he years go by her greatest son Mark Twain, or
S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the
estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous and
the town that made him famous. His name is associated with every old
building that is torn down to make way for the modern structures
demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill or cave over
or through which he might by any possibility have roamed, while the
many points of interest which he wove into his stories, such as
Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain Cave, are now monuments
to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do him honor
as he has honored her.

So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with Mark
or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored
with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and
condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came
to be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now
seen to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Beckey
and Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated
when he lived here and that the things he did as a boy and was
whipped for doing were not all bad after all. So they have been in
no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the
good in their efforts to get a "Mark Twain story," all incidents
being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of
"Twainiana" is already considerable and growing in proportion as the
"old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and third
hand by their descendants. With some seventy-three years young and
living in a villa instead of a house he is a fair target, and let him
incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some
of his "works" that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as
gray-beards gather about the fires and begin with "I've heard father
tell" or possibly "Once when I."

The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother--_was_ my mother.

And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper. Of date twenty days
ago:

Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock
Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The
deceased was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of