There were a good many curious letters-letters from humorists, would-be and genuine.  A bright man in Duluth sent him an old Allen “pepper-box” revolver with the statement that it had been found among a pile of bones under a tree, from the limb of which was suspended a lasso and a buffalo skull; this as evidence that the weapon was the genuine Allen which Bemis had lost on that memorable Overland buffalo-hunt.  Mark Twain enjoyed that, and kept the old pepper-box as long as he lived.  There were letters from people with fads; letters from cranks of every description; curious letters even from friends.  Reginald Cholmondeley, that lovely eccentric of Condover Hall, where Mr. and Mrs. Clemens had spent some halcyon days in 1873, wrote him invitations to be at his castle on a certain day, naming the hour, and adding that he had asked friends to meet him.  Cholmondeley had a fancy for birds, and spared nothing to improve his collection.  Once he wrote Clemens asking him to collect for him two hundred and five American specimens, naming the varieties and the amount which he was to pay for each.  Clemens was to catch these birds and bring them over to England, arriving at Condover on a certain day, when there would be friends to meet him, of course.

Then there was a report which came now and then from another English castle—­the minutes of a certain “Mark Twain Club,” all neatly and elaborately written out, with the speech of each member and the discussions which had followed—­the work, he found out later, of another eccentric; for there was no Mark Twain Club, the reports being just the mental diversion of a rich young man, with nothing else to do.—­[In Following the Equator Clemens combined these two pleasant characters in one story, with elaborations.]

Letters came queerly addressed.  There is one envelope still in existence which bears Clemens’s name in elaborate design and a very good silhouette likeness, the work of some talented artist.  “Mark Twain, United States,” was a common address; “Mark Twain, The World,” was also used; “Mark Twain, Somewhere,” mailed in a foreign country, reached him promptly, and “Mark Twain, Anywhere,” found its way to Hartford in due season.  Then there was a letter (though this was later; he was abroad at the time), mailed by Brander Matthews and Francis Wilson, addressed, “Mark Twain, God Knows Where.”  It found him after traveling half around the world on its errand, and in his answer he said, “He did.”  Then some one sent a letter addressed, “The Devil Knows Where.”  Which also reached him, and he answered, “He did, too.”

Surely this was the farthest horizon of fame.

Countless Mark Twain anecdotes are told of this period, of every period, and will be told and personally vouched for so long as the last soul of his generation remains alive.  For seventy years longer, perhaps, there will be those who will relate “personal recollections” of Mark Twain.  Many of them will be interesting; some of them will be true; most of them will become history at last.  It is too soon to make history of much of this drift now.  It is only safe to admit a few authenticated examples.