Columbus's great achievement gave him the
discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search
out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot's ship up there
in the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to
enlarge her estate--but not the last.

Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.)

That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.

Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.)

He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his
head, which is a LAST--shoemaker's last.

Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.)

The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke.
The first three letters of Mary's name and the first three of the word
martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were
becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes
called Bloody Mary.

This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period
of nearly five hundred years of England's history--492 to be exact. I
think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further
lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the
scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the
pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help
your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has
done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all
of England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other
rooms. This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really
worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the house
together.

1. Summer of 1899.

THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION

Note.--The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September
10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrian residence. The news came
to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of Vienna.
To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote:

"That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman,
and I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's Jubilee
last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this
murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a
thousand a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the
wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep du