ourse, nobody
believed it. The report passed the World night-editor, and appeared,
next morning. Halstead woke up, then, and wrote a note to the World,
denying the interview throughout. The World printed his note with the
added line:

"When Mr. Halstead saw our reporter he had dined."

It required John Hay (then on the Tribune) to place the joke where it
belonged.

There is a Lotos Club anecdote of Mark Twain that carries the internal
evidence of truth. Saturday evening at the Lotos always brought a
gathering of the "wits," and on certain evenings--"Hens and chickens"
nights--each man had to tell a story, make a speech, or sing a song. On
one evening a young man, an invited guest, was called upon and recited a
very long poem.

One by one those who sat within easy reach of the various exits
melted away, until no one remained but Mark Twain. Perhaps he saw the
earnestness of the young man, and sympathized with it. He may have
remembered a time when he would have been grateful for one such
attentive auditor. At all events, he sat perfectly still, never taking
his eyes from the reader, never showing the least inclination toward
discomfort or impatience, but listening, as with rapt attention, to
the very last line. Douglas Taylor, one of the faithful Saturday-night
members, said to him later:

"Mark, how did you manage to sit through that dreary, interminable
poem?"

"Well," he said, "that young man thought he had a divine message to
deliver, and I thought he was entitled to at least one auditor, so I
stayed with him."

We may believe that for that one auditor the young author was willing to
sacrifice all the others.

One might continue these anecdotes for as long as the young man's poem
lasted, and perhaps hold as large an audience. But anecdotes are not all
of history. These are set down because they reflect a phase of the man
and an aspect of his life at this period. For at the most we can only
present an angle here and there, and tell a little of the story, letting
each reader from his fancy construct the rest.

CVI. HIS FIRST STAGE APPEARANCE

Once that winter the Monday Evening Club met at Mark Twain's home, and
instead of the usual essay he read them a story: "The Facts Concerning
the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." It was the story of a
man's warfare with a personified conscience--a sort of "William Wilson"
idea, though less weird, less somber, and with more actuality, more
verisimilitu