Little Falls herald. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1889-1950, 1910-04-29

Iand therein rs SOU sof poli teness.
Those obsessed by the notion that it
was impossible for Mark Twain to
open bis. mouth without saying some
thing. funny should revise their I'M
pressions Of him. In the course Of his
last visit to his boy hood home at Han
sntbal In the summer of. 1902 he said
solemn things in the most dignided
manner possible: Several times he was
80 deeply touched By the pathos of the
occasion, 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 trtckled down his
face. He was overcome with emotion,
conquered by tender sentiment, and
those Of us whose privilege twas to
observe him upon these occasions went
away with a new notion as to Mark
Twain. He was not the mere jester,
not the buffoon who sees in life only
the outlaws and works assiduously to
evoke them in boistefous riot Of laugh.
ter: He was the man Of feeling, tho
tender hearted old fellow, the owner
OF a heart as gentle as any that ever
beat ~
His Many Personal Sorrows.
Mark Twain's life was not; rose
bed. He walked no primrose path. He
encountered stumbling places and had
steep hills Of difficulty to climb. And
he had sorrows that bit and griefs that
bludgeoned. At the close Of his life,
so far as relatives were concerned, he
was almost alone in the world.
His best loved daughter, susy, died
In America when be was in>sRurope.
His story of her death in his autobiog-
raphy Is a piece Of pathos seldom sur
passed. His wife, who was Miss Olivia
Langdon Of Eln1ira. IN. T.. his co1npau-
lon 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 continue growing old as grace
fully as he could with his two remain
ing daughters, Clara and Jean. In No
vember Of 1909 Clara married for
eigner and went abroad to live. Jean
was left with him. On the day before
Christmas, with 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 epileptic 6t and
drowned.
When Mark Twain was fifty years
old and worth about $1.00O,O00 a pub
fishing firm in which be was a part
ner became bankrupt. He lost his for
tune 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 work commanded its
own price. Thereafter he could write
or rest as he chose, and he chose to
write much.
Mark Twain's writing life began In
his pilot days and continued up to his
death-half q century Of devotion to
the art Of making people happy. For
several years he was simply a hard
working newspaper reporter and spe-
cial correspondent, searching for gold
In Nevada and California between jobs
at journalism which grubstaked him
for prospecting. But he found his
purest and most paying streak of ore
when in 1867 he wrote 1.-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-
balmed to enduring fame.