after fifteen minutes, if Mark Twain had had a blank cheque with him, he
would gladly have turned it over, signed, to the minister, to fill out
for any amount. But it was a very warm evening, the eloquence of the
minister was inexhaustible--and Mark Twain's enthusiasm for foreign
missions slowly oozed away--one hundred dollars, fifty dollars, and even
lower still--so that when the plate was actually passed around, Mark put
in ten cents and took out a quarter!

I was a witness in London, and at Oxford, in 1907, of the vast,
spontaneous, national reception which Mark Twain received from the
English people. One incident of that memorable visit is a perfect
example of that masterly power over an audience, that deep humanity,
with which Mark Twain was endowed. At the banquet presided over by the
Lord Mayor of Liverpool, which was the signal of Mark Twain's farewell
to the English people, his peroration was as follows:

"Many and many a year ago I read an anecdote in Dana's Two Years Before
the Mast. A frivolous little self-important captain of a coasting-sloop
in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade was always hailing every
vessel that came in sight, just to hear himself talk and air his small
grandeurs. One day a majestic Indiaman came ploughing by, with course
on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming
with sailors, with macaws and monkeys and all manner of strange and
romantic creatures populating her rigging, and thereto her freightage of
precious spices lading the breeze with gracious and mysterious odours of
the Orient. Of course, the little coaster-captain hopped into the
shrouds and squeaked a hail: 'Ship ahoy! What ship is that, and whence
and whither?' In a deep and thunderous bass came the answer back,
through a speaking trumpet: The Begum of Bengal, a hundred and
twenty-three days out from Canton homeward bound! What ship is that?'