dmiring & affectionate brother has
told me of your sorrowful share in the trolley disaster which
brought unaccustomed tears to millions of eyes & fierce resentment
against those whose criminal indifference to their responsibilities
caused it, & the reminder has brought back to me a pang out of that
bygone time. I wish I could take you sound & whole out of your bed
& break the legs of those officials & put them in it--to stay there.
For in my spirit I am merciful, and would not break their necks &
backs also, as some would who have no feeling.

It is your brother who permits me to write this line--& so it is not
an intrusion, you see.

May you get well-& soon!
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

A very little later he was writing another letter on a similar subject
to St. Clair McKelway, who had narrowly escaped injury in a railway
accident.

DEAR McKELWAY, Your innumerable friends are grateful, most grateful.

As I understand the telegrams, the engineers of your train had never
seen a locomotive before.... The government's official
report, showing that our railways killed twelve hundred persons last
year & injured sixty thousand, convinces me that under present
conditions one Providence is not enough properly & efficiently to
take care of our railroad business. But it is characteristically
American--always trying to get along short-handed & save wages.

A massacre of Jews in Moscow renewed his animosity for semi-barbaric
Russia. Asked for a Christmas sentiment, he wrote:

It is my warm & world-embracing Christmas hope that all of us that
deserve it may finally be gathered together in a heaven of rest &
peace, & the others permitted to retire into the clutches of Satan,
or the Emperor of Russia, according to preference--if they have a
preference.

An article, "The Tsar's Soliloquy," written at this time, was published
in the North American Review for March (1905). He wrote much more, but
most of the other matter he put aside. On a subject like that he always
discarded three times as much as he published, and it was usually about
three times as terrific as that which found its way into type. "The
Soliloquy," however, is severe enough. It represents the Tsar as
contemplating himself without his clothes, and reflecting on what a poor
human specimen he presents:

Is