CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE ("Mark Twain "), an American humorist and author, born at Florida, Mo., November 30, 1835. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a printer, and worked at the trade in several cities. In 1855 he became a pilot on the Mississippi, and in 1861 went to Nevada in the capacity of private secretary to his brother, who was then Secretary of that Territory. Here he visited the silver mines, and became editor of the Enterprise, in Virginia City, where he remained three years. After a voyage to Hawaii, and a lecturing tour in California and Nevada, he went to Europe, visited Egypt and Palestine, and on his return wrote The Innocents Abroad, a humorous account of his travels. His writings include The Jumping Frog (1867); Roughing It (1872); The Gilded Age, a comedy (1874); Tom Sawyer (1876); A Tramp Abroad (1880); Prince and Pauper, and The Stolen White Elephant (1882); Life on the Mississippi (1883); Huckleberry Finn (1885); A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur (1889). John T. Raymond, an American comedian, did much to popularize The Gilded Age by his delineation of the optimistic Colonel Mulberry Sellers. Several other of Clemens' works have been dramatized. In 1884 he founded the publishing firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., New York, and Hartford, Conn.

Through injudicious ventures this firm failed, and in 1897 Mr. Clemens, who had become personally responsible for $200,000 of the firm's debts, went to Europe to retrieve his fortunes by writing and lecturing. He wrote an account of Queen Victoria's celebration of the sixtieth year of her reign for a New York newspaper, and in that year en tered upon the work of writing an account of his tour of the world, under the title, The Surviving Innocent Abroad. As a writer he has never been a great exaggerator of character, only of circumstance. Even his most extraordinary descriptions have smacked of reality, and this, coupled with his droll humor, has ever been one of his peculiar charms. At times he can be very serious, but after such a spell he is certain to surprise and startle you by the sudden display of some grotesque and irresistible master-stroke. William D. Howells, in writing of "Mark Twain," declared that his humor would live forever, "because of its artistic qualities." Artemus Ward was a very funny man, and so was Josh Billings. Yet little that the former wrote is remembered now, and nothing that came from the pen of the latter. As Mr. Howells truthfully wrote, " Mark Twain portrays and interprets real types, not only with exquisite appreciation and sympathy, but with a force and truth of drawing that makes them permanent."

ITALIAN GUIDES.

Guides know about enough English to tangle everything up so that a man can make neither head nor tail of it. They know their story by heart-the history of

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every statue, painting, cathedral, or other wonder they show you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would -and if you interrupt, and throw them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again. All their lives long they are employed in showing strange things to foreigners, and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is what prompts children to say smart things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways "show off" when company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling piece of news. Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege it is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw them into perfect ecstacies of admiration! He gets so that he could not by any possibility live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered this, we never went into ecstacies any more; we never admired anything; we never showed any but impassible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of the sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We had found their weak point. We have made some good use of it ever since. We have made some of those people savage at times, but we have never lost our own serenity.

The doctor asks the questions generally, because he can keep his own countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more imbecility into the tone of his voice, than any man that lives. It comes natural to him.

The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation, full of impatience. He said: "Come wis me, genteelmen!-come! I show you ze letter-writing by Christopher Colombo !-write it himself!-write it wis his own hand!-come!"

He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment with his finger: