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قراءة كتاب Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 6 (1907-1910)
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for? Is that the right spirit? is it considerate? is it kind? How do you suppose they feel when you come around—looking the way you look? And you so pink and sweet and dainty and lovely and supernatural? Why, it makes them feel embarrassed and artificial, of course; and in my opinion it is just as pathetic as it can be. Now then you want to reform—dear—and do right.
Well certainly you are well off, Joy:
3 goldfish;
3 doves;
6 canaries;
2 dogs;
1 cat;
All you need, now, to be permanently beyond the reach of want, is one more dog—just one more good, gentle, high principled, affectionate, loyal dog who wouldn't want any nobler service than the golden privilege of lying at your door, nights, and biting everything that came along—and I am that very one, and ready to come at the dropping of a hat.
Do you think you could convey my love and thanks to your "daddy" and Owen Seaman and those other oppressed and down-trodden subjects of yours, you darling small tyrant?
On my knees! These—with the kiss of fealty from your other subject—
America that winter and asked permission to call on Mark Twain. An
appointment was made and Clemens discussed with her, for an hour or
more, those crucial phases of life which have made living a complex
problem since the days of Eve in Eden. Mrs. Glyn had never before
heard anything like Mark Twain's wonderful talk, and she was anxious
to print their interview. She wrote what she could remember of it
and sent it to him for approval. If his conversation had been
frank, his refusal was hardly less so.
To Mrs. Elinor Glyn, in New York:
DEAR MRS. GLYN, It reads pretty poorly—I get the sense of it, but it is a poor literary job; however, it would have to be that because nobody can be reported even approximately, except by a stenographer. Approximations, synopsized speeches, translated poems, artificial flowers and chromos all have a sort of value, but it is small. If you had put upon paper what I really said it would have wrecked your type-machine. I said some fetid, over-vigorous things, but that was because it was a confidential conversation. I said nothing for print. My own report of the same conversation reads like Satan roasting a Sunday school. It, and certain other readable chapters of my autobiography will not be published until all the Clemens family are dead—dead and correspondingly indifferent. They were written to entertain me, not the rest of the world. I am not here to do good—at least not to do it intentionally. You must pardon me for dictating this letter; I am sick a-bed and not feeling as well as I might.
S. L. CLEMENS.
or warmer friend, than Andrew Lang. They were at one on most
literary subjects, and especially so in their admiration of the life
and character of Joan of Arc. Both had written of her, and both
held her to be something almost more than