"Think it over, dear B—! A man's gifts are
not a property: they are a duty."
—IBSEN'S Letters
"What a man sees in the human race is merely himself in thedeep and honest privacy of his own heart. Byron despised therace because he despised himself. I feel as Byron did, andfor the same reason."—Marginal note in one of Mark Twain'sbooks.
To those who are interested in American life and letters there has beenno question of greater significance, during the last few years, than thepessimism of Mark Twain. During the last few years, I say, for his ownfriends and contemporaries were rather inclined to make light of hisoft-expressed belief that man is the meanest of the animals and life atragic mistake.
For some time before his death Mark Twain had appeared before the publicin the rôle less of a laughing philosopher than of a somewhat gloomyprophet of modern civilization. But he was old and he had suffered manymisfortunes and the progress of society is not a matter for any one tobe very jubilant about: to be gloomy about the world is a sort ofprerogative of those who have lived long and thought much. The publicthat had grown old with him could hardly, therefore, accept at its facevalue a point of view that seeme