MARK TWAIN If God is what people say there can be no one in the universe so unhappy as he; for he sees unceasingly myriads of his creatures suffering unspeakable miseries__ and besides this foresees how they are going to suffer dur- ing the remainder of their lives. One might well say: "As unhappy as God." The telephone must be driven out, for it is useless—at any rate at night when the electric lights are burning. It was at this time that Mark Twain wrote for the Century Magazine his article on his ex- perience as a Confederate soldier when this small irregular company of which he was a member was pursued by troops under the then unknown Col. U. S. Grant. The General said he read my article, first, and all the family afterwards. (I said) I did not know that this was the future General Grant or I would have turned and attacked him. I supposed it was just some ordinary Colonel of no particular consequence, so I let him go. It was probably a great mistake. It is curious and dreadful to sit up this way and talk cheerful nonsense to Gen. Grant and he under sentence of death with that cancer. lie says he has made the book too large by 200 pages—not a bad fault—a short time ago we were afraid it would lack 400 of being enough. He has dictated 10,000 words at a single sitting, and he a sick man! It kills me, these days, to write half of it. It has been claimed by persons having no knowledge of the circumstances—having nothing indeed but a malignant desire to cheapen a great hero—that General Grant did not write his own memoirs—that Mark Twain and others wrote them. These notes are sufficiently conclusive. 182