It was like leaving the dead to mingle with the living:  it was like withdrawing from the infant class in the College of journalism to sit under the lectures in English literature in Columbia University.

I wonder who wrote Quentin Durward? 
                                   Yrs ever
          
                                   mark.

In 1903, preparations were going on for a great world’s fair, to be held in St. Louis, and among other features proposed was a World’s Literary Convention, with a week to be set apart in honor of Mark Twain, and a special Mark Twain Day in it, on which the National Association would hold grand services in honor of the distinguished Missourian.  A letter asking his consent to the plan brought the following reply.

To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri: 

NewYork, May 30, 1903.  Dear Mr. Gatts,—­It is indeed a high compliment which you offer me in naming an association after me and in proposing the setting apart of a Mark Twain day at the great St. Louis fair, but such compliments are not proper for the living; they are proper and safe for the dead only.  I value the impulse which moves you to tender me these honors.  I value it as highly as any one can, and am grateful for it, but I should stand in a sort of terror of the honors themselves.  So long as we remain alive we are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships.

I hope that no society will be named for me while I am still alive, for I might at some time or other do something which would cause its members to regret having done me that honor.  After I shall have joined the dead I shall follow the customs of those people and be guilty of no conduct that can wound any friend; but until that time shall come I shall be a doubtful quantity like the rest of our race. 
                              Very truly yours,
                                        S. L. Clemens.

The National Mark Twain Association did not surrender easily.  Mr.
Gatts wrote a second letter full of urgent appeal.  If Mark Twain
was tempted, we get no hint of it in his answer.

To T. F. Gatts, of Missouri: 

NewYork, June 8, 1903.  Dear Mr. Gatts,—­While I am deeply touched by the desire of my friends of Hannibal to confer these great honors upon me, I must still forbear to accept them.  Spontaneous and unpremeditated honors, like those which came to me at Hannibal, Columbia, St. Louis and at the village stations all down the line, are beyond all price and are a treasure for life in the memory, for they are a free gift out of the heart and they come without solicitations; but I am a Missourian and so I shrink from distinctions which have to be arranged beforehand and with my privity, for I then became a party to