Barnard girls, and another afternoon to
the Women's University Club, illustrating his talk with what purported to
be moral tales. He spoke at a dinner given to City Tax Commissioner Mr.
Charles Putzel; and when he was introduced there as the man who had said,
"When in doubt tell the truth," he replied that he had invented that
maxim for others, but that when in doubt himself, he used more sagacity.

The speeches he made kept his hearers always in good humor; but he made
them think, too, for there was always substance and sound reason and
searching satire in the body of what he said.

It was natural that there should be reporters calling frequently at Mark
Twain's home, and now and then the place became a veritable storm-center
of news. Such a moment arrived when it became known that a public
library in Brooklyn had banished Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer from the
children's room, presided over by a young woman of rather severe morals.
The incident had begun in November of the previous year. One of the
librarians, Asa Don Dickinson, who had vigorously voted against the
decree, wrote privately of the matter. Clemens had replied:

DEAR SIR,--I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote Tom
Sawyer & Huck Finn for adults exclusively, & it always distresses me
when I find that boys & girls have been allowed access to them. The
mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.
I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an
unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young
life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an
unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do
that and ever draw a clean, sweet breath again this side of the
grave. Ask that young lady--she will tell you so.

Most honestly do I wish that I could say a softening word or two in
defense of Huck's character since you wish it, but really, in my
opinion, it is no better than those of Solomon, David, & the rest of
the sacred brotherhood.

If there is an unexpurgated in the Children's Department, won't you
please help that young woman remove Tom & Huck from that
questionable companionship?

Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

I shall not show your letter to any one-it is safe with me.

Mr. Dickinson naturally kept this letter from the public, though he read
it aloud t