To the biographer belongs the task of describing, in detail, the lavish entertainment and open-hearted homage which were bestowed upon Mark Twain in German Europe. In writing of Mark Twain and his popularity in Germanic countries, Carl von Thaler unhesitatingly asserts that Mark Twain was feted, wined and dined in Vienna, the Austrian metropolis, in an unprecedented manner, and awarded unique honours hitherto paid to no German writer. In Berlin, the young Kaiser bestowed upon him the most distinguished marks of his esteem; and praised his works, in especial 'Life on the Mississippi', with the intensest enthusiasm. When Mark Twain received a command from the Kaiser to dine with him, his young daughter exclaimed that if it kept on like this, there soon wouldn't be anybody left for him to become acquainted with but God! Mark said that it seemed uncomplimentary to regard him as unacquainted in that quarter; but of course his daughter was young, and the young always jump to conclusions without reflection. After hearing the Kaiser's eulogy on 'Life on the Mississippi', he was astounded and touched to receive a similar tribute, the same evening, from the portier of his lodging-house. He loved to dwell upon this, in later years--declaring it the most extraordinary coincidence of his life that a crowned head and a portier, the very top of an empire and the very bottom of it, should have expressed the very same criticism, and delivered the very same verdict, upon one of his books, almost in the same hour and the same breath.