The Jew article is my “gem of the ocean.”  I have taken a world of pleasure in writing it & doctoring it & fussing at it.  Neither Jew nor Christian will approve of it, but people who are neither Jews nor Christian will, for they are in a condition to know the truth when they see it.

Clemens was not given to race distinctions.  In his article he says: 

I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices.  Indeed I know it.  I can stand any society.  All that I care to know is that a man is a human being, that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.

We gather from something that follows that the one race which he bars is the French, and this, just then, mainly because of the Dreyfus agitations.

He also states in this article: 

I have no special regard for Satan, but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him.  It may even be that I lean a little his way on account of his not having a fair show.

Clemens indeed always had a friendly feeling toward Satan (at least, as he conceived him), and just at this time addressed a number of letters to him concerning affairs in general—­cordial, sympathetic, informing letters enough, though apparently not suited for publication.  A good deal of the work done at this period did not find its way into print.  An interview with Satan; a dream-story concerning a platonic sweetheart, and some further comment on Austrian politics, are among the condemned manuscripts.

Mark Twain’s interest in Satan would seem later to have extended to his relatives, for there are at least three bulky manuscripts in which he has attempted to set down some episodes in the life of one “Young Satan,” a nephew, who appears to have visited among the planets and promoted some astonishing adventures in Austria several centuries ago.  The idea of a mysterious, young, and beautiful stranger who would visit the earth and perform mighty wonders, was always one which Mark Twain loved to play with, and a nephew of Satan’s seemed to him properly qualified to carry out his intention.  His idea was that this celestial visitant was not wicked, but only indifferent to good and evil and suffering, having no personal knowledge of any of these things.  Clemens tried the experiment in various ways, and portions of the manuscript are absorbingly interesting, lofty in conception, and rarely worked out—­other portions being merely grotesque, in which the illusion of reality vanishes.

Among the published work of the Vienna period is an article about a morality play, the “Master of Palmyra,”—­[About play-acting, Forum, October, 1898.]—­by Adolf Wilbrandt, an impressive play presenting Death, the all-powerful, as the principal part.

The Cosmopolitan Magazine for August published “At the Appetite-Cure,” in which Mark Twain, in the guise of humor, set forth a very sound and sensible idea concerning dietetics, and in October the same magazine published his first article on “Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy.”  As we have seen, Clemens had been always deeply interested in mental healing, and in closing this humorous skit he made due acknowledgments to the unseen forces which, properly employed, through the imagination work physical benefits: