The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 6,
1907-1910, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 6, 1907-1910

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Last Updated: February 18, 2009
Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #3198]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAIN LETTERS, VOL. 6 ***

Produced by David Widger

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1907-1910

VOLUME VI.

By Mark Twain

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

XLVI. LETTERS 1907-08. A DEGREE FROM OXFORD. THE NEW HOME AT REDDING.

The author, J. Howard Moore, sent a copy of his book, The Universal
Kinship, with a letter in which he said: "Most humorists have no
anxiety except to glorify themselves and add substance to their
pocket-books by making their readers laugh. You have shown, on many
occasions, that your mission is not simply to antidote the
melancholy of a world, but includes a real and intelligent concern
for the general welfare of your fellowman."

The Universal Kinship was the kind of a book that Mark Twain
appreciated, as his acknowledgment clearly shows.

*****

To Mr. J. Howard Moore:

Feb. 2, '07.

DEAR MR. MOORE, The book has furnished me several days of deep pleasure
and satisfaction; it has compelled my gratitude at the same time, since
it saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished opinions and
reflections and resentments by doing it lucidly and fervently and
irascibly for me.

There is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the
mentality of our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance by
a thousand grades; but in the matter of the morals which they left us we
have gone backward as many grades. That evolution is strange, and to me
unaccountable and unnatural. Necessarily we started equipped with their
perfect and blemishless morals; now we are wholly destitute; we have no
real, morals, but only artificial ones--morals created and preserved by
the forced suppression of natural and hellish instincts. Yet we are
du