A writer in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, not many years since, as follows: “There have been moments in the lives of various kind hearted and respectable citizens of California and Nevada, when, if Mark Twain were up before them as members of a vigilance committee for any mild crime, such as mule stealing or arson, it is to be feared his shrift would have been short. What a dramatic picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! Mark, before those honest men, infuriated by his practical jokes, trying to show them what an innocent creature he was when it came to mules, or how the only policy of fire insurance he held had lapsed, and how void of guile he was in any direction, and all with that inimitable drawl, that perplexed countenance, and the peculiar scraping back of the left foot, like a boy speaking his first piece at school. It is but fair to say that the fun Mark mixed up for citizens in those days, was not altogether appreciated in the midst of it, for some one, touched too sharply, _surge bat amari aliquid_, and Mark had another denouncer joined to the wounded throng.... He is keenly sensitive to sympathy or criticism, and relates, as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life, a six hours’ ride across England, his fellow traveler an Englishman, who, shortly after they started, drew forth the first volume of the English edition of Innocents Abroad from his pocket, and calmly perused it from beginning to end without a smile. Then he drew forth the second volume and read it as solemnly as the first. Mark says he thought he should die, yet John Bull was probably enjoying it after his own undemonstrative style.” In another instance the same writer says of Mark Twain: “This literary wag has performed some services which entitle him to the gratitude of his generation. He has run the traditional Sunday-school book boy through his literary mangle and turned him out washed and ironed into a proper state of flatness and collapse. That whining, canting, early-dying anæmic creature was the nauseating model held up to the full-blooded mischievous lads of by-gone years as worthy their imitation. He poured his religious hypocrisy over every honest pleasure a boy had. He whined his lachrymose warnings on every playground. He vexed their lives. So, when Mark grew old enough he went gunning for him, and lo, wherever his soul may be, the skin of the strumous young pietist is now neatly tacked up to view on the Sunday-school door of to-day as a warning, and the lads of to-day see no particular charm in a priggish, hydropathical existence.”