ST. PETERSBURG, February.

COL. MARK TWAIN, Washington.

Your cablegram received. It should have been transmitted through my
minister, but let that pass. I am opposed to international copyright.
At present American literature is harmless here because we doctor it in
such a way as to make it approve the various beneficent devices which we
use to keep our people favorable to fetters as jewelry and pleased with
Siberia as a summer resort. But your bill would spoil this. We should
be obliged to let you say your say in your own way. 'Voila'! my empire
would be a republic in five years and I should be sampling Siberia
myself.

If you should run across Mr. Kennan--[George Kennan, who had graphically
pictured the fearful conditions of Siberian exile.]--please ask him to
come over and give some readings. I will take good care of him.

ALEXANDER III.

144--Collect.

CONSTANTINOPLE, February.

DR. MARK TWAIN, Washington.

Great Scott, no! By the beard of the Prophet, no! How can you ask such
a thing of me? I am a man of family. I cannot take chances, like other
people. I cannot let a literature come in here which teaches that a
man's wife is as good as the man himself. Such a doctrine cannot do any
particular harm, of course, where the man has only one wife, for then
it is a dead-level between them, and there is no humiliating inequality,
and no resulting disorder; but you take an extremely married person,
like me, and go to teaching that his wife is 964 times as good as he is,
and what's hell to that harem, dear friend? I never saw such a fool as
you. Do not mind that expression; I already regret it, and would replace
it with a softer one if I could do it without debauching the truth. I
beseech you, do not pass that bill. Roberts College is quite all the
American product we can stand just now. On top of that, do you want to
send us a flood of freedom-shrieking literature which we can't edit the
poison out of, but must let it go among our people just as it is? My
friend, we should be a republic inside of ten years.

ABDUL II.

III. MARK TWAIN'S LAST SUGGESTION ON COPYRIGHT.

A MEMORIAL RESPECTFULLY TENDERED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

(Prepared early in 1909 at the suggestion of Mr. Champ Clack but not
offered. A bill adding fourteen years to the copyright