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SPECIAL FEATURE

LONDON DAILY MAIL, October 6, 1900, p. 3.

MARK TWAIN GOES HOME.
RETURNS TO AMERICAN AFTER A NINE YEARS ABSENCE.

"My family have been away from America so long I'm afraid they may have forgotten the language of the country."

Mr. S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain) was in a reminiscent mood when a "Daily Mail" representative caught him for a few minutes yesterday in the process of packing up prior to his departure for America to-day.

"It is nine years since they left," he continued, "and though I have been back several times, this is their first return trip."

During the interim the famous humorist has travelled nearly all over the world."doing in Rome as the Romans do, and doing out of Rome as they do out of Rome," which has been the principle he has carried with him, he said, wherever he went.

"For instance, in the matter of language, he went on. "Take the word clerk. It's a long time before an American in England learns to pronounce that word as though it were spelled 'clark,' and yet that is the recognized pronunciation here, and any other is offensive to people. On the other hand, when we go back to America if we call it 'clark,' why they will say at once that we're putting on style just to show we've been in Europe."

Mr. Clemens will stay for the winter in New York, and in the spring will go to his old home in Hartford, Connecticut.

"I have paid taxes there regularly all these nine years," he added, "and I think I ought to be allowed to vote."

While a return journey next year is not a settled point in his programme, it is more than likely that he may revisit England in the summer.

"Where is there a spot on earth to compare with rural England?" he said. "The nearest approach to it I ever say was in Australia, where a section of country was laid out after the style of England, and was indeed called New England. But it did not compare after all with the Old England. No place does."