he full value (who does not?) of his labors and
properties. He took a childish delight in piling up money; but it became
greed only when he believed some one with whom he had dealings was trying
to get an unfair division of profits. Then it became something besides
greed. It became an indignation that amounted to malevolence. I was
concerned in a number of dealings with Mark Twain, and at a period in his
life when human traits are supposed to become exaggerated, which is to
say old age, and if he had any natural tendency to be unfair, or small,
or greedy in his money dealings I think I should have seen it.
Personally, I found him liberal to excess, and I never observed in him
anything less than generosity to those who were fair with him.

Once that winter, when a letter came from Steve Gillis saying that he was
an invalid now, and would have plenty of time to read Sam's books if he
owned them, Clemens ordered an expensive set from his publishers, and did
what meant to him even more than the cost in money--he autographed each
of those twenty-five volumes. Then he sent them, charges paid, to that
far Californian retreat. It was hardly the act of a stingy man.

He had the human fondness for a compliment when it was genuine and from
an authoritative source, and I remember how pleased he was that winter
with Prof. William Lyon Phelps's widely published opinion, which ranked
Mark Twain as the greatest American novelist, and declared that his fame
would outlive any American of his time. Phelps had placed him above
Holmes, Howells, James, and even Hawthorne. He had declared him to be
more American than any of these--more American even than Whitman.
Professor Phelps's position in Yale College gave this opinion a certain
official weight; but I think the fact of Phelps himself being a writer of
great force, with an American freshness of style, gave it a still greater
value.

Among the pleasant things that winter was a meeting with Eugene F. Ware,
of Kansas, with whose penname--"Ironquill"--Clemens had long been
familiar.

Ware was a breezy Western genius of the finest type. If he had abandoned
law for poetry, there is no telling how far his fame might have reached.
There was in his work that same spirit of Americanism and humor and
humanity that is found in Mark Twain's writings, and he had the added
faculty of rhyme and rhythm, which would have set him in a place apart. I
had known Ware personally during a period of Western re