Mr. Howells had been granted a degree at Oxford, whose gown was red.  He had been invited to an exercise at Columbia, and upon inquiry had been told that it was usual to wear the black gown:  Later he had found that three other men wore bright gowns, and he had lamented that he had been one of the black mass, and not a red torch.

Edison wrote:  “The average American loves his family.  If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.”

Now here’s the compliment of a little Montana girl which came to me indirectly.  She was in a room in which there was a large photograph of me.  After gazing at it steadily for a time, she said: 

“We’ve got a John the Baptist like that.”  She also said:  “Only ours has more trimmings.”

I suppose she meant the halo.  Now here is a gold-miner’s compliment.  It is forty-two years old.  It was my introduction to an audience to which I lectured in a log school-house.  There were no ladies there.  I wasn’t famous then.  They didn’t know me.  Only the miners were there, with their breeches tucked into their boottops and with clay all over them.  They wanted some one to introduce me, and they selected a miner, who protested, saying: 

“I don’t know anything about this man.  Anyhow, I only know two things about him.  One is, he has never been in jail, and the other is, I don’t know why.”

There’s one thing I want to say about that English trip.  I knew his Majesty the King of England long years ago, and I didn’t meet him for the first time then.  One thing that I regret was that some newspapers said I talked with the Queen of England with my hat on.  I don’t do that with any woman.  I did not put it on until she asked me to.  Then she told me to put it on, and it’s a command there.  I thought I had carried my American democracy far enough.  So I put it on.  I have no use for a hat, and never did have.

Who was it who said that the police of London knew me?  Why, the police know me everywhere.  There never was a day over there when a policeman did not salute me, and then put up his hand and stop the traffic of the world.  They treated me as though I were a duchess.

The happiest experience I had in England was at a dinner given in the building of the Punch publication, a humorous paper which is appreciated by all Englishmen.  It was the greatest privilege ever allowed a foreigner.  I entered the dining-room of the building, where those men get together who have been running the paper for over fifty years.  We were about to begin dinner when the toastmaster said:  “Just a minute; there ought to be a little ceremony.”  Then there was that meditating silence for a while, and out of a closet there came a beautiful little girl dressed in pink, holding in her hand a copy of the previous week’s paper, which had in it my cartoon.  It broke me all up.  I could not even say “Thank you.”  That was the prettiest incident of the dinner, the delight of all that wonderful table.  When she was about to go; I said, “My child, you are not going to leave me; I have hardly got acquainted with you.”  She replied, “You know I’ve got to go; they never let me come in here before, and they never will again.”  That is one of the beautiful incidents that I cherish.