y should set up a monument to the Milky
Way.

People would come from every corner of the globe and stop off to look
at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out Adam's
monument. Elmira would be a Mecca; there would be pilgrim ships at
pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways; libraries
would be written about the monument, every tourist would kodak it,
models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth, its form would
become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon.

One of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think the
other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with certainty
now whether that was the figure or not. We got designs made--some of
them came from Paris.

In the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke--I
had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to Congress
begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony of the
Great Republic's gratitude to the Father of the Human Race and as a
token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation when his
older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed to me that
this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be widely and
feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our
scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. So I sent it
to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House, and he said he
would present it. But he did not do it. I think he explained that when
he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, to gushy,
too sentimental--the House might take it for earnest.

We ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could have managed
it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would now be the most
celebrated town in the universe.

Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor
characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam,
and now the TRIBUNE has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of
thirty years ago. Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business. It
is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd.

A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN

(The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from
him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark
Twain.--Editor.)

TO THE EDITOR OF HARPER'S WEEKLY:

Dear Sir and Kinsman,--Let us have done with this frivolous talk.
The American Board accepts