We regret to record the death of Mark Twain, which
took place at Redding, Connecticut, on Thursday evening. In him the world loses a great deal more than a humorist. He was that in a very high and original degree, but he was also a great humanist. Though not a man of learning, he had in him the spirit of letters. His were essentially "lips that uttered nothing base." The mass of his literary work was very great, but he never wrote a line that he had cause to be ashamed of. Not only was hie gift of comedy and satire never used to demoralise, but he never employed it for base or personal ends,—to hunt down a rival or to disparage a private enemy, or, again, to praise or flatter the unworthy. Every speaker of the English tongue has a right to be proud of him. His good temper and good heart were shown to the very end. There was something delightfully characteristic in his last joke made only a few days ago. When the illness from which he died began, he told an inquiring reporter that, though his condition was not good, it was not such as to be "exciting to an undertaker."
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