Show I soiARdllt R Nark TwainsExperlence With a Funny Cdlumn + HIS FAmOUS DRAWINGS 1VIW wo TUGH LLRKS HIR DANGEROUS t Xplings lIe IrLUII Burden Ha Set Afii tl e linor Poets td A Poet t Twanging Tei LyesAutor liraking Wt Visits to New YQrkA Collaborating Duo t Special Correspondence New York March IIn a conversation conversa-tion I had the other day wIth a friend of Mark Twains there was recalled Mark Twains attempt to conduct a humorous department in a monthly magazine I was a interesting and characteristic an adventure a any in aU of Mark TwaIns eventful life and it is one that must by now be pretty well forgotten by the genera public for It befell all but thirty years ago The magazine in whIch the attempt was made has been dead all of twentyyears I was the Gala a magazine hatin the distinction of its contributors was surpassed by none of Its day but the tide In some mysterious way ln agaInst it and after a career of perhaps per-haps twelve or fifteen years it passed under Mark Twains venture began In the sprIng of 1870 tInder the general title of Memoranda he supplied to each number eight or ten pages of short sketches and paragraphs Very little if any of this matter survIves in his collected works and I may add that the fat Is on the whole not to be regretted re-gretted And yet among these monthly Memoranda there were a good may brIght thingsthings that had the true MarkTwain favor Twice lIark introduced intro-duced into the department specImens of his drawing One was a map of ParIs made timely by the fact that the war between Frnce and Germany was I then in progress and the other was a portrait of the German emperor Vl lam II With each he printed a series of testimonials RegardIng the portrait for instance Pius IX was alleged to have sad Therels nothing like It in the vatican and Rosa Bonheur I is the neatest thIng in still life I hove seen for year and Bismarck The smile may be almost called unique and the emperors son the crown prince Fred crick William One cannot see it without wIth-out longing to contemplate the artist The map of Paris was no less aptly remarked re-marked upon U S Grant sad I Is the only map of the kInd I ever saw General Sherman I is but fair to say that In some respects it is a truly remarkable re-markable map and Napoleon II It Is very nice large prInt Of all the contents of the department however the thingthrt attracted most attention at the time was a rater long revIew of 11mle Tans book The Innocents Abroad from the London Saturday Review With what appeared to be absolute sincerity and serIousness the reviewer took the author to task for ignorance falsehood and bad taste The most whoppingof the statements and stories in the book were cIted or I retaled with such comments a This seems to be rather exaggerated this certainly departs In important particulars particu-lars from the ascertained historical facts thIs surely could not have happened In the way in which the author has represented i At one pOint the book was colmendeq for cer tin curious information it gave j and at this exceptionally praseful passage Mal Twain Interposed a footnote saying say-ing that the information 50 much valued val-ued was of hIs own invention Summing Sum-ming up finally the long list of excep tons taken the reviewer said The book is absolutely dangerous considerIng consider-Ing the magnitude and variety of its mIsstatement and the convincIng con fdence with which they are made And yet It is a teat book in the schools of America No end of dls ion followed the publication of thIs curious composi ton Through the newspapers and by private letters Mark Twain was profusely pro-fusely counseled a to all thepossible bering of i Some judges Informed him Ihat he had been most ludIcrously taken in that the writer in the Satm day Review was hImself a humorist as deft a one as lark Twain hhnself i t ge the critique all a deep dry joke Others saw in It a new exampleant surprising perhaps hl things consid eref that monumeatal English I dulness which was always making mote ar less < a paTe of itself In I his department tit next month Mark Twain gratefully printed a selection from these judgments exhibiting them In all theIr picturesque vigor and variety va-riety and he added a note of personal explanation in whIch he informed the jUdge and the public that he had written ten the review himself conceiving that I it was about the sort of notice of hIs beol the Saturday Review would have taken had It taken anywhich at the I time the review was written It had have not tough i did subsequently I be I As time went on itbecme quite owl dent that his department was a burden to Mark Twain Finally he could endure en-dure It no longer and he closd it aha I ah-a valedictory that Is like a masterpiece master-piece of short fiction In the dramatic suggestiveness with which It places before I be-fore the imagination the fundamental contrasts ef life II have now it reds written for the Galay a year For the last eight months wIth h rly an interval I have had for my fellows and comrade night and day doctor and watchers of the sick DurIng these eIght months death has taken two member of my home circle and malignantly ma-lignantly threatened two other Ail this I have experienced yet all the time ben under contract to furnish humorous hu-morous mate once a month for this magazine I think that some of the humor I have written during his period could have been injected into peod culd injeted IntO a funeral sermon without dIsturbing the solemnity of the occasion To be a pirate on a loW salary and with no share In the profits of the business used to be my Idea o an uncomfOrtable occupation but I have other views now To be a monthhhumorist In a cheerless cheer-less time is drearier In conclusion the valedictory stat cJ that the author would now devote himself to writing a book The book referred to must have ben RoughIng It which appeared the following year It was MarIo Twains third venture In thIs sort the frt being the obscure little collection that opened with the story of the Jumping Fog and Ih second being The Innocents Abroad Mr W A Fraser the Canadian storywriter writer has just finished his usual win te visit to New York His duties as a government civil engineer keep him up In the northwest territories from the beginning of spying until the beginning of winter Ten he comes to hiS home at Georgetown Ontario and shuts himself self up in his study and writes those strong dramatic little storIes which are gradually maklng his name very well known But always about the middle of the winter he allows himself a short holiday and then it is that hIs friends In New York get to see him His vis this year had a special interest in that it brought hIm for Ulefrst time face to face with the maT who through correspondence has long bon his encourager courger and ndiser In his literary work This 13 lfr Rudyar Kipling T have told the hory tMnlt before f hOw coming bYtrchance upqn one of Frasers stories of Ue il India Kip hagiran so much struck by It that he Wrote tOt the author an thuS btgan a I friendship that has continued to grow ee since This was several yearS ago and more or less corepondene had passed and American publishers 111 ing in England had had Mr Frass work warmly commended to them by Mr Kipling but until now the two men had never met The meTe accIdent of Mr KpIngs having arrIved In New York for a visit at the time of yea when Mr Fraser is wont to come brought the two together From here Mr Fraser wet to Phia d lphia where he ha a partca fried and adviser In Jr Jordan the editor of the Saturday Evening Pest llr Jordan accepted some stories of his for Short store when h was editor of that magazine and these were about the first to find publication In this country A number had already been fer published in Canada and England how Margaret Sutton Briscoe who In pr vate life Is Mrs Arthur Hopkins has just finished a weeks vIsit here attending at-tending to afar with her publishers and affording between whiles bright but brief glimpses of herself to her numerous friends For several yea prevIous to her marriage Mrs Hopkins Hop-kins had her home her and by her fins socIal qualities added to the excellence excel-lence of her work she made herself avery a-very definite and honorable place Her marriage removed her to Amherst Mass where her husband is a professor pro-fessor In chemistry She has comeback come-back often enough however to main I tainmost of her old social connections tanmost connections she has easily Hog literary connectonsshe ha eaiy maIntained by making a steady improvement im-provement In her work With thIs ha marrIage has neier been allowed to marrae ncver daughter inelfere She has a young < andshe has a hpuse and she gIves to both all the care they need at her hands but In general no day passes that she does not secure to her writing Ing the full number of hours that she has decided shall be devoted to It This unusual result she has attained by the simple process of making a rule and living up to I The writing time Is sacred Her whole household understands under-stands that during that time Mrs HopkIns that have absolutely no interruptions inter-ruptions there is to be not even so much xis a knock on her door The frequency with which her work Is seen Iq the leading periodicals is the best intcaton of how the plan works out Every week or two she has a article Ol it story In Harpers Baza and every ev-ery few months a story i one or another er other of the monthly magazines and may occasional pieces beside 111 Kipling by the provocation of The White Mans Burden seems to have set about all the versifers in the nation to driving theIr quills Not a few expansIons and confutatons of The White Mans BurdenmovIng for the most In Its own or some fancIful reproduction of its own mea uehave appeared in print but these are nothIng In comparIson wih the number that have been offered for print and declined I learn from the editors of the magazine that published the original poem that ever since It appeared they have receivdd on an av erag from four to six poems a day In refutation 01 endorsement of it and any number more have gone to the newspaper offices In all parts of the country So fa a I have personal I of knowledge of them the larger par these poems accept the Kipling posI tin and Instruction either sImply uttering ut-tering approval of i 6r pro eeing from it to If possible develop Its Ida a little further But now ana then a ltte antagonistic fer there i5 one that is antaon5UC venty striving to tur 11 Kiplngs phrases upon hIm to his complete die comftur if not destruction A very interesting and I may say extraordinary instance of communIty of business and diversion between husband hus-band and wife Is afforded by Mr and n Ernest Seton Thompson I was I thInk while they were both art students stu-dents in ParIs tat theIr acquaintance began and maria has not ben al IQwe to dIvert either from the genera course of life which thy then had in vle They both draw and they both write and one often lends a hand to the tasks of the other Mrs Thompson Thomp-son for example made many of the designs that Illustrate lr Tompsons recent book Wild AnImals I Have Known But i is not simply their a socIaton in work that makes them a striking instance their association In port I yet more unusual They dIvIde the year pretty evenly between the confnement of New York and the freedom free-dom of the plains and mountains of the fa west and In the plains and the mountains r Thompson does all that her husband does she sleeps on the ground she rides climbs and hunts and theIr city aparment i adorned wIt notable trophies of her sportsmanship no less than with the trophIes of his She carries her own rUle and can bring down her antelope or elk as Infallibly as Mr Thompson i I hImself So fa a place of birth Is concerned the far ends of the earth met In them l1r Thompson being a native of England and Mrs Thompson a native of California But he came quIte early to America and lived for several years on the frontier and so though so fa apart in mere place or birth they were In a way of one con diton in theIr rearing Mr Thompson as those who know him through his writings are aware is primarily a naturalist nat-uralist He held for a time the office of government naturalist for theproy ince of Manitoba HIs worlc a an artist art-ist has been mainly the depicting of animal life I was his drawings of birds and animals that were used In illustrating the Century dictionary and he has illustrated a number ot articles ar-ticles and books of the Tatural hIstory kind besIdes his own hat he should have found a wife who could join 50 intimately in work so special as this Intmotely adds further emphasIs to the unusualness unusual-ness of their case E l C MARTIN |