I bring you the stately nation named Christendom, returning, bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao- Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies.  Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking- glass.—­[Prepared for Red Cross Society watch-meeting, which was postponed until March.  Clemens recalled his “Greeting” for that reason and for one other, which he expressed thus:  “The list of greeters thus far issued by you contains only vague generalities and one definite name—­mine:  ‘Some kings and queens and Mark Twain.’  Now I am not enjoying this sparkling solitude and distinction.  It makes me feel like a circus-poster in a graveyard.”]

This was a sort of preliminary.  Then, restraining himself no longer, he embodied his sentiments in an article for the North American Review entitled, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.”  There was crying need for some one to speak the right word.  He was about the only one who could do it and be certain of a universal audience.  He took as his text some Christmas Eve clippings from the New York Tribune and Sun which he had been saving for this purpose.  The Tribune clipping said: 

Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope and aspiration and good cheer.  Such a condition means contentment and happiness.  The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will find few to listen to him.  The majority will wonder what is the matter with him, and pass on.

A Sun clipping depicted the “terrible offenses against humanity committed in the name of politics in some of the most notorious East Side districts “—­the unmissionaried, unpoliced darker New York.  The Sun declared that they could not be pictured even verbally.  But it suggested enough to make the reader shudder at the hideous depths of vice in the sections named.  Another clipping from the same paper reported the “Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions,” as having collected indemnities for Boxer damages in China at the rate of three hundred taels for each murder, “full payment for all destroyed property belonging to Christians, and national fines amounting to thirteen times the indemnity.”  It quoted Mr. Ament as saying that the money so obtained was used for the propagation of the Gospel, and that the amount so collected was moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who had demanded, in addition to money, life for life, that is to say, “head for head”—­in one district six hundred and eighty heads having been so collected.

The despatch made Mr. Ament say a great deal more than this, but the gist here is enough.  Mark Twain, of course, was fiercely stirred.  The missionary idea had seldom appealed to him, and coupled with this business of bloodshed, it was less attractive than usual.  He printed the clippings in full, one following the other; then he said: