Mark Twain says he is writing “Joan of Arc” anonymously in _Harper’s_ because he is convinced if he signed it the people would insist the stuff was funny. Mr. Twain is worried unnecessarily. It has been a long time since any one insisted the matter he turns out so voluminously was or is funny. * * * * * The amusing William Dean Howells writes that he is so bothered by autograph seekers that he will hereafter refuse to send his signature “with a sentiment” unless the applicant for his favor produces satisfactory evidence he has read all of his works, “now some thirty or forty in number.” When this proof has been sent if Mr. Howells does not return his autograph on the bottom of a check for a large amount, he deserves to be arrested for cruelty to his fellows. * * * * * There is no doubt that a teacher once committed to a certain line of thought will cling to that line long after all others have deserted it. In trying to persuade others he convinces himself. This is especially so if he is opposed. Opposition evolves in his mind a maternal affection for the product of his brain and he defends it blindly to the death. Thus we see why institutions are so conservative. Like the coral insect they secrete osseous matter; and when a preacher preaches he himself always goes forward to the mourners’ bench and accepts all of the dogmas that have just been so ably stated. * * * * * Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter’s colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments; but the _Index Expurgatorius_ is as naught, and the books burned by the fires of the _auto da fe_ still live. Literature is reproduced ten thousand times ten thousand and lodges its appeal with posterity. It dedicates itself to Time. * * * * *