Doctor McKelway paid the top compliment, the cumulation, when he said of Mr. Carnegie: 

“There is a man who wants to pay more taxes than he is charged.”  Richard Watson Gilder did very well for a poet.  He advertised his magazine.  He spoke of hiring Mr. Carnegie—­the next thing he will be trying to hire me.

If I undertook—­to pay compliments I would do it stronger than any others have done it, for what Mr. Carnegie wants are strong compliments.  Now, the other side of seventy, I have preserved, as my chiefest virtue, modesty.

ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE

          Addressat A dinner of the Manhattan dickens fellowship,
          new York city, February 7, 1906

This dinner was in commemoration of the ninety-fourth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.  On an other occasion Mr. Clemens told the same story with variations and a different conclusion to the University Settlement Society.

I always had taken an interest in young people who wanted to become poets.  I remember I was particularly interested in one budding poet when I was a reporter.  His name was Butter.

One day he came to me and said, disconsolately, that he was going to commit suicide—­he was tired of life, not being able to express his thoughts in poetic form.  Butter asked me what I thought of the idea.

I said I would; that it was a good idea.  “You can do me a friendly turn.  You go off in a private place and do it there, and I’ll get it all.  You do it, and I’ll do as much for you some time.”

At first he determined to drown himself.  Drowning is so nice and clean, and writes up so well in a newspaper.

But things ne’er do go smoothly in weddings, suicides, or courtships.  Only there at the edge of the water, where Butter was to end himself, lay a life-preserver—­a big round canvas one, which would float after the scrap-iron was soaked out of it.

Butter wouldn’t kill himself with the life-preserver in sight, and so I had an idea.  I took it to a pawnshop, and [soaked] it for a revolver:  The pawnbroker didn’t think much of the exchange, but when I explained the situation he acquiesced.  We went up on top of a high building, and this is what happened to the poet: 

He put the revolver to his forehead and blew a tunnel straight through his head.  The tunnel was about the size of your finger.  You could look right through it.  The job was complete; there was nothing in it.

Well, after that that man never could write prose, but he could write poetry.  He could write it after he had blown his brains out.  There is lots of that talent all over the country, but the trouble is they don’t develop it.

I am suffering now from the fact that I, who have told the truth a good many times in my life, have lately received more letters than anybody else urging me to lead a righteous life.  I have more friends who want to see me develop on a high level than anybody else.