BIG TWAIN EXHIBIT COLLECTED IN ST. LOUIS
Letters, Books and Relics Are Loaned by Many Collectors at Home an Abroad.
Special to The New York Times.
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 30. - One of the most comprehensive exhibits of Mark Twain letters, books and relics ever brought together will be opened Tuesday at the Jefferson Memorial under the auspices of the Missouri Historical Society.
It was started several months ago when Cyril Clemens, president of the Mark Twain Society and a distant cousin of the humorist, loaned his collection for public exhibition purposes.
Mrs. Nettie Beauregard, curator of the Missouri Historical Society, asked other local Twain devotees to loan their collections, with the result that the exhibition assumed world-wide popularity. Owners of the famous Missourian's letters, mementoes and books all over the world have sent them to St. Louis. The exhibition marks Samuel Clemens's ninety-third birth anniversary.
The Wadsworth Atheneum and Morgan Memorial of Hartford, Conn., have sent a bronze bust of Mark Twain by Louis Potter, which is one of the best in existence. A drive to raise $150,000 to buy the old Clemens home in Hartford for a public historical building is soon to be launched by citizens of that town.
One of the unique letters received was written in Germany by Mark Twain, Feb.
2, 1898, in Kaltenleutgeben, near Vienna, to the famous author Siegmund Schlesinger,
with whom he was planning to write a play. It is one of the few letters written
by Mark Twain in German and is the property of Otto Hahn of West Orange, N.J.
