Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-11-03
SUNDAY MAGAZINE FOR NOVEMBER 3. 1907
/ 8, 1907

Louis thousand dollars in goldfor nights in Toro
have declined them all just usual though sorely
tempted as usual
audience but because travelling alone is SO heart
bseskngy d5eary and e, shGuldering the whole show
Therefore propose to you what you proposed to
me in November lso7-ten years ago when was I'm,
adenee Should enomousy enoy meanderga around
Ito big towns-dont want to 60 to little ones) with you
for company. ..---
The letter includes schedule of cities and the number
of appearances planned for each.
This is as it should be. This is worthy of all
praise. say it myself lest other competent persons
should forget to do it. 1t appears that four of my
ancient letters sold at auction, three of them
at twenty-seven dollars, twentyeight dollars, and
twenty nine dollars respectively, and the men
toned at forty-three dollars. There is very
gratifying circumstance about this, to wit that
my literature has than held its regards
money value through this stretch of thirty-six
years l Judge that the forty-three- dollar letter
must have gone at about ten cents word, whereas
if had written it to-day its market rate would be
thirty cents; so l have increased in value two
three hundred per cent. l note another gratifying
circumstance: that letter of General Grants sold
at something short of eighteen dollars. can't rise
this nation but is deep happiness to me to know
that when it to epistolary literature he can't
sit in the front seat along with me-
This reminds me,cnine years ago, when we were
living in Tedworth Square, London, report
cabled to the American journals that was dying.
was not the one. 1t was another Clemens, cousin
of mine,-Dr ]. Ross Clemens, now of St. Louis
who was due to die but presently escaped, by some
chicanery other characteristic of the tribe OF
Clemens. The London representatives of the Amer-
can papers began to flock in, with American cables
in their hands, to inquire into my condition. There
was nothing the matter with me, and each in his
turn was astonished and disappointed to find
reading and smoking in my study, and worth next
to nothing as a text for transatlantic One
of these men was gentle and kindly and grave and
sympathetic Irishman, who hid his sorrow the best
he could and tried to look glad, and told that
his paper, The Evening Sum- !" had cabled him that
it was reported in New York that was dead What
should he cable in reply? l said:
Say the report is greatly exaggerated"
He never smiled, but went solemnly away and
sent the cable in those words. The remark hit the
world pleasantly and to this day it keeps turning
up now and then in the newspapers when people
have occasion to discount exaggerations.
The next man was also an Irishman. He had his
New York cablegram in his hand from The New
York World, and he evidently trying to
get around that cable with invented softnesses and
pa1liations that my curiosity aroused and /
wanted to what it did really say So when
occasion offered slipped it out of his hand 1t said:
IF Mark Twain dying, send five hundred words;
Now that old letter of mine sold yesterday for
forty-three dollars When l dead it will be
worth eighty-six.