other hundreds who came
with this thing and that thing--axes to grind--and there were newspaper
reporters to ask his opinion on politics, or polygamy, or woman's
suffrage; on heaven and hell and happiness; on the latest novel; on
the war in Africa, the troubles in China; on anything under the sun,
important or unimportant, interesting or inane, concerning which one
might possibly hold an opinion. He was unfailing "copy" if they could
but get a word with him. Anything that he might choose to say upon
any subject whatever was seized upon and magnified and printed with
head-lines. Sometimes opinions were invented for him. If he let fall a
few words they were multiplied into a column interview.

"That reporter worked a miracle equal to the loaves and fishes," he said
of one such performance.

Many men would have become annoyed and irritable as these things
continued; but Mark Twain was greater than that. Eventually he employed
a secretary to stand between him and the wash of the tide, as a sort of
breakwater; but he seldom lost his temper no matter what was the request
which was laid before him, for he recognized underneath it the great
tribute of a great nation.

Of course his literary valuation would be affected by the noise of the
general applause. Magazines and syndicates besought him for manuscripts.
He was offered fifty cents and even a dollar a word for whatever he
might give them. He felt a child-like gratification in these evidences
of his market advancement, but he was not demoralized by them. He
confined his work to a few magazines, and in November concluded an
arrangement with the new management of Harper & Brothers, by which that
firm was to have the exclusive serial privilege of whatever he might
write at a fixed rate of twenty cents per word--a rate increased to
thirty cents by a later contract, which also provided an increased
royalty for the publication of his books.

The United States, as a nation, does not confer any special honors upon
private citizens. We do not have decorations and titles, even
though there are times when it seems that such things might be not
inappropriately conferred. Certain of the newspapers, more lavish in
their enthusiasm than others, were inclined to propose, as one paper
phrased it, "Some peculiar recognition--something that should appeal
to Samuel L. Clemens, the man, rather than to Mark Twain, the literate.
Just what form this recognition should take is doubtful, for the