Commenting further, he said: 

As I have remarked before about one thousand times the coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one another; for we are all beggars, each in his own way.  One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction into society; another does not care for society, but he wants a postmastership; another will inveigle a lawyer into conversation and then sponge on him for free advice.  The man who wouldn’t do any of these things will beg for the Presidency.  Each admires his own dignity and greatly guards it, but in his opinion the others haven’t any.

Mendicancy is a matter of taste and temperament, no doubt, but no human being is without some form of it.  I know my own form, you know yours.  Let us conceal them from view and abuse the others.  There is no man so poor but what at intervals some man comes to him with an ax to grind.  By and by the ax’s aspect becomes familiar to the proprietor of the grindstone.  He perceives that it is the same old ax.  If you are a governor you know that the stranger wants an office.  The first time he arrives you are deceived; he pours out such noble praises of you and your political record that you are moved to tears; there’s a lump in your throat and you are thankful that you have lived for this happiness.  Then the stranger discloses his ax, and you are ashamed of yourself and your race.  Six repetitions will cure you.  After that you interrupt the compliments and say, “Yes, yes, that’s all right; never mind about that.  What is it you want?”

But you and I are in the business ourselves.  Every now and then we carry our ax to somebody and ask a whet.  I don’t carry mine to strangers—­I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way.  This is bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down in cold rebuke on persons who carry their axes to strangers.

I do not know how to answer that stranger’s letter.  I wish he had spared me.  Never mind about him—­I am thinking about myself.  I wish he had spared me.  The book has not arrived yet; but no matter, I am prejudiced against it.

It was a few days later that he added: 

I wrote to that man.  I fell back upon the old Overworked, polite lie, and thanked him for his book and said I was promising myself the pleasure of reading it.  Of course that set me free; I was not obliged to read it now at all, and, being free, my prejudice was gone, and as soon as the book came I opened it to see what it was like.  I was not able to put it down until I had finished.  It was an embarrassing thing to have to write to that man and confess that fact, but I had to do it.  That first letter was merely a lie.  Do you think I wrote the second one to give that man pleasure?  Well, I did, but it was second-hand pleasure.  I wrote it first to give myself comfort, to make myself forget the original lie.

Mark Twain’s interest was once aroused by the following: