The Rev. Judson Smith, one of the board, took up the defense of Dr. Ament, declaring him to be one who had suffered for the cause, and asked Mark Twain, whose “brilliant article,” he said, “would produce an effect quite beyond the reach of plain argument,” not to do an innocent man an injustice.  Clemens in the same paper replied that such was not his intent, that Mr. Ament in his report had simply arraigned himself.

Then it suddenly developed that the cable report had “grossly exaggerated” the amount of Mr. Ament’s collections.  Instead of thirteen times the indemnity it should have read “one and a third times” the indemnity; whereupon, in another open letter, the board demanded retraction and apology.  Clemens would not fail to make the apology—­at least he would explain.  It was precisely the kind of thing that would appeal to him—­the delicate moral difference between a demand thirteen times as great as it should be and a demand that was only one and a third times the correct amount.  “To My Missionary Critics,” in the North American Review for April (1901), was his formal and somewhat lengthy reply.

“I have no prejudice against apologies,” he wrote.  “I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due.”

He then proceeded to make out his case categorically.  Touching the exaggerated indemnity, he said: 

To Dr. Smith the “thirteen-fold-extra” clearly stood for “theft and extortion,” and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right.  He manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere “one-third” a little thing like that was some other than “theft and extortion.”  Why, only the board knows!

I will try to explain this difficult problem so that the board can get an idea of it.  If a pauper owes me a dollar and I catch him unprotected and make him pay me fourteen dollars thirteen of it is “theft and extortion.”  If I make him pay only one dollar thirty-three and a third cents the thirty-three and a third cents are “theft and extortion,” just the same.

I will put it in another way still simpler.  If a man owes me one dog —­any kind of a dog, the breed is of no consequence—­and I—­but let it go; the board would never understand it.  It can’t understand these involved and difficult things.

He offered some further illustrations, including the “Tale of a King and His Treasure” and another tale entitled “The Watermelons.”

I have it now.  Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a scrupulously good fellow though devious.  He was preparing to qualify for a place on the board, for there was going to be a vacancy by superannuation in about five years.  This was down South, in the slavery days.  It was the nature of the negro then, as now, to steal watermelons.  They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother of mine, the only good ones he had.  I suspected