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The New York Times, November 24, 1906

BAR MARK TWAIN'S BOOK.

A Massachusetts Librarian Draws the Line at "Eve's Diary."

Special to The New York Times.

WORCESTER, Mass., Nov. 23--"Eve's Diary," by Mark Twain, a copy of which is among 100 books recently bought for Charlton Public Library, has been barred by Frank O. Wakefield, one of the Trustees. The other Trustees, the Rev. G. O. Jenness and Lewis A. McIntyre, concur with him. The other ninety and nine books are all right, but this one book Mr. Wakefield says, is objectionable. That is because there are pictures in the book of a kind to which Mr. Wakefield objects.

Before "Eve's Diary" could go on the circulating shelves, the Librarian, Mrs. H. L. Carpenter, looked it through. She saw the pictures and made known to Mr. Wakefield that she "had her doubts."

On every left-hand page is a picture, fifty of which represent Eve in Summer costume. Her dresses are all cut Garden of Eden style. In one of them Eve is seen skipping through the bushes unrestrained and not at all afraid. The bushes do not seriously cut off the view of Eve.

After looking long and earnestly at on picture depicting Eve pensively reclining on a rock, Mr. Wakefield decided to act.

_____

Mr. Clemens sent out word last night to a TIMES reporter who conveyed to him the substance of this dispatch, that the action of the Charlton library was not of the slightest interest to him.

 

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