The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-06-01
A DOUBTFUL INTRODUCTION

w nat scamp Mark Twain could be!
 At a rally in Elmira, N. Y. the repub- Jcans dragged him out to introduce General Hawley of Connecticut and this is how he went about it. General flaw ley is a member of my church in Hart ford and the author of Beautiful Snow As citizen, I respect him. as a neigh hos whose vegetable garden adjoins | min@ why-why. I watch him. As the
 author of Beautiful snow he has added
 new pang to winter. He is square, true man. So broad. so bountifuI in his character that he never turned tramp ! empty handed from his door, but al-
 ways gave him letter of introduction to me. Pure, honest, incorruptible is Joe Hawley. Such man in politics is like bottle of perfumery in glue fac tory. 1 haven't said any more of him than l would say of myself. Ladies and gentlemen, this is General Hawley" Such moods would seize Mark in the very midst of his most serious writing, for he was serious half the time-more now l come to think of it. If he pulled 1 through his Prince and the Pauper," and his Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, without turning an inspired lit erary or oratorical somersault it was by sheer luck But you have a fair sam pie of Mark in his famous description of scene in the gorgeous west-the cam J Oii' tHc iIpulltdiiis, anu all CHdl, pO1nteQ in high color and aglow with vivid real ism until of a sudden he ',busts loose" as they say out west, with the assertion. overhead. on unquivering pinions. scared single oescophagus.
 You snort The caper is hardly less unexpected and bewldering than 'Irv'' Cobb's at the wind-up of a rhapsodical l outburst about a sunset, which, after any amount of poetical sentimentalizing, he 6ecla red he ink. ho ,c;I a of blonde cow'
 However, there was here and there a | reader who took Mark in dead earnest and wrote him, T have been an orni- biologist 90 years, and flatter myself that know something of the birds of
 the far west, but I have never seen an | oesophagus or heard of one. and on looking Up the word in the dictionary I find that Webster says it means gullet Please drop me line to relieve my per- l plexity" | If l could keep my face straight long enough, l might add that Mark knew
 the far west altogether too intimately to make fun as he did. for in his early.
 inglorious days he worked on paper 1 out there. It was then that he produced masterpiece l would give my ears to read, but am unable to for reasons Will L. Clemens elucidates in a hilarious It, tie book about Mark
 Tn Nevada at that time," says Will, It was the custom of the proprietor of every new saloon to send a basket of his choicest wines to the newspaper office and for the editor to return the compli-
 rnent by giving a glowing account of the affair. A basket of unusually choice wine had been sent to the office one day rom a saloon of a very aristocratic or der that was to be opened Mark was
 to write up the opening. He wrote few lines in the best of English and then began to be badly mixed. and as he rep resented bottle after bottle as having been sampled, approved and emptied, he ] drlfted into worse and worse confusion, as might be supposed of man who had drunk basket of mixed wines.
 | When the paper came out Mark could 1 not find his cherished article but in- | stead found a short paragraph setting | forth, in the most commonplace way. 1 that basket of wine had been received 1 from Mir. -, and that they were very 1 fine, ~etc.
 1 Mark was mad, and found that one | o1 the printers was responsible. The l fellow said he could not make head nor | tail of the copy and thought MT. Clemens must have been drunk when he wrote 1 1t, so etore it up and substituted the ! paragraph.
 MARK TWAIN ONCE FIRED l Nobody really appreciated Mark in | those days, the editor least of all. O.,
 morning he fired him. Think of it, fire l l Mark Twain. know where that editor | is now, but I don't believe they waste | good birthstone on him down there. It | is my opinion that instead they appoint i nine little imps to whittle their fingers
 at the culprit and cry. 'Sha-mee. Shas 1 me- You fired Mark Twain" And it is l clear that he got punish~ert and. [, l spare while still alive, for Mark went on
 the San Francisco Call ana. turned Ills
 former editor green with envy by witt
 ing Answers to Correspondents" one of {! which ran thus
 l simple and touching reiaarks and ac- companying poem have just come to