Work?  I retired from work on my seventieth birthday.  Since then I have been putting in merely twenty-six hours a day dictating my autobiography, which, as John Phoenix said in regard to his autograph, may be relied upon as authentic, as it is written exclusively by me.  But it is not to be published in full until I am thoroughly dead.  I have made it as caustic, fiendish, and devilish as possible.  It will fill many volumes, and I shall continue writing it until the time comes for me to join the angels.  It is going to be a terrible autobiography.  It will make the hair of some folks curl.  But it cannot be published until I am dead, and the persons mentioned in it and their children and grandchildren are dead.  It is something awful!

“Can you tell us the names of some of the notables that are here to see you off?”

I don’t know.  I am so shy.  My shyness takes a peculiar phase.  I never look a person in the face.  The reason is that I am afraid they may know me and that I may not know them, which makes it very embarrassing for both of us.  I always wait for the other person to speak.  I know lots of people, but I don’t know who they are.  It is all a matter of ability to observe things.  I never observe anything now.  I gave up the habit years ago.  You should keep a habit up if you want to become proficient in it.  For instance, I was a pilot once, but I gave it up, and I do not believe the captain of the Minneapolis would let me navigate his ship to London.  Still, if I think that he is not on the job I may go up on the bridge and offer him a few suggestions.

COLLEGE GIRLS

Five hundred undergraduates, under the auspices of the Woman’s University Club, New York, welcomed Mr. Clemens as their guest, April 3, 1906, and gave him the freedom of the club, which the chairman explained was freedom to talk individually to any girl present.

I’ve worked for the public good thirty years, so for the rest of my life I shall work for my personal contentment.  I am glad Miss Neron has fed me, for there is no telling what iniquity I might wander into on an empty stomach—­I mean, an empty mind.

I am going to tell you a practical story about how once upon a time I was blind—­a story I should have been using all these months, but I never thought about telling it until the other night, and now it is too late, for on the nineteenth of this month I hope to take formal leave of the platform forever at Carnegie Hall—­that is, take leave so far as talking for money and for people who have paid money to hear me talk.  I shall continue to infest the platform on these conditions—­that there is nobody in the house who has paid to hear me, that I am not paid to be heard, and that there will be none but young women students in the audience. [Here Mr. Clemens told the story of how he took a girl to the theatre while he was wearing tight boots, which appears elsewhere in this volume, and ended by saying:  “And now let this be a lesson to you—­I don’t know what kind of a lesson; I’ll let you think it out.”]