n live for two months on a good compliment," he once said. Certain
persistent correspondents, too self-centered to realize their lack of
consideration, or the futility of their purpose, followed him
relentlessly. Of one such he remarked:

"That woman intends to pursue me to the grave. I wish something could be
done to appease her."

And again:

"Everybody in the world who wants something--something of no interest to
me--writes to me to get it."

These morning sessions were likely to be of great interest. Once a
letter spoke of the desirability of being an optimist. "That word
perfectly disgusts me," he said, and his features materialized the
disgust, "just as that other word, pessimist, does; and the idea that one
can, by any effort of will, be one or the other, any more than he can
change the color of his hair. The reason why a man is a pessimist or an
optimist is not because he wants to be, but because he was born so; and
this man [a minister of the Gospel who was going to explain life to him]
is going to tell me why he isn't a pessimist. Oh, he'll do it, but he
won't tell the truth; he won't make it short enough."

Yet he was always patient with any one who came with spiritual messages,
theological arguments, and consolations. He might have said to them:
"Oh, dear friends, those things of which you speak are the toys that long
ago I played with and set aside." He could have said it and spoken the
truth; but I believe he did not even think it. He listened to any one
for whom he had respect, and was grateful for any effort in his behalf.
One morning he read aloud a lecture given in London by George Bernard
Shaw on religion, commenting as he read. He said:

"This letter is a frank breath of expression [and his comments were
equally frank]. There is no such thing as morality; it is not immoral
for the tiger to eat the wolf, or the wolf the cat, or the cat the bird,
and so on down; that is their business. There is always enough for each
one to live on. It is not immoral for one nation to seize another nation
by force of arms, or for one man to seize another man's property or life
if he is strong enough and wants to take it. It is not immoral to create
the human species--with or without ceremony; nature intended exactly
these things."

At one place in the lecture Shaw had said: "No one of good sense can
accept any creed to-day without reservation."

"Certainly not," commented Clemens; "the reservation is that he i