man who paid his debts and who tried to make
others pay theirs. The people he helped were the people he knew, or had
known, and they were folks who had helped him. He never forgot a
benefit--nor a wrong. He was a very human individual. To give to a
person where the account is not balanced by a mutual service is,
probably, to add an enemy to your list. You have uncovered the weakness
of your man--he is an incompetent--and he will never forgive you for
making the discovery.

When H. H. Rogers paid off Mark Twain's indebtedness to the tune of
ninety thousand dollars, he did not scratch a poet and find an ingrate.
What he actually discovered was a philosopher and a prophet without a
grouch.

Somewhere I have said that there were only two men in America who could
be safely endowed. One is Luther Burbank and the other Booker T.
Washington. These men have both made the world their debtors. They are
impersonal men--sort of human media through which Deity is creating.
They ask for nothing: they give everything.

Mark Twain belongs in the same select list. The difference between Mark
Twain and Luther Burbank is this: Mark hoes his spiritual acreage in
bed, while Luther Burbank works in the garden. Luther produces spineless
cacti, while Mark gives spineless men a vertebra. Mark makes us laugh,
in order that he may make us think.

The last time I saw H. H. Rogers was in his office at Twenty-six
Broadway. Out through a half-doorway, leading into a private
conference-room, I saw a man stretched out on a sofa asleep. A great
shock of white hair spread out over the pillow that held his head; and
Huck Finn snores of peace, in rhythmic measures, filled the room.

Mr. Rogers noticed my glance in the direction of the Morpheus music. He
smiled and said, "It's only Mark--he's taking a little well-earned
rest--he was born tired, you know."

If Mark Twain were not a rich man himself, rich in mines of truth,
fields of uncut fun, and argosies sailing great spiritual seas, coming
into port laden with commonsense, he would long since have turned on his
benefactor and nailed his hide on the barn-door of obliquity. As it is,
Mark takes his own, just as Socrates did from Mr. and Mrs. Pericles.
Aye, or as did Bronson Alcott, who once ran his wheelbarrow into the
well-kept garden of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Orphic One was loading up
with potatoes, peas, beans and one big yellow pumpkin, when he glanced
around and saw the man who wrote "Self-Reli