A letter which came to him soon after his return from England contained a clipping which reported the good work done by Christian missionaries in the Congo, especially among natives afflicted by the terrible sleeping sickness.  The letter itself consisted merely of a line, which said: 

    Won’t you give your friends, the missionaries, a good mark for this?

The writer’s name was signed, and Mark Twain answered: 

    In China the missionaries are not wanted, & so they ought to be
    decent & go away.  But I have not heard that in the Congo the
    missionary servants of God are unwelcome to the native.

Evidently those missionaries axe pitying, compassionate, kind.  How it would improve God to take a lesson from them!  He invented & distributed the germ of that awful disease among those helpless, poor savages, & now He sits with His elbows on the balusters & looks down & enjoys this wanton crime.  Confidently, & between you & me —­well, never mind, I might get struck by lightning if I said it.

    Those are good and kindly men, those missionaries, but they are a
    measureless satire upon their Master.

To which the writer answered: 

O wicked Mr. Clemens!  I have to ask Saint Joan of Arc to pray for you; then one of these days, when we all stand before the Golden Gates and we no longer “see through a glass darkly and know only in part,” there will be a struggle at the heavenly portals between Joan of Arc and St. Peter, but your blessed Joan will conquer and she’ll lead Mr. Clemens through the gates of pearl and apologize and plead for him.

Of the letters that irritated him, perhaps the following is as fair a sample as any, and it has additional interest in its sequel.

Dear sir,—­I have written a book—­naturally—­which fact, however, since I am not your enemy, need give you no occasion to rejoice.  Nor need you grieve, though I am sending you a copy.  If I knew of any way of compelling you to read it I would do so, but unless the first few pages have that effect I can do nothing.  Try the first few pages.  I have done a great deal more than that with your books, so perhaps you owe me some thing—­say ten pages.  If after that attempt you put it aside I shall be sorry—­for you.

I am afraid that the above looks flippant—­but think of the twitterings of the soul of him who brings in his hand an unbidden book, written by himself.  To such a one much is due in the way of indulgence.  Will you remember that?  Have you forgotten early twitterings of your own?

In a memorandum made on this letter Mark Twain wrote: 

    Another one of those peculiarly depressing letters—­a letter cast in
    artificially humorous form, whilst no art could make the subject
    humorous—­to me.