ered in the Philippines; Leopold of Belgium
was massacring and mutilating the blacks in the Congo, and the allied
powers, in the cause of Christ, were slaughtering the Chinese. In his
letters he had more than once boiled over touching these matters, and
for New-Year's Eve, 1900, had written:

A GREETING FROM THE NINETEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

I bring you the stately nation named Christendom, returning,
bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao-
Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul
full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of
pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking-
glass.--[Prepared for Red Cross Society watch-meeting, which was
postponed until March. Clemens recalled his "Greeting" for that
reason and for one other, which he expressed thus: "The list of
greeters thus far issued by you contains only vague generalities and
one definite name--mine: 'Some kings and queens and Mark Twain.' Now
I am not enjoying this sparkling solitude and distinction. It makes
me feel like a circus-poster in a graveyard."]

This was a sort of preliminary. Then, restraining himself no longer,
he embodied his sentiments in an article for the North American Review
entitled, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." There was crying need for
some one to speak the right word. He was about the only one who could
do it and be certain of a universal audience. He took as his text some
Christmas Eve clippings from the New York Tribune and Sun which he had
been saving for this purpose. The Tribune clipping said:

Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope
and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment
and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth
will find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is
the matter with him, and pass on.

A Sun clipping depicted the "terrible offenses against humanity
committed in the name of politics in some of the most notorious East
Side districts "--the unmissionaried, unpoliced darker New York. The Sun
declared that they could not be pictured even verbally. But it suggested
enough to make the reader shudder at the hideous depths of vice in the
sections named. Another clipping from the same paper reported the
"Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions,