n't believe we let him get sober the whole
time.

I trust that you will carry away some good thought from these lessons I
have given you, and that the memory of them will inspire you to higher
things, and elevate you to plans far above the old--and--and--

And I tell you one thing, young ladies: I've had a better time with you
to-day than with that peach fifty-three years ago.

QUEEN VICTORIA

ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES CLUB, AT
DELMONICO'S, MONDAY, MAY 25, IN HONOR OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S
BIRTHDAY

Mr. Clemens told the story of his duel with a rival editor: how
he practised firing at a barn door and failed to hit it, but a
friend of his took off the head of a little bird at thirty-five
yards and attributed the shot to Mark twain. The duel did not
take place. Mr. Clemens continued as follows:

It also happened that I was the means of stopping duelling in Nevada,
for a law was passed sending all duellists to jail for two years, and
the Governor, hearing of my marksmanship, said that if he got me I
should go to prison for the full term. That's why I left Nevada, and I
have not been there since.

You do me a high honor, indeed, in selecting me to speak of my country
in this commemoration of the birthday of that noble lady whose life was
consecrated to the virtues and the humanities and to the promotion of
lofty ideals, and was a model upon which many a humbler life was formed
and made beautiful while she lived, and upon which many such lives will
still be formed in the generations that are to come--a life which finds
its just image in the star which falls out of its place in the sky and
out of existence, but whose light still streams with unfaded lustre
across the abysses of space long after its fires have been extinguished
at their source.

As a woman the Queen was all that the most exacting standards could
require. As a far-reaching and effective beneficent moral force she had
no peer in her time among either, monarchs or commoners. As a monarch
she was without reproach in her great office. We may not venture,
perhaps, to say so sweeping a thing as this in cold blood about any
monarch that preceded her upon either her own throne or upon any other.
It is a colossal eulogy, but it is justified.

In those qualities of the heart which beget affection in all sorts and
conditions of men she was rich, surprisi