Complete Letters of Mark Twain

XXVIII. Letters,1888. A Yale Degree. Work On “The Yankee.” On Interviewing, etc

Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888. Editor of the Courant, Charles H. Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title. Clarke was an old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly.

*****

To Charles H. Clarke, in Hartford:

Elmira, July 2, ’88.

My dear Charles, – Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation intentions. I shall be ready for you. I feel mighty proud of that degree; in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain of it. And why shouldn’t I be? – I am the only literary animal of my particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in any age of the world, as far as I know.

Sincerely Yours,

S. L. Clemens M. A.

Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens:

My dear friend, You are “the only literary animal of your particular subspecies” in existence and you’ve no cause for humility in the fact. Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and “Don’t you forget it.”

C. H. C.

With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882. Mark Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting. Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old times and for old river comrades. Major “Jack” Downing had been a Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town. Clemens had not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the following answer.

*****

To Major “Jack” Downing, in Middleport Ohio:

Elmira, N. Y.(no month) 1888.

Dear major, – And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak? For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your name.

And how young you’ve grown! I was a mere boy when I knew you on the river, where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a year and a half older than I am! I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and get 30 or 40 years knocked off my age. It’s manifestly the place that Ponce de Leon was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail.

Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in November. I propose to go down the river and “note the changes” once more before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there. Will you? I want to see all the boys that are left alive.

And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet? A mighty good fellow, and smart too. When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers, which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting such a thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I resigned in Marsh’s favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration. We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority. I always had good judgement, more judgement than talent, in fact.

No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way. Capt. Sellers used the signature, “Mark Twain,” himself, when he used to write up the antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans Picayune. He hated me for burlesquing them in an article in the True Delta; so four years later when he died, I robbed the corpse – that is I confiscated the nom de plume. I have published this vital fact 3,000 times now. But no matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact that I can tell the same way every time. Very glad, indeed, to hear from you Major, and shall be gladder still to see you in November.

Truly yours,

S. L. Clemens.

He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year. He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.

Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings, more generously considerate of the senders. Louis Pendleton was a young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost precious time, thought, and effort. It must have rejoiced the young man’s heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young authors held supreme.

*****

To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:

Elmira, N. Y., Aug. 4, ’88.

My dear sir, – I found your letter an hour ago among some others which had lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to read Ariadne. Stole is the right word, for the summer “Vacation” is the only chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is borrowed, it is stolen. But this time I do not repent. As a rule, people don’t send me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing – which looks uncourteous. But I thank you. Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying story; and true, too – which is the best part of a story; or indeed of any other thing. Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent liars; I mean in their private^[34] intervals. (I struck that word out because a man’s private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always; what he speaks – but these be platitudes.)

If you want me to pick some flaws – very well – but I do it unwillingly. I notice one thing – which one may notice also in my books, and in all books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement or Expression. If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence – it is almost proof – that your words were not as clear as they should have been. True, it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror. I would have hung the pail on Ariadne’s arm. You did not deceive me when you said that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn’t; still it was not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture. If the pail had been a portfolio, I wouldn’t be making these remark. The engraver of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises – and then revises, and revises, and revises; and then repeats. And always the charm of that picture grows, under his hand. It was good enough before – told its story, and was beautiful. True: and a lovely girl is lovely, with freckles; but she isn’t at her level best with them.

This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.

So much concerning exactness of statement. In that other not-small matter – selection of the exact single word – you are hard to catch. Still, I should hold that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no occasion for concealment; that “motive” implied a deeper mental search than she expended on the matter; that it doesn’t reflect the attitude of her mind with precision. Is this hypercriticism? I shan’t dispute it. I only say, that if Mrs. Walker didn’t go so far as to have a motive, I had to suggest that when a word is so near the right one that a body can’t quite tell whether it is or isn’t, it’s good politics to strike it out and go for the Thesaurus. That’s all. Motive may stand; but you have allowed a snake to scream, and I will not concede that that was the best word.

I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can. They would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to you, said once.

I save the other stories for my real vacation – which is nine months long, to my sorrow. I thank you again.

Truly Yours,

S. L. Clemens.

In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine, the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and holding out false hopes of relief and golden return. The program here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet, with the end always in sight, but never quite attained.

*****

To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:

Oct. 3, ’88.

Private.

Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days’ work to do on the machine.

We can use 4 men, but not constantly. If they could work constantly it would complete the machine in 21 days, of course. They will all be on hand and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is opportunity for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the 21 days, nobody can tell.

*****

To-day I pay Pratt & Whitney $10,000. This squares back indebtedness and everything to date. They began about May or April or March 1886—along there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen master-hands on the machine.

That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak and caulk it. Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a conclusion.

Love to you both. All well here.

And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea.

Sam.

Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on ’The Yankee at King Arthur’s Court’, a book which he had begun two years before. He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction. Also it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set to work to finish the Yankee story. He had worked pretty steadily that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell’s, where carpenter work was in progress. He seems to have worked there successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult to say.

*****

To Theodore W. Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N. Y.

Friday, Oct.,5, ’88.

Dear Theo, – I am here in Twichell’s house at work, with the noise of the children and an army of carpenters to help. Of course they don’t help, but neither do they hinder. It’s like a boiler-factory for racket, and in nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles my feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of relief without knowing when I do it. I began here Monday morning, and have done eighty pages since. I was so tired last night that I thought I would lie abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn’t resist. I mean to try to knock off tomorrow, but it’s doubtful if I do. I want to finish the day the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that indicated Oct. 22—but experience teaches me that their calculations will miss fire, as usual.

The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to furnish the money – a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea. She said: “We haven’t got any money. Children, if you would think, you would remember the machine isn’t done.”

It’s billiards to-night. I wish you were here.

With love to you both,

S. L. C.

P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn’t the children, it was Marie. She wanted a box of blacking, for the children’s shoes. Jean reproved her – and said:

“Why, Marie, you mustn’t ask for things now. The machine isn’t done.”

S. L. C.

The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal. There is today no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written, but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief value.

*****

To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:

Hartford, Nov 4, ’88.

Dear will, – I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves, examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings – unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not uninfluenced by them. Here was the near presence of the two supreme events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death which is the end of it. I found myself seeking chances to shirk into corners where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought, was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it. A long procession of people filed through my mind – people whom you and I knew so many years ago – so many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of the house; and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a procession of the dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was, and to me there was nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome faces to me. I would have liked to bring up every creature we knew in those days – even the dumb animals – it would be bathing in the fabled Fountain of Youth.

We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might, but your words deny us that privilege. To die one’s self is a thing that must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one’s self – well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.

Sincerely your friend,

S. L. Clemens.

His next is of quite a different nature. Evidently the typesetting conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies with a view of retrenchment. Orion was always reducing economy to science. Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted. Orion was a trial, certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse. Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds. Mark Twain’s rages always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more than Orion himself would appreciate. He preserved this letter, quietly noting on the envelope, “Letter from Sam, about ma’s nurse.”

Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

Nov. 29, ’88.

Jesus Christ! – It is perilous to write such a man. You can go crazy on less material than anybody that ever lived. What in hell has produced all these maniacal imaginings? You told me you had hired an attendant for ma. Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves. Hire the attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co. to add it every month to what they already send. Don’t fool away any more time about this. And don’t write me any more damned rot about “storms,” and inability to pay trivial sums of money and – and – hell and damnation! You see I’ve read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn’t read the rest for a million dollars.

Yr,

Sam.

P. S. Don’t imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear. I swear all day, but I do not lose my temper. And don’t imagine that I am on my way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am not; or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy – for I never am. I don’t know what it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn how, at this late day.

Sam.

Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them. “What I say in an interview loses it character in print,” he often remarked, “all its life and personality. The reporter realizes this himself, and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn’t help matters any.”

Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal, was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of “Bok’s Literary Leaves.” It usually consisted of news and gossip of writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional interviews with distinguished authors. He went up to Hartford one day to interview Mark Twain. The result seemed satisfactory to Bok, but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens, he sent him a copy for approval. The interview was not returned; in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as the reader may believe.

*****

To Edward W. Bok, in New York:

My dear Mr. Bok, – No, no. It is like most interviews, pure twaddle and valueless.

For several quite plain and simple reasons, an “interview” must, as a rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason – It is an attempt to use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is the proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn’t for the former. The moment “talk” is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from it. That is its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your hands. Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of the voice, the laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that body warmth, grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to your affections – or, at least, to your tolerance – is gone and nothing is left but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.

Such is “talk” almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an “interview”. The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there. When one writes for print his methods are very different. He follows forms which have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader understand what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and difficult thing. “If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,” said Alfred, “taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance upon the company, blood would have flowed.”

“If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,” said Hawkwood, with that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty assemblage to quake, “blood would have flowed.”

“If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,” said the paltry blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, “blood would have flowed.”

So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud confession that print is a poor vehicle for “talk”; it is a recognition that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader, not instruction.

Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated. Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether. Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can convey many meanings to the reader, but never the right one. To add interpretations which would convey the right meaning is a something which would require – what? An art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.

No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is rubbish. I wouldn’t talk in my sleep if I couldn’t talk better than that.

If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some value, for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.

Very sincerely yours,

Mark Twain.

XXIX. Letters, 1889. The Machine. Death Of Mr. Crane. Conclusion Of The Yankee

In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine. Paige, the inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches. The mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch – the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world. To George Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: “The machine is finished!” and added, “This is by far the most marvelous invention ever contrived by man. And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made of massive steel, and will last a century.”

In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters. They were more or less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation here.

*****

To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:

Hartford, Jan. 5, ’89.

Dear Orion, – At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was spaced and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of the world! And I was there to see. It was done automatically – instantly – perfectly. This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever was perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on this earth.

This was the last function that remained to be tested – and so by long odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain of man stands completed and perfect. Livy is down stairs celebrating.

But it’s a cunning devil, is that machine! – and knows more than any man that ever lived. You shall see. We made the test in this way. We set up a lot of random letters in a stick – three-fourths of a line; then filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be 35/1000 of an inch thick. Then we threw aside the quads and put the letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words, leaving the words separated by two-inch vacancies. Then we started up the machine slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting pins. The first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came traveling along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third block projected its second pin!

“Oh, hell! stop the machine – something wrong – it’s going to set a 30/1000 space!”

General consternation. “A foreign substance has got into the spacing plates.” This from the head mathematician.

“Yes, that is the trouble,” assented the foreman.

Paige examined. “No – look in, and you can see that there’s nothing of the kind.” Further examination. “Now I know what it is – what it must be: one of those plates projects and binds. It’s too bad – the first test is a failure.” A pause. “Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work – take the machine down. – No – Hold on! don’t touch a thing! Go right ahead! We are fools, the machine isn’t. The machine knows what it’s about. There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine is putting in a thinner space to allow for it!”

That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line, justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and perfect! We took it out and examined it with a glass. You could not tell by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but the glass and the calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.

All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth – the first justification of a line of movable type by machinery – and also set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had drank anything, and yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned.

All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle. Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines, Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright’s frames – all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone and far in the lead of human inventions.

In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.

Return me this letter when you have read it.

Sam.

Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk! Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford – for a time.

Then further delays. Before the machine got “the stiffness out of her joints” that “cunning devil” manifested a tendency to break the types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.

There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring. Theodore Crane, who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse. In February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious. Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him cheering and amusing incidents.

*****

To Mrs. Theodore Crane in Elmira, N. Y.:

Hartford, May 28, ’89.

Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore. You know how absent-minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in that frame. At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the street and is not aware of the meeting at all. Twice in a week, our Clara had this latter experience with him within the past month. But the second instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks, with a reproach. She said:

“Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into the grave, when you meet a person on the street?”—and then went on to reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such occasions. Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth. As soon as he sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven.

With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.

S. L. C.

The reference in the next to the “closing sentence” in a letter written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a heart-broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter Winnie, who had died some time before. She had been a gentle talented girl, but never of robust health. Her death had followed a long period of gradual decline.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Hartford, Judy 13, ’89.

Dear Howells, – I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a house of mourning. Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had always hoped for a swift death. Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen years ago, when Mr. Langdon died. It is heart-breaking to see Mrs. Crane. Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing sentence of your last letter to me. I do see that there is an argument against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.

I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the servants. Can’t Mrs. Howells spare you to me? Can’t you come and stay with me? The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find the Children’s schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection of a retired and silent den for work. There isn’t a fly or a mosquito on the estate. Come – say you will.

With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,

Yours Ever,

Mark.

Howells was more hopeful. He wrote: “I read something in a strange book, The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel.” And a few days later, he wrote: “I would rather see and talk with you than any other man in the world outside my own blood.”

A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court was brought to an end that year and given to the artist and printer. Dan Beard was selected for the drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.

*****

To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster^[35] & Co.:

Elmira, July 20, ’89.

Dear Mr. Hall, – Upon reflection – thus: tell Beard to obey his own inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly unhampered, I shan’t have fears as to the result. They will be better pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own trade.

Send this note and he’ll understand.

Yr,

S. L. C.

Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the illustrations. He was well qualified for the work, and being of a socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it. When the drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: “Hold me under permanent obligations. What luck it was to find you! There are hundreds of artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was only one who could illustrate this one. Yes, it was a fortunate hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor. Live forever!”

Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and Mrs. Clemens particularly so. Her eyes were giving her trouble that summer, so that she could not read the Ms. for herself, and she had grave doubts as to some of its chapters. It may be said here that the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able to read it. Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps somewhat blinded to its literary defects. However, this is premature. Howells did not at once see the story. He had promised to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his visit impossible. From the next letter we get the situation at this time. The “Mr. Church” mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the well-known artist.