pleased the Russian officials,
for Witte asked permission to publish it, and declared that he was going
to take it home to show to the Tsar. It was as follows:

To COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more
than glad of this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came
here equipped with nothing but a pen, & with it have divided the
honors of the war with the sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty
centuries history will not get done in admiring these men who attempted
what the world regarded as the impossible & achieved it.

MARK TWAIN.

But this was a modified form. His original draft would perhaps have been
less gratifying to that Russian embassy. It read:

To COLONEL HARVEY,--I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more
than glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians
who with the pen have annulled, obliterated, & abolished every high
achievement of the Japanese sword and turned the tragedy of a
tremendous war into a gay & blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in
all respect and honor salute them as my fellow-humorists, I taking
third place, as becomes one who was not born to modesty, but by
diligence & hard work is acquiring it.
MARK.

There was still another form, brief and expressive:

DEAR COLONEL,--No, this is a love-feast; when you call a lodge of sorrow
send for me. MARK.

Clemens's war sentiment was given the widest newspaper circulation, and
brought him many letters, most of them applauding his words. Charles
Francis Adams wrote him:

It attracted my attention because it so exactly expresses the views
I have myself all along entertained.

And this was the gist of most of the expressed sentiments which came to
him.

Clemens wrote a number of things that summer, among them a little essay
entitled, "The Privilege of the Grave"--that is to say, free speech. He
was looking forward, he said, to the time when he should inherit that
privilege, when some of the things he had said, written and laid away,
could be published without damage to his friends or family. An article
entitled, "Interpreting the Deity," he counted as among the things to
be uttered when he had entered into that last great privilege. It is an
article on the reading of signs and auguries in all ages to discover the
intentions of the Almighty, with historical examples of God's judgments
and vindications