Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 297, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1912 — TWAIN HAD HIS REVENGE [ARTICLE]

TWAIN HAD HIS REVENGE

How Great American Humorist Got Baok at Chum Who Bald He Was Lazy. When the great man "arrives” the associates of bis boyhood days, who used to iaugh at the idea of hls ever “amounting to anything,” retire unobtrusively to the background. But when the opportunity arises to make an example of some such skeptlcaT old friend, surely no one could rise to the occasion more effectively than did Mark Twain on the occasion described by Albert Bigelow Paine. He came to Keokuk to visit, and was offered five dollars a week and board to remain. He accepted. In the same building was a book store, in which a young man named Edward Brownell clerked. He and Sam Clemens became great charms. Sam read at odd moments at night in bed, voluminously, until very late sometimes. One night Ed Brownell, passing upstairs, to his. room on the fourth floor, poked hls head In at the door. * . “What are you reading, Sam?” he asked. “O, nothing orach —a so-called funny book. One of these days Til write a funnier book than that myself.” Brownell laughed. "No, you won’t Sam,” he said. “You are too lazy ever to write a book.” A good many years later, when the name “Mark Twain” had begun to stand for American humor, the owner of It gave hls “Spanish Islands” lecture in Keokuk. Speaking of the unreliability of the. islanders, he said: “The king is, I believe, the greatest liar on the face of the earth, except one; and I am sorry to locate that one right hers In the city of Keokuk la the person of Ed Brownell.” —Youth’s Companion.