The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-15

Joseph Verey, the messenger, who was Mark Twain's courier. and mad+ nine tours with him, has fallen upon evil times, and is now living in Lon don in a Rowton house. He has come down in the world through the loss of his savings, which he invested in an incandescent mantle business.
 His last engagement of any length, the star" states was when he was employed at the royal palace. Madrid, to hatch phea sants for King Alfonso.
 He left London with an English gamek eeper and 200o phcasants' eggs, and in the Casa Real Del Campo, at the rear of the royal palace, in Madrid, Verey and the gamekeeper matched out the eggs with Spanish hens.
 King Alfonso and the queen mother one day visited the matching place and talked to Verey about his travels and he told them stories of Mark Twain which kept their ajesties and the ladies of the court in constant laugh ter. Verey was also able to inform, the queen mother that he had paid homa ge before three popes.
 When the engagement at the royal palace was finished Verey had to re- turn to London. But, apart from the possession of testimonial written on parchment in Spanish and bearing the seals and coats of arms of Spain, he had nothing very substantial to show for his foreign trip.
 Verey has, of course, an endless store of "recollections" of Mark Twain. Civ ing few of these to a newspaper representative yesterday the famous courier said:
 MT. Clemens hardly ever talked to any, one. once I travelled from Cologne to Dresden with him, and he only spoke about two words to me. What l was in- structed to do was to engage the other people in the compartment In converse ton and ask them about everything. MT. Clemens used to sit and listen.
 ''He must have had a wonderful mem ory. He used to go to museums for hours. He would not say word but he would listen while I asked questions and engaged people in conversation.
 .I never heard him make joke not even with his own family. He never made one with, me. The nearest approach that he got to one was in a letter to me about the uncertainty of his plans. He wrote: "Ifs are as bad as prophets
 'He was great listener He would take it all in, and never say word him self.
 Mark and Verey understood one another thoroughly. Mark "dscovered" Verey in Paris through the hall porter at the Hotel Normandy, who gave such glowing ac- count of verey that Mark determined To nave nm.
 George. must have this Verey," Ee said. George could not leave his post to go and find him, so Mark said he would put on Georges apron and look after the door
 verey remained Mark Twains courier for many years.
 Mr. John A. Corey, a Leeds shoemaker who recently forsook the last for the study of aviation and gave successful demonstrations with his aerial torpedo worked by wireless apparatus, has now turned his attention to propulsion, and asserts that by means of an invention the secret of which he is not yet prepared to divulge. it will be possible for our big Atlantic liners to go from Liverpool to New York in under two days-consider- ably less than half the time now occupied by the Mauretania.
 Mir. Carry has the utmost confidence in his discovery upon which he has been working almost day and sahght for the last six months, and he claims that the experiments conducteds. at home with d little model have been cminently successful. 'I am dete rminei now" he declared today. Ito plQpe Wy patent before some large ship .bpild- ing firm. or even before the adnfffa.lty Iitself. and for an adequate remqnera- tion to show how the whole method