OBSERVE TWAIN'S BIRTHDAY
Senator Reed Extols Author of "The Prince and Pauper" at Theatre.
The eighty-fifty anniversary of Mark Twain's birth was the occasion of a celebration last night at the Booth Theatre, where a dramatization of the Twain story "The Prince and the Pauper" is being played. Following the second act William Faversham introduced James A. Reed, Senator from Missouri, Mark Twain's native State, and also read tributes from Secretary Lansing, Booth Tarkington, Mayor Hylan, John Grier Hibben and others.
"Mark Twain gave us pleasing fancies," said Senator Reed, "but he also gave to America and the world one of the most direct visions it had ever known. He saw instantly through sham and pretense of every sort. Sometimes a nation deliberately deceives itself and worships its own delusion. Mark Twain, the American, was a caustic solvent for delusion. He was wholesome. We need his mentality in America today, and in the world.
"He despised cant and held the mirror of truth toward the countenance of hypocrisy. Twain hated Kings and Queens, not for themselves, but for the false pretense they imposed on the earth."
Return to The New York Times
index
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links
| Search