The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1910-04-28

| mouth without saying something funny
should revise their impressions of him.
In the course of his last visit to his boy
hood home in the summer of 1902 he said
solemn things in the most dignifed man.
! ner possible. Several times he was so
deeply touched by the pathos of the oc-
casion, his meeting with boyhood friends
then grown old like himself, his visit to
the graves of his parents, that his voice
quavered and broke, and the inevitable
tears trickled down his face. He was
overcome with emotion, conquered by
| tender sentiment, and those Of US whose
privilege it was to observe him upon
these occasions went away with new
notion as to Mark Twain. He was not the
mere jester, not buffoon who sees in life
only the outlaws and works assiduously
to evoke them in boisterous riot of
laughter. He was the man of feeling,
| the tender hearted old fellow, the owner
of heart as gentle as any that ever
| beat
Mark Twain's life was not a rose bed.
He walked no primrose path. He en-
countered stumbling places and had
. steep hills of difficulty to climb. And
he had sorrows that bit and grlefs that
bludgeoned. At the close of his life, so
tar as relatives were concerned, he was
almost alone in the world.
His best loved daughter, Susy, died in
America when he was in Europe. His
story of her death in his autobiography,
Is piece of pathos seldom surpassed.
His wife, VINO was Miss Olivia Langdon
of Elmira, N. Y, his companion for
many years, died in Italy after vain
Wanderings for the restoration OF her
health. He built big country home
near Redding, Conn, and settled down
to continuing growing old as gracefully
as he could with his two remaining
daughters, Clara and Jean. In Novem-
Der of 1909 Clara married a foreigner
and went abroad to live. Jean was left
with him. On the day before Christ
mas with a Christmas tree for her father
trimmed by her own hands in one of the
rooms, Jean Clemens was found dead in
her bathtub, having been seized with
an epilepitc fit and drowned.
When Mark Twain was fifty years old
and worth about 81, 900, 900 a publishing
firm in which he was partner became
bankrupt. He lost his fortune and was
involved heavily in debt. He set to
work, made lecturing and writing tour
around the world and in ten years had
paid off his Indebtedness and again was
ahead of the wolf By that time he
had become so universally famous that
his works commanded its own price.
Thereafter he could write or rest as he
chose, and he chose to write mrch.
Mark Twain's writing life began in
his pilot days and continued up to his
death-half a century of devotion to the
art of making people happy. For sever
al years he was simply Woodworking
newspaper reporter and special CORES
pondent, searching for gold in Nevada
and California between jobs at journal
ism which grubstaked him for prospect
ing. But he found his purest and most
paying streak of ore when in l867 he
wrote THE jumping Frog Of Calaveras
County" That story, picked up in
mining camp, was his first promising
literary prospect.
He had struck the mother lode.
Printer, pilot, reporter, humorist.
novelist, philosopher-he is safely en-
banned to enduring fame.