July 11 Saturday – The New York Times, “Topics of the Week,” p. BR385, led off with the following paragraph about Elinor Glyn and Mark Twain:

ELINOR GLYN’S decision, after carefully sifting the evidence, that Mark Twain is our most distinguished citizen, is valuable. It helps to adjust our appreciation of contemporary genius. Mrs. Glyn has a report, written by herself from memory, of some private remarks by Mr. Clemens, which she is going to print in the future. She might better print it now, as Mark would not mind, and what he says is generally timely, and belongs particularly to the moment of its utterance. But Mark has already placed her transcription of his words in the class with “approximations, synopsized speeches, translated poems, artificial flowers, and chromos.” Nevertheless she thinks that his eyes indicate hidden beauties of character. He impressed her more favorably than President Roosevelt did, who she thinks, might have read “Three Weeks” and not liked it. This would indicate the possession of a “bourgeois soul.” Mrs. Glyn, because of one silly, overwrought book, is now on the top wave of popularity, so far as interviews, newspaper portraiture, and cable dispatches signify popularity. She is the subject of common talk. Yet her first work, “The Visits of Elizabeth,” a trifle and not of an elevating character, remains her best book, and nothing she has done is of world-wide importance.

“Mark Twain’s Pastor: Some Stories of Samuel L. Clemens,” ran in the Daily Graphic (London) [Tenney 45].