MARK TWAIN
folk have worked off at par on this confiding ob server. It compels the conviction that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted was "significant" facts, and that he was not accus tomed to examine the source whence they pro ceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of con spiracy against him almost from the start a conspiracy to freight him up with all the strange extravagances those people s decayed brains could invent.
The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him things which surely would have excited any one else s suspicion, but they did not excite his. Consider this:
There is not in all the United States an entirely nude statue.
If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a reasonably cautious observer would take that angel s number and inquire a little "further before he added it to his catch. What does the present observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this innocent comment :
This small fact is strangely significant.
It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.
Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
�� �
