oosing which of them it will
welcome or reject, its performance is wholly automatic, it has no more
mastership nor authority over its mind than it has over its stomach,
which receives material from the outside and does as it pleases with
it, indifferent to it's proprietor's suggestions, even, let alone his
commands; wherefore, whatever the machine does--so called crimes and
infamies included--is the personal act of its Maker, and He, solely,
is responsible. I wish I could learn to pity the human race instead of
censuring it and laughing at it; and I could, if the outside influences
of old habit were not so strong upon my machine. It vexes me to catch
myself praising the clean private citizen Roosevelt, and blaming the
soiled President Roosevelt, when I know that neither praise nor blame
is due to him for any thought or word or deed of his, he being merely a
helpless and irresponsible coffee-mill ground by the hand of God.

Through a misunderstanding, Clemens, something more than a year
earlier, had severed his connection with the Players' Club, of which
he had been one of the charter members. Now, upon his return to New
York, a number of his friends joined in an invitation to him to
return. It was not exactly a letter they sent, but a bit of an old
Scotch song--

"To Mark Twain
from
The Clansmen.
Will ye no come back again,
Will ye no come back again?
Better lo'ed ye canna be.
Will ye no come back again?"

Those who signed it were David Monroe, of the North American Review;
Robert Reid, the painter, and about thirty others of the Round Table
Group, so called because its members were accustomed to lunching at
a large round table in a bay window of the Player dining-room. Mark
Twain's reply was prompt and heartfelt. He wrote:

*****

To Robt. Reid and the Others:

WELL-BELOVED,--Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charley's
heart, if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine. I shall
be glad and proud to come back again after such a moving and beautiful
compliment as this from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you
can poll the necessary vote; I know you will try, at any rate. It will
be many months before I can foregather with you, for this blac