bout four or five years. I was watching the affection which existed
between those two. I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It was
really a pretty child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I
was admiring her he began to notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody
else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get
four times as much of his admiration. Things went on very pleasantly. I
was making my way into his heart.

By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off,
he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something
to you which I hope you will regard as a compliment." And then he went
on to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of
him, and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a
portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,
and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his
brother. Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment. Yes,
you are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are
probably not that man."

I said: "I will be frank with you. In my desire to look like that
excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been
playing a part."

He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on
the outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the
original."

So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I
always play a part. But I will say before I sit down that when it comes
to saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily
in sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers
in this calamity, and in your desire to heap those who were rendered
homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am
not playing a part.

SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE

After the address at the Robert Fulton Fund meeting, June 19,
1906, Mr. Clemens talked to the assembled reporters about the
San Francisco earthquake.

I haven't been there since 1868, and that great city of San Francisco
has grown up since my day. When I was there she had one hundred and
eighteen thousand people, and of this number eighteen thousand were
Chinese. I was a reporter on the Virginia City Enterprise in Nevada in
1862, and stayed there, I think, about two years, w