Mark Twain, and consequently,
when I saw the table of contents of the November number of the
Century, I bought it and turned at once to the article bearing his
name, and entitled, "A Curious Episode." When I began to read it,
it struck me as strangely familiar, and I soon recognized the story
as a true one, told me in the summer of 1878 by an officer of the
United States artillery. Query: Did Mr. Twain expect the public to
credit this narrative to his clever brain?

The editor, seeing a chance for Mark Twain "copy," forwarded a clipping
to Clemens and asked him if he had anything to say in the matter. Clemens
happened to know the editor very well, and he did have something to say,
not for print, but for the editor's private ear.

The newspaper custom of shooting a man in the back and then calling
upon him to come out in a card and prove that he was not engaged in
any infamy at the time is a good enough custom for those who think
it justifiable. Your correspondent is not stupid, I judge, but
purely and simply malicious. He knew there was not the shadow of a
suggestion, from the beginning to the end of "A Curious Episode,"
that the story was an invention; he knew he had no warrant for
trying to persuade the public that I had stolen the narrative and
was endeavoring to palm it off as a piece of literary invention; he
also knew that he was asking his closing question with a base
motive, else he would have asked it of me by letter, not spread it
before the public.

I have never wronged you in any way, and I think you had no right to
print that communication; no right, neither any excuse. As to
publicly answering that correspondent, I would as soon think of
bandying words in public with any other prostitute.

The editor replied in a manly, frank acknowledgment of error. He had not
looked up the article itself in the Century before printing the
communication.

"Your letter has taught me a lesson," he said. "The blame belongs
to me for not hunting up the proofs. Please accept my apology."

Mark Twain was likely to be peculiarly sensitive to printed innuendos.
Not always. Sometimes he would only laugh at them or be wholly
indifferent. Indeed, in his later years, he seldom cared to read
anything about himself, one way or the other, but at the time of which we
are now writing--the period of the early eighties--he was alive to