What a wee little part of 2 person's life are his acts and Words! His real life is led 'n his head and is known to none bu. himself. AN day long, and every day, the mill of his brain grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history. His acts and words are merely the visible, thin erust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and ts vacant wastes of water—ana they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a micro skin enveloping The mass of him is hidden—it and fig volcanic tres that toss and boll, and never rest, night or day. These are his life, and they are not! written, and cannot be" written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words—three hundred and sixty-five books 4 year. Biographies are the clothes and butions of the man—the bio. graphy Of the man himself cannot One of the world's greatest humourist wrote that, and it is|" inimitable not only for the style in which itis wien, but for the depth of the thought which it contains, It is the text with which Mark Twain opens his autoblography. And because he was born hundred years ago on November 80, 1935, in Floria, Monroe County, Missouri, where his father after meeting several misfortunes "kept store" for several years, "but had no luck except that I was born to him," some memories of what the writer always prefers to think o!
great humanitarian as well as great humourist,—indeed there is always a lingering doubt whether a great deal of his humour was not almost unconscious,—are recalled Mark Twain for many years could be persuaded to regard bim-self as nothing more than an accident, a newspaper writer to whom distinction had come as a matter of good fortune rather than. as a tribute to his genius. He had owned a newspaper, and experimented more or Jess' casually—and unfortunately—with a variety of other enterprises, when in 1884, at age of forty-nine he capitalized publishing concern, primarily to produce his own works, but not without an {dea of establishing something more dependable than authorship.
Forty-nine to commence a new undertaking!
What fan answer to the "too old school, and those of to-day who believe there is nothing world but youth! It would be idle to follow the ups and downs of Mark Twain's career, to suggest that for a large part of his life he: was a Jack of all trades and master of none, because we are not concerned as to how the finished product was arrived at, but with the fact that at last it was presented to the world, What a picture the man made in his later years! That well coloured strongly chiselled face, those bushy eyebrows, reinforced by his leonine head of white hair, suggesting fierceness which was just as much of a fraud as some of his own stories, There was character in every line of his face, in every swell and hollow of its moulding. There was imagination in every twinkle of his eye, and what an imagination! He has been accused of embroidering many of his: stories. He seems to admit himself for it is on record that he once complained "When I was: younger I could remember anything whether it happened or not; but now I am getting old and soon I shall remember only the other." 'And at another time paraphrasing Josh Billings, "It isn't so astonish~ Jing the things that I can remem~ ber, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so." Of all' this Arthur Bigelow Paine, who assisted him in his autobiography, taking down the various disjointed chapters of which It is composed, remarks "Tt was only when he relied on his of general history, memory responded to old prejudice, or when life-long habit prompted a good story' that be went wandering Into fields of elaboration and gathered there such flowera and thorns as his fancy oF feelings seemed to require."
Nothing particularly wrong in that, or a humourist paints his canvas ith the pigments of imagination, on, in this case, can it be figments?
Most of Mark Twain's work up. to the time of his entering the publishing business, such as. "Roughing It," "Tom Sawyer," "Life on the Mississippi," had been mare or less of an autobiographical nature, and in those books it is possible to ascertain much of what als early life was, the conditions which it was lived, and the joys and pains of the early part of career. Even before 1870 he had Jotted down an occasional reminiscent chapter, for possible /publication, though apparently with 'n0 idea of a continuous narrative, and unconsciously he seems to rave been sowing small acorns rom which great oaks were sub-equantly to grow. Had Mark Cwain's father not met with reverses, the luck of having such son born to him might never nave occurred, for at one time the former was a potentially rich man, wing purchased 75,000 acres of land in Tennessee for something in the neighbourhood of $400. He had oped that his children would reap the fruits of his investment, out they did not. Things went wrong and the Clemens family had to rough it like Tom Sawyer had to. That is perhaps just as well, for if Samuel Clemens had been cradled in the lap of luxury, if he had never gone through the life of which he writes so richly, a very brilliant page in American literature might never have been written. Providence has its own methods of sharpening its tools.
His mother must have been' a woman of original thought for she was the natural ally and friend of the friendless.
It was believed that Presbyterian as she was, she could be beguiled into saying a soft word for the devil himself, and 50 experiment was tried. 'The abuse of began; one conspirator after another added' his bitter word, his malign reproach, hig pitiless censure until at last, sure enough, the unsuspecting subject of the trick walked into the trap. She admitted that the indictment was sound, that Satan was niterly wicked and abandoned, Just as these people had said; but would any claim that he had been fairly treated? A sinner was but a sinner; Satan was just that, like the rest, "What saves the rest?—thelr efforts alone? No—or none might] be saved. To their feeble efforts Is added the mighty help of pathetic, appealing, imploring prayers. that 0 up daily out of all the churches Christendom and out of myriads upon myriads of pitying hearts. But who prays for Satan? Who, In eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the tone sinner who needed it most, our tone fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's: daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and Hable reason that his was the frst and greatest need, he being among sinners the Mark Twain tells the story himself, and, astonishing as it might seem Jat first blush, the suggestion that Christian clemency should be extended to the ultimate is not with-
Jout a very considerable logic to, support it. However that may be, it shows that from the maternal side Mark Twain was likely to be gifted with an originality of thought which after events proved to be the ease. It would be possible to dwell on his remarkably devoted wife, his clever daughter Susy and derive great benefit therefrom, [but it is Mark Twain with whom we are dealing.
'And not necessarily Mark Twain' the humourist, but Mark Twain in fall the varied facets of a remarkable character. For Mark was not merely your genial poker of fun, Jman oot gentle whimsicality. His very: eyebrows deny that. He was a /man of strong, forceful purpose, a man who knew what he wanted, and in most cases how to get it, direct in his English and intolerant of those who paltered with its) simplicity. He was once asked to write an introduction to a translation of the evidence given at the trial of Joan of Are. The person who asked him, a welder of smug commonplaces, had the audacity to attempt to edit what Mark wrote,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.