[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret.  He then introduced Joseph H. Choate, saying:]

It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate.  I don’t have to really introduce him.  I don’t have to praise him, or to flatter him.  I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has ever produced.  And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five years more.  He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.  He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher in his countrymen’s esteem and affection, I would say that word whether it was true or not.

DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH

          Addressat the annual dinner of the new York post-graduate
          medical school and hospital, January 21, 1909

          The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr.
          Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.

Gentlemen and doctors,—­I am glad to be among my own kind to-night.  I was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally as deadly a profession.  It wasn’t so very long ago that I became a member of your cult, and for the time I’ve been in the business my record is one that can’t be scoffed at.

As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people.  I have always had a good deal to do with burglars—­not officially, but through their attentions to me.  I never suffered anything at the hands of a burglar.  They have invaded my house time and time again.  They never got anything.  Then those people who burglarized our house in September—­we got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been sorry ever since.  They did us a great service they scared off all the servants in the place.

I consider the Children’s Theatre, of which I am president, and the Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the country.  This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of lives which otherwise would have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months.  When I settled on my farm in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled—­and since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled still.  This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression on my community.  I suppose it is the same with all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School.  I am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.