k border
is not perfunctory, not a convention; it symbolizes the loss of one
whose memory is the only thing I worship.

It is not necessary for me to thank you--and words could not deliver
what I feel, anyway. I will put the contents of your envelope in the
small casket where I keep the things which have become sacred to me.

S. L. C.

A year later, Mark Twain did "come back again," as an honorary life
member, and was given a dinner of welcome by those who had signed the
lines urging his return.

XLIV. LETTERS OF 1905. TO TWICHELL, MR. DUNEKA AND OTHERS. POLITICS AND
HUMANITY. A SUMMER AT DUBLIN. MARK TWAIN AT 70.

In 1884 Mark Twain had abandoned the Republican Party to vote for
Cleveland. He believed the party had become corrupt, and to his
last day it was hard for him to see anything good in Republican
policies or performance. He was a personal friend of Theodore
Roosevelt's but, as we have seen in a former letter, Roosevelt the
politician rarely found favor in his eyes. With or without
justification, most of the President's political acts invited his
caustic sarcasm and unsparing condemnation. Another letter to
Twichell of this time affords a fair example.

*****

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

Feb. 16, '05.

DEAR JOE,--I knew I had in me somewhere a definite feeling about the
President if I could only find the words to define it with. Here they
are, to a hair--from Leonard Jerome: "For twenty years I have loved
Roosevelt the man and hated Roosevelt the statesman and politician."

It's mighty good. Every time, in 25 years, that I have met Roosevelt the
man, a wave of welcome has streaked through me with the hand-grip; but
whenever (as a rule) I meet Roosevelt the statesman and politician, I
find him destitute of morals and not respectworthy. It is plain that
where his political self and his party self are concerned he has nothing
resembling a conscience; that under those inspirations he is naively
indifferent to the restraints of duty and even unaware of them; ready
to kick the Constitution into the back yard whenever it gets in the way;
and whenever he smells a vote, not only willing but eager to buy it,
give extravagant rates for it and pay the bill not out of his own pocket
or the party's, but out of the nation's, by cold pillage.