Mark Twain.


P.S.--For the best Obituary--one suitable for me to read in public,
and calculated to inspire regret--I desire to offer a Prize,
consisting of a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink
without previous instructions. The ink warranted to be the kind
used by the very best artists.






A MONUMENT TO ADAM



Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested
to Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up
a monument to Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project.
There is more to it than that. The matter started as a joke,
but it came somewhat near to materializing.

It is long ago--thirty years. Mr. Darwin's DESCENT OF MAN has been
in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised
by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing
the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had
left Adam out altogether. We had monkeys, and "missing links,"