 Section 49 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5. 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. November 20, 1907. Uptown audience at children's play. Society folk, as Mark Twain's guests, see the prince and the pauper. Host's speech, cut short. Miss Hertz, founder of the theatre, says the object is to develop latent traumatic talent. It was said last night that twenty-five dollars was vainly offered in the course of the evening by some East Side folk for a ticket of admission to the children's theatre in the Educational Alliance Building, where Mark Twain was entertaining a host of guests, including Governor Hughes and District Attorney Jerome, with a special performance of his The Prince and the Pauper. The company was the regular one of the children's theatre. Soon after eight o'clock, East Broadway and the intersecting block of Jefferson Street seemed a Broadway in everything except the background and the white lights. Cabs, coupes, automobiles, and carriages drove up to the Jefferson Street entrance and deposited many of the well-known residents of the town, men and women in evening dress, while footmen lined the lobby, exciting a quite respectful murmur from the crowd kept at a distance by alert policemen. Of course, everyone expected a speech from the author. In an entree act Mr. Clemens came before the curtain. As he began, some of those in the audience recalled that on a former occasion when he had attempted to speak, the play then being the same, he had been cut short in the midst of a story by the management. So these persons waited to see what would happen. Mr. Clemens expressed the pleasure the occasion held for him. He said that as the ambassador of the children who played in the theatre and who usually made up its audiences, he had invited those present, the hearts and the brains of New York, to see the work done in the theatre. The children's theatre is a great educational feature, he said. The time ought to come when a child's theatre will be a part of every public school in the land. I am apt to be quite plain, at this point a muffled whistle sounded behind the lowered curtain. That whistle was the signal agreed upon that I should stop, said Mr. Clemens, and I have not yet started. I shall now do the special thing that I am here to do. I introduce to you Miss Hertz, the founder of the theatre. He led Miss A. Mini Hertz to the centre of the curtain line and then stepped down into the orchestra. Miss Hertz spoke with fervour of the work being done in the theatre. She told how plays and scenery had been obtained from managers. Then we had no players, she said, so that we had to make them. There were a number of dramatic clubs of the district which had been hiring this very hall for their entertainments. Some young man would like to see himself as Hamlet or wish to play in The Bells and Ghosts. He would gather about himself a little company of friends, sell the tickets to other admiring friends, and then give his performance. So we—the whistle that had checked Mr. Clemens now blew rather insistently. But Miss Hertz, while intent upon her subject, paid no attention to it. The young people enter into the spirit of the thing fully, she said. The scene-shifter or member of the crown enters just as heartily into the performance as those who play the principal roles. And these young women and young men work the better for it in their department store or shop. They, again the whistle, have a fine spirit about it. We are endeavouring to develop the elemental dramatic impulse latent in every human being from the cradle to the grave. A final blast from the whistle, and Miss Hertz bowed and retired. The performance itself was fully up to the best standards of amateur acting, but there was about the stage management a deafness that was professional. The whole moved in obedience to routine stage discipline. The Governor, who entered while an act was in progress and so escaped notice for the time, was in time to see the set of that act struck and another set in place. None of the amateur actors or actresses faltered. If any or all of them had been unable to continue, their places could have been readily filled from the two complete castes waiting upstairs, known as the understudy and emergency castes. In addition to the Governor and the District Attorney, some of those in the audience were President Elliot of Harvard, Andrew Carnegie, Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey M. DePew, Robert Collier, John Burroughs, Commissioner Bingham, Dan Beard, Richard Harding Davis, Mrs. John Drew, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, Dr. Thomas R. Slicer, Frederick A. Stokes, Hamilton W. Mabey, Brander Matthews, Morris K. Jessup, James J. Hill, John Bigelow, Poltny Bigelow, A. F. Eno, Walter Damrosch, Colonel George Harvey, and Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Corey. End of Section 49, November 20, 1907, Uptown Audience at Children's Play, read by John Greenman. Section 50 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 1, 1907, Mark Twain, 72. Many friends called to congratulate him on his birthday. Samuel M. Sick Clemens celebrated his 72nd birthday yesterday at his home, 21 Fifth Avenue. The humorist spent the day quietly at home, and there were no festivities. Hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams were received during the day from points all over the world. Many friends called at the house to congratulate him. End of Section 50, December 1, 1907, Mark Twain, 72, read by John Greenman. Section 51 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 10, 1907, Mark Twain jeers at simple spelling. Has fun with Mr. Carnegie's system at the dedication of the engineer's club. Puts hard words to him. One of them is Paradoxal. The Iron Master elected to honorary place in club for his gift. After three or four hundred members of the engineer's club had given over their voices and ears last night to sound, and hear the praise of Andrew Carnegie, who gave them their million-dollar clubhouse in 40th Street, Mark Twain took it on himself to relieve the Iron Master of the embarrassment of a superfluidity of laudulation. The occasion was officially the christening of the new home of the engineer's club. I have been a guest of honor myself, said Mark Twain, and I know what Mr. Carnegie is experiencing now. It is embarrassing to get compliments and compliments and only compliments, particularly when he knows as well as the rest of us, that on the other side of him there are all sorts of things worthy of our condemnation. Well, just look at Mr. Carnegie's face. It is all scintillating with fictitious innocence. You might think that he had never committed a crime. But no, look at his pestiferous simplified spelling. You can't, any of you, imagine what a crime that has been. Mr. Carmada was nothing to Mr. Carnegie. That old fellow shed some blood in the inquisition, but Mr. Carnegie has brought destruction to the entire race. I know he didn't mean it to be a crime, but it was just the same. He's got us all so he can't spell anything. The trouble with him is that he attacked orthography at the wrong end. He attacked the symptoms and not the cause of the disease. He ought to have gone to work on the alphabet. There's not a vowel in it with a definite value and not a consonant that you can hitch anything to. Look at the H's distributed all around. There's gherkin. What are you going to do with the H in that? It's one thing I admire the English for. They just don't mind anything about them at all. But look at the pneumatics and the pneumonias and the rest of them. The real reform would settle them once and for all and wind up by giving us an alphabet that we wouldn't have to spell with at all, instead of this present silly alphabet which I fancy was invented by a drunken thief. There isn't a man who doesn't have to throw out about fifteen hundred words a day when he writes its letters because he can't spell them. It's like trying to do a St. Vitus dance with wooden legs. Now, I'll bet there isn't a man here who can spell Pterodactyl, not even the prisoner at the bar. I'd like to hear him try once, but not in public for it's too near Sunday when all extravagant histrionic entertainments are barred. I'd like to hear him try in private and when he got through trying to spell Pterodactyl, you wouldn't know whether it was a fish or a beast or a bird and whether it flew on its legs or walked with its wings. Let's get Mr. Carnegie to reform the alphabet and we'll pray for him if he'll take the risk. Mr. Carnegie made two speeches in which he told the engineers how much he thought of them and what a fine thing it was for them to have such a club and what a fine fellow and engineer was, anyway. This was after T. C. Martin, president of the club, made his speech presenting him to the members. John Fritz, the 80-year-old engineer who is the nester of the engineering contingent in New York, presented to Mr. Carnegie a framed certificate of honorary membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Mr. Carnegie said he had received many honors in his life, but this honor was one that touched his heart. Some of those present were the Reverend Wilton Merle Smith, John Ford, David J. Hill, Charles MacDonald, Linda Belknap, Robert C. Clowrey, James Crookshank, H. L. Daugherty, James Gailey, John Hayes Hammond, Frank Headley, Alexander C. Humphries, Frederick R. Hutton, Charles Kirchhoff, Emerson McMillan, Rear Admiral George W. Melville, John Reed, Joseph E. Schwab, Melville E. Stone, and H. H. Westinghouse. End of Section 51, December 10, 1907, Mark Twain jeers, at simple spelling, read by John Greenman. Section 52 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. This edited article includes only Mark Twain's involvement. December 19, 1907, Clemency asked for Tchaikovsky. Movement to save Father of Russian Revolution is started here. Petition to Baron Rosen. Madame Catherine Breszkowski, also a political prisoner, included in the appeal. On behalf of Nicholas Tchaikovsky, Father of the Russian Revolution, and Madame Catherine Breszkowski, a woman pioneer in the revolutionary movement who, according to reports from the Russian capital, have been incarcerated in the fortress of St. Peter and Paul on the shores of the Neva. A petition has been placed before Baron Rosen, Russian ambassador in Washington, asking that the greatest clemency be exercised by the Tsar's government in deciding upon its course of action with regard to them. The Petition. Here is the petition submitted to Baron Rosen with signatures attached. December 14, 1907, to His Excellency Baron Rosen, Russian ambassador. Excellency. Many thousand American citizens have learned with deep sorrow and concern of the arrest in Russia of Nicholas Tchaikovsky and of Catherine Breszkowski, and venture most respectfully to express their earnest hope that the government of His Imperial Majesty may show the greatest clemency in deciding upon its course of action with regard to them. These persons are well known in this country, and have won the respect and affection of a host of friends by reason of their purity of character, sweetness of nature, and characteristically Russian charm of temperament. They called out warm personal regard, even from those who did not accept their position in public matters, and made themselves in an unusual degree the recipients of the deep interest which Americans have always felt in the people of Russia. Appreciating as they do the perplexities which confront the government of His Imperial Majesty, and recalling His Majesty's initiative in the cause of international peace in 1898, where, alone among rulers, He summoned the first Hague Conference and His Majesty's Manifesto of 1905, providing for the representation of the Russian people in a national parliament, the signers of this petition venture to express to Your Excellency the assurance that the release of Nicholas Tchaikovsky and Catherine Breszkowski would be interpreted as an act of friendship by a host of American citizens who are warm friends and well-wishers for the welfare of Russia. Signed, the right Reverend David H. Greer, Seth Lowe, Richard W. Gilder, the Reverend Lyman Abbott, Francis L. Stetson, Morgan J. O'Brien, John D. Crimmins, Henry Clues, R. Fulton Cutting, William D. Howells, Samuel L. Clemens, George F. Peabody, Robert W. DeForest, William J. Schaeffelin, Elgin R. L. Gould, Jacob A. Rees, Hamilton Holt, Hamilton W. Mayby, Herman Ritter, Oswald C. Villard, the Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, the Reverend Percy S. Grant, the Reverend Thomas R. Slicer, V. Everett Macy, Horace White, Eugene Smith, Norman Hopgood, the Reverend Newell D. Hillis, Edward M. Shepard, George W. Kirchway, Samuel J. Barrows, James R. Reynolds, George McEnany, Everett P. Wheeler, William L. Garrison, Rallo Ogden, Walter H. Page, John A. Slasher, John H. Finley. The following signatures have been received from Boston, the right Reverend William Lawrence, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Robert Treet Payne, Richard C. Cabot, M.D., Charles P. Putnam, M.D., Edward H. Clement, Herbert Underwood, the Reverend Charles L. Dole, D.D., the Reverend Edward Cummings, D.D., the Reverend Charles G. Ammers, D.D., Sumner B. Peerman, Joel E. Goldflate, James G. Starrow, J. E. Moores, Robert H. Gardner. End of Section 52, December 19, 1907, Clemency Asked for Tchaikovsky, Read by John Greenman. Section 53 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 21, 1907, Mark Twain Concern Gives Up the Ghost. Plasmon Company of America, Unable to Meet Obligations and Receiver is Named. Liabilities are twenty-seven thousand dollars. Take Plasmon into your stomach and trust in God," said Humorist, before he bought stock. A petition in bankruptcy was filed yesterday against the Plasmon Company of America, of which Mark Twain is acting president. The petition is likely to end the business life of a concern in which the Humorist became interested while in Europe through testing the merits of the company's product. Mr. Clemens first wrote a testimonial to the effect that, if you took Plasmon into your stomach and trusted in God, you were all right. Then he bought some stock in the English company, afterward going into the American company. The petition was filed by three former officers of the company, William B. McGahn, has a claim for salary as president to April 30, 1906, amounting to two thousand five hundred dollars. William T. Robson, former secretary and treasurer, has a salary claim amounting to one thousand dollars, and Ralph W. Ashcroft claims eight hundred and fifty-five dollars for salary as general manager and for money lent. The petition alleges that the company was insolvent in December and that its inability to pay its debts was admitted in the following letter signed by Mr. Clemens and addressed to Mr. McGahn. Dear sir, replying to your letter of the fourth inst, regarding your claim of one thousand dollars against the Plasmon Company of America, I beg to state that the company is unable to pay the same as it has not sufficient funds to do so. Its available bank balance is thirteen dollars and eight cents. It has nine hundred and two dollars and forty-nine cents on deposit with the Nickerbocker Trust Company, but as you know this will not be available for some time to come. Its accounts receivable amount to but thirty dollars and forty-six cents, and it owes you and other creditors twenty-seven thousand twenty-three dollars and sixty-nine cents. Its nominal assets are ten thousand five hundred and ninety-six dollars and nineteen cents. As follows, patent rights etc. seven thousand four hundred and eighty-seven dollars and sixty cents, stale casein one thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars and fifty-six cents, machinery one thousand dollars, cash in bank nine hundred and fifteen dollars and fifty-seven cents, accounts receivable thirty dollars and forty-six cents. Its other assets, furniture etc., were this day sold by the sheriff under execution. The company is therefore hopelessly insolvent and it is willing to be adjudicated a bankrupt on that ground. Yours very truly, Plasmon Company of America, S. L. Clemens, acting president and vice president. The sheriff's sale, referred to, was in execution of a judgment for one thousand twenty dollars in favor of William Kirmish and realized two hundred and fifty dollars. There has been a contest on between the English and American stockholders for some time and much internal dissension in the company. The concern went into bankruptcy in nineteen-o-five but the proceedings were dismissed a year later. Mark Twain has been acting as an officer and harmonizer since April nineteen-o-six. The company was incorporated in nineteen-o-two with a capital of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Judge Hough in the United States District Court yesterday appointed Charles L. Brookheim receiver and fixed the bond at five hundred dollars. The company's plant is at Breyer Cliff Manor. At Mark Twain's house last night his secretary said that the author was only nominally the vice president of the company. Mr. Clemens was then asked if it was true, as reported by some of his friends, that he had been swindled. It is, said Mr. Clemens, out of how much? Oh, about thirty-two thousand dollars. I held twenty-five thousand dollars worth of the stock and one of the members of the company swindled me out of twelve thousand five hundred dollars later. No, I won't say I was swindled out of the twenty-five thousand dollars. The company failed because of bad management. I ought not to say I was swindled out of all the money. Most of it was lost through bad business. I was always bad in business. Please don't confound the bankrupt company with the English Plasmon Company, went on Mark Twain. That company is paying five or six percent, which is pretty good for an English company. I hold about eighty thousand dollars worth of stock of that company. End of Section 53, December 21, 1907, Mark Twain Concern Gives Up the Ghost. Read by John Greenman. Section 54 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. December 23, 1907, how Mark Twain worked General Miles. Sold him another man's dog, he tells Pleiades Club, because he needed the money. Started First Syndicate, while he was writing Innocence Abroad in Washington, thinks he's comparatively honest. Mark Twain was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevort last night. In his talk, which he described as being wholly unprepared, he told how he first met General Nelson A. Miles by selling him for three dollars, a dog that belonged to another person. He explained the transaction by saying that, at the time, he was in sore need of funds, as he and a friend were then running the first newspaper syndicate in this country at salaries of twelve dollars a week. The dining-room of the Brevort was filled with about two hundred guests, all rose and applauded when the aged humorist made his entrance after the meal was over. The menus were covered with illustrated quotations from Mr. Clemens' works. Carter S. Cole acted as Toastmaster. He introduced the guest of the evening with a high tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was dear to the hearts of all Americans. It is hard work to make a speech, began Mr. Twain, when you have listened to compliments from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to. When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says pleasant things about me, I always feel, like answering simply, that what he says is true, that it is all right, that as far as I am concerned, the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say something, and that is what frightens me. I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks, like any other worm, and run for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date when I had to introduce a speaker, hoping then to spur his speech by putting him in joke on the defensive. I accused him in my introduction of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I finished, there was an awful calm. I had been telling him his life story by mistake. One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first, if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been following and devising and revising for seventy-two years, I remember one detail. All my life I have been honest. Comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly. I could only lend it. Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are these. I was then under contract for my innocence abroad, but did not have a cent to live on while I wrote. So I went to Washington to do a little journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a scot, to love scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate, selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers, and getting one dollar a letter. That was twenty-four dollars a week, and would have been enough for us, if we had not had to support the jug. But there was a day when we felt that we must have three dollars right away. Three dollars at once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what we wanted so much money at one time for, but that scot and I did occasionally want it. The scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a great belief in providence, that Scottish friend of mine. I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel lobby in despair. When I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw me too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in, admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at three dollars. He offered me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but I refused to take more than providence knew I needed. The General carried the dog to his room. Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking around the lobby. Did you lose a dog? I asked. He said he had. I think I could find it, I volunteered, for a small sum. How much, he asked, and I told him three dollars. He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish to outdo providence. Then I went to the General's room and asked for the dog back. He was very angry and wanted to know why I had sold him a dog that did not belong to me. That's a singular question to ask me, sir, I replied. Didn't you ask me to sell him? You started it. And he let me have him. I gave him back his three dollars and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. That second three dollars I carried home to the Scott, and we enjoyed it. But the first three dollars, the money I got from the General, I would have had to lend. The General seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and I never had the heart to tell him about it. Mr. Clemens left the Brevour after his speech. There followed a mixed program of music and recitations. End of Section 54, December 23, 1907, How Mark Twain Worked General Miles. Read by John Greenman. Section 55 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5. 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 27, 1907. Want Tchaikovsky Free? Well-known Americans appeal by cable to Premier Stolipin. A petition pleading for the liberation of Nicholas Tchaikovsky and Madame Braskoskaya recently arrested for complicity in the Russian Revolutionary Movement has been cabled to M. Stolipin, Premier of Russia, by a group of prominent Americans who represent the sentiments of thousands of citizens of New York, Chicago, and Boston. The list of about five hundred names signed to the petition was headed by ex-Mayor Lowe of New York, Mayor Bussey of Chicago, Illinois, co-agitor Bishop David H. Greer of New York, Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, George Foster Peabody, and ex-judge Morgan J. O'Brien. The cabled message to the Premier was similar to the one forwarded to Baron Rosen, the Russian ambassador at Washington last week by a committee consisting of S. G. Barrows, James B. Reynolds, W. B. Howland, and E. F. Baldwin. In its shortened form it read as follows, To M. Stolipin, the Premier of Russia, many thousands of American citizens not of Russian blood, nor connected with any Russian Revolutionary Organization but admirers of Nicholas Tchaikovsky and Madame Catherine Braskoskaya, respectfully inform you that the release of the two prisoners would be interpreted by the American people who are warm friends and well-wishers for the welfare of Russia as an act of friendship on the part of the government of his Imperial Majesty. Robert Erskine Elly of the City Club, who is an active worker in this movement for the liberation of these well-known Russians, stated last night that this cabled petition represents the widespread sympathy in the United States for Tchaikovsky and Madame Braskoskaya, both of whom are well known in this country. While living here Tchaikovsky made many warm friends and admirers and Madame Braskoskaya established an enviable reputation by her philanthropic and charitable work and her standing as an educator. End of Section 55, December 27, 1907, Want Tchaikovsky Free? Read by John Greenman. Section 56 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 29, 1907. Dinner to W. D. Howells. Mark Twain makes a speech for the guest of honor. Special to the New York Times. Lakewood, New Jersey, December 28. A brilliant gathering made up of representatives of the various Harper Publications and their most prominent literary contributors, attended a dinner given today at the Laurel House by Colonel George Harvey in honor of W. D. Howells, who will soon sail for Europe. Among the seventy guests present were Mark Twain, Henry M. Alden, David Monroe, Albert Bigelow Payne, Van Tassel Stutphen, and Dennis O'Sullivan, well known as a singer in London opera. After dinner, Colonel Harvey called on Mr. Howells, who said that as he and Mr. Clemens had long ago made a pact that if he would write Mr. Clemens' books, Mr. Clemens would make his speeches. He would leave him to make the speech now if Mr. Clemens thought he could remember it. Mr. Clemens rose to the occasion and kept the room in a gale of laughter for some time, revealing the details of his literary collaboration with Mr. Howells for some years. He said that Mr. Howells had started by expurgating his books for him till he had attained his present reputation. And that had Mr. Howells continued the process. He had no doubt it would have brought to him a reputation for literary purity, such as had never been before known. But, unfortunately, Mr. Howells was not content with merely expurgating Mr. Clemens' books. He soon began to interline. And then, concluded Mr. Clemens, I released him from the contract and have edited my own books ever since. January 10, 1908 Mark Twain on Bank Plan agrees to Knickerbocker Depositors' Committee scheme of resumption. The Satterley Parsons Committee of Depositors of the Knickerbocker Trust Company received a letter yesterday from Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, who has $51,000 in the company, giving notice that he assented to the plan of rehabilitation. Mr. Clemens' letter read, January 9, 1908 To the Committee Gentlemen, I am in receipt of the plan for the resumption of the business of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, and I willingly yield my assent. My interest in the matter is strong, since I measure it by my deposit, $51,199, which is a large one for me. I believe in your plan. In my judgment it will succeed, and I hope the other depositors will view it in the same way, and will give in their adhesion to it. Very truly yours. S. L. Clemens Just as Clark granted an extension of two weeks last Saturday for obtaining a sense of depositors, many have been received since. Some have held off in the hope that an alternative plan might be presented. A member of the committee pointed out yesterday that the only alternative to the acceptance of the Parsons Saturday Plan is a permanent receivership, which means large inevitable losses to both depositors and stockholders and long delay in paying depositors a percentage of their deposits. Judge Chatfield in the United States District Court handed down an order yesterday authorizing the law firm of Blandy, Moody and Shipman, who had on deposit with the company a large sum collected for a client in bankruptcy to sign a formal assent to the Parsons Plan. End of Section 57, January 10, 1908, Mark Twain on Bank Plan, read by John Greenman. Section 58 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 12, 1908, Mark Twain now after compliments. And, Invited by Nordica, Mark Twain now after compliments, says at Lotus Club dinner he's collecting them as some others do stamps. Named dishes for his works. Author took a nap between courses because he was going to be up so late. Through innocent oysters abroad, roughing it soup, fish huckleberry fin, and Joan of Arc filet of beef, which the menu of the Lotus Club's dinner to Mark Twain told the guests they were eating last night, the guest of honor in his white suit sat in an armchair at the speaker's table. But when jumping frog Terrapin had been reached, the author, the names of whose works had been perpetuated in the dishes, thought that he would be out of bed pretty late for him, and consequently he would like to take a nap. While the guests cheered him and he waved his hand to them, he was escorted to the upper floor. Those left in the dining room continued with Punch Brothers Punch, Gilded Age Duck, Hadleyburg Salad, Life on the Mississippi Salad, Prince and the Popper Cakes, and Puddin Head Cheese and White Elephant Coffee. Toward the end of the menu Mark Twain reappeared. When his turn to speak came, he announced that he had discovered a new idea. People collected postage stamps, cats, dogs, and autographs, but he was collecting compliments, he declared. He had a number of specimens and he would read them. He did. And then he added his appreciation of their author's sincerity. The paying of compliments was an art by itself, he said. At the speaker's table with Mark Twain where Frank R. Lawrence, president of the club, Colonel Robert P. Porter, Andrew Carnegie, Dr. Robert S. MacArthur, Hamilton W. Maby, James M. Beck, Colonel George M. Harvey, Colonel William C. Church, General Stuart L. Woodford, H. H. Rogers, Chester S. Lord, Dr. Alexander C. Humphries, and William H. McElroy. Near the close of the dinner, Fort of New Jersey entered. After Mark had taken his armchair again and the other guests had sipped their white elephant coffee, President Lawrence, as a prelude to the introduction of the guest of honour, pointed out one significant feature of the occasion. The first club dinner in the present clubhouse at 558 Fifth Avenue, held 14 years ago, had been in honour of Mark Twain. Seven years later, on his return from diverse and irregular wanderings, he was the guest at another dinner. At that time it had been jokingly proposed that at regular intervals of seven years dinners should be held for the author. Last night was the night. It was possible, Mr. Lawrence said, that this dinner might be the last given in the old house. The new house, 110 West 57th Street, may be ready on January 15th. Mr. Lawrence then called upon Colonel Robert P. Porter, who had accompanied Mr. Clemens to Oxford on the occasion of the conferring upon him of the degree of Doctor of Literature, to tell something of the author as he appeared then. Dr. Porter said, among other things, that he had been impressed abroad at the number and kind of people who knew Mr. Clemens, the people on the street, even the London policemen who had been sent down to the university town to help their comrades of Oxford with the pageant knew him. Then, after a toast had been drunk to him, Mr. Clemens began in his drawing gentle way, I wish to begin at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether, he said. I wish to thank you for your welcome now and for that of seven years ago, which I forgot to thank you for at the time, also for that of fourteen years ago, which I also forgot to thank you for. I know how it is when you have been in a parlor and are going away. Common decency ought to make you say the decent thing. What a good time you have had. Everybody does it, except myself. I hope that you will continue that excellent custom of giving me dinners every seven years. I had had it on my mind to join the hosts of another world. I do not know which world, but I have enjoyed your custom so much that I am willing to postpone it for another seven years. The guest is in an embarrassing position because compliments have been said to him. I don't care whether you deserve it or not, but it is hard to talk up to it. The other night at the Engineers Club dinner, they were paying Mr. Carnegie here discomforting compliments. They were all compliments, and they were not deserved. And I tried to help him out with criticisms and references to things nobody understood. They say that one cannot live on bread alone, but I could live on compliments. I can digest them. They do not trouble me. I have missed much in life that I did not make a collection of compliments and keep them where I could take them out and look at them once in a while. I am beginning now. Other people collect autographs, dogs and cats, and I collect compliments. I have brought them along. I have written them down to preserve them and think that they're mighty good and exceedingly just. Then Mr. Clemens read a few. The first by Hamilton W. Mabey said that the sal might have been the first man to make a voyage of the Mississippi, but that Mark Twain was the first man to chart light and humor for the human race. If that had been published at the time that I issued that book, Life on the Mississippi, it would have been money in my pocket, he said. I tell you, it is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring true. It's an art by itself. Now here's one by my biographer. Loud laughter. Well, he ought to know me if anybody does. He's been at my elbow for two years and a half. This is Albert Bigelow Payne. Mr. Twain is not merely the great writer, the great philosopher, but he is the supreme expression of the human being with its strengths and weaknesses. Mark Twain looked up from the paper upon which the compliments were written. What a talent for compression! he exclaimed. W. D. Howells, Mark Twain said, spoke of him as first of Hartford and ultimately of the solar system, not to say of the universe. You know how modest Howells is, he commented. If it can be proved that my fame reaches to Neptune and Saturn, that will satisfy even me. You know how modest and retiring Howells is, but deep down he is as vain as I am. Mark Twain said that Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford whose gown was red. He had been invited to an exercise at Columbia and upon inquiry had been told that it was usual to wear the black gown. Later he had found out that three other men wore bright gowns and he had lamented that he had been one of the black mass and not a red torch. Edison wrote, The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person he generally selects Mark Twain. Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl, continued Mark Twain, which came to me indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me. After gazing at it steadily for a time she said, We've got a John the Baptist like that. When the diners laughter allowed him Mr. Clemens added, She also said, Only ours has more trimmings. I suppose she meant the halo. Now here's a gold miner's compliment. It is forty-two years old. It was my introduction to an audience to which I lectured in a log schoolhouse. There were no ladies there. I wasn't famous then. They didn't know me. Only the miners were there with their britches tucked into their boot tops and with clay all over them. They wanted someone to introduce me and then selected a miner who protested that he didn't want to do on the ground that he had never appeared in public. This is what he said. I don't know anything about this man. Anyhow I only know two things about him. One is he has never been in jail and the other is I don't know why. There's one thing I want to say about that English trip. I knew His Majesty, the King of England, long years ago and I didn't meet him for the first time then. One thing that I regret was that some newspapers said I talked with the Queen of England with my hat on. I don't do that with any woman. I did not put it on until she asked me to. Then she told me to put it on and it's a command there. I thought I had carried my American democracy far enough so I put it on. I have no use for a hat and never did have. Who was it who said that the police of London knew me? Why, the police knew me everywhere. There never was a day over there when a policeman did not salute me and then put up his hand and stop the traffic of the world. They treated me as though I were a duchess. Andrew Carnegie who followed Mr. Clemens said that the English public had made much of the author's literary attainments. But there was another Mark Twain. Mark Twain, the man. He eulogised Mark Twain at length and referred to his action in paying every cent of the debts of the publishing firm with which he had once been connected. Other speakers were Dr. Robert S. MacArthur, Hamilton W. Mabey, James M. Beck, Colonel George M. Harvey, Colonel William C. Church, and General Stuart L. Woodford. The menu card was a large sheet rolled as a diploma or a degree with its central feature a picture of Mark Twain in the Oxford Doctors' Robes. The margins contained small pictures of scenes and characters from the author's books. They were also shown the old homes and the new of the Lotus Club. A woman below the Mark Twain portrait held in one hand a scroll with Mr. Clemens' various degrees and in the other a mask whose features were those of Mark Twain. Near the bottom in the centre was the menu with its book and character names and titles. Here is what the diners ate. Innocent oysters abroad, roughing at soup, Huckleberry fin fish, Joan of Arc filet of beef, jumping frog terrapin, Punch Brothers punch, fielded duck, Hadleyburg salad, life on the Mississippi ice cream, Prince and the pauper cake, Puddin had cheese, white elephant coffee, Chateau-Yuan Royals, Pomerie Brute, and Cal Cognac. After it was all over, President Lawrence told the company that while this might be the final gathering in the old quarters the Lotus spirit must be made Invited by Nordica, Mark Twain, Dr. Butler, Edison and Sir Pertin Clark to be singers' guests. There will be a veritable herd of social lions at Sherry's tonight when Madame Nordica gives her musicals for more than four hundred guests. She has engaged the entire second floor suite for the occasion. Among the celebrities in various walks of life who have accepted invitations are Mark Twain, Thomas A. Edison, Richard Watson-Gilder, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, Gustav Mahler, James Russell Soli, Carl Muck, Madame Eames, Madame Homer, Madame Sembridge, George Munzig, Clyde Fitch, Frederick Townsend Martin, Sir Pertin Clark, and Brander Matthews. Society will be represented by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. George J. Gould, Mrs. Ogden Mills, Mrs. Ormond Wilson, Mrs. Henry Clues, Mrs. Reginald C. Vanderbilt, and Mrs. I. Townsend Burden. End of Section 58, January 12, 1908, Mark Twain, now after Compliments, and Invited by Nordica, Read by John Greenman. January 19, 1908, The Knickerbocker gets two weeks more, and Mark Twain stunned at death of E. C. Steadman. The Knickerbocker gets two weeks more. Additional ascents to Satterley Resumption Plan coming in January 19, 1908, The Knickerbocker gets two weeks more. Satterley Resumption Plan coming in rapidly. Mark Twain's warning tells fellow depositors who are holding back to hurry back, as does Justice Clark also. Cheering news for depositors in the failed Knickerbocker Trust Company came from more than one quarter yesterday. At the hearing before Justice Clark on Staten Island yesterday $1,000 of deposits have already assented to the rehabilitation plan of the Parsons-Satterley Committee, and that the present directors had finally sent in their resignations, making possible the immediate consideration by the voting trustees of the long list of new directors and officers tentatively selected by the committee. Justice Clark granted a further extension later a cheerful appeal and at the same time a warning from Mark Twain to the backward depositors was made public by Attorney Herbert L. Satterley, counsel to the depositors committee. Mark Twain, who has something like $50,000 tied up in the company, has already sent in his assent to the plan. He is afraid that enough of the others will stay out to hold up the reorganization and leave to the mercies of a permanent receivership, which he says would be more expensive than a harem. His letter read, Mark Twain, he knows, to the other depositors, the time is very short. Mr. Grover Cleveland, a depositor, has approved the Satterley plan for resumption, and it seems to me that ought to satisfy every depositor that that plan is safe and wise. If we accept it, we shall lose no part of our money. If we do not accept it, the Knickerbocker will be delivered over to a permanent receivership. I have already tried a permanent receivership once, and did not like the result. It costs more to keep a permanent receiver than it does to keep a harem. Anybody who has had experience in these matters will endorse this statement. In the long run, in the very long run, we got some of our money. All the depositors were disappointed, and there was much regret. If we accept the Satterley plan and do it immediately, it will be well for us. If we refuse, we invite and ensure a shrinkage which the patients will not find enjoyable. I have not been invited to say these things. Still, it has seemed worthwhile to say this. Very respectfully yours, Mark Twain. After hearing the arguments of Attorney Satterley and of Misser's Davies and Slowly Council of the American Stockholders, Justice Clark granted a further adjournment of two weeks. The lawyers offered evidence showing that $34,600,000 or 85% of the depositors had assented to the plan and assured the court that it was reasonably expected that the other 15% could be brought into line within two weeks. Assents have been coming in at the rate of over $1 The depositors were only waiting to learn the make-up of the new directorate which the voting trustees will select this week. The tentative list of directors and officers was not submitted to the court, as has been expected, and will be withheld for a time. A representative of Attorney General Jackson said that in view of the progress the depositors' committee was making he saw no reason to receivers for the employment of counsel made strong objection to the petition of the receivers for the approval of their contract with counsel, on the ground that it furnished no estimate of the nature or amount of the legal work required. The contract provides that the attorney's fees shall not exceed three-quarters of one percent of the assets. He said that he believed upward of fifty million dollars would pass through the receiver's hands, and he believed the compensation should have a maximum yearly limit. Justice Clark's Warning In granting the adjournment, Justice Clark said that the depositors had the assurance that the whole matter of the reopening would be thoroughly reviewed by the superintendent of banks, and would be further passed upon by the court before it was made operative. He laid stress, however, on the necessity of practical unanimity of assent, and warned those depositors who were holding out in the hope of taking advantage of the opening by calling for their money in full at the expense of the other depositors that might be disappointed. On this point he said it was very doubtful that the court would permit anything of the kind. A minority, however small, may block the whole plan of resumption, and it was for them to decide whether they will do that or whether they will come into a plan which means a resumption of business. Mark Twain stunned. His loss unfits me to speak, he says. Mr. Gilder mourns him. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, dictated the following last night from a sick bed to which he has been confined with a heavy cold since last Thursday, on learning of the death of Mr. Steadman. I do not wish to talk about it. He was a valued friend from days that date back thirty-five years. His loss stuns me, and unfits me to speak. Asked by a Times reporter for the tribute to his dead friend, Richard Watson Gilder said, Mr. Steadman was for a lifetime like an elder brother to me, and it is difficult to respond to your request for a word about him tonight, as poet, critic, leader in all matters pertaining to the interests and honors of literature, and as a helpful, loyal and generous friend of men of letters, his position was unique. He will be greatly missed and widely mourned. End of Section 59, January 19, 1908. The knickerbocker gets two weeks more, and Mark Twain stunned at death of E. C. Steadman, read by John Greenman. Section 60 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This liver-vox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 26, 1908. Mark Twain sails for Bermuda. Mark Twain sailed for the West Indies yesterday on the steamer Bermudian. Mr. Clemens has been ill at his home for some days, and when he arrived at the vessel went direct to his stateroom and did not emerge until the vessel was at her pier. He was ordered south by his physician because of an attack of Laryngitis. End of Section 60, January 26, 1908. Mark Twain sails for Bermuda, read by John Greenman. Section 61 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This liver-vox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 30, 1908. Receiver wants to see Mark Twain. Armed with an order signed by Judge Holt of the United States District Court, Charles L. Brookheim is looking for Mark Twain to get from him the books of the Plasmon Company, of which the humorist was President prior to the recent bankruptcy proceedings against it. Mr. Brookheim was appointed Receiver of the Company. Mark Twain is at present in Bermuda. End of Section 61, January 30, 1908. Receiver wants to see Mark Twain. Read by John Greenman. Section 62 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This liver-vox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. February 14, 1908. Collie Ballet for Collier. At a dinner at Sherry's, dogs and dancers amuse guests. Robert Collier gave an elaborate dinner last night at Sherry's, entertaining some thirty of his friends, among them many of the most prominent socially in town. Details about the dinner were not circulated, just because the affair was intended to be informal and an exceptionally cosy little matter. It was not only a dinner. It was dinner and theatrical entertainment combined. For while the guests dined, they were also amused with various novelties. The dinner and entertainment last night was given in two of the rooms on the second floor at Sherry's. The two apartments had been arranged in Spanish fashion, one representing the Maison de Madrid and the other the Court of the Royal Palace. In the outer room the thirty guests sat at tables, surrounding the apartment on three sides. On each table were roses, and in the center of each was an outspread Japanese parasol. The effect with the soft lighting was very beautiful. At the further end of the room at the most prominent place sat Mark Twain in ordinary evening dress. On his right was Ethel Barrymore, and nearby were Mr. and Mrs. Collier and Richard Harding Davis. Alain Azemova was at a table on the left side of the apartment, as one faced Mark Twain. Among the others present were Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Mrs. Aster, Mr. and Mrs. William Waldorf Aster, and Mr. and Mrs. Harry Paine Whitney. The sensation of the evening, however, was the Collie Ballet from the top of the world. The dance never went better. And yet the dogs were hungry. When it was all over, and each girl had asked her pet whether he would be her little doggie-dear, King, forgetting all decorum, ran to the center table, where Mark Twain had sat, and there helped himself to ice-cream. He stood on his hind legs and licked away complacently. It was curious to see the guests, men and women, smoking cigarettes, and watching the girls and the dogs. Not all the women smoked, but many of them did. The other chief entertainment introduced into the dinner was the dancing of a prima ballerina from the Manhattan Opera House. End of Section 62, February 12, 1908, Collie Ballet for Collier, read by John Greenman. Section 63 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. This edited article includes only Twain's participation. February 20, 1908, Ambassador Reid, the Pilgrim's guest, tells them talk of war with Japan is silly, and that England wouldn't aid her. Cheer, King, and President! Ex-Ambassador Chote presides in President Duncan's absence. Mark Twain speaks. The Pilgrims of the United States obtained much information last night. They learned from Mark Twain that it was taking from the coins the motto, in God we trust, that caused the recent financial panic. They learned from Joseph H. Chote, what a poor embassy this country has in London, and they learned from White Law Reid, the present ambassador to England and the guest of honour, how very remote the possibility of war with Japan is, and how still more remote is the possibility of England supporting Japan in such a contingency. In every respect the dinner was a typical Pilgrim dinner, hands across the sea affair, with a joint toast to the President and the King, and more people singing God Save the King than the star-spangled banner, because the words are easier to remember. The dinner was held in Delmonico's big dining hall, and the decorations consisted of English and American flags intertwined about the walls. The musical selections were not only Anglo-American, but also very reminiscent the diners joining at one point in singing the chorus of Annie Rooney. President Duncan Ill Unfortunately, the President of the Pilgrim Society, William Butler Duncan, was unable to be present owing to illness. Instead, Mr. Chote was Toastmaster, and sat next to the guest of honour, Mr. Reid. Others at the guest table were J. P. Morgan, Levi P. Morton, General Thornton Bingham, Ogden Mills, Colonel Hugh L. Scott, Lieutenant Colonel B. R. James, Alton B. Parker, Rear Admiral Casper Goodrich, Seth Lowe, Samuel L. Clemens, Bishop Potter, Esme Howard of the British Embassy at Washington, the right Reverend William Lawrence, Andrew Carnegie, Major General Frederick Grant, Courtney Walter Bennett, British Consul at New York, J. Edward Simmons, St. Clair McElway, and Sir Casper Purden Clark. There were altogether about three hundred guests. The first toast Mr. Chote proposed was that to the President and the King, and it met with warm applause. After this the national anthems of America and England were sung with vigor. There were three cheers for the President and three more for the King, led by George T. Wilson, who followed the football rules and asked the diners, Are you ready? before starting the cheering. The Toastmaster told a story of an American who visited the Embassy in London, just to see if my ambassador is in his place, and said he felt sure that none of the diners had come just to see Mr. Reed, but rather to pay respect to him. The speaker struck a serious note at the end of his speech by stating that it was a great pity that in the vestibule of the Embassy there was no picture of Benjamin Franklin, the first great American diplomatist. This was a matter he said that should receive serious attention. He then introduced Mr. Reed, who was greeted with three rousing cheers. End of Section 63, February 20, 1908, Ambassador Reed, the Pilgrim's guest, read by John Greenman. Section 64 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. February 23, 1908, Rogers and Twain sail. Exchanging jests on the pier, financier thinks the outlook bright. This is what I get for being in bad company, said Mark Twain, humorist, pointing to H. H. Rogers, financier, when a host of interviewers descended upon him yesterday morning on the deck of the steamship Bermudian, previous to their departure for Bermuda. My methods, responded Mr. Rogers quickly, are no worse than your jokes, and they are bad enough. Mr. Clemens is going to Bermuda to continue the stay which certain social and business obligations cut short. Mr. Rogers is going away for a rest and recreation. The former wore a light suit of grey and looked like a fashion plate. Mr. Rogers was in somber black. Mr. Rogers smilingly declared that there was no truth in Mr. Clemens's story that he was going to Bermuda to keep the financier straight. He added that his own reason for making the trip was because of Mr. Clemens offered to stand treat. That's true, said Mark Twain, but I'm two dollars shy of the amount, and I'm going to shake him down for it when we get to see. This Mr. Rogers laughed, and said that Mark Twain's remark might be taken as a fair sample of his jokes, but he doubted if it was worth the two dollars. Mr. Clemens said he expected to remain in Bermuda until April, when Mr. Rogers was asked about the financial situation he smiled and, looking out across the river, said that the horizon was bright, and he believed that the same thing could be said of the financial horizon. On the Bermudian also sailed Mr. and Mrs. George Keegan. Mr. Keegan is assistant manager of the Interboro Rapid Transit Company. Two days ago he married Mary Brennan of 2 West 75th Street. When the bride and groom arrived at the steamer their friends fell upon them with rice and confetti. They found their stateroom appropriately decorated with signs announcing that they were newlyweds. CHAPTER XXVIII Antinoid Society Reviews Progress 59 hospitals, with 18,000 beds, now represented in its directorate. Children help the cause. Mark Twain runs their branch. Mrs. Rice, at St. Regis meeting, tells what has come of small beginnings. The Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise held its first annual meeting last night at the Hotel St. Regis, Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, and Mrs. Isaac L. Rice, its founder and president, reported the progress it had made. One of the newest moves was the organization, with the full consent and cooperation of the Board of Education, of a children's hospital branch, to be composed of children pledged to make as little noise as possible in the neighborhood of hospitals. Mark Twain has agreed to be president of this. In accepting the office he wrote to Mrs. Rice, I have an abundance of sympathy for this movement. If I were younger, I would like to work for it. Now I thank you for the compliment you pay me, and shall be happy to have my name used as president of the children's hospital branch. Sincerely yours, Mark Twain. The Board of Education endorsed the movement for the organization of the children's hospital branch last month, and the work has just got underway. Public School 69, in West 54th Street, has sent word that its 1,540 pupils have been organized, all the children of the Free Synagogue have also been enrolled. Children who take the anti-noise pledge receive buttons to wear, designed to jog the memory of the wearer and impress upon him the responsibility of the pledge. The buttons are in black and white, and in the center is the word humanity. Child Recruits Right The membership of the children's hospital branch is not to be confined to school children. The society wants to enroll every child in the city, and Mrs. Rice has started a card catalogue of the names of the volunteers in this army. The first recruit, signing himself James Gutman, wrote a letter to Mrs. Rice on his own account, saying, I hereby pledge myself not to make any noise around a hospital. The next recruit was his brother, and the third was Joseph Liebman, who wrote, I will not disturb sick, the sick people in the hospital. Reviewing the short history of the society and the circumstances of its organization, Mrs. Rice, in a short address last night, said that about fifteen months before the society was born she tried to see what she could do toward abating the noise in the East River near the hospitals. Having gone to all sorts of municipal boards, to Albany and to Washington, she found that no one had any authority in the matter. Later the bill was passed which put the power of controlling indiscriminate whistling in the hands of the supervising inspectors of steamboats. Fifty-nine hospitals grateful. The society was organized about a year ago, and now has on its board the most distinguished men in the city. A few months ago Mrs. Rice said it had, in its directorate, representatives from eighteen hospitals containing eighty-five hundred beds. Now, fifty-nine hospitals with eighteen thousand eighteen beds are represented. The membership has grown to about two hundred, and the movement has attracted serious attention all over the world. Mrs. Rice spoke of a letter received recently from Dr. S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia who called attention to the effect of the noises caused by flat wheels on surface and elevated cars. She said that where notices indicating quiet zones around hospitals had been posted, the hospitals reported that the noise had very noticeably abated. She also recalled that last year, because of the orders of Commissioner Bingham, the thousands of sick in the hospitals had passed the easiest Fourth of July known in New York for many a year. The next work planned, Mrs. Rice said, was to have the hospital streets and the harbor patrolled by special policemen to abate unnecessary noise, and to do something with the flat wheel nuisance. Getting to an Elegy Ideal Health Commissioner Darlington said he thought the society had accomplished wonders, and he believed it might well continue its work until New Yorkers lived up to the lines in Gray's Elegy, along the cool sequestered veil of life they kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Dr. William Hannah Thompson told how closely connected the heart is with the ear, and emphasized the importance of quiet in treating nervous diseases. The public could not appreciate, he said, how many lives have been lost because of unnecessary noise. Cordial thanks were noted to Mark Twain and to Mrs. Rice. The latter must evidently have a dual personality and some Mahatma accomplishments. For dispatches from Paris reported Marcel Provost, as having interviewed her there yesterday, as the Queen of Silence. End of Section 65, February 27, 1908, Anti-Noise Society Reviews Progress. Read by John Greenman. Section 66 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5. 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. March 1, 1908. After-dinner speakers tell how they do it. Interesting methods of Joseph Chote, Mark Twain, and others in the making of speeches by which they score their triumphs. Since the days of Webster many significant change have arisen that add to the enjoyment of post-Prandial eloquence. Joseph Chote, perhaps the foremost of American after-dinner speakers today, has a saying to the effect that he always goes to a dinner with an anecdote and a sentiment and trusts to the evening for the rest. After-dinner speaking is becoming less and less cut and dried with the passing time. In the days of Daniel Webster they had parerations lasting an hour or more. Now there are no more Daniel Websters, and if there were, the people would have no time to listen to them. Most of the successful after-dinner speakers today declare that anything in the world can be said in half an hour and almost anything in fifteen minutes. Then, too, the speeches and toasts at dinners today are no longer stated on the menus. The three, four, or five speakers who have been asked to oblige have their names printed thereon without the slightest indication of what they are going to talk about. That is a great improvement upon the old stereotyped program method, as will be readily seen. The first thirty seconds are what make or mar a speech. Now if the audience sees Mr. So-and-So will speak upon the police of New York, a certain amount of the early part of the ensuing discourse is discounted. They already know what it is about. But if they have heard nothing about it, they listen for the opening of the speech to enlighten them, and in that first thirty seconds the orator captures their attention for the rest of the evening. That is, he does if he knows his business. Many men succeed, said a certain brilliant orator yesterday. It is amazing. And, to some people, a little disgruntling to consider how little better any one man is than any other. The quality that counts in the game is the ability for recovery, the gift of picking oneself up after a fall, and making people forget that it ever happened. A very brilliant man may slip into the mud through some mistake or oversight, and all the public sees or hears of it is the splash. But to go on and make people blotted out of their minds, through sheer nerve and brains, there you have something privileged to endure, and deservedly. It is particularly true of speakers. The men who make mistakes are divided into two sets. The one who have tack and grit enough to make good after their failures, and the ones who are conquered thereby, who, in short, can't play the game. THE HINT FOR A SPEECH The advantages of going unprepared to a dinner are many. One of the most obvious is this. If something happens or is said at the table during dinner or during the course of the speeches, some trifling incident or statement that suggests to one or more men there, something which he would like to say himself if he happened to be in the chair, and the speaker gets up and says it for him, he is bound to agree with him. Of course, agreeing with him, he thinks him the cleverest man he knows. The tactful orator works on this and many other subtle little facts of human nature. Mark Twain never prepares a speech in any way. He says that he has lived so long and had so many and varied experiences that no man can talk for five minutes without suggesting to him a train of thought and a consequent number of pertinent anecdotes and important points. It is for this reason that he always likes to be put at the very end of the program, if possible. He uses the other men's speeches as inspiration and fuel for his own, and is likely to make new and humorous changes upon almost any subject which has been broached during the evening. Mr. Clemens enjoys speaking immensely. Indeed, he loves to talk by his own admission, and apparently people love to hear him quite as much, judging by the number and urgency of his invitations. Of course, he cannot accept one half of them, and now appears at very few public banquets. He prefers to talk at small dinners, where he feels he is among friends, though indeed he could not fail to be that, wherever he might go, for everyone loves Mark Twain. That humorous drawl. As he talks, he runs his fingers through his long, thick, white hair, and in his delicious drawl murmurs, It's a very curious thing, a very curious thing, and then springs a story upon his audience, which awakes roars of laughter. This little trick of repeating a phrase just before he makes a point is a favorite one with Mark Twain. He uses it as a composer uses a phrase of melody, repeating it slowly to create a sense of suspense, before he bursts into a new motif. Everything which Mr. Clemens does is invested with his own individual touch, a touch which is paramountly humorous. But it is interesting to note that he never makes a speech which has not in it a deeply serious note. Joseph Chote has a very subtle method of making points. He talks with a finest art of simplicity and makes his points so casually that they seem to have been dropped unwittingly upon the air. He never seems to be conscious of being clever or amusing, and as the laugh grows and swells following some delicately brilliant touch, he is quite grave and unconscious. In some trifling ways his method has undergone a change of late years. He is a good deal more of the foreign diplomat in his speeches. He does not exactly ha ha after the English fashion, commented someone who was himself a speech-maker, but he has adopted their method of feeling his way into his subject, as it were. He drops his wittesisms as if by accident, and waits to give people a chance to pick them up, and how many laughs he gets. Trancy de Pew for twenty-five years, the king of them all, has a unique style of his own. His method is to begin his speech with a jab at the persons who have asked him to speak. If it should happen to be a dinner given by a society of merchants, he would quite as likely as not commence with references to the custom of putting sand in sugar. At this point his face is normal, in shape and expression. Then he begins to warm up into the humor of the occasion, and his countenance broadens and spreads with appreciation of the comic touches he is making. Finally he becomes serious, and like a piece of India rubber this same expressive face is lengthened into an accompanying shape of gravity. And at the very close of his speech his eyes beam, and his face curves again in full refulgence and satisfaction in a good thing well done. General Porter always begins with a joke. Then he presents a string of anecdotes, always new and funny ones, and at the close breaks into a peroration full of fine flowers of speech, elaborate metaphors, and well-turned phrases. Three Laugh Makers. Hamilton W. Maybe, the editor of the Outlook, is a speaker whose work is both polished and incisive. He dearly loves to poke fun of a satirical nature at his audience, often of the most finished and elaborate sort, before he gets at the meat of his argument, which he treats when the time comes with clearness and earnestness. There are three men in New York who are called by many persons the Three Laugh Makers. Patrick Murphy, Job, Hedges, and Simeon Ford. Murphy has an inimitable manner and a very slow delivery. He drops his jokes a word at a time, making his hearers wait for each point, and phrasing each line with careful humor. The word careful is employed advisedly, for he slaves over his speeches in advance, and writes and rewrites them many times. His sense of humor is exquisite, and his style very finished and perfect of its kind. Job Hedges dislikes being starred as an after-dinner speaker. Of course he is one, and one of the best. Probably he does more of it than any of them. But, just the same, he doesn't like to have this branch of his fame thrown at his head too much. He goes to dinners and talks on subjects that interest him by way of diversion, not as a profession. Some men play golf, some men play bridge. This is his way of playing. While one man sketches for amusement and one makes love or friends, and one makes money by gambling, and another makes mischief by way of refreshment and recreation, Mr. Hedges makes speeches. It is his pet dissipation and has the quality, rather rare in forms of dissipation, of giving others more pleasure than it gives himself. He never prepares a speech. He has been heard to say that preparing a speech is like planning how you are going to make love to a girl. By the time you get there you are so scared you can't touch her. Job Hedges cannot digest his dinner if he is in an attitude of anxiety. Therefore he makes it a rule never to dine where he is going to speak. Hedges must be a nervous fellow, remarked a man who had often heard him. Whenever he is to speak he just toys with a knife and fork, and never eats a morsel. As a matter of fact he has dined well and substantially before he ever reaches the table at all. When he has agreed to make a speech he just explains that he may be a little late, that he wants no recognition or reception. He will just slip into his place quietly, and when he is wanted will respond. Job Hedges and Simeon Ford When the evening arrives, instead of presenting himself at Del Monaco's, where the banquet is to be held, he hies him to burns and orders a thick beef steak and baked potatoes. The latter slathered over with dish gravy, a fine old New England dish if you never tried it. All of this he eats, and he has a cigar, a drink maybe, and reads the evening paper. Finally he takes a walk, and quite calm and comfortable, ends up at the big dinner ready to talk. I have heard his speaking method called explosive, but it is probably the natural expression of the man himself. He is very buoyant, very enthusiastic, with a hearty laugh, a sly twinkle, and a clean cut face at once boyish and shrewd under his gray hair. I can imagine that he might sound explosive, but he might make other speakers sound tame. Simeon Ford But let Simeon Ford speak, for himself. You must imagine him as plunged in gloom as Mr. Hedges is sparkling with energy and humor. Mr. Ford's face refuses to break into a smile, except once in a while, and then it is very pleasant and revealing. For the most part he is wrapped in a cloak of melancholy, of as sable atone, as that of the Dane himself. Speech-making is a thoroughly detestable occupation, said Mr. Ford, with deep sadness. I dislike it more than I can say, and I cannot think why I ever do it, or why I ever began to do it. As a matter of fact, I don't do it very often now. When I was younger it may have pleased my vanity, but now it brings me nothing but misery. I am considered funny, a humorous speaker. By nature I am the most melancholy and serious of persons. I never knew a comedian yet who was not at heart a pessimist of the most tragic depths. The Tortures of a Speaker I grind my speeches out word by word, and phrase by phrase. I suffer agonies over each one, and I really believe I would rather have typhoid fever forty times than make one speech. It was all very well in the days when Chote and Howland and Porter were at the beginning of their prime. Then a man knew far in advance, just at what dates he would be expected to speak, at the New England dinner, at the St. George's dinner, and so on. He could, if he liked, work up his speech a year in advance. It is very different now. A proposition of that sort has sprung on a man almost overnight, and he has to think wildly against time of something which will be at once appropriate and funny. I am never eloquent and patriotic. In Washington you can get about twelve gross orators capable of ringing the changes upon the grand old flag. I get along well enough during dinner until the speeches begin. Then I am in misery until I am through with my part of the performance. Of course I think that all the speeches which come before mine are rotten, and all those that follow me great. Some people tell me they forget their speeches. Indeed I have seen a man faint away in the middle of a seemingly flourishing speech because he could not remember his lines. I have nearly toppled over myself once or twice, but it was from nervousness, not from loss of memory. I go over everything I am to speak so many times and correct and change and copy so often that the words are engraved on my brain permanently. No, I don't forget my speeches, I can't. For just a moment the elusive shadow of a smile passed over Mr. Ford's face, then he looked grave again, almost tragic. Spontaneous, did you say? My speeches are about as spontaneous as a coral insect building coral in the Pacific Ocean. It was the Honourable Henry E. T. Haaland who, when he found himself the only Yale guest at the Harvard Dinner and was received with uproarious applause, began his speech with this story which promptly became famous. Gentlemen, I am overwhelmed by this reception. I had expected my greeting to be something after the manner of Mrs. Flaherty who, when she met her neighbour and enemy out walking, said, The top of the morning to you, Mrs. Morarty! Not that I care a damn, but just for the sake of making conversation. A speech, said Judge Haaland, with his delicious twinkle, should be partly sense and partly nonsense. Many men prepare heavy dignified speeches, but I don't. It seems to me that, at the end of dinner, full of good wine and inhaling good cigars, men want to be amused. Up there on the platform, or days, are the minstrels furnished for the occasion. They should be amusing. I have a son who is a purist. He and some other people think that my flights are too flippant. Well, I have tried to make a big, dignified, serious speech. At the New England Dinner one night it was. And it was very bad. He chuckled at this amusing fact and continued, The after-dinner speakers are growing fewer every day. And above all, they are growing briefer. That is a great improvement. A good thing should not be run into the ground. And the tercerer a speaker is, the more he has to say as a rule. Anecdotes should be treated very tenderly. An anecdote should never be introduced unless it is absolutely in the spirit of the occasion. I remember hearing Everts make the hit of the evening with the simplest sort of response. It wasn't a story, nor a full-fledged joke. Just a delightfully humorous touch. A reminiscence of Everts. The speaker had been putting difficult exam questions to the men at the table. It was a Harvard dinner. And Everts was, of course, from Yale. Finally the speaker ended up with, and now, gentlemen, I should like to know why the coatings of the stomach, being charged with digestive juices capable of digesting almost anything, do not digest themselves. To which Everts, like a flash, replied, That question seems to be unnecessary to answer as whenever I expect I attend a Harvard dinner I always remove all the coatings of my stomach. Of course he was never permitted to finish. But a little thing like that will set the whole evening to a humorous tune. Chote is particularly happy in that sort of thing, too. I remember—oh, you want me to talk about myself. But I am not a famous after-dinner speaker, you know. No, I don't like speaking any longer. At last, not so well as I used to like it. Of course sometimes it is much easier and pleasanter than at others. Some audiences are so responsive that they draw the speech right out of your mind before you know it. And, anyway, though on general principles I believe in preparing a few points of a speech in advance, some of the best speeches I ever made in my life were without the slightest preparation. Am I ever embarrassed? The gulp became confidential, though still with the twinkle. Scared of death! I've always been so. I think I must tell you of the most dreadful ordeal of my life. It was a good many years ago, and Trinity Church, just across there, had a Sunday school that needed money. Well, Walter Satterley planned a Christmas festival there, and a group of us, who had been giving charades and amateur theatricals in the country, were called in to perform. Now, it is all very well to give charades in the country where everyone knows everyone else, and you have none of the feeling of being on probation. But it turned out to be somewhat different in New York before a large audience of the Trinity congregation. It was all very nicely planned. A lady named Mrs. Mead was going to play the part of a poor woman freezing to death in the streets while I was the kind man who rescued her. At the proper moment the clouds were to roll by and the Christmas waits. The Trinity Choir were to burst into song. Well, in the first place Mrs. Meads, when the time came, either forgot or refused to say her long recital of woes and just wailed, I am so cold, I am so cold, which looked as if it might be true. Then when the clouds rolled by, the choir was found to consist of two rather faint-voiced boys, and to finish up with Walter Satterley hustled the rest off and whispered to me cheerfully from the wings that I was to amuse them while the others changed their costumes. Trouble in old Trinity. I'll never forget that moment, never! Whenever I pass old Trinity I shudder. As a matter of fact the calmness and daring of despair fell upon me, and I danced a pussle on that stage amid great applause. But all my life my nightmares have been going up for examinations without being prepared, a ghastly experience which inscribed itself indelibly upon my mind and my youth, going upon the stage without knowing my lines, or, and this is invariably the worst, standing up to make a speech and having no idea what to say. Now that last has never actually happened to me, though I always expect it. Whenever I have reached very deep waters of forgetfulness, or some other undertow, I have always been able to reach for a lifeline somewhere and gain safety before I was lost. Some audiences are very responsive. They always help a speaker. The Southern Society is one, and the Virginia Society is another. The St. Patrick is sympathetic and delightful, but you have to treat them with gloves on all the time. They are touchy. Everything is a personal matter, really, with speech-making. I have heard a certain famous man talk about himself for an endless time and relate, by the score, chestnuts that I have had to discard long since, regretfully, for they were good ones, and yet his hearers have laughed at him as heartily as if they had not heard every one of his stories a hundred times, and did not know all his peculiarities by heart. That is just because they love the man, and because he has a personal charm and humorous twist that will doubtless continue to endear him to everyone, myself included, for years to come. You know, it's a funny thing, but when the speech making is all over and the strain is gone and you have listened to what all the other fellows have had to say, you are always ready to get up and make a great speech. When I am all through with my performance at a dinner, I always think of ever so many clever, brilliant things that I wish I had said. You know, the best speeches in the world are composed going home in the cab. End of Section 66, March 1, 1908, after dinner speakers tell how they do it. Red by John Greenman. Section 67 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Red by John Greenman. March 18, 1908, great men's letters sold at auction. Two written by Roosevelt, while he was at Montauk Point during Spanish War. Mark Twain's sell higher. A missive from Brian, about the commoner, brings three dollars and twenty-five cents. One from Carnegie brings forty cents. Two letters of President Roosevelt written during the Spanish War were among the interesting autographs sold by the Anderson Company in West 29th Street yesterday. Both are addressed to John Brisbane Walker, then editor of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. They are type-written, but signed by Mr. Roosevelt. One dated 1st Reg U.S. Vol Kav. in camp at Montauk Point, August 3, 1898, is as follows. My dear Mr. Walker, I should like very much to accept, but upon my word I do not know how I can, for I have had infinite requests to write, and it is going to be difficult to meet a tenth of them, and they offer me prices which I really should not have dreamed of asking myself. Very sincerely yours, T. Roosevelt. This fetched two dollars and twenty-five cents. The other letter is dated Camp Wyckoff, Montauk, L.L., September 7, 1898, and is as follows. My dear Mr. Walker, in a little while I think I shall be at leisure to have the writer of whom you spoke call on me. I only wish I were able to write for you, myself, but I am engaged to the hilt. Sincerely yours, T. Roosevelt. This letter sold for two dollars and fifty cents. There were also three interesting and characteristic letters written by Mark Twain to Mr. Walker. The earliest of these is a four-page, twelve-mo, dated, Counten Benthaven, by Vine, September 19, 1898, and reading in part as follows. Dear Mr. Walker, sure it's elegant, sick, conscience, you've got and few there be that can afford such an expensive one. Yes, the second check astonished and gratified me. I didn't know what it was for. I merely uttered my little prayer of humble thanks and went and cashed it. Many would have thought God sent it, but I knew by the signature it was you. Indeed and indeed I am hoping I shall yet appear again in the cosmopolitan. This letter brought thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents. Another of the letters is two pages and is dated London, March 2, 1900. The letter paper bears morning border. It refers to a request for permission to republish one of his articles. This letter sold for six dollars and thirty cents. The third letter is dated Wallace Hill, London, September 27, 1900, and is of similar import to the previous letter to Mr. Walker. It sold for four dollars and eighty cents. William Jennings Bryan was also represented in the sale by a two-page letter to Mr. Walker. It was written in Lincoln, Nebraska, but bears no date. It is entirely in Bryan's handwriting. Such letters, it is said, are rare. It is as follows. My dear Mr. Walker, I do not know to what extent it is considered proper for a publisher to tell others of his rates, but to the extent that it is proper I would like to know about what rates are charged per one thousand circulation. I have not taken advertisements, but shall soon. I prefer the class of advertisements found in the magazine. You will be interested to know that the commoner has about forty-one thousand now, and has been increasing at over one thousand per day for two weeks. Regards to the family, yours truly, W. J. Bryan. This fetched three dollars and twenty-five cents. Other interesting items sold as follows. General U.S. Grants ordered to General Thomas, December 8, 1864, to advance on the Confederate General Hood at Nashville, seventy-five dollars. A letter of John Hay, Washington, D.C., November 19, 1890. I have never written a word of gossip about the White House, and never shall. Six dollars and fifty cents. A letter of Oliver Wendell Holmes, January 7, 1891, about his introduction to the history of Woodstock, twelve dollars and fifty cents. A letter of Rudyard Kipling, March 15, 1895, in regard to writing articles from India, eleven dollars. The signatures of President Lincoln and his cabinet on one sheet of paper, nineteen dollars. A letter of President McKinley, New York, November 30, 1904, nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. And a type-written letter of Andrew Carnegie to John Brisbane Walker, declining to write his autobiography, forty cents. End of Section 67, March 18, 1908, Great Men's Letters, sold at auction. Read by John Greenman. Section 68 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 14, 1908, Twain and Rogers back from Bermuda, offered to lend two dollars to Rogers not accepted, strain of traveling with financier. Joins anti-noise crusade. Fourteen banks of England could not finance lakes to gulf canal. Birds of a feather, said Mark Twain as he appeared on the deck of the steamer Bermuda yesterday, holding H. H. Rogers by the arm. You know the rest of it! And both humorist and financier laughed heartily. All this marked the end of a five weeks vacation on the island of Bermuda. Both looked in the best of health. Mark Twain wore a gray flannel suit, a long fur-lined overcoat, and a peaked hat, which sat jauntily on his long gray hair. Mark Twain, smoking a long black churrut, met interviewers standing under a sign warning male passengers that smoking undecanoid milde-mer patience. It's a terrible strain, this being a financier, he said, nodding his head in the direction of Mr. Rogers. It is also a strain traveling with one. I offered to loan Rogers two dollars, though I knew I was taking an awful risk. Rogers thought it was simply a courtesy, and so did not take me up. Now I am two dollars ahead. I have returned from my trip a reformer. I have joined the ranks of the anti-noise society. I have retired from the making of after-dinner speeches and the lecture platform. No one can tolerate noise, you know, unless they are the noisemakers. I am through making a noise, and so I now insist on quiet. Mrs. Rice started her crusade at the right time for me. Mr. Twain, what do you think of the scheme to improve our interior waterways by dredging a fourteen-foot channel down the Mississippi River? asked one. I have no sentimental interest in such a project, and I have too many realities to deal with, to be chasing a will of a wisp. When the Almighty built this earth, he knew very well that a fourteen-foot channel from Chicago to the Gulf would have been a very excellent and much needed thing, but he also knew that it would tax even his resources. If there were fourteen banks of England behind the scheme, and fourteen more behind them, there would not be enough available money to finance the scheme. I know the Mississippi Valley, and its cozy soil, too well. The digging of the channel would be but the beginning. A thousand dredges could not keep it clear. Mr. Rogers said that he had had a pleasant vacation and was much improved in health, but was out of touch with current events. Mark Twain told of one exciting incident of the voyage home, the ocean he characterized as most rude. On Sunday afternoon, dressed in his famous white suit, he was standing at the stern rail with Miss Dorothy Sturgis of Boston, watching the play of the ship's log, when a wave struck the vessel of stern, and a great comor climbed over the rail and drenched the pair. Mr. Twain said he will remain in his Fifth Avenue house for five weeks, and then go to the new home he is building on a farm at Redding, four miles out of Danbury, Connecticut. The Bermuda brought a large consignment of West Indian fish for the aquarium. She also had on board a consignment of one thousand boxes containing sixty thousand Easter lilies. The Bermuda steamer Trinidad, arriving later in the week, will, it is expected, bring a great cargo of lilies. End of Section 68, April 14, 1908, Twain and Rogers, back from Bermuda. Red by John Greenman. Section 69 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 5, 1907 through 1909. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Red by John Greenman. April 17, 1908, New Plea for Tchaikovsky. Ex-Mayor Seth Lowe of New York, Mayor Bussey of Chicago, Bishop Greer of New York, Mark Twain, and many other prominent Americans have united in another cable appeal to Premier St. Philippine at St. Petersburg, in behalf of Nicholas Tchaikovsky, now imprisoned in a Russian fortress. The appeal says that a speedy trial and the release of Tchaikovsky, if there are no charges against him, would give great satisfaction to the multitudes of friends of Russia in America. End of Section 69, April 17, 1908, New Plea for Tchaikovsky. Red by John Greenman.