University of Virginia Library

My Dear Conspirators:

—It was the pleasantest surprise I have ever had, and you have my best thanks. It reconciles me to being fifty years old; and it was for you to invent the miracle that could do that—I could never have invented one myself that could do it. May you live to be fifty yourselves, and find a fellow-benefactor in that hour of awful need.

Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens Hartford, Nov. 20, 1885

A current paragraph reports Mrs. Thomas K. Beecher as having concluded a conversation on immortality, in which Mark Twain had "taken the agnostic side," by asking him whether he would confess his error, if he should meet her in Heaven a million years hence. Mark promised that he would, and sealed the promise by writing appropriate stanzas on three stones found on the banks of the Chemung River, the three stones being fragments of what once was a single rock. The "contract" is dated Elmira, N. Y., 2 July 1895; and here are the terms of it:—

Mark Twain lost a fine opportunity to add to his reputation as a humorist in his letter declining the Hearld's fund for his benefit, after first having accepted it. His letter is one to make his many friends weep rather than smile. Here it is:—

"To the Editor of the Herald:—

"I made no revelation to my family of your generous undertaking in my behalf and for my relief from debt, and in that I was wrong. Now that they know all about the matter they contend I have no right to allow my friends to help me while my health is good and my ability to work remains, that it is not fair to my friends and

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"London, 19 June 1897.
S. L. Clemens."

The following personal letter, written in answer to a question, is printed by permission of the writer:—

Beverly Farms, Mass., Aug. 28th, 1892.
My dear Mr. Gilder:—

I have been interviewed already and got off as cheaply as I could, for it has become rather monotonous answering birthday questions—a little too much like 'What

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I have received two poems in advance, and my dear and honored friend Whittier, whose heart is a cornucopia of blessings for his fellow-creatures, has remembered me in the pages of The Atlantic, where we have found ourselves side by side for so many years. Long may the sands of his life keep running, for they come from the bed of Pactolus.

I shall very probably have a few visitors to-morrow with whom I shall interchange kindly words, but I have really no news of myself which can interest.

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Sept. 1.

Here I was interrupted, and from that moment I have been in a perfect storm of letters, poems, flowers, fruits, gifts of various kinds; one of them a silver-framed chambered Nautilus from a Chicago lady—an exquisite piece of work, fit for a young prince's heir-loom rather than an old poet's.

I have forgotten almost everything in the crowd and crush of these pleasant interruptions. But I must not forget to thank you for your kind remembrance, for which I am truly grateful, only regretting that I cannot reach all the kind and generous friends who have sent their cheering remembrances to one whose most notable virtue is that he is the survivor of so many of his betters.

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Another interruption, and ah! how sad a one. A reporter calls at my door and tells me that George William Curtis died this morning. His death eclipses the cheerfulness of a great reading public. He has not left a sweeter nature or a fairer record behind him. The lovable quality of his bright intelligence showed in his features, in his voice, in every line he wrote. No American writer came so near taking the place of Washington Irving in the affections of his countrymen, no one has been more generally missed and lamented than he will be. Peace to his gentle memory! This is a day of mourning to all who love what is purest and best in letters and civilization.

Believe me, dear Mr. Gilder,
Faithfully yours,
O. W. Holmes.

Boston, Oct. 15, 1894.

Since the following letter was written, I have enjoyed many a conversation with the genial Autocrat, but then I knew him only through his writings. It so aptly illustrates the uniform courtesy of the man as a man that I add it to The Critic's repertoire of tributes. The "magnifier" was a choice little magnifying-glass, set in solid silver, marked "O. W. H."

W. C. W.

"296 Beacon Street, July 9, 1872.
"My Dear Sir:—

"I am particularly obliged to you for returning my little magnifier with such promptness that I had not even time to miss it. I shall always value it more hereafter for having passed through the hands of a finder who proved not only honest but courteous. There may be a hundred or more honest men in Boston, but there are not many who would be so attentive.

"I hope you blessed my instrument of research, as the Pope blesses a coin or a medal—at any rate you have conferred new value upon it. The bread that was cast upon the waters was to return "after many days," but my little estray cannot have been wandering from the pocket where it belongs many hours.

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"I truly wish I could lose something every day, if I were sure to have it so swiftly returned with a pleasant word for the owner to make him contented with himself and grateful to the friend who restores the lost possession.

"Very truly and especially yours,
"To Rev. W. C. Winslow, Boston.
O. W. Holmes."

York Harbor, Maine, August 21, 1898.

I am sorry that I shall not be able to join with his other friends in keeping the seventieth birthday of Leo Tolstoy. His writings and his life have meant more to me than any other man's; and if I could be with you I should try to express my deep sense of the import of his philosophy to such an age as this, and to a people who have been the latest, as I wish they might be the last, to make war.

It seems to me that Tolstoy's greatest word is peace; and in this as in everything he appeals to the intellectual and spiritual reality within the official and social simulacrum which hides each of us from the others. It has been his mission to give men a bad conscience, to alarm them and distress them in the opinions and conventions in which they rested so comfortably. He repeats to us the divinely simple truth which the good and wise have known from the beginning, in terms which the most modern intelligence cannot refuse as trite. He arrives at a moment of civilization when no one any longer contends that the evils which war sums up in itself are justifiable apart from it, and he asks us to refrain from them by refraining from war, which makes imperative things essentially and immutably wrong.

Tolstoy's literature, his matchless art, his fiction, which makes all other appear so feeble and false, is merely the flower of his love of men, his desire to be true to them. All that he has written, so far as I know it, is of one effect with all that he has been since he came to his moral consciousness. I cannot separate his aesthetics from his ethics, for he has himself known no difference in them. But it seems to me that in his fiction he works more instinctively and vitally, and I believe that in this he will work longest. As a teacher he has put in contemporaneous terms the wisdom which has always been in the world for the conduct of men; but as an artist he has divined things concerning their nature and character in mystical heights and depths unreached before, and has portrayed life with an unexampled truth and fullness.

Such a man was sure to come when he was needed most; and in order that he should perform his office to the generation to which he was sent it was not necessary that his own life should be perfect, or his whole doctrine unerring. One perfect life and one unerring doctrine we had already, and it is praise enough for Tolstoy to say that he teaches these with all his heart and all his mind; and however he falters or wanders, he worships them by a constant endeavor for their goodness and beauty.

Hall, Cooperstown, Jan. 12, 1850.
Dear Sir:

During the last session, a law granting a pension to Edward Myers. passed to Hou. Rep., but was not taken up in the Senate. Myers was the old seaman whose life and services I have recorded in "Ned Myers." I feel quite confident of the justice of his claims, having the facts from eye-witnesses, as well as from his commander, the late Comm. Chauncey. There is no doubt that his energy, coolness, and skill were the principal means of saving some ten or twelve lives, the night he received the hurt for which the pension is asked.

Alas! Poor Myers can now never be benefited by the grant. He died of dropsy a few weeks since, leaving a widow and several children. The arrears of this pension is all he had to bequeath. He made a will leaving everything to his wife during her life, and then to the children.

I do not know whether the law will have to be taken up again in the House, but I suppose a claim once looked into, and in-so-much granted, will be regarded as sacred. May I ask your good offices in this matter. It is for a widow and orphans that the grant will now be made.

It might interest them were this letter shown to Messrs. Calhoun, Cass, Seward, Cooper, and others of the Senate. I think I can safely say that the claimant well deserved all his family will get, and more too.

I remain very truly
Yours,
J. Fenimore Cooper.
D.S. Dickinson, Esquire,
U. S. Senate.

Max Gate, Dorchester, Aug. 26th, 1892.
To the Editors of The Critic:—

A complaint has reached me from your pages to the effect that even in the revised and enlarged American edition of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles' I have thought fit to suppress the explanatory preface which appears in all the English editions.

I find it to be quite true that the preface is omitted; but you will perhaps allow me to assure your readers that such omission was not intentional on my part, but arose from circumstances of publication over which I had no control at the time.

I am now taking measures to attach to the American edition both the original preface and a new preface which is in preparation for the fifth English edition.

I may add in this connection that the necessity for (at least) simultaneous publication in America of English books, to secure copyright, renders it almost impossible that the latest addenda of an author should be incorporated in the foreign imprint. Could even a fortnight's grace be allowed, final touches, given just before going to press on this side, would not be excluded from American copies as they now are in so many cases.

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Hardy.

To the Editor of The Times:—
Sir,

—As the centenary of the birth of John Keats approaches, it will doubtless be of importance to a wide circle of lovers of English poetry to be informed of any steps which it may be intended to take in the direction of honoring so beloved a memory. . . . The American Committee, which has been engaged for some five years past in preparing for an English memorial of Keats, has done me the honor to communicate to me its intentions, and has asked me to make them known in this country.

The movement is due to the piety of Mr. F. Holland Day of Norwood, Massachusetts, who is a great Keats enthusiast. As early as 1889, Mr. Day began to suggest to certain men-of-letters and artists in America that a monument to the poet should be presented by the United States to England. He consulted Mr. Lowell in particular, and received the warmest encouragement from him. There is no doubt, indeed, that, if the life of Mr. Lowell had been prolonged, he would to-day be found at the head of this generous movement. Among those, however, who, on the failure of Mr. Lowell's health, continued to urge forward the execution of the scheme, were Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, Mr. T. B. Aldrich, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the late Dr. T. W. Parsons, and, indeed, most of those who are now prominent in American poetical literature. . . . Mr. Day has arrived in this country with a marble bust of Keats, which, through the kindness of the vicar, the Rev. Mr. Burnaby, will shortly be unveiled in the parish church at Hampstead. It now merely awaits the carrying out of the accepted design for a bracket, upon which the advice of Mr. E. Onslow Ford, A.R.A., was desired. Lovers of Keats—and this is but a synonym for lovers of poetry—will presently receive a formal announcement of the date when the little ceremony of presenting and accepting the bust will be performed at Hampstead.

So far I obey the duty which has been laid upon me by our American friends. Will you permit me to add one word for ourselves? Surely, while we accept this gracious gift from our Transatlantic kinsfolk, we shall not be able to do so without some sense of shame at our own negligence in rites so appropriate and seemly. How long are we to be contented to accept from others monuments to those men of genius who are, after all, not theirs, but ours? In a few months a hundred years will have passed since the birth of one of the most illustrious and original of the long line of English poets, yet if there is any scheme on foot for the celebration of that event by Englishmen on English soil, I have not been fortunate enough to hear of it. There is no other country in the world that could have produced a Keats a hundred years ago,

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I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Edmund Gosse. 29, Delamere-terrace, London, W., May 24.