MARK TWAIN

never guess—he has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes
its place"

He wrote several chapters of the book—it was to have
been that—but he was tired, and no longer well. He had
exhausted the topic, first and last—it could not amuse or
interest him long.

What seems to be his final notebook entry was made
about this time, or a little earlier.

"All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to
confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge. The Theologi-
cal knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be re-
garded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That
is, if, when man is buying a basket of strawberries, it can
profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
Nov. 5, 1908."

He still made notes, now and again, on the little pads
that were always near his bed, where he spent most of
his time. Among the later memoranda was this one, writ-
ten doubtless at some moment when he considered his
acceptance of the swiftly approaching (and, to him, wel-
come) change:

"He had arrived at the dignity of Death—the only
earthly dignity that is not artificial—the only safe one.
The others are traps that can beguile to humiliation.

"Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose
pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the
soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and
the unloved."

And once he wrote:

"Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is
best worth living."