Here is another compliment by Albert Bigelow Paine, my biographer. He is
writing four octavo volumes about me, and he has been at my elbow two and
one-half years.

I just suppose that he does not know me, but says he knows me. He says
"Mark Twain is not merely a great writer, a great philosopher, a great
man; he is the supreme expression of the human being, with his strength
and his weakness." What a talent for compression! It takes a genius in
compression to compact as many facts as that.

W. D. Howells spoke of me as first of Hartford, and ultimately of the
solar system, not to say of the universe:

You know how modest Howells is. If it can be proved that my fame reaches
to Neptune and Saturn; that will satisfy even me. You know how modest
and retiring Howells seems to be, but deep down he is as vain as I am.

Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford, whose gown was red.
He had been invited to an exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had been
told that it was usual to wear the black gown: Later he had found that
three other men wore bright gowns, and he had lamented that he had been
one of the black mass, and not a red torch.

Edison wrote: "The average American loves his family. If he has any love
left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain."

Now here's the compliment of a little Montana girl which came to me
indirectly. She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of
me. After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said: