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Show MARK TWAIN HAS GONE. Tho death of ''Mark Twain" is a national loss. He was the country's most gifted humorist. The versatility of the man was remarkable. He commenced his career as a writer in the earlier period per-iod of the Comstock by contributing to the Enterprise of Virginia City. Writing of a Fourth of July oration at Dayton, he made the orator say that he was sired by a revolutionary cuss and born of a continental dam. The humor of the communication struck Goodman, Good-man, the editor, himself a writer of great ability, as so out of the ordinary that he wrote Samuel Clemens, the then unassiimine prospector pros-pector who was later to be known to all the world as Mark Twain. Inviting him to take a position as reporter on the Enterprise. Clem- ens accepted and from then on his upward course was rapid. He moved from Nevada to San Francisco and, while on one of the dailies in that city, wrote his first book. That was in 1869 and, almost up to the time of his death, he continued to produce gems of thought. There are writers who have had flashes of wit and have then subsided, but, with Mark Twain, the outpouring of humor was never ending and his wealth of imagination and his gift of expression were a constant source of surprise. Mark Twain's rare humor caused not only Americans to smile, but convulsed the world with laughter. His books, translated into half a dozen different languages, won the hearts of foreign people as readily as they did the people of the west who first recognized and rewarded his genius. Germans boasted that they knew Mark Twain and appreciated him even better than his own countrymen. His "Innocents Abroad" is one of the most popular of German publications. publica-tions. Countless thousands of the boys of twenty years ago, now grown to manhood, will say good-bye to the author of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" with deep regrets, and many a grown boy will have his thoughts turned backward to the days of long ago and to the homes they have left since the time when they read those stories from the pen of Mark Twain. The death of "Mark Twain" is not only a death, but a reminder re-minder to some of us that the days are fleeting. |