The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-06
MARK TWAIN IN BEST
 OF HUMOR AT SEVENTY
AUTHOR SPEAKS AT DINNER IN HONOR OF HIS BIRTH
 DAK

About 150 Writers of Imaginative Lite
 erature Present, Half of Them
 Being WOmen-MarIz Accorded En-
 thusIastlc GreetIng-Reached Seventy
 by Sticking to Scheme of Life That Would Kill Anyone Else-OnIy Last
 Spring He Stopped FrOIicling With
 Mince Pie After Midnight-FOund at
 Last it Was Loaded.
 New York, Dec. 5.-Mark Twain was the guest of honor tonight at dinner at Delmonico's given by Colonel George Harvey, in honor of the humorist's seventieth birthday. The guests were confined to writers of imaginative liter ature only and about 17O authors were present, nearly half of them women. During the dinner a congratulatory cable message was received from Eng lang signed by forty of the most dis tinguished writers, including Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Alfred Austin, Arthur Balfour, Rudyard Kipling, An thony Hope, Sir Gilbert Parker, Sir Conan Doyle, Ian MacLaren,e Mrs. Humphrey Ward, and Israel Zangwill. Each guest received as a souvenir half life size bust of Mark Twain.
 President Roosevelt and Joel Chand- Ter Harris sent letters, and among those who spoke or presented poems were D. D. Howells, Richard Watson Glider, Henry Van Dyke, Brander Matthews, Weir Mitchell, Kate Douglas Wiggins, John Kendrick Bangs, Amelia Barr, Hamilton W. Mabie, Caroline wells, Irving Bacheller, Rex Beach, Andrew Carnegie, George ". Cable, Louise Morgan Sill, Hopkinson Smith, Agner Repplier, and Virginia Frazer Royle.
 When Mark Twain arose to speak he could not proceed for several min- utes on account of the cheers that were given in greeting. He said:
 ''The seventieth birthday. It is the time of life when you arrive at 8 new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside decent reserves which have oppressed you for generation, and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your -terraced summit and look down and teachs-unrebuked You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all ao You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anx- ious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right.
 1T have achieved my seventy years in the usual way-by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill any, body else. It sounds like an exagger- ation, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins Since forty have been regular about going to bed and getting up-and that is one of the main things. have made it a rule to go to bed when there was not anybody left to sit up with and have made it rule to get up when I had to. This has resulted in an un- swerving regularity of irregularity.
 HI luG lldLLGI Ol ulCt- "Al4Gh ID another main thing-I have been per- sistently strict in sticking to the things which did not agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of 1t. Until lately got the best of 1t myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince pie after midnight; up to then had always believed 1t was not loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at s in the morning and no bite nor sup till 7:30 in the even ing.
 T have made it a rule not to smoke more than one cigar at time. have no other restrictions as regards smok- ing. do not know just when began to smoke I only know that 1t was in my fathers lifetime, and that I was discreet He passed from this life early in 1874, when I was shade past elev- en; ever since then have smoked pub licly As an example for others, and not that I cared for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to re- frain when awake.
 'As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to
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