he widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another
theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with the
others. It is not permissible here to apply to any purpose goods
dishonestly obtained; not even to the feeding of widows and orphans,
for this would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it."

He said it in open court, before everybody, and to me it did not
seem very kind.

It was in the midst of the tumult that Clemens, perhaps feeling the need
of sacred melody, wrote to Andrew Carnegie:

DEAR SIR & FRIEND,--You seem to be in prosperity. Could you lend an
admirer $1.50 to buy a hymn-book with? God will bless you. I feel it; I
know it.

N. B.--If there should be other applications, this one not to count.
Yours, MARK.

P. S.-Don't send the hymn-book; send the money; I want to make the
selection myself.

Carnegie answered:

Nothing less than a two-dollar & a half hymn-book gilt will do for
you. Your place in the choir (celestial) demands that & you shall
have it.

There's a new Gospel of Saint Mark in the North American which I
like better than anything I've read for many a day.

I am willing to borrow a thousand dollars to distribute that sacred
message in proper form, & if the author don't object may I send that
sum, when I can raise it, to the Anti-Imperialist League, Boston, to
which I am a contributor, the only missionary work I am responsible
for.

Just tell me you are willing & many thousands of the holy little
missals will go forth. This inimitable satire is to become a
classic. I count among my privileges in life that I know you, the
author.

Perhaps a few more of the letters invited by Mark Twain's criticism of
missionary work in China may still be of interest to the reader:
Frederick T. Cook, of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association,
wrote: "I hail you as the Voltaire of America. It is a noble
distinction. God bless you and see that you weary not in well-doing in
this noblest, sublimest of crusades."

Ministers were by no means all against him. The associate pastor of the
Every-day Church, in Boston, sent this line: "I want to thank you for
your matchless article in the current North American. It must make
converts of well-nigh all who read it."

But a Boston school-teacher was angry. "I have been reading the North
American," she wrote, "and I am fille