uble.

Jan. 26.

It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human
race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the
purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess
a conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the "Times"
various samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date,
and expose it as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom
a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more members and
beneficiaries of our Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with
the rest of his regalia in the wash.

I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval
of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.

I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.

With great love to you all
MARK.

One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But his opinion
of the race could hardly have been worse than it was. And nothing
that human beings could do would have surprised him.

*****

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.

DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and
give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang
the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the
war out there has no interest for me.

I have just been examining chapter LXX of "Following the Equator," to
see if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads
curiously as if it had been written about the present war.

I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
ambitions, honesty, ki