I hope you will continue this custom to give me a dinner every seven
years before I join the hosts in the other world--I do not know which
world.

Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Porter have paid me many compliments. It is very
difficult to take compliments. I do not care whether you deserve the
compliments or not, it is just as difficult to take them. The other
night I was at the Engineers' Club, and enjoyed the sufferings of
Mr. Carnegie. They were complimenting him there; there it was all
compliments, and none of them deserved. They say that you cannot live
by bread alone, but I can live on compliments.

I do not make any pretence that I dislike compliments. The stronger the
better, and I can manage to digest them. I think I have lost so much by
not making a collection of compliments, to put them away and take them
out again once in a while. When in England I said that I would start to
collect compliments, and I began there and I have brought some of them
along.

The first one of these lies--I wrote them down and preserved them
--I think they are mighty good and extremely just. It is one of Hamilton
Mabie's compliments. He said that La Salle was the first one to make a
voyage of the Mississippi, but Mark Twain was the first to chart, light,
and navigate it for the whole world.

If that had been published at the time that I issued that book [Life on
the Mississippi], it would have been money in my pocket. I tell you, it
is a talent by itself to pay compliments gracefully and have them ring
true. It's an art by itself.