the Club shall decide.

I have made four appointments in the past three or four months: You
as Member for France, a young Highland girl as Member for Scotland, a
Mohammedan girl as Member for Bengal, and a dear and bright young
niece of mine as Member for the United States--for I do not represent a
country myself, but am merely Member at Large for the Human Race.

You must not try to resign, for the laws of the Club do not allow that.
You must console yourself by remembering that you are in the best of
company; that nobody knows of your membership except myself--that no
Member knows another's name, but only her country; that no taxes are
levied and no meetings held (but how dearly I should like to attend
one!).

One of my Members is a Princess of a royal house, another is the
daughter of a village book-seller on the continent of Europe. For the
only qualification for Membership is intellect and the spirit of good
will; other distinctions, hereditary or acquired, do not count.

May I send you the Constitution and Laws of the Club? I shall be so
pleased if I may. It is a document which one of my daughters typewrites
for me when I need one for a new Member, and she would give her eyebrows
to know what it is all about, but I strangle her curiosity by saying:
"There are much cheaper typewriters than you are, my dear, and if
you try to pry into the sacred mysteries of this Club one of your
prosperities will perish sure."

My favorite? It is "Joan of Arc." My next is "Huckleberry Finn," but the
family's next is "The Prince and the Pauper." (Yes, you are right--I
am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go
thrashing around in political questions.)

I wish you every good fortune and happiness and I thank you so much for
your letter.

Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

Early in the year Clemens paid a visit to Twichell in Hartford, and
after one of their regular arguments on theology and the moral
accountability of the human race, arguments that had been going on
between them for more than thirty years--Twichell lent his visitor
Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, to read on the way home.
The next letter was the result.

*****

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

RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON.
Feb. '02.