ing, which gave promise of effecting
civic betterment and social improvement.

I have always felt a peculiar and personal debt of gratitude to Mark
Twain for three events--for the publication of such works can be
dignified with no less eminent characterization. When Mr. Edward Dowden
tried to make out the best case for Shelley that he could, it was at the
sacrifice of the reputation of the defenceless Harriet Westbrook. That
ingrained chivalry which is the defining characteristic of the
Southerner, the sympathy for the oppressed, the compassion for the weak
and the defenceless, animated Mark Twain to one of the noblest actions
of his career. For his defence of Harriet Westbrook is something more
than a work, it is an act--an act of high courage and nobility. With
words icily cold in their logic, Mark Twain tabulated the six pitifully
insignificant charges against Harriet, such as her love for dress and
her waning interest in Latin lessons, and set over against them the six
times repeated name of Cornelia Turner, that fascinating young married
woman who read Petrarch with Shelley and sat up all hours of the night
with him--because he saw visions when he was alone! Again, in his 'Joan
of Arc', Mark Twain erected a monument of enduring beauty to that simple
maid of Orleans, to whom the Roman Catholic Church has just now paid the
merited yet tardy tribute of canonization. It is a sad commentary upon
the popular attitude of frivolity towards the professional humorist that
Mark Twain felt compelled to publish this book anonymously, in order
that the truth and beauty of that magic story might receive its just
meed of respectful and sympathetic attention.

The third act for which I have always felt deeply grateful to Mark Twain
is the apparently little known, yet beautiful and significant story
entitled 'Was it Heaven or Hell?' It contains, I believe, the moral
that had most meaning for Mark Twain throughout his entire life--the
bankruptcy of rigidly formal Puritanism in the face of erring human
nature, the tragic result of heedlessly holding to the letter, instead
of wisely conforming to the spirit, of moral law. No one doubts that
Mark Twain--as who would not?--believed, aye, knew, that this sweet,
human child went to a heaven of forgiveness and mercy, not to a hell of
fire and brimstone, for her innocently trivial transgression. The essay
on Harriet Shelley, the novel of 'Joan of Arc', and the story 'Was it
Heaven