urn, and to share
proportionately in the expense and risk. Mark Twain was entering into a
field where he did not belong; where in the end he would harvest only
disaster and regret.

One curious project came to an end in 1881--the plan for a monument to
Adam. In a sketch written a great many years later Mark Twain tells of
the memorial which the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher and himself once proposed
to erect to our great common ancestor. The story is based on a real
incident. Clemens, in Elmira one day (it was October, 1879), heard of a
jesting proposal made by F. G. Hall to erect a monument in Elmira to
Adam. The idea promptly caught Mark Twain's fancy. He observed to
Beecher that the human race really showed a pretty poor regard for its
great progenitor, who was about to be deposed by Darwin's simian, not to
pay him the tribute of a single monument. Mankind, he said, would
probably accept the monkey ancestor, and in time the very name of Adam
would be forgotten. He declared Mr. Hall's suggestion to be a sound
idea.

Beecher agreed that there were many reasons why a monument should be
erected to Adam, and suggested that a subscription be started for the
purpose. Certain business men, seeing an opportunity for advertising the
city, took the matter semi-seriously, and offered to contribute large
sums in the interest of the enterprise. Then it was agreed that Congress
should be petitioned to sanction the idea exclusively to Elmira,
prohibiting the erection of any such memorial elsewhere. A document to
this effect was prepared, headed by F. G. Hall, and signed by other
leading citizens of Elmira, including Beecher himself. General Joe
Hawley came along just then on a political speech-making tour. Clemens
introduced him, and Hawley, in turn, agreed to father the petition in
Congress. What had begun merely as pleasantry began to have a formidable
look.

But alas! in the end Hawley's courage had failed him. He began to hate
his undertaking. He was afraid of the national laugh it would arouse,
the jeers of the newspapers. It was certain to leak out that Mark Twain
was behind it, in spite of the fact that his name nowhere appeared; that
it was one of his colossal jokes. Now and then, in the privacy of his
own room at night, Hawley would hunt up the Adam petition and read it and
feel the cold sweat breaking out. He postponed the matter from one
session to another till the summer of 1881, when he was about to sail for
Europe. Then h