I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was back at him as quick as a flash—­“Right, your Excellency!  But I reckon a Frenchman’s got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can’t find out who his father was!”

Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on!  He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says: 

“Land, but it’s good!  It’s im-mensely good!  I’George, I never heard it said so good in my life before!  Say it again.”

So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same.  In my opinion there isn’t anything that is as killing as one of those dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh sort of original way.

But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came.  It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people.  When I found I was coming to Paris, I read ‘La Terre’.

A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

[The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review in an article entitled “Mark Twain and Paul Bourget,” by Max O’Rell.  The following little note is a Rejoinder to that article.  It is possible that the position assumed here—­that M. Bourget dictated the O’Rell article himself—­is untenable.]

You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation, if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may say it without hurt—­and certainly I mean no offence—­I believe you would have acquitted yourself better with the pen.  With the pen you are at home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm, persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect when they have earned a castigation.  But I am sure I see signs in the above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of practice.  If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more.  There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I have named the main ones.  I feel sure that they are all due to your lack of practice in dictating.

Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you had not dictated it.  But only for a moment.  Certain quite simple and definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific invitation from you or from me.  I mean, it could not except as an intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into a private dispute between friends, unasked.