nspiration. I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
him again. I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.

I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York
today. I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope
soiled, and asked Livy to put on a clean one. That is why I am going to
the banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going
to punch billiards with, upstairs to-night.

Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck. And I am the
other.

Your Brother
SAM.

The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
already in the reviewers' hands. Just at this moment the Brazilian
monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
suspected.

DEAR MR. BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
satisfaction. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I
should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven
image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
kingship and so-called "nobility." It is enough to make the monarchs
and nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no
question about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and
that is the spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys
and Huntingtons and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves,
for rotten carcases and stolen titles. When our great brethren the
disenslaved Brazilians frame their Declaration of Independence, I
hope they will insert this missing link: "We hold these truths to
be self-evident: that all monarchs are usurpers, and descendants of
usurpers; for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by
the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate
right to set it up--the numerical mass of the nation."

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