an
heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite commercial value for
my remote posterity.

I beg, sir, that you will insert this Advertisement (1t-eow, agate,
inside), and send the bill to

Yours very respectfully.

Mark Twain.

P.S.--For the best Obituary--one suitable for me to read in public, and
calculated to inspire regret--I desire to offer a Prize, consisting of
a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink without previous
instructions. The ink warranted to be the kind used by the very best
artists.

A MONUMENT TO ADAM

Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested to Rev.
Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up a monument to
Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project. There is more to it
than that. The matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to
materializing.

It is long ago--thirty years. Mr. Darwin's DESCENT OF MAN has been in
print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised by it was
still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing the genesis of the
human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had left Adam out altogether.
We had monkeys, and "missing links," and plenty of other kinds of
ancestors, but no Adam. Jesting with Mr. Beecher and other friends in
Elmira, I said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would
discard Adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time
Adam's very name would be forgotten in the earth; therefore this
calamity ought to be averted; a monument would accomplish this, and
Elmira ought not to waste this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor
and herself a credit.

Then the unexpected happened. Two bankers came forward and took hold of
the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they saw in the
monument certain commercial advantages for the town. The project had
seemed gently humorous before--it was more than that now, with this
stern business gravity injected into it. The bankers discussed the
monument with me. We met several times. They proposed an indestructible
memorial, to cost twenty-five thousand dollars. The insane oddity of a
monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the
hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise Elmira to the
ends of the earth--and draw custom. It would be the only monument on the
planet to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could
never have a rival until somebod