March 5 Saturday – The New York Times ran “English Praise Mark Twain,” p. 7 datelined Mar. 5, likely from the London Times:

ENGLISH PRAISE MARK TWAIN

Dr. McAlister Eulogizes his Conduct

In Paying His Webster & Co. Debts.

LONDON, March 5.—The English press has universally printed praises of the statement that Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) has paid the last of his Webster & Co. debts. Dr. McAlister, writing to The Times on the subject, says:

“With the exception of the historical case of Sir Walter Scott, I do not think there is to be found in the records of literature anything quite equal to Mark Twain’s conduct [Note: this may be from the brief article in the London Academy of the same date—see Tenney, p.28]

Literary Digest (N.Y.) quoted a Westminster Gazette citation of correspondence in the (British) Methodist Times recommending MT’s New Pilgrim’s Progress (IA), but only for “the reader who understands the difference between American humor and lying”; he will find beneath the joking “the mind of a ‘cute, observant, and—yes—reverent traveler in the Holy Land’” [Tenney 28].