ries of obloquy, and a subsequent devotion to
lasting infamy.

CXXXVIII. MANY UNDERTAKINGS

To write a detailed biography of Mark Twain at this period would be to
defy perusal. Even to set down all the interesting matters, interesting
to the public of his time, would mean not only to exhaust the subject,
but the reader. He lived at the top of his bent, and almost anything
relating to him was regarded as news. Daily and hourly he mingled
with important matters or spoke concerning them. A bare list of the
interesting events of Mark Twain's life would fill a large volume.

He was so busy, so deeply interested himself, so vitally alive to every
human aspect. He read the papers through, and there was always enough to
arouse his indignation--the doings of the human race at large could
be relied upon to do that--and he would write, and write, to relieve
himself. His mental Niagara was always pouring away, turning out
articles, essays, communications on every conceivable subject, mainly
with the idea of reform. There were many public and private abuses,
and he wanted to correct them all. He covered reams of paper with lurid
heresies--political, religious, civic--for most of which there was no
hope of publication.

Now and then he was allowed to speak out: An order from the Past-office
Department at Washington concerning the superscription of envelopes
seemed to him unwarranted. He assailed it, and directly the nation
was being entertained by a controversy between Mark Twain and the
Postmaster-General's private secretary, who subsequently receded from
the field. At another time, on the matter of postage rates he wrote a
paper which began: "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you
were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

It is hardly necessary to add that the paper did not appear.

On the whole, Clemens wrote his strictures more for relief than to
print, and such of these papers as are preserved to-day form a curious
collection of human documents. Many of them could be printed to-day,
without distress to any one. The conditions that invited them are
changed; the heresies are not heresies any more. He may have had some
thought of their publication in later years, for once he wrote:

Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put
them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then
all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the result.