that occasion at a later date
when I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I
finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by
mistake.

One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can,
and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember one
detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.

Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point
I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are
these:

I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a
cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who
had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love
Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,
selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.
That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to
support the jug.

But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3
at once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what
we wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did
occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a
great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The
Lord will provide."

I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel
lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw
me, too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in,
admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He offered
me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but I
refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The General carried
the dog to his room.

Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking
around the lobby.

"Did you lose a dog?" I asked. He said he had.

"I think I cou