n pardons! That one there, the 'Old Times on
the Mississippi,' is the best book you ever wrote!"

The usual number of those curious accidents which we call coincidences
have fallen to my share in this life, but for picturesqueness this one
puts all the others in the shade: that a crowned head and a _portier_,
the very top of an empire and the very bottom of it, should pass the
very same criticism and deliver the very same verdict upon a book of
mine--and almost in the same hour and the same breath--is a coincidence
which out-coincidences any coincidence which I could have imagined with
such powers of imagination as I have been favored with; and I have not
been accustomed to regard them as being small or of an inferior quality.
It is always a satisfaction to me to remember that whereas I do not
know, for sure, what any other nation thinks of any one of my
twenty-three volumes, I do at least know for a certainty what one nation
of fifty millions thinks of one of them, at any rate; for if the mutual
verdict of the top of an empire and the bottom of it does not establish
for good and all the judgment of the entire nation concerning that book,
then the axiom that we can get a sure estimate of a thing by arriving at
a general average of all the opinions involved, is a fallacy.

[_Dictated Monday, February 10, 1907._] Two months ago (December 6) I
was dictating a brief account of a private dinner in Berlin, where the
Emperor of Germany was host and I the chief guest. Something happened
day before yesterday which moves me to take up that matter again.

At the dinner his Majesty chatted briskly and entertainingly along in
easy and flowing English, and now and then he interrupted himself to
address a remark to me, or to some other individual of the guests. When
the reply had been delivered, he resumed his talk. I noticed that the
table etiquette tallied with that which was the law of my house at home
when we had guests: that is to say, the guests answered when the host
favored them with a remark, and then quieted down and behaved themselves
until they got another chance. If I had been in the Emperor's chair and
he in mine, I should have felt infinitely comfortable and at home, and
should have done a world of talking, and done it well; but I was guest
now, and consequently I felt less at home. From old experience, I was
familiar with the rules of the game, and familiar with their exercise
from the high place of host; but I was no