humorist."

"When Mark Twain visits a garden... he goes in the far-away corner where
the soil is prepared."

"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the
Frenchwomen).

"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter,
nasty."

"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.

"Mark might certainly have derived from it" (M. Bourget's book) "a
lesson in politeness and good manners."

A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."--

These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very
young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name
them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and
arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think
that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly
strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your
proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:

"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as
personal."

It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not
needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call
you any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your
unoffending and dearest ones present.

Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like
that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When
M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the
Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find
out who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an
American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark
Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the
Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in
their name!

Snobbery.... I could give Mark Twain an example of the American
specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared
my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of