there until the completion of Stormfield, at Redding, Connecticut, in
1908.

In his later life Mark Twain was accorded high academic honors. Already,
in 1888, he had received from Yale College the degree of Master of Arts,
and the same college made him a Doctor of Literature in 1901. A year
later the university of his own State, at Columbia, Missouri, conferred
the same degree, and then, in 1907, came the crowning honor, when
venerable Oxford tendered him the doctor's robe.

"I don't know why they should give me a degree like that," he said,
quaintly. "I never doctored any literature--I wouldn't know how."

He had thought never to cross the ocean again, but he declared he would
travel to Mars and back, if necessary, to get that Oxford degree.
He appreciated its full meaning-recognition by the world's foremost
institution of learning of the achievements of one who had no learning of
the institutionary kind. He sailed in June, and his sojourn in England
was marked by a continuous ovation. His hotel was besieged by callers.
Two secretaries were busy nearly twenty hours a day attending to visitors
and mail. When he appeared on the street his name went echoing in every
direction and the multitudes gathered. On the day when he rose, in his
scarlet robe and black mortar-board, to receive his degree (he must have
made a splendid picture in that dress, with his crown of silver hair),
the vast assembly went wild. What a triumph, indeed, for the little
Missouri printer-boy! It was the climax of a great career.

Mark Twain's work was always of a kind to make people talk, always
important, even when it was mere humor. Yet it was seldom that; there
was always wisdom under it, and purpose, and these things gave it dynamic