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Show TWAIN'S POLITICS. Mark Twain has been visiting on his old stamping stamp-ing grounds in Missouri and naturally the Mirror of St. Louis gives him an extended notice. It thinks he has written many good but no immortal literature, but estimates his politics at a heavy discount, hinting hint-ing at the same time that much of the fervor of Mark's reception in Missouri may nave been due to his recent attitude as to the Filipinos and declares that he "stands as a prophet of a certain political obscurantism and obstructionism always popular in Missouri.' The Mirror does not quite understand Mark. Mark himself has explained his eminent services in the Confederate army in humorous vein. But behind all the humor, Mark Twain was at heart a very strong rebel forty ycrrs ago this month of June. lie never talked much politics for about that time he made his home among a people, a good many of whom did not take kindly to his views. He imbibed early a great hate for the Republican party. He may not bo conscious of the fact, but the lees of that old hate are still in the cup of his soul and it affects him as a little pill of strychnine does a bucket of water, it embitters his whole system. While most Southern men, under the abrasions of the years, have had their old prejudices and hates ground off, Mark, in the seclusion of his books, has experienced no change. Without knowing why, possibly pos-sibly without being conscious of the fact, Mark's political opinions are of the date of 1801. Ho is "agin" the government. Ho found congenial spirits in the Springfield Republican and the little circle of oxtreme impracticables and goody-goodies of Massachusetts; Massa-chusetts; he has found a kindred affiliation among the embittered olt- mossbacks of Missouri, but both elements ele-ments are, fortunately, impotent to stop the onward sweep of the Republic; they are simply brakes on the wheels of progress, kept on alike, up as well as down grade, and they should bo considered merely as the curiosities of political vagaries. If Mark could only keep still his politics might be described by Tennyson's lines: "Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead Oar'd by the dumb went upward with the flood." |