is preacher is a colored man; he doesn't know
how to write a polished letter. How should he?"

My manner changed so suddenly and so radically that Mrs. C. said: "I
will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will
adopt it: 'Consider every man colored till he is proved white.'"

It is dern good, I think.

One of the note-books contains these entries:

Talking last night about home matters, I said, "I wish I had said to
George when we were leaving home, 'Now, George, I wish you would
take advantage of these three or four months' idle time while I am
away----'"

"To learn to let my matches alone," interrupted Livy. The very
words I was going to use. Yet George had not been mentioned before,
nor his peculiarities.

Several years ago I said:

"Suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and just as I was dying a
messenger should enter and say----"

"You are become Earl of Durham," interrupted Livy. The very words I
was going to utter. Yet there had not been a word said about the
earl, or any other person, nor had there been any conversation
calculated to suggest any such subject.

CLI. MARK TWAIN MUGWUMPS

The Republican Presidential nomination of James G. Blaine resulted in a
political revolt such as the nation had not known. Blaine was immensely
popular, but he had many enemies in his own party. There
were strong suspicions of his being connected with doubtful
financiering-enterprises, more or less sensitive to official influence,
and while these scandals had become quieted a very large portion of the
Republican constituency refused to believe them unjustified. What might
be termed the intellectual element of Republicanism was against Blame:
George William Curtis, Charles Dudley Warner, James Russell Lowell,
Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Nast, the firm of Harper & Brothers, Joseph
W. Hawley, Joseph Twichell, Mark Twain--in fact the majority of thinking
men who held principle above party in their choice.

On the day of the Chicago nomination, Henry C. Robinson, Charles E.
Perkins, Edward M. Bunce, F. G. Whitmore, and Samuel C. Dunham were
collected with Mark Twain in his billiard-room, taking turns at the game
and discussing the political situation, with George, the colored butler,
at the telephone down-stairs to report the returns as they came in. As
fast as the ballot was received at the political headquarters down-town,
it was