He appended a full list of their names, and added: 

“If the farmers of Cohocton are of this complexion, what on earth must a Cohocton rough be like?”

But all this happened a long time ago, and we need not detail those various old interests and labors here.  It is enough to say that Mark Twain on the Express was what he had been from the beginning, and would be to the end—­the zealous champion of justice and liberty; violent and sometimes wrong in his viewpoint, but never less than fearless and sincere.  Invariably he was for the oppressed.  He had a natural instinct for the right, but, right or wrong, he was for the under dog.

Among the best of his editorial contributions is a tribute to Anson Burlingame, who died February 23, 1870, at St. Petersburg, on his trip around the world as special ambassador for the Chinese Empire.  In this editorial Clemens endeavored to pay something of his debt to the noble statesman.  He reviewed Burlingame’s astonishing career—­the career which had closed at forty-seven, and read like a fairy-tale-and he dwelt lovingly on his hero’s nobility of character.  At the close he said: 

“He was a good man, and a very, very great man.  America, lost a son, and all the world a servant, when he died.”

Among those early contributions to the Express is a series called “Around the World,” an attempt at collaboration with Prof.  D. R. Ford, who did the actual traveling, while Mark Twain, writing in the first person, gave the letters his literary stamp.  At least some of the contributions were written in this way, such as “Adventures in Hayti,” “The Pacific,” and “Japan.”  These letters exist to-day only in the old files of the Express, and indeed this is the case with most of Clemens’s work for that paper.  It was mainly ephemeral or timely work, and its larger value has disappeared.  Here and there is a sentence worth remembering.  Of two practical jokers who sent in a marriage notice of persons not even contemplating matrimony, he said:  “This deceit has been practised maliciously by a couple of men whose small souls will escape through their pores some day if they do not varnish their hides.”

Some of the sketches have been preserved.  “Journalism in Tennessee,” one of the best of his wilder burlesques, is as enjoyable to-day as when written.  “A Curious Dream” made a lasting impression on his Buffalo readers, and you are pretty certain to hear of it when you mention Mark Twain in that city to-day.  It vividly called attention to the neglect of the old North Street graveyard.  The gruesome vision of the ancestors deserting with their coffins on their backs was even more humiliating than amusing, and inspired a movement for reform.  It has been effective elsewhere since then, and may still be read with profit—­or satisfaction —­for in a note at the end the reader is assured that if the cemeteries of his town are kept in good order the dream is not leveled at his town at all, but “particularly and venomously at the next town.”