment houses. In a long opinion, supported by many citations of decisions rendered in cases which he declares relevant, the Attorney General declares that the Park Commission's power to take property is unquestionable, but he advises that the Memorial Association have in hand, before the condemnation proceedings begin, enough money to pay whatever the Park Commission may decide to be a reasonable price for the house and the seven acres of ground in which it stands. These are public purposes. There is no doubt, of course, as to the power of a state or municipal board to take, at an appraised value, land for a park the need for which has been duly recognized. The question at issue is whether or not the commemoration of a literary man's memory is a public purpose in the legal meaning of that phrase. There are intentions, the Attorney General holds, that bring the project well within the domain where the right of eminent domain can be exercised with propriety. This recreation place, he writes, will not only benefit the general welfare of our people, but it will be the mecca for people from every country in the world. That is an exaggeration so slight as to be permissible the part of the world not interested in Mark Twain and his work not having much right to be considered in such a matter. The thing to do now is to raise the money with which to pay the price the owners of the Mark Twain home ought to get as distinguished from the price they want to get. The Hartford Current is ready to accept contributions, large or small, and take care of them. End of Section 6 May 17, 1920 Coercion can be applied Read by John Greenman Section 7 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 7 1920-1924 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. June 27, 1920 Mark Twain, Chief of Sinners Book Review of the Ordeal of Mark Twain by William Lyon Phelps The Ordeal of Mark Twain by Van Wick Brooks, New York, E. P. Dutton & Company Ten years have passed since the death of Mark Twain. During these ten years his fame has grown steadily brighter, his personality more salient and imposing, his masterpieces more mountainous. Times silent but effective methods of cancellation, which bury a reputation without leaving a monument, seem powerless here, as all the sand in Egypt cannot cover the pyramids, so the ever-falling drift of days cannot obliterate genius. Many books have been written about Mark Twain, but with the exception of Paine's biography, perhaps the best biography ever written by an American, this work by Mr. Van Wick Brooks is the most important and the most essential. Mr. Brooks is one of our ablest critics, for he combines Catholicity of taste with an almost austere sincerity. His book, like all books filled with ideas, is a challenge. It contains so much truth that it provokes and disturbs the reader, as all critical writing should do. Emerson said, God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, you can never have both. I say that this book contains much truth. I do not think it contains all the truth, or that it is wholly true, but it is packed with ideas. Ideas have always interested mankind more than facts, because every idea is a challenge, a summons to thought. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. That is a fact. But no man will die for it. We fight and die only for things that cannot be proved. There is something finished about a fact. It has lost the principle of development. It is dead. Ideas are alive. The main idea in this book is that Mark Twain's career was a tragedy, a tragedy for himself and a tragedy for mankind. Every man who does not live up to his highest possibilities is living in a state of sin. Mark Twain was, therefore, one of the chief of sinners, because his possibilities were so great, and he fell so short. Everyone knows that Mark Twain was a pessimist. During his later years he shouted out his pessimism to the four winds of heaven. I have no quarrel with a philosophical pessimist. Every honest man must report external life and his own consciousness as he sees and feels it. Jonathan Swift was a sincere pessimist. He kept his birthday as a day of fasting and mourning. Schopenhauer was a true pessimist, writing his greatest book before he was thirty years old. Thomas Hardy has always been a pessimist, both in youth and old age. These three men are all masters in literature, not because of their pessimism, but because of their literary art. It is a common error to suppose that pessimism in itself is a sign of profound thought and optimism, the mark of a shallow mind, just as many people when listening to music think they can look intelligent, merely by looking sad. Emerson and Browning were both profound thinkers, and they were both incorrigible optimists. In a moment I shall give Mr. Brooks reason why Mark Twain was a pessimist. I do not think it is the true explanation. I believe that Mark Twain's pessimism was partly opposed, and therefore to that extent unworthy of him. It was a creed by which he talked and wrote, not by which he lived. He railed at happiness, he railed at virtue, he railed at self-sacrifice, but he lived a wonderfully happy life. He was so virtuous that he could not swallow the Gorky episode, and he made immense sacrifices for an almost quixotic standard of honor and probity. No man was kinder or more generous in public or in private affairs. There is something unworthy about his contempt for the great unspeakable gift of life. When I remember his rise from obscurity to fame, the long years of dazzling popularity which he loved, the serene happiness of his family life, the idolatry of hosts of friends, and his statement that it was far better not to be born, I can only think of many individuals I know living in poverty and obscurity without fame, riches or popularity, shaken by appalling disasters, yet standing erect with cheerful smiling courage. There is nothing heroic about Mark Twain's pessimism. On the fourteenth page Mr. Brooks states his hypothesis. No, there was a reason for Mark Twain's pessimism, a reason for that chagrin, that fear of solitude, that tortured conscience, those fantastic self-accusations, that indubitable self-contempt. It is an established fact, if I am not mistaken, that these morbid feelings of sin which have no evident cause are the result of having transgressed some inalienable life-demand peculiar to one's nature. It is as old as Milton that there are talents which are death to hide, and I suggest that Mark Twain's talent was just so hidden. That bitterness of his was the effect of a certain miscarriage in his creative life, a balked personality, an arrested development of which he was himself almost wholly unaware, but which for him destroyed the meaning of life. The spirit of the artist in him, like the genie at last released from the bottle, overspread in a gloomy vapor the mind it had never quite been able to possess. If I understand Mr. Brooks correctly there were two villains in Mark Twain's tragedy, his mother and his wife. His mother was more eager to have him good than to have him great, his wife wanted him to be a gentleman. Between them they tamed the lion and made him perform parlor tricks. This hypothesis is worked out by Mr. Brooks with such ingenuity and such force that I can only advise everyone to read the whole book with serious attention to every page. Yet although there is much truth in this explanation, I do not believe it to be the whole truth nor the real reason for Mark Twain's pessimism. Every man of genius who lives in organized society and has a wife and children must necessarily make some sacrifices. He cannot be free. He is checked by a thousand hindrances. But do these repressions necessarily bring pessimism or even unhappiness? Do we not often find pessimism in the absolute free life of an artist? Turgenev was as free as man can possibly be in this world. He was, it is true, subject to the caprices of Madame Vierdo, so far as keeping social engagements went. But she never interfered with his creative life and he realized his highest possibilities as an artist. What did he say? He said, I would give all my fame if there were some woman who cared whether I came home late to dinner or not. Ibsen was married, but his wife has as much repressing effect on his artistic advance as a feather in the path of a locomotive. What did Ibsen say at the end of his marvelously successful career? He said, it takes more courage to live than die. And in that last terrible drama, when we dead awaken, he tells us that the man who sacrifices love for art commits the one unpardonable sin. I do not believe that Mark Twain would have been happier if he had completely shaken off his mother's influence or if he had trampled on his wife's sensibilities. If he really were dissatisfied with his achievements, however unconscious that discontent may have been, this was not, I think, owing to the restrictions placed on him by his conventional wife. It was owing to the natural self-reproach in every honest man, and particularly in those in whom the sense of humor is dominant. Humor and self-criticism go together. A sense of humor is an antidote for conceit. Mr. Brooks hints that Victor Hugo would never have consented to follow the advice of friends as Mark Twain did. But Victor Hugo had no sense of humor, and the complacency with which he looked back upon his career arose from a conceit that was even more colossal than his genius. Late in life some of his friends were talking with him and, of course, about him. One said, Streets ought to be named after him. Another remarked, Streets! Paris ought to change its name and be called Victor Hugo. Another added scornfully, Paris? Paris, after such a great man? No, indeed. France ought to change its name, and the whole country be called Victor Hugo. The great writer then lifted his head and, with Jovian dignity, spoke in tones of quiet solemn conviction. That will come in time. Mr. Brooks cannot sufficiently condemn the influence of Mrs. Clemens and the influence of Elmira, but it is worth remembering that Huckleberry Finn, which I am glad to say Mr. Brooks believes to be his masterpiece, was written during the crowded years of his married life, and much of it was written in Elmira. I have visited the lonely octagonal room in Elmira where Mark Twain wrote, it is an isolated little building on a hilltop, commanding an enormous view of rolling country. Here no one was allowed to disturb him. As a rule he ate no luncheon. He went to this solitude after breakfast and often remained there until evening. His wife kept visitors from him, looked after the household, and left him free. In Hartford his writing-room was the upper story of the barn. There again he worked in undisturbed seclusion. She may have combed many things out of his manuscripts. She may have liked the prince and the pauper better than Huckleberry Finn. She had no genius, but the inspiration of love may have been as valuable to him as the inspiration of an artistic sense equal to his own. I do not believe that he was a fellow almost damned in a fair wife. Mr. Brooks, though he does not use this particular comparison, would have us imagine that his plight was almost equal to that of Andrea del Sarto, who looked from the bondage of domestic tyranny with longing at the great three, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, who never let a woman come between them and their work. I can hardly subscribe to this. The fact that Mark Twain showed such sympathy with Huck's rebellion against the artificialities and restraints of polite society is nothing more than what all men and women too often feel. An instinctive resistance to convention that draws people at times away from the comforts of civilization into the free life of the woods. This feeling is in every human animal. Tolstoy is frequently quoted by Mr. Brooks with approval as a man who refused to surrender to society and remained a rebel to the last. But Tolstoy despised his best books and looked upon Anna Karenina with loathing and contempt. If Mark Twain originally believed Joan of Arc to be a greater book than Huckleberry Finn, he found out later that it was not, and the judgments of authors about their own works are often strange. Thomas Hardy firmly believes that his poems are much greater than the return of the native and tests of the Durbevils, but I do not care what he thinks as long as we have his masterpieces of fiction. Mr. Brooks has written a powerful, thoughtful, and ingenious work, but he has endeavored to fit Mark Twain's life and career to a theory, and, though he brings many facts and many strong arguments to its support, he fails because no man's life can be made to fit a theory. That Mark Twain wrote many books unworthy of his genius is perfectly true, so did Shakespeare. But not only do I think that Mr. Brooks has hit upon the wrong theory for the tragedy of Mark Twain's life, I do not think it was a tragedy. The fact that he loved the cultivated society of New England is no more against him than Shakespeare's love of the aristocrats, and his desire to become a gentleman can be thought a crime against his art. I do not believe that his mother or his wife or Mr. Howells inflicted any serious or permanent injury upon him, and whatever they may have done to repress him was perhaps equaled by the inspiration they all three undoubtedly gave him, the inspiration of love and friendship. A good case can be made against them for individual words and phrases they persuaded him to cut out of his writings, but these are matter for smiles than grief. They do not stop his genius. If he had been a great thinker like Goethe, he would not have held to so shallow a pessimism. But he was never a great thinker, he was a great novelist, a great humorist, a great artist. Goethe said of Byron, the moment he thinks he is a child. But he had a consuming admiration for Byron's genius, so when I read What Is Man and Is Shakespeare Dead, I feel that an ignorant child is talking. But when I read Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi, I stand in awe before the mysterious power of genius. I agree with Mr. Brooks that Mark Twain did not realize all his highest possibilities, but I do not share his approval of Henry James statement that Mark Twain's appeal is an appeal to rudimentary minds, nor of Arnold Bennett's calling him a divine amateur, and his remark that while Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are episodically magnificent, as complete works of art they are of quite inferior quality. With all due respect to Arnold Bennett, his criticism of Mark Twain is an impertinence. This book was written before the appearance of the letters of Henry James, but one thinks of those wonderful letters while reading Mr. Brooks. There was a man who did live up to his highest possibilities as an artist, who sought only an environment favorable to art, who lived away from his country, away from his family, and who was never married, whose passion was to do his best. But is it not at least possible that in a more normal life the genius of Henry James, splendid as we know it to be, might have been mellowed and enriched, more warm with humanity? It is vain to speculate on what might have been, let us be grateful for genius wherever we find it. I believe that Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, the man that corrupted Hadleyberg, life on the Mississippi, Putin had Wilson, yes, and innocence abroad, are all great achievements. Whether one agrees with Mr. Brooks's thesis or not, and I do not, one must admire and one ought to profit by the noble and splendid purpose animating it. It is a call to every writer and to every man and woman not to sin against their own talents. End of Section 7, June 27, 1920, Mark Twain, Chief of Sinners by William Lyon Phelps. Read by John Greenman Section 8 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. September 12, 1920, Mark Twain's Mock Trial We were having a very dull voyage. Mark Twain was one of the passengers on the steamship, and it was decided to have a mock trial instead of the usual concert for the benefit of the Siemens Fund. Mark Twain was to be arrested and tried on the charge of being the greatest liar in the world. Everyone was eager for this unusual form of entertainment, and Mr. Clemens entered into the spirit of it heartily. Judge Dittenhofer of New York presided. A number of Harvard and Yale students were the jury, and the witnesses were other passengers. The hall was crowded. Everyone received a souvenir program with Mark Twain's autograph. The prisoner was handcuffed and forcibly led in by two sailors, looking as if he had had a severe struggle before his arrest. He was placed on the stand, and the witnesses talked about everything but the case. They related numerous funny stories, and the only allusion to Mark Twain's veracity was made by a witness who said Mark Twain had written that coffee in Germany was so weak that it looked and tasted as if a coffee-bean had just waded through it, and she knew this to be untrue, since she had often tasted good coffee in Germany. Finally the author testified in his own behalf and said the only difference between others and himself was that other people were natural-born liars, while with him it was an acquired art. However the jury found him guilty, and Judge Dittenhofer, in summing up the case, said he hoped Mark Twain would live long to charm us with his stories. The sentence was that he must read his own works three hours daily, whereupon Mark Twain in weeping voice said, I would rather be hind, and handed the jury twelve stolen napkins to weep with him. He made a picturesque figure with his shaggy white hair, his wonderfully brilliant eyes and commanding presence. The receipts from the entertainment were one hundred dollars. Carrie H. German. End of section 8, September 12, 1920, Mark Twain's Mock Trial, read by John Greenman. Section 9 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. This edited article contains only the portion relating to Mark Twain. November 7, 1920, elect Mark Twain to Hall of Fame. Five other men and Alice Freeman Palmer placed among American immortals. Patrick Henry recognized. Roger Williams, St. Godin's, and the Discoverer of Anesthesia honored. Many notables voted for. Grover Cleveland and Martha Washington, among those who fail of election. The report of the official canvas of ballots received from the electors of the Hall of Fame in the fifth quinquennial election, was made public yesterday by the Senate of the University of the State of New York, disclosing that Mark Twain had been placed among the American immortals. In the absence of Dr. Robert Underwood Johnson, Ambassador to Italy, the election was in charge of Mrs. William Vanemy, as Acting Director. The names of a hundred and seventy-seven men were voted for, the six following being chosen, Samuel Langhorn Clemens, James Buchanan Eads, Patrick Henry, William Thomas Green Morton, Augustus St. Godin's, and Roger Williams. Twenty-seven women were nominated, the successful candidate being Alice Freeman Palmer. Among those who received votes but not enough to elect were Noah Webster, Walt Whitman, Edward Everett Hale, John Brown, Henry M. Stanley, John Paul Jones, Philip Henry Sheridan, William Maxwell Everts, Grover Cleveland, John Jay, William Penn, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, James A. McNeill, Whistler, Susan B. Anthony, Martha Washington, and Pocahontas Rolf. Louisa Mae Alcott was an unsuccessful candidate, as were Joel Chandler Harris, Cyrus Hall McCormick, John Erickson, John Hay, Theodore Thomas, Alice Carey, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Hall of Fame electorate The electorate of the Hall of Fame consists of ninety-six men and six women. In the election just closed, the electors were university and college presidents, twenty-seven, professors of history and historians, eighteen, scientists, eleven, authors and editors, fourteen, public officials and men and women of affairs, nineteen, past and present justices of national or state courts, twelve. One elector cast a blank ballot. Biographical material prepared by the Hall of Fame concerning the new elected is as follows. Samuel Langhorn Clemens, American humorist, is more generally known by his pseudonym Mark Twain. He was born in Florida, Missouri, November 30th, 1835, and died in Reading, Connecticut, April 21st, 1910. After a brief schooling he was apprenticed to a printer in 1848 and worked at this trade in Philadelphia, New York, and in the West. While he was a pilot on the Mississippi River he was greatly taken with the cry of the Ledzman in taking soundings, and when he began writing he signed himself Mark Twain, the cry of the Ledzman being, by the Mark, Twain. After leaving the Mississippi he tried mining in Nevada. In 1862 he edited a newspaper in Virginia City but soon tired of that and went to San Francisco where he was a newspaper reporter. For a time he edited a newspaper in Buffalo, but tired of this and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. In Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, conceded to be his best books, he appears as a master of humor and pathetic suggestion with a great creative genius. Among his better-known works are The Innocence Abroad, Roughing It, The Gilded Age, Life on the Mississippi, A Yankee in the Court of King Arthur, Putin Had Wilson, How to Tell a Story, Autobiography of Mark Twain, and The Thirty Thousand Dollar Bequest. End of Section 9, November 7th, 1920, Elect Mark Twain to the Hall of Fame, Red by John Greenman. Section 10 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the Public Domain, Red by John Greenman. Editorial on Election to Hall of Fame. November 9th, 1920. Fame. So Mark Twain has at last got into the Hall of Fame. Edgar Allen Poe was admitted in 1910, but Walt Whitman still lingers outside the mystic enclosure within which sit the honored figures of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and William Cullen Bryant. It may be argued, and doubtless has been, for few forms of error have the virtue of novelty, that fame and merit are not the same thing. He who is called the greatest of American poets is understood and appreciated abroad, though his own people have failed to live up to his somewhat optimistic prophecies. But so long as he is under moral disapproval here at home, no amount of foreign favor will suffice to mark him as famous. Fame is a local matter. A man's place in history may depend on the estimate of his unsuccessful neighbors in his hometown. But Whitman's exclusion can no longer be defended by this argument, for by this time Whitman is pretty widely appreciated at home, as well as in foreign parts, where some of the most distinguished American mediocrities have never been heard of. Whitman was a great writer, and he has become famous, but that is not enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Poe was led in after a period of probation, but then Poe's writings were respectable. His life was not always commendable, but neither were the lives of some of the founders of this republic who were admitted virtually by acclamation. The difference is merely one of emphasis. We permit our famous men to overstep the bounds of conventionality, provided they do it apologetically, and without putting anything down on paper, which may seem to suggest extenuation for their behavior. Perhaps Whitman would have been more fortunate if he had lived in our day. End of section 10, November 9, 1920. Fame. Read by John Greenman. Section 11 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. November 24, 1920. To Honor Mark Twain. Ettinger wants books mentioned in Schools on Author's Birthday. City Superintendent of Schools Ettinger has notified district superintendents and principals that as November 30 will be the 85th anniversary of the birth of Mark Twain, Samuel L. Clemens. The attention of pupils, especially of those in the upper grades, ought to be directed to such books as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and The Prince and the Popper. He says that it might also be worthwhile to mention that the last named story has been dramatized and is now being produced in this city. I understand, he says, that the production is notable, both from the standpoint of the actors concerned and the historical correctness of the scenery and costumes. End of section 11, November 24, 1920. To Honor Mark Twain. Read by John Greenman. Section 12 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 1, 1920. Observed Twain's Birthday. Senator Read extols author of The Prince and the Popper at Theatre. The 85th anniversary of Mark Twain's birth was the occasion of a celebration last night at the Booth Theatre, where a dramatization of the Twain's story The Prince and the Popper is being played. Following the second act William Favisham introduced James A. Read, Senator from Missouri, Mark Twain's native state, and also read tributes from Secretary Lansing, Booth Tarkington, Mayor Highland, John Greer Hibbon, and others. Mark Twain gave us pleasing fancies, said Senator Read, but he also gave to America and the world one of the most direct visions it had ever known. He saw instantly through sham and pretense of every sort. Sometimes a nation deliberately deceives itself and worships its own delusion. Mark Twain, the American, was a caustic solvent for delusion. He was wholesome. We need his mentality in America today and in the world. He despised, can't, and held the mirror of truth toward the countenance of hypocrisy. Twain hated kings and queens not for themselves, but for the false pretense they imposed on the earth. End of Section 12, December 1, 1920, Observe Twain's Birthday, read by John Greenwin. Section 13 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenwin. March 10, 1921. Bust of Mark Twain, Stolen. Hartford, Connecticut, March 9. Theft of a bust of Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, from in front of the former home of the author, was discovered here today. The pedestal of the bust was found in Park River, but no trace of the bust itself. A money reward has been offered for its return, as friends of the author consider it an excellent likeness. End of Section 13, March 10, 1921, Bust of Mark Twain, Stolen, read by John Greenwin. Section 14 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenwin. October 9, 1921. Aid Escape from Russia. Clara Clemens, Mark Twain's daughter and her husband, rescue his brothers. American money, pasted between the leaves of novels and between sheets of music, was responsible for my brother-in-law's release from Russia, where he had been practically a prisoner in his own apartment for the past three years. Said Clara Clemens, daughter of Mark Twain, who, with her husband, Osip Gabrilevich, has just returned from a summer in Germany, Switzerland, England, and France. Miss Clemens, when seen at her apartment at 14 East 16th Street, seemed to be in excellent health and spirits. She has not, however, entirely recovered from a serious attack of influenza, which for some time has made her more or less of an invalid. My brother-in-law, George Gabrilevich, she said, arrived in Berlin just before we left that city, after a most frightful journey from Petrograd to Riga. He said that all but two rooms in his apartment had been seized by the Soviet government, that all his money had been taken from him, and that for nearly three years he had but one meal a day. His hair was almost white, although he is still young, and he was emaciated to a shadow of his former self. The trip from Petrograd to Riga was made in a train packed so full of people it was impossible for one of them to sit down unless they all sat down. Food, what little there was of it, was gathered along the way wherever the train stopped. This journey, which in the old days took but twenty-four hours, now takes more than six to seven days. As he was not in sympathy with the Soviet government, he had been treated as any prisoner. He said it was impossible to describe the tyranny under which he and other non-sympathizers had lived. The people whose houses and money had been seized had one or two rooms to live in, one meal a day, and were allowed to go to walk only at certain hours. The fare, even before the famine made it impossible to get grain and other foods, was unspeakable. It was principally to get his two brothers out of Russia that my husband went to England this summer. In London he talked with Mr. Krasin, and while he was very helpful in fact appeared anxious to help, and told my husband just how to send money into Russia, it somehow went astray before it reached its destination. We did not know just where it was lost, we never did know, but it was months before any money reached our two brothers. Finally we tried pasting bills in books, story books, and between sheets of music. Some of this got through, and some of it didn't. At least enough got through to bring them out. We have just received word that the second one has reached Riga. According to my brother-in-law, reports coming out of Russia are not exaggerated. There is no food, and there are no clothes. The people are tired of the present regime. What the next step will be, no one seems to know. Life in Munich, where I spent several months the past year, is not as cheerful as it used to be in the old days. Everyone goes to the opera to be sure, just as they always have, but there is no gala dressing as before the war. Somehow one does not feel like wearing gay clothes in Munich. It just isn't done. There was one Bolshevist demonstration while I was there. We went out one morning and saw large placards pasted on all the billboards, warning people to keep off the streets at five o'clock in the afternoon, as there would be a revolutionary demonstration. We went out at that hour, however, and there was a big crowd in the street, a boisterous crowd. The soldiers had been called out and there were machine guns on most of the street corners. One man was killed, and several wounded. Friends of mine, who had been in Munich two years earlier, during the big revolution, when two thousand persons were killed, did not think this one very serious. Many of the buildings still bear the bullet marks of the Civil War of two years ago. While the officials make it difficult to gain entry to Bavaria, many refugees from all parts of the world are there now, Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Bulgarians. They are a restless crowd. The return soldier class is also a disturbing element. Today they want a democracy. Tomorrow they want another form of government, and so it goes. Our visit in Berlin was not interrupted by any similar demonstration. There things are much quieter, and life has resumed its old routine. A great friend of mine, Countess S., who had belonged to the court circles in Vienna, and had saved a very little money, was living in Munich. We went to the opera often together. One evening she pointed out a quietly dressed gentleman sitting in one of the boxes and said, that is the Exzar of Bulgaria. A few nights later we were late getting to the opera. After the curtain goes up one must always wait until the end of the act. They are very strict in Europe about this. No one is ever allowed to enter during an act. As this opera was a modern one, and this one a premier, and there was but one act, we had visions of missing the whole of it, when the Exzar of Bulgaria came along and, being a friend of the Countess, stopped and spoke to us. We told him our trouble, and he said he would see what he could do. In a few minutes he came back and took us into the opera house. Even ex-royalty still has its privileges in some places in Europe. Miss Clemens has gone to Detroit to join her husband, who is director of the Symphony Orchestra there. She plans to return to Munich in May and give a historical series of national songs. This series will embrace the history of the songs of all nations, from the beginning to the present day. End of Section 14 October 9, 1921 Aide Escape from Russia Read by John Greenman Section 15 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. March 12, 1922 Mark Twain found Gorky a vexation. Hits public in the face with his hat, then holds it out, he wrote. 19 letters of Mark Twain to Charlotte Teller, the author of The Cage, will be sold at the Anderson Galleries on March 14. Miss Teller met Mark Twain in connection with Gorky's visit to New York during the Russian Revolution of 1905. She saw him nearly every day for about three months. She then went abroad, and they continued to correspond at intervals until his death. In one of the letters Mark Twain says, Gorky is a puzzle and a vexation to me. He came here in a distinctly diplomatic capacity, a function which demands and necessitates delicacy, tact, deference to people's prejudices. He came on a great mission, a majestic mission, the sucker of an abused and suffering vast nation. As to his diplomacy, it does not resemble Tellerans, Gorchakov's, Metternich's. It is new. It is original. It has not its like in history. He hits the public in the face with his hat, and then holds it out for contributions. It is not ludicrous. It is pitiful. As to his patriotism, his lofty talk of lifting up and healing his bleeding nation, it can't stand the strain of a trifling temporary inconvenience. He had made a grave blunder, and persistently refuses to rectify it. The other letters are full of such characteristic touches as, I never use profanity except when writing to a clergyman. They have taken to interrupting me every time I try to arrange about my funeral, which is to be in January, a year and seven months from now, January 4. I tell strangers it is the sixth. This letter reminds me of the time I reformed. I said I would smoke only one cigar a day. Before the month was out, I was getting cigars manufactured specially. They were as long as a crutch. In one of the letters he says, If you yourself have any doubts, brush them away, for there is greatness in you, Charlotte, more than you suspect. A few of the letters have pieces cut out of them, which was done by Mark Twain, who explained it in this way. This letter is getting oppressively long for you, who are a busy person, and I am modifying it with the scissors. The letters are sympathetic and intimate. They are full of revelations of character and conditions. In spite of their sometimes somber tone, they are full of humorous touches. End of Section 15, March 12, 1922, Mark Twain found Gorky of Exation, read by John Greenman. Section 16 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. March 21, 1922, $200,000, Mark Twain set. Gabriel Wells pays record price for any author's work. Gabriel Wells, rare bookseller, has bought from P. F. Collier & Son Company a new definitive deluxe edition of Mark Twain's works, valued at more than $200,000. It is said to be the highest price ever paid for a single edition of any author's works. Mr. Clemens' estate will receive from this sale alone more money than the author of a bestseller of the day obtains from the sale of 100,000 copies. This royalty added to the returns on the popular editions of Mark Twain make his earnings, it is said, the greatest recorded for any author. The value of this edition is enhanced by autographed title pages done by Mr. Clemens a short time before his death. End of Section 16, March 21, 1922, $200,000, Mark Twain set. Read by John Greenman. Section 17 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. June 11, 1922. Twain's Cabin Dedicated. California Quarters occupied by author when seeking gold restored. Sonora, California. June 10. The Mark Twain Memorial Cabin at Jackass Hill near here was dedicated today with Governor William D. Stevens delivering the dedicatory address. Twain slept an eight in the cabin, which has been restored during the time he prospected for gold in California. He gave up prospecting and left this district in 1865. The Governor recited events of Twain's arrival at Jackass Hill in December 1864, his prospecting days, and his life in the cabin, which has been restored by William J. Loring, President of the American Mining Congress. The beginning of Twain's career of making men's tasks easier to bear, the Governor said, is indelibly associated with his days in the mining country of Tuolumne and Calaveras counties. In his cabin the sick were made well, and the well made better as the result of his cheerfulness and humor. End of Section 17, June 11, 1922, Twain's Cabin dedicated, read by John Greenman. Section 18 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 28, 1922, Mark Twain's home sold. Mrs. Margaret Given becomes owner of Humorous Connecticut Estate. Reading Connecticut December 27. Stormfield, the home of Samuel Langhorn Clemens, Mark Twain, on Reading Ridge, in which he spent the last years of his career until his death, in 1910, will pass into the hands of Mrs. Margaret Given of New York City as the result of arrangements completed through the trustees of the Humorous estate it was announced to-night. The estate, which consists of 248 acres of land and an Italian villa, was planned by Mark Twain as a country retreat. It has been unoccupied since his death, and will be remodeled by its new owner. End of Section 18, December 28, 1922, Mark Twain's home sold, read by John Greenman. Section 19 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. This edited article contains only reference to Mark Twain. January 25, 1923 pays $1,900 for rare Mark Twain work. Dr. Rosenbach buys manuscript at sale of Mrs. John B. Stansfield Library. Mark Twain's manuscript, Is Shakespeare Dead, brought $1,900 yesterday at the sale in the Anderson Galleries of the Library of Mrs. John B. Stansfield of Islip, Long Island. The afternoon session yielded $11,798.50, while the evening sales amounted to $8,762, making a total for the day of $20,560.50. The sale will be continued this afternoon and evening. Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, who has been one of the heaviest buyers at recent book sales, was the purchaser of the Mark Twain manuscript, which brought the highest price of the day. This is a desirable manuscript, because autographed manuscripts of this period of Mark Twain's life are uncommon. During the later years of Mark Twain's literary activity he generally resorted to stenographic dictation. This is one of his last in long hand. End of Section 19, January 25, 1923, pays $1,900 for rare Mark Twain work, read by John Greenman. Section 20 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. March 23, 1923, Mark Twain Estate sold. The trustees of the Samuel L. Clemens Estate have sold Stormfield, near Reading, Connecticut, to Mrs. Margaret E. Given. The property contains about two hundred acres, with a stucco residence of Italian architecture containing eighteen rooms and five baths, built in 1907, and occupied by Mr. Clemens, Mark Twain, the world famous humorist, until his death in 1910. Hamilton, Iceland and company were the brokers in the deal. End of Section 20, March 23, 1923, Mark Twain Estate sold, read by John Greenman. Section 21 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. June 10, 1923, Dinner Talk by Mark Twain. A review by Percy A. Hutchinson. Mark Twain's Speeches, edited by Albert Bigelow Payne. Three hundred ninety-six pages, New York Harper and Brothers, two dollars and twenty-five cents. In most respects, this edition of the speeches of Samuel L. Clemens is not a new book. Fully ninety percent of the speeches herein contained will be found in the earlier collection from the hands of the same editor. Moreover, that earlier collection contains more than a score of speeches not to be found in the later book. On the other hand, the new volume includes a considerable amount of material which was not in the first collection. Texturally, the new book is more nearly authentic, and the fact that Albert Bigelow Payne has arranged the speeches chronologically makes possible for the first time a study of Mark Twain's growth and evolution as a lecturer and after-dinner speaker. This study will be found as illuminating as it is interesting. The earliest lecture of Mark Twain's, of which Payne has been able to secure a manuscript copy, was Clemens' talk on the Sandwich Islands, first delivered at Maguire's Music Hall, San Francisco, in October 1866, and afterward repeated by Clemens many times, both in this country and in England. Previous to the initial delivery of this lecture, Mark Twain had spoken more than once in public, at least, so his editor believes, but of these talks which may have been extemporaneous there is no text or report extant. Hence the speech-making career of the American humorist must be considered as having begun with the Sandwich Islands talk. Payne closes the volume with a short appreciation by Twain of William Travers Jerome, delivered at a dinner to the then District Attorney held at Del Monaco's in May 1909. Thus the speech-making career of Mark Twain extended over a period of forty-three years, during which time his humor held unfailing, although it underwent certain subtle changes, losing its boisterousness and acquiring a mellowness as time went on. Most notable is it that never, even when life bore most heavily on Clemens, is there the slightest trace of acerbity. Indeed, as the reader progresses through the book he finds the conviction forced upon him that Mark Twain held his sense, and his command of humor, as a very sacred thing, as a Pentecostal gift to be used for healing, never to be used for wounding. Righteously indignant Clemens could be at times, and righteously indignant he was when the hypocrisies, shams, and abuses that were all around him seemed too great to bear. And on such occasions his wit was barbed. But after the shaft had found its mark he soothed with the curative touch of a mirth mingled with magnanimity, or turned from the subject with a jovial quip. Certain critics have made considerable adieu latterly over the alleged discovery that underlying Twain's humor was a substratum of pessimism. It is apparently the conclusion of this school that Clemens was a modern Prometheus, who, finding no escape from the vulture tearing at his entrails, took refuge in making a colossal mock of his devourer. If this view be correct, there is little evidence of it in the speeches, where one would expect to find it most pronounced, and no evidence whatever in the earlier speeches. On the contrary, the impression one gets from Twain's earlier attempts to storm the lecture-platform is that of a young man who has discovered that he is possessed of a certain rare talent—in this case the talent for humor—and who is making, now furtive, now arrogant, efforts to put his product across. And, far from anything of pessimism, there is instead all the joy of a puppy awkwardly learning to walk. If one can hear the laughter of the audience, one can also hear the chortle of the lecturer as the effect for which he planned comes off successfully. The information furnished by the editor that in the beginning Twain carefully wrote out his speeches, learned them by heart, and practiced them in seclusion, would have been guessed at by the reader. The lecture on the Sandwich Islands shows in every line and word the most careful preparation. It was evidently not only cast, but recast, and the trepidation of the speaker is at once apparent. Clemens felt that he must give a certain amount of information that bore on its face evidence that it was true, and on this information he depended to carry the speech through. Launching himself in media's res, he says, To cut the matter short, the Sandwich Islands are 2,100 miles southwest from San Francisco. But why they were put out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so far from any place, and in such an inconvenient locality is no business of ours, it was the work of providence, and not open to criticism. The reader feels clearly the half-hesitating manner in which Twain makes the transition from fact to humor, and not such robust humor at that, but it is enough to provoke a smile, if not a laugh, and after a little more of the same tentative wit, the lecturer again seeks the solid ground of fact before his next attempt at humor. But he had succeeded as the reader of the speech in cold type finds himself face to admit. The smile carries over, and when again the speaker essayed the humorous, this time with more confidence and more robustness, he was master of the situation. Not only is the lecturer a valuable object of study for anyone planning to attempt the career of humorist, but it is illuminating as a study of Mark Twain. The lecturer on the subject of the Sandwich Islands bears witness in every line that a writer and speaker had come into his own. Very early in Twain's speech-making two traits appear which became more pronounced as time went on. One of these was shrewdness. The other might be called egotism. But to call it egotism would be to do Clemens an injustice. It took the form of talking about himself, but of talking about himself in a humorous way. In the speech which the editor called unconscious plagiarism, delivered at the dinner given by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly to Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1879, Twain says, a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that protects a man from stealing other people's ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man, and admirers had often told me that I had nearly a basketful, though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket, or again in the address at the Fourth of July dinner of the American Society in London twenty years later, consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the ambassador, Joseph Chote, rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a senator, and I come third. What a subtle tribute that to the monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability. Of course this egotism, or mock egotism, is indicative of the progress Twain had achieved in the affection of the people, not merely the American people, but Englishmen also. It would be an interesting experiment to place the volume of speeches before some reader who had never taken up a book of Twains, who knew nothing of the humorous place in literature, have him construct the man from this record of his spoken words. The picture would be more nearly true than most portraits, for Clemens gave of himself unsparingly, genuinely. As we get away from the lecture period and into the years when the speeches were invariably made in response to the Toastmasters call, Twain is more and more frankly himself, although it was his rule, after a momentary revelation, to turn the matter off with a quip. On these occasions he talked of his debts, his honor, his family, his hopes, and his fears, and his affections. But so nimble was he that before there was any slopping over into sentimentality he had snapped a whip, and his hearers, on the verge of a tear, were brought up with a laugh. Very rarely was there any exception to this. In the political speech against Blaine, Clemens was in too deadly earnest to trifle with humor, and when he replied to the Toast at the dinner given him at Delmonico's on his 70th birthday by Colonel Harvey, he finished without the customary joke at the end. The close of the 70th birthday speech has no counterpart in American literature, and the only Britisher who could have come near it would have been Stevenson, and Stevenson could not have done it in so consummate a fashion. Twain led up to his closing with a fine burst of buffoonery. It was not such good buffoonery as he had mustered in his younger days, but it served his purpose, which was to get his hearers into such a state of laughter that they would not grasp the fact that he had turned to seriousness until he was halfway through. Apparently launched into verbal clowning that had no end in sight, Twain suddenly switched. Three scores, years, and ten! It is the scriptural statute of limitations, and after that you have no active duties. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase. You have served your time, well or ill, and you are mustered out. Blank, if you shrink at the thought of night and winter, and the late homecoming from the banquet, and the lights and 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 the thought of these things, you need not make in declining an invitation the previous engagement plea. You need only reply. Your invitation honours 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. And then, 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. This also should go a long way to refute the pessimist charge. It is true that Mark Twain was no superficial optimist. He was a staunch moralist, a teacher in Cap and Bells, almost a preacher. But he delighted in his humour, and even if he had his moments of melancholy, such moments are evidenced more than once, he was no pessimist. When cannot leave the subject of Mark Twain's speeches without recurring to what he must have looked back upon as the most ludicrous happening of his career, although at the time it seemed anything but ludicrous. The story is told in the Twain biography, and will be familiar to most of Twain's readers. References made to the Whittier dinner in Boston in 1877, at which Clemens unintentionally wounded the susceptibilities of Boston's literary inhabitants, hero-worshiping, at the names of long fellow Emerson and Holmes. In his broadest, but never gross, frontier style and manner, Twain elaborated an extravagant fiction of having arrived at a miner's cabin and asked Shelter for the night, seeking to get on the right side of the miner by impressing him with the fact that his caller was none less than Mark Twain. The prospector, however, instead of being impressed, allowed that he wanted no more literary fellows around, three having stopped there the night before and must up things generally, ending with a fight. On Twain's inquiry as to the identity of the strangers they turned out to be the Trinity named. The speech was received in utter silence. Clemens had quoted from the poetry of each, and made, it is true, a ridiculous application of the passage quoted. For example, the three are represented as playing Uker. I began, says the miner, to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson Dell looked at his hand, shook his head, says, I am the doubter and the doubt. And calmly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new layout. Says he, they reckon ill who leave me out. They know not well the subtle ways I keep, I pass, and deal again. Twain's other quotations were similarly applied, and the very exaggeration of the humor should have been sufficient to carry the absurdity across. But no, even W. D. Howells, who as Toastmaster had introduced the humorist, was unable to smooth matters out. Twain was stunned. Speaking of the incident later he said, the people in front of me seemed to turn to stone with horror. It was the sort of expression their faces would have worn if I had been making these remarks about the deity, and the rest of the trinity. There is no other way in which to describe the petrified condition and ghastly expression of those people. It took many letters of apology before Clemens was able to set himself right, and he never tried again the experiment of lampooning an idol of the Boston Brahmins. But the episode shows that we of this generation hardly realize how seriously America's Victorians took themselves. But some of the Brahmins of the idols of our present Georgian period would undoubtedly make a similar spectacle of themselves if some Mark Twain should open the windows on their pretensions and let in the fresh wind of humor and common sense. End of Section 21, June 10, 1923, Dinner Talk by Mark Twain, read by John Greenman. Section 22 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. July 9, 1923, Harbaugh, writer of Terror Tales, sells relics of past to Peiwei in Poorhouse. Castown, Ohio, July 8, Associated Press. Before a small collection of worldly goods stood a village auctioneer, importuning a handful of country people to part with their dollars, thus starting the last chapter in the life of Thomas C. Harbaugh, as fantastic an ending probably as he ever dreamed of when he was penning vivid fiction three-score years ago. Not very valuable looking were these real possessions of Harbaugh, and they brought but one thousand dollars, but they were rich in names and associations. In an autograph book, which sold for sixty dollars, was a letter from Mark Twain to Governor Frank Fuller of New York, dated in 1870 at Hartford, Connecticut, which said, My dear Fuller, does the whiskey mill need a new man who knows how to boss men? I know the right man, in case a boss should be wanted, diligent, honest, and plucky, never drinks, but can be taught. The letter was signed Mark. Harbaugh, now nearing his eightieth birthday, whose name was on the lips of readers of the American Penny Dreadfuls, was on his way to Miami County Infirmary today, the poor house, as most people call it, with the one thousand dollars, which he expects will keep him there as a paying inmate for the rest of his life. In the days of Beatles' dime weekly, the Saturday night, and such publications, the name of Thomas C. Harbaugh was seen in many issues over a story of blood-curdling adventure, evolved from a prolific mind in some nolent and peaceful castown. His name and that of Nick Carter often were linked together as writers of a kind. Volumes of sensational writing were turned out by Harbaugh, and at one time he was considered wealthy from the returns of his endeavors. There are many stories in Castown of how he scattered the money. The autograph book contained scores of letters from eminent Americans, from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt. His correspondence also included many Union and Confederate generals who survived the Civil War, as well as foreign notables who acknowledged over their signatures the pleasure they had found, either in his thrilling stories or the sentimental poetry that he wrote in Reims. End of Section 22, July 9, 1923. Harbaugh, writer of terror tales, sells relics of past to payway in poor house. Read by John Greenman. Section 23, Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. July 26, 1923. Twain's old home destroyed by fire. Stormfield, at Redding Connecticut, burns. Present owners flee for lives. Redding Connecticut, July 25. Stormfield, the home of Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, in the closing years of his life, was burned early today. The picturesque villa on the ridge of this town was unoccupied for many years after Mr. Clemens' death, but was bought in December by Mrs. Margaret E. Givens of New York as a summer home. The home was built to carry out the ideas and wishes of Mr. Clemens and with the other buildings comprised a country estate. In this home Mark Twain spent his last years, and as he had expressed it, experienced some of the deepest sorrows of his life, as well as some of his happiest days. Here his younger daughter, Janet, sick, met a tragic death, and here there was a burglary which aroused widespread interest. In Stormfield Mr. Clemens lay ill for a long time, and from it his body was born to its last resting place. After a visit to Stormfield, William Dean Howells wrote of Mark Twain in his home, he showed his absolute content with his home. Truly he loved the place! Mrs. Givens, her daughter Thelma, and her son Eben, were in the house when the latter discovered the fire in the laundry. They were obliged to flee in their night garments. The flames could be seen for a long distance, and farmers hastened to the place to assist the Reading Fire Department and neighbors. The property was originally offered at $175,000, and the house was valued at a considerable part of that figure. It was insured. The fires believed to have started from spontaneous combustion among some painting materials which were in the laundry. Neighbors saved a few things, including articles which had been thought much of by Mr. Clemens. Among them was a carved mantle brought by him from Scotland. End of Section 23, July 26, 1923, Twain's old home destroyed by fire. Read by John Greenman. Section 24 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. October 7, 1923. A Book Review. Europe and Elsewhere. Europe and Elsewhere by Mark Twain, with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Payne. Frontist piece from drawing by Peter Newell, 406 pages, New York Harper and Brothers, $2.25. Old timers, very old timers, in Newspaperdom out in Nevada, and California, still chuckle over a story they heard a generation and more ago from Mark Twain's associates on the Virginia City Enterprise when he was doing his apprenticeship on that paper soon after the Civil War. It was the custom they explained in those unregenerate days whenever a new saloon was opened, which was quite frequently, for Virginia City was in its heyday of mining prosperity, and life was hectic and hilarious, for the proprietors to send a basket of champagne to the newspaper office, expecting, and always receiving, in the next issue, an account of the occasion, and the place that glowed with good fellowship. Such a basket, large and well filled, came one day, and to young Clemens was assigned the job of writing the story about it. The others heard him laughing to himself now and then as he wrote, and when he hung his copy on the hook and hurried off on some other assignment, for the office was undermanned and he did all manner of varied work, they read it, laughing uproariously. He had written it as if under the mounting inspiration of bottle after bottle of the wine, not one of which had been opened, mingling boisterous humor, sly wit, quaint fantasy, extravagant imagination, and, seeming to progress gradually through the successive stages of intoxication from brilliant good fellowship at the beginning, through increasing mental stuttering and hiccuping, to sudden end in maudlin imbecility. They agreed it was a masterpiece of its kind and excruciatingly funny, and hailed Clemens on his return with congratulations and appreciation. But when the paper came out, his story wasn't there, and in its place was a colorless conventional four-line notice. Clemens and his associates rushed in a body to the composing-room to find out what had happened. The foreman explained, Yes, I read the piece, and I saw Sam had been getting drunk again, and I was afraid the boss would discharge him if he saw the proof of it in the paper. So I threw it away and wrote that item instead, and I recognized Sam's job for him. To this day the old-timers declare that it was the funniest and cleverest and most brilliant thing Mark Twain ever wrote, and hold that he thought so too, and always regretted its untimely snuffing out. One closes this new posthumous volume with the wish that somebody as strenuously determined as Mark Twain's old foreman to uphold his reputation to its highest notch had taken a hand in the selection of the papers that compose it. Some of them indeed are well worthwhile. The initial article describing a visit to Westminster Abbey at midnight, any lover of Mark Twain ought to read. Mr. Payne tells us in his introduction that it was part of a mass of notes, comments, and short bits that Twain wrote during a visit to England in 1872, as preparation for a book about that country. But he gave up that purpose, and the volume was never written. Other articles preserve newspaper correspondence from Europe during the 70s and the 90s. There are some graphic descriptions of scenes, incidents, and places, one of these telling the story of a lazy, drifting trip down the Rhone River in 1891, of which some parts are very delightful, while others are unworthy of Mark Twain, or anyone else. It was on this trip that he discovered, and lost, a mountain silhouette having a startling resemblance to a recumbent Napoleon of tremendous size, which is described in another short article. Readers of one of Albert Bigelow Payne's recent books will remember the account of an automobile journey he took through that country in 1913 for the purpose, which was finally successful, of rediscovering that effigy. The volume contains thirty-five articles of varying length, dated all along through the years from the early 70s to 1908. Some of them had newspaper or magazine publication at the time, but most of them are now put into print for the first time. Some deserve preservation because of their inherent worth and their delectable, inimitable Mark Twain flavor. But as for most of them, it is probable that the author had entirely forgotten them and would have rushed them into the waste-basket, if he had known they would some time appear in print. End of Section 24, October 7, 1923, Europe and Elsewhere. Read by John Greenman. Section 25 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920-1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. This is an edited segment from the original article. December 2, 1923. Fleet-fingered typist, the deus ex machina of the 20th century and her forerunners, by Mary Badger Wilson. It was in 1867 that Christopher Latham Scholes made his first crude writing machine, which he himself christened typewriter, and by 1873 he had so far perfected the instrument that the Remington firm of gun-makers undertook to market it. There are still in existence copies of one of the original catalogs a quaint publication containing the following testimonial from Mark Twain. Hartford, March 19, 1875. Gentlemen, please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge the fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know that I own this curiosity-breeding little joker. Yours truly, Samuel L. Clemens. The first typed manuscript ever submitted to a publisher was one of Mark Twain's masterpieces. End of Section 25, December 2, 1923, Fleet-Fingered Typist, read by John Greenman. Section 26 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 18, 1924, Buys Mark Twain's house. GL Hunter is reported acting for a wealthy New Yorker. Reading Connecticut April 17, the Mark Twain place, where stand the ruins of the former home of the author, burned three years ago, has been sold to George Leyland Hunter, who, it is understood, represents a wealthy New York man who is expected to erect an elaborate residence on the site. Mr. Hunter recently purchased and occupies the house known as the Lobster Pot, given by Mark Twain to his Social Secretary, Ms. Virginia Lyon. He is author of several books on tapestries. End of Section 26, April 18, 1924, Buys Mark Twain's house, read by John Greenman. Section 27 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 7, 1920 through 1924. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. May 14, 1924, unveil ten busts for Hall of Fame. Nine men and one woman further honored at ceremonies at New York University. Trumpeters lead parade. Tributes paid to Adams, Brooks, Clemens, Eads, Cooper, Jefferson, Alice Palmer and others. Ten of the immortals in the Hall of Fame were further honored yesterday when the busts of nine men and one woman, leaders in statesmanship, in science, in letters, in medicine, in education and in religion, were presented and unveiled with impressive ceremonies at New York University. Descendants, in several cases, unveiled the busts, and men of eminence in the branches in which they excelled, told why they merited places among the immortals. The ceremonies were held in a large marquee, pitched on the lawn outside the Hall of Fame, and those who were honored were John Adams, President of the United States, Bishop Phillips Brooks, Samuel L. Clemens, James Buchanan Eads, Engineer, Peter Cooper, also an engineer and founder of Cooper Union, Joseph Henry, Alice Freeman Palmer, who at the age of 26 was President of Wellesley College, Andrew Jackson, soldier and statesman, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Dr. W. T. G. Morton, pioneer in anesthesia. Their busts, wrought in bronze, hidden at first from view by enfolding American flags, were placed in a colonnade of whitened classic pillars, and were unveiled in turn. Dr. Robert Underwood Johnson, poet and editor, Director of the Hall of Fame, presided, and Dr. Elmer Ellsworth Brown, Chancellor of the University, stood beside him. An active participant in the ceremonies was Thomas A. Edison, who caused some amusement at first by moving whenever photographers had him in focus, but he would not let them snap him until it fell to him to unveil the bust of Joseph Henry. Then he stood still for a moment, and the troubles of the photographers were over. Procession opens ceremonies. The ceremonies opened with a procession of the faculty of the university and invited guests, which formed in the rotunda of the library, and, led by four women trumpeters in classic attire, and carrying a colorful array of flags, passed slowly through the open corridor of the Hall of Fame, passed the busts already there. The audience of nearly five hundred persons rose when the trumpeters led the way into the marquee. Then, one by one, the busts were unveiled. First came John Adams, and another John Adams, the great great grandson of the first, unveiled bust. But not before Dr. Johnson said that in the selections to the Hall of Fame there was no room for race, sex, religious, or political opinion. The Hall of Fame, he said, is not a calendar of saints but of human beings, each of whom presents some fine equation of greatness. It is not too much to say that the names here recorded, and those to be added, will be, for all time, the pride and inspiration of the American people. The address on John Adams was by William M. Sloan, President of the Academy of Arts and Letters. He said Adams had been justly designated as a self-made aristocrat, and that he exhibited a towering moral courage in successfully defending British soldiers charged with murder in the Boston Massacre, at a time when public opinion was dangerously inflamed. The bust of Philip's Brooks was by Daniel Chester French and was the gift of Trinity Church Boston, members of whose vestry attended. It was unveiled by Miss Josephine Brooks Anise. Mark Twain's Daughter there. Mrs. Osip Gabrilevich, daughter of Samuel L. Clemens, unveiled the bust of Mark Twain. Miss Agnes Repler made the address. She said Mark Twain had been aptly described as America's great laughing philosopher, but that his hatred of sham raised him to the status of moralist. Governor Arthur M. Hyde of Missouri and Bainbridge Colby, President of the Missouri Society, were in the delegation that escorted James E. Switzer, a grandson, to unveil the bust of James Buchanan Eads, and Dr. George F. Swain, Professor of Civil Engineering at Harvard University, made the address. The bust of Peter Cooper, the work of Chester Beech, was presented in behalf of graduates of Cooper Union, and was unveiled by Miss Edith Cram, a great-great-granddaughter. Our Fulton cutting made the address. A delegation of Barnard Girls escorted Professor George H. Palmer of Harvard University to unveil the bust of his wife, Alice Freeman Palmer. The address was by Dr. James A. Angle, President of Yale University. Members of the Ladies' Hermitage Association of Nashville, Tennessee, unveiled the bust of Andrew Jackson, which was presented by the association. Albert Marble Jackson, a great-grandson, unveiled the memorial, and Norman H. Davis, former acting Secretary of State, spoke. The bust of Thomas Jefferson was unveiled by Mrs. Francis O. Barton, a great-great-granddaughter, and was provided through subscriptions raised by the New York World. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, President of the University of Virginia, which Jefferson founded, spoke of him as the first great philosopher and intellectual radical in American life. The bust of Dr. William T. G. Morton, an esthetist, was unveiled by Boditch Morton, a grandson. Dr. William W. Keene, a former President of the American Surgical Association, made the address. Thomas A. Edison unveiled the bust of Joseph Henry, electrical engineer, and Frank B. Jewett, a former President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, made the address. The busts will be placed on their pedestals in the Hall of Fame today. Ender, Section 27, May 14, 1924, Unveil 10 busts for Hall of Fame, read by John Greenman.