the
character and the work of Mr. Mabie. And when they were through they
said that portrait, fine as it is, that work, beautiful as it is, that
piece of humanity on that canvas, gracious and fine as it is, does not
rise to those perfections that exist in the man himself. Come up, Mr.
Alexander. [The reference was to James W. Alexander, who happened to
be sitting--beneath the portrait of himself on the wall.] Now, I should
come up and show myself. But he cannot do it, he cannot do it. He was
born that way, he was reared in that way. Let his modesty be an example,
and I wish some of you had it, too. But that is just what I have been
saying--that portrait, fine as it is, is not as fine as the man it
represents, and all the things that have been said about Mr. Mabie, and
certainly they have been very nobly worded and beautiful, still fall
short of the real Mabie.

INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY

James Whitcomb Riley and Edgar Wilson Nye (Bill Nye) were to
give readings in Tremont Temple, Boston, November, 1888. Mr.
Clemens was induced to introduce Messrs. Riley and Nye. His
appearance on the platform was a surprise to the audience, and
when they recognized him there was a tremendous demonstration.

I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the
same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than
once for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them
personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many
years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam.
The ligature was their best hold then, the literature became their best
hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to
cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff.

In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The
sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so
fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested;
when one slept, the other snored; if one sold a thing, the other scooped
the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable
in all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary
distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the
two--between, I may say, this dynamo and the other always motor, or,
in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other
always the utili