MARK TWAIN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 257, 7 May 1910, Page 3

MARK TWAIN.

The death of Mark Twain, that prince of humourists, recalls the speech he made at the dinner given in his honour on his seventieth birthday. "I have made it a rule," he said, "to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. . . . I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise-is loathsome. "1 have made it a rule toneversmoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restrictions as regards smoking, I do not know just when I began to smoke. I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that 1 was discreet. He ps3sed from this life early in 18-17.- when I was a shade past eleven; ever since, then I have smoked publicly. "As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When others drink I like

to help, otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. This dryness does not hurt me, but it could easily hurt you, because you are different. You let it alone. "For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at 8 in the morning, and no bite or sup until 7.30 in the evening. That is all right for me and is wholesome, because I never bad a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try. If you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. Get out at the first station where there's a cemetery. "We can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you." All his novels and stories are delightful, and it is difficult to say which has yielded the most enjoyment. "Huckleberry Finn," in the estimation of most competent critics, will be judged by posterity as the best work he ever did. It is largely autobiographical.