dispatch in twenty-four languages."

In San Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain
and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful
Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica.
One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate
standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big
revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement," relates Paine in
his Biography.

"'Come here, Steve,' he said. 'I'm so chilled through I can't get a bead
on him.'

"'Sam,' said Steve, 'don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily
kill him at any range with your profanity.'

"Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain let go such a scorching, singeing
blast that the brute's owner sold him the next day for a Mexican hairless
dog."

Nor did Mark's "geysers of profanity" cease spouting after these gay and
youthful days in San Francisco. With Clemens it may truly be said that
profanity was an art--a pyrotechnic art that entertained nations.

"It was my duty to keep buttons on his shirts," recalled Katy Leary,
life-long housekeeper and friend in the Clemens menage, "and he'd swear
something terrible if I didn't. If he found a shirt in his drawer
without a button on, he'd take every single shirt out of that drawer and
throw them right out of the window, rain or shine--out of the bathroom
window they'd go. I used to look out every morning to see the