“Better leave the humor on this paper to me, Lamed”; and once when Lamed was away attending the Republican State Convention at Saratoga, and some editorial comment seemed necessary, Clemens thought it best to sign the utterance, and to make humor of his shortcomings.

    I do not know much about politics, and am not sitting up nights to
    learn . . . .

I am satisfied that these nominations are all right and sound, and that they are the only ones that can bring peace to our distracted country (the only political phrase I am perfectly familiar with and competent to hurl at the public with fearless confidence—­the other editor is full of them), but being merely satisfied is not enough.  I always like to know before I shout.  But I go for Mr. Curtis with all my strength!  Being certain of him, I hereby shout all I know how.  But the others may be a split ticket, or a scratched ticket, or whatever you call it.

I will let it alone for the present.  It will keep.  The other young man will be back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no split, rest assured of that.  He will prance into this political ring with his tomahawk and his war-whoop, and then you will hear a crash and see the scalps fly.  He has none of my diffidence.  He knows all about these nominees, and if he don’t he will let on to in such a natural way as to deceive the most critical.  He knows everything—­he knows more than Webster’s Unabridged and the American Encyclopedia—­but whether he knows anything about a subject or not he is perfectly willing to discuss it.  When he gets back he will tell you all about these candidates as serenely as if he had been acquainted with them a hundred years, though, speaking confidentially, I doubt if he ever heard of any of them till to-day.  I am right well satisfied it is a good, sound, sensible ticket, and a ticket to win; but wait till he comes.

    In the mean time I go for George William Curtis and take the
    chances. 
                                Mark twain.

He had become what Mr. Howells calls entirely “desouthernized” by this time.  From having been of slaveholding stock, and a Confederate soldier, he had become a most positive Republican, a rampant abolitionist—­had there been anything left to abolish.  His sympathy had been always with the oppressed, and he had now become their defender.  His work on the paper revealed this more and more.  He wrote fewer sketches and more editorials, and the editorials were likely to be either savage assaults upon some human abuse, or fierce espousals of the weak.  They were fearless, scathing, terrific.  Of some farmers of Cohocton, who had taken the law into their own hands to punish a couple whom they believed to be a detriment to the community, he wrote: 

“The men who did that deed are capable of doing any low, sneaking, cowardly villainy that could be invented in perdition.  They are the very bastards of the devil.”