It is impossible to think of Mark Twain in his maturer development as other than a moralist. My personal acquaintance with Mr. Clemens convinced me--had I needed to be convinced--that in his later years he had striven to grapple nobly with many of the deeper issues of life, character and morality, public, religious and social, as well as personal and private. I never knew anyone who thought so “straight,” or who expressed himself with such simple directness upon questions affecting religion and conduct. He was absolutely fearless in his condemnation of those subsidized “ministers” of the Gospel in cosmopolitan centres, who, through self-interest, cut their moral disquisitions to fit the predilections of their wealthy parishioners, many of whom were under national condemnation as “malefactors of great wealth.” Animated by love for all creatures, the defenceless wild animal as well as the domestic pet, he was unsparing in his indictment of those big-game hunters who shamelessly described their feelings of savage exultation when some poor animal served as the target for their skill, and staggered off wounded unto death. His sympathy for the natives of the Congo was profound and intense; and his philippic against King Leopold for the atrocities he sanctioned called the attention of the whole world to conditions that constituted a disgrace to modern civilization. His diatribe against the Czar of Russia for his inhumanity to the serfs was an equally convincing proof of his noble determination to throw the whole weight of his influence in behalf of suffering and oppressed humanity. Some years before his death, he told me that he never intended to speak in public again save in behalf of movements, humanitarian and uplifting, which gave promise of effecting civic betterment and social improvement.