ir leader, Sir William
Glasdale, a most valorous knight. He was clothed all in steel; so
he plunged under the water like a lance, and of course came up no
more.

We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves
against the last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans
from friends and supplies. Before the sun was quite down Joan's
forever memorable day's work was finished, her banner floated from
the fortress of the Tourelles, her promise was fulfilled, she had
raised the siege of Orleans!

England had resented the Yankee, but it welcomed Joan. Andrew Lang
adored it, and some years later contemplated dedicating his own book,
'The Maid of France', to Mark Twain.'--[His letter proposing this
dedication, received in 1909, appears to have been put aside and
forgotten by Mr. Clemens, whose memory had not improved with failing
health.]

Brander Matthews ranks Huck Finn before Joan of Arc, but that is
understandable. His literary culture and research enable him, in some
measure, to comprehend the production of Joan; whereas to him Huck is
pure magic. Huck is not altogether magic to those who know the West--the
character of that section and the Mississippi River, especially of
an older time--it is rather inspiration resulting from these existing
things. Joan is a truer literary magic--the reconstruction of a
far-vanished life and time. To reincarnate, as in a living body of
the present, that marvelous child whose life was all that was pure and
exalted and holy, is veritable necromancy and something more. It is the
apotheosis of history.

Throughout his life Joan of Arc had been Mark Twain's favorite character
in the world's history. His love for her was a beautiful and a sacred
thing. He adored young maidenhood always and nobility of character,
and he was always the champion of the weak and the oppressed. The
combination of these characteristics made him the ideal historian of an
individuality and of a career like hers. It is fitting that in his old
age (he was nearing sixty when it was finished) he should have written
this marvelously beautiful thing. He could not have written it at an
earlier time. It had taken him all these years to prepare for it; to
become softened, to acquire the delicacy of expression, the refinement
of feeling, necessary to the achievement.

It was the only book of all he had written that Mark Twain considered
worthy of this dedication: