Evening star., 1935-12-01
twain COMPLAINT
OF DOUBLEF0UND
Author Protested Against
Imposter in Letter to
Cleveland Herald.
BY the Associated Press.

BY the Associated Press
CLEVELAND, November 30.-E
Mark Twain ever had double he was
almost as elusive as the supernatural
little boy of whom the author wrote in
1.-THE Mysterious Stranger"
A Mark Twain letter has been dug
out of the records of the old Cleveland
Herald, in which Twain complains to
the editor about a double who went
around borrowing money in Twain's
name, swindling landlords, getting
''magnificently intoxicated" and even
stopping to horse thievery.
Entitled "A Mystery" the letter
bears many earmarks of the hoaxes
Twain liked to play in his day, and 1t
appeared Just one day before a Cleve-
land lecture by Twain, November II,
1868.
Appeared in San Francisco.
The first time the purported double
turned up was in San Francisco, some
two wears" before the date OF the ietter.
The double borrowed five dollars. Tne
author claimed he was 800 miles away
st the time. :,
"rrwo months afterward," Twain
rrote when I was down IN tne
Sandwich Islands, this double went ano
boarded four weeks at tnlro-raVe
hotel in Sacramento and then van
ished in the most mysterious way,
leaving an oil skin carpet sack 1uii Oh
;nterior bricks, and the bill unsettled.
could not but consider myself re-
.nonsible for the acts of my double OF
course, so paid the hotel bill.
The little boy who was the mystefl.
o,s stranger" in Twain's story OF tnat
nare and who materialized out OF
thin air at unexpected moments, lden-
tified himself as member OF SATAN 5
family and spoke of his rich uncle In
the tropics.
Lectured in Idaho.
A psycho-analyist. keeping tna1 II,
mind. might smile at the locale OF the
doubles next adventure. While twain
was at sea, the double delivered q
lecture at Satans Delight, Idaho, on
the Moral Impossibility of Dough-
nuts-a subject in which I never
took the slightest interest in my lie.
In June of the year Of the letter
the supposed double lectured in WIS
consin and Ohio, while the autnoi
himself was lecturing in California.
About this time it fell into tne
habit of getting persistently ano
eternally drunk-a thing which al
ways considered disgraceful IN q
ghost" wrote Twain.
In Cleveland the double imposed
upon the newspapers, "swindled the
landlord" of one Of the principal
hotels, kept itself more imposingly
and magnifcently intoxicated than
ever a specter did before. and it closed
its splendid career by failing to recog-
nize a photograph of an old and we'll
beloved comrade of mine, and so was
at once denounced as an imposter'
and run out Of town.
The doubles fate was to disappear
TO the northward, stealing horse the
first chance 1t got.
Not Spectral Double.
In the first of three postscripts
Twain declared the mystery is solved
with the discovery that the man is
not a spectral double, but a Every
ordinary" young man, entirely un-
known to me or any of my friends" /"
The author adds that II speak
seriously" in declaring the young man
"perpetrated, in my name. each and
every one of the frauds mentioned in
the article above.
IT ought to hate him." wrote Twain.
Sand yet the fact that he had been
able to borrow money and get board
on credit by representing himself to
be me is so comfortably flattering that
I own to a sort of sneaking fondneSs
for the outcast for demonstrating
that such thing was possible. I
will try it myself, now"