The evidence of the past day or two should induce Mark Twain to make for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology for his scathing attack on the Rev. Dr. Ament, the veteran Chinese missionary. The assault was based on a Peking dispatch to the New York _Sun_, which said that Dr. Ament had collected from the Chinese in various places damages thirteen times in excess of actual losses. So Mark Twain charged Mr. Ament with bullyragging, extortion, and things. A Peking dispatch to the _Sun_ yesterday, however, explains that the amount collected was not thirteen times the damage sustained, but _one-third in excess of the indemnities_, and that the blunder was due to a cable error in transmission. The 1-3d got converted into 13. Yesterday the Rev. Judson Smith, Secretary of the American Board, received a dispatch from Dr. Ament, calling attention to the cable blunder, and declaring that all the collections which he made were _approved by the Chinese officials_. The fractional amount that was collected in excess of actual losses, he explains, is being _used for the support of widows and orphans_. So collapses completely--and convulsively--Mark Twain’s sensational and ugly bombardment of a missionary whose character and services should have exempted him from such an assault. From the charge the underpinning has been knocked out. To Dr. Ament Mr. Clemens has done an injustice which is gross but unintentional. If Mark Twain is the man we take him to be he won’t be long in filing a retraction, plus an apology. I have no prejudice against apologies. I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due; I trust I shall never even have a disposition to do so. These letters and newspaper paragraphs are entitled to my best attention; respect for their writers and for the humane feeling which has prompted their utterances requires this of me. It may be barely possible that, if these requests for an apology had reached me before the 20th of February, I might have had a sort of qualified chance to apologize; but on that day appeared the two little cablegrams referred to in the newspaper cutting copied above--one from the Rev. Dr. Smith to the Rev. Dr. Ament, the other from Dr. Ament to Dr. Smith--and my small chance died then. In my opinion, these cablegrams ought to have been suppressed, for it seems clear that they give Dr. Ament’s case entirely away. Still, that is only an opinion, and may be a mistake. It will be best to examine the case from the beginning, by the light of the documents connected with it. EXHIBIT A This is a dispatch from Mr. Chamberlain,[11] chief of the _Sun’s_ correspondence staff in Peking. It appeared in the _Sun_ last Christmas Eve, and in referring to it hereafter I will call it the “C. E. dispatch” for short: