Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling: 

“Curse all the world’s gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies!  And miscalled, every one.  They are not gifts, but merely lendings.  Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches:  they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities—­Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty.  The fairy said true; in all her store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not valueless.  How poor and cheap and mean I know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart.  Bring it!  I am weary, I would rest.”

Chapter V

The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.  She said: 

“I gave it to a mother’s pet, a little child.  It was ignorant, but trusted me, asking me to choose for it.  You did not ask me to choose.”

“Oh, miserable me!  What is left for me?”

“What not even you have deserved:  the wanton insult of Old Age.”

THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES

From My Unpublished Autobiography

Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature of Mark Twain: 

“Hartford, March 10, 1875.

“Please do not use my name in any way.  Please do not even divulge that fact that I own a machine.  I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc.  I don’t like to write letters, and so I don’t want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.”

A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that.  Mr. Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his unpublished autobiography: 

1904.  Villa Quarto, Florence, January.

Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save time and “language” —­the kind of language that soothes vexation.