writing-table, the
furniture is back where it used to be in the long-ago. The
housemaid, forbidden the place for five months, has been there &
tidied it up & scoured it clean & made it repellent & awful.

I stand here this morning contemplating this desolation, & I realize
that if I would bring back the spirit that made this hospital home-
like & pleasant to me I must restore the aids to lingering
dissolution to their wonted places & nurse another patient through
& send it forth for the last rites, With many or few to assist
there, as may happen; & that I will do.

CXC

STARTING ON THE LONG TRAIL

The tragedy of 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', with its splendid illustrations by
Louis Loeb, having finished its course in the Century Magazine, had been
issued by the American Publishing Company. It proved not one of Mark
Twain's great books, but only one of his good books. From first to last
it is interesting, and there are strong situations and chapters finely
written. The character of Roxy is thoroughly alive, and her weird
relationship with her half-breed son is startling enough. There are not
many situations in fiction stronger than that where half-breed Tom sells
his mother down the river into slavery. The negro character is well
drawn, of course-Mark Twain could not write it less than well, but its
realism is hardly to be compared with similar matter in his other books
--in Tom Sawyer, for instance, or Huck Finn. With the exceptions of Tom,
Roxy, and Pudd'nhead the characters are slight. The Twins are mere
bodiless names that might have been eliminated altogether. The character
of Pudd'nhead Wilson is lovable and fine, and his final triumph at the
murder trial is thrilling in the extreme. Identification by thumb-marks
was a new feature in fiction then--in law, too, for that matter. But it
is chiefly Pudd'nhead Wilson's maxims, run at the head of each chapter,
that will stick in the memory of men. Perhaps the book would live
without these, but with them it is certainly immortal.

Such aphorisms as: "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits";
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example"; "When angry count four, and when very angry swear," cannot
perish; these, with the forty or so others in this volume and the added
collection of rare philosophies that head the chapters of Following the
Equator, have insured to Philosopher Pudd'nhead a respec