The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-01-24
Sketch of Mark Twain.
lCleveland I.eAtierI

Mark Twain has a big head stuck on by long neck to A pair of round shoul- ders. He came On 10 the stage as though he were half asleep, and he looked to me as though nature, in putting him to- gether, had, somehow, gstten sae joints mixed. He has big face, nose large enough to represent any kind of genius, and eyes large, black and sleepy. He has thick. bushy mane of hair, which is now iron gray, and . bushy moustache which ovcFhangs his characteristic mouth. AS he stood on the stage he reminded me much of Q mammoth interrogation point, and as he drawlcd out hts words with scarcely gesture his voice made me think of little bug. saw slowly grind ing inside a corpse. He did not laugh while he uttered his funniest jokes, and when the audience roared he merely stroked his chin or pulled his moustache.
 Still he could not help being satis6ed, and do not doubt the contrast of his 6rst days in Washington, when he came hem years age and had hard work mak. ing money enough to pay his board bills, came foFcibly before him. Though It is not generally known, Mark Twain was once a Washington correspondent. He came here from the west with Senator Stewart and tor a time wrote letters to the Aiks CaA/orNia and the New York
 zsI6Sss. He used to drink . good deal in those days, and was hardly considered reputable character. It was shortly be- fore this that he made the trip from which he wrote lnnocents Abroad" and this book he wrote here from the notes he took during his tour. The book made him both famous and wealthy.
 His manuscript he first sent to several prominent publishers, but they all re- jected 1t, and he was about giving up In despair when a Hartford company took hold of 1t. The result vas they made S7S 900 off the book and sold Ta0zs than 100000 copies of 1t. It was aseer this that Mark Twain tried editing the Buffalo Exbr<Ss. A Man who worked on the paper as the time told me to-day that this venture of his wes not success. He leafed around the office, guying the of- 6ce-boy, and telling jokes and stories rather than writing, and the only fruit of his Buffalo experience was hts marriage, which, like lnnocents Abroad,n turned out well. His wife brought pot of gold into the family, and when he got to FL mira he found that his father-in-lax had made him the present of a brown-stone front, and thrown in a coachman with bug on his hat. Twain did not remain in Elmira, however, but went to Hart ford and began to write Roughing It." This was also successful and established his fame.
 Mark Twain makes probably as much out of his books as any other writer in the country. He has his Hastfcrd firm pub fish his books for him, and he SO ar ranges it that he gets royalty on those printed in Europe. He l. better known in foreign lands than any other Ameri- can writer, and he is an international character. Many of his scenes are taken from real life, and his descriptions of worker, and while at Hartford he writes in his billiard-room in the attic. Like Trollope, he believes that there is nothing like piece of shoemaker's wax on the seat of one's chair to turn cut good liter ary work, and, like Blaine, he has fixed amount of writing for each days duty. He rewrites many of his chapters, and some of them have been scratched out and interiined again and again. Mir. Clemens-everyone knows Mark Twain's name is Clcmens--will be 4o years old on the goth of December. He is . Mis- souri man by birth, and has taken care sf himsef ever since he was Is. He has, been q practical printer, a steamboat pilot, private secretary, . miner, re- porter, lecturer, and book maker.