OCR Text |
Show H Twain's Oxford Degree. H Mark Twain received from Lord Curzon, tho chancellor of the great University of Oxford, the degree of Doctor of Letters. The account says that the degree was conferred in University Latin, and, translated, was as follows: "You are one of the finest, most agreeable, and fl most witty men of the day; you have made the IH sides of the entire literary world shake with laughter; and so by virtue of my own authority, and with the authority of the whole University, I admit you to the honorary degree of Doctor of H Letters." H It must have been worth much to have watched j Twain's face while that was going on. Twain is fond of cats. In his autobiography, which is now 1 running through the North American Review, H Clemens tells how his cats always weep when he reads al6ud to them In German. The chances Hj are ten to one that when Lord Curzon was dellv- ring that speech In Latin, Mark was thinking of pj his cats. Doubtless we shall hear from him on B the subject later. H The degree was a great honor to him, for per- haps of all universities, Oxford is the stateliest. H It is of ancient and justly high renown. To those who visit It the very air must seem filled with echoes of tho voices of tho immortal onos who in young manhood wore students there, but the honor was not all to Samuel demons. If a stranger was there and askod why the degree was conferred, and if ho received a truthful truth-ful answer; it was something liko this: "It was bocauso tho man thus honored was. born in a then western State of tho United States, born in poverty and surrounded by a people as poor as himself; his best schooling was in the solitude of his night watches as pilot on the Father of Waters; the school of tho groat river below and the great stars above; his post-graduate course was as a local reporter on a newspaper in a mining camp of the West, which was a good place to rub tho angles out of a man, and to cajole him out of any weakness that attached to him; and then he bogan with his pen to write for all tho world to road, the jolliost stories Imaginable, but at tho same time to convoy to men while thoy laughed tho truth that to all men the right to aspire to any honor if they havo the genius to plan and persistence to try; until he made for himself a name as wido as civilization and proved that to some souls a title from any of tho world's great schools is not necessary in order to compass com-pass fame. This fame has beon growing steadily for forty years and Is so marked that now our groat Oxford honors Itsolf by honoring him." Tho losson of it all should bo an encouragement encourage-ment to every poor but brave boy on both sides of the deep soa; for it convoys the truth i that while an education at Oxford is a splendid commencement com-mencement for a young man, it is not necessary to make for him an immortal name if he has the genius to try, and the pluck and industry to persevere. |