BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS

ADDRESS AT THE PILGRIMS' CLUB LUNCHEON, GIVEN IN HONOR OF Mr.
CLEMENS AT THE SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON, JUNE 25, 1907.

Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief-Secretary for Ireland, in introducing
Mr. Clemens said: "We all love Mark Twain, and we are here to
tell him so. One more point--all the world knows it, and that
is why it is dangerous to omit it--our guest is a distinguished
citizen of the Great Republic beyond the seas. In America his
'Huckleberry Finn' and his 'Tom Sawyer' are what 'Robinson
Crusoe' and 'Tom Brown's School Days' have been to us. They
are racy of the soil. They are books to which it is impossible
to place any period of termination. I will not speak of the
classics--reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do
not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and
depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords.
I am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence
will think of Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself,
will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to
forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our critical
mumblings and jumblings. Let us therefore be content to say to
our friend and guest that we are here speaking for ourselves
and for our children, to say what he has been to us. I
remember in Liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which I