10, 1899, reading his
sketch "The Lucerne Girl," and describing how he had been
interviewed and ridiculed. He said in part:

I have not sufficiently mastered German, to allow my using it with
impunity. My collection of fourteen-syllable German words is still
incomplete. But I have just added to that collection a jewel--a
veritable jewel. I found it in a telegram from Linz, and it contains
ninety-five letters:

Personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissionsmitgliedsreisekostenrechnungs
erganzungsrevisionsfund

If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should sleep
beneath it in peace.

UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM

DELIVERED AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE PUBLISHERS OF "THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY" TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, IN HONOR OF HIS
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, AUGUST 29, 1879

I would have travelled a much greater distance than I have come to
witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes; for my feeling toward him
has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from
a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him,
as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letters
enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the
memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave
you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap.

Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our
guest--Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I
ever stole anything from--and that is how I came to write to him and
he to me. When my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, "The
dedication is very neat." Yes, I said, I thought it was. My friend said,
"I always admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad." I
naturally said: "What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?"
"Well, I saw it first some years ago as Doctor Holmes's dedication to
his Songs in Many Keys." Of course, my first impulse was to prepare this
man's remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve
him for a moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion
if he could: We stepped into a book-store, and he did prove it. I had
really stolen that dedication, almost word for word. I could not imagine
how this curious thing had happened; for I knew one thing--that a
certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains,
a