MARK TWAIN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7393, 20 February 1902, Page 4

MARK TWAIN.

There is reason to fear that Merk Twain is being drawn into the vortex of politics in the United States (writes Mr Lucy in the Sydney Morning Herald). This would be a pity. There are many who could breast tloat troubled and not always cleanly stream, and there is only one Mark Twain. After long residence in Europe he has gone back to his beautiful home with the proud concioucness oi having achieved a task that finds no parallel save in the case of Walter Scott. Like him, Mark Twain, having made a large sum by his literary work, drifted into business relations with a publisher. In both cases the result was the same. The enterprise came to grief. The hapless author was not only deprived of his life's earnings, but a millstone of debt was tied round his neck. Similitude is carried further. Just as Walter Bcott courageously and patiently took up his pen, labouring night and day to clear off liabilities for which he was not morally responsible, so Marls Tsyain, at a period when he had earned the right to spend his closing years in leisure, went forth tound the world on a lecturing tour, the proceeds of which, together with the payments for fresh literary work, he handed over to the creditor? of the firm, pucceeding in paying eirary penny of indebtedness. I saw a good deal of him bafore in the early gpring he left London homeward bound. His manner had no trace of the depressing trouble he had gone through. On the contrary, he was in highest spirits, bubbling over with fun. I remember, one night meeting him at the table of a compatriot, who, albeit an American, is one of our most distinguished R.A.'s. Mark gravely proposed to me a literary undertaking. It wag to be called "The Obituary." The plan was that he end I as joint editors and sole contributors were to write most savagely scurrilous notices ol eminent men, our host amongst others. The artiole being put into type, a proof was to be sent to the person chiefly concerned, with the intimation that if he didn't plank down a certain sum the article should bo published and widely circulated 'immediately on his death. "That makes it quite safe, dear boy," he said, without a vestige of a smile on his funereal countenance; " when the subject of your remarks is a corpse, no action for libel can lie." To hear him discuss the project, with a wealth of detail, no one would imagine that the wild phantasy had only just flashed in his brain, or tnat he was otherwise than in solemn earnest.