to you can glance
around the carpet of a Pullman car, and go and pick up a hair-pin; but
not to save your life can you get any woman in that car to acknowledge
that hair-pin. Now, isn't that strange? But it's true. The woman who
has never swerved from cast-iron veracity and fidelity in her whole life
will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny her hair-pin. She
will deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. I have stupidly got
into more trouble and more hot water trying to hunt up the owner of a
hair-pin in a Pullman than by any other indiscretion of my life.

DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT

When the present copyright law was under discussion, Mr.
Clemens appeared before the committee. He had sent Speaker
Cannon the following letter:

"DEAR UNCLE JOSEPH,--Please get me the thanks of Congress, not
next week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish
this for your affectionate old friend right away--by,
persuasion if you can, by violence if you must, for it is
imperatively necessary that I get on the floor of the House for
two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in
behalf of support; encouragement, and protection of one of the
nation's most valuable assets and industries--its literature.
I have arguments with me--also a barrel with liquid in it.

"Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait
for others--there isn't time; furnish them to me yourself and
let Congress ratify later. I have stayed away and let Congress
alone for seventy-one years and am entitled to the thanks.
Congress knows this perfectly well, and I have long felt hurt
that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has
been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered.

"Send me an order on the sergeant-at-arms quick. When shall I
come?
"With love and a benediction,
"MARK TWAIN."

While waiting to appear before the committee, Mr. Clemens
talked to the reporters:

Why don't you ask why I am wearing such apparently unseasonable clothes?
I'll tell you. I have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of
seventy-one years, as I have, the continual sigh