HOW MARK TWAIN MISSED KNIGHTHOOD.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2471, 12 May 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW MARK TWAIN MISSED KNIGHTHOOD.

Mark Twain, writes an American paper, will never he hanged for modesty, and yet he owes it to a retiring disposition that he is not a real knight at this lilesspd minute. It is generally known that the

humorist is a mighty shrewd business man, and that, by being his own publisher, he has made dollars out of his books where other writers of equal merit have made cents. But he chooses to keep his name out of the commercial end of his enterprises, saving it for the authorship apex of them. Thus, in the (inn of Charles L. Webster and Co. he is the unmentioned partner, although the principal one. Well, from the issuing of Twain's books the concern went into the Grant autobiography, clearing §250,000 from it, and their latest venture was a volume about the Pope at Rome. Twain went himself to Italy to arrange the matter, and while there had audiences with the Pontiff, but he figured there only as " Charles L. Webster and C 0.," because he was at the time engaijed in business rather than literature. !so it happened that the Pope regarded him as Webster. Now comes a big parchment from Rome setting forth that Charles L Webster has been created a Knight of thn Order of Pius, because "it is the custom and practice of the Roman Pontiffs to gladly bestow titles of high honour on those gentlemen whoso eminent gifts of mind and whoso excellent qualities soern to us worthy of being crowned with rewards." With this document of cnoblement is a decoration of blue silk, ornamented with two stripes of red at the edges, and the directions are that it shall

be worn on the left breast, " according to knightly custom." But it cannot propurly adorn the front of Mark Twain, although really meant for liiin, and his lesser partner thus scoops the glory which belong to the greater.