1870 To MY WIFE 1895
OLIVIA LANGDON CLEMENS
THIS BOOK

is tendered on our wedding anniversary in grateful recognition
of her twenty-five years of valued service as my literary
adviser and editor.
THE AUTHOR

The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was a book not understood in
the beginning, but to-day the public, that always renders justice in
the end, has reversed its earlier verdict. The demand for Joan has
multiplied many fold and it continues to multiply with every year. Its
author lived long enough to see this change and to be comforted by it,
for though the creative enthusiasm in his other books soon passed, his
glory in the tale of Joan never died. On his seventy-third birthday,
when all of his important books were far behind him, and he could judge
them without prejudice, he wrote as his final verdict:

Nov. 30, 1908

I like the Joan of Arc best of all my books; & it is the best; I know
it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure
afforded me by any of the others: 12 years of preparation & a years of
writing. The others needed no preparation, & got none.

MARK TWAIN.

CXCVI. MR. ROGERS AND HELEN KELLER

It was during the winter of '96, in London, that Clemens took an active
interest in the education of Helen Keller and enlisted the most valuable
adherent in that cause, that is to say, Henry H. Rogers. It was to Mrs.
Rogers that he wrote, heading his letter:

For & in behalf
of Helen Keller,
Stone blind & deaf,
& formerly dumb.

DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one
wished to set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't
prefer to be bothered with it is best to move upon him behind his
wife. If she can't convince him it isn't worth while for other
people to try.

Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at
Lawrence Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July,
in Boston, when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for
admission to Radcliffe College. She passed without a single
condition. She was allowed only the same amount of time that is
granted to other applicants, & this was shortened in her case by the
fact that