[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw myself, confidently dubbed “Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain” in the next issue of that journal without a pang—­notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]

By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my mail matter.  This form was common: 

     How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which
     was beging.  Pol.  Pry.

And this: 

     There is things which you Have done which is unbeknowens to anybody
     but me.  You better trot out a few dots, to yours truly, or you’ll
     hear through the papers from
                                             handy Andy.

This is about the idea.  I could continue them till the reader was surfeited, if desirable.

Shortly the principal Republican journal “convicted” me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper “nailed” an aggravated case of blackmailing to me.

[In this way I acquired two additional names:  “Twain the Filthy Corruptionist” and “Twain the Loathsome Embracer.”]

By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an “answer” to all the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer.  As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day: 

Behold the man!—­The independent candidate still maintains silence.  Because he dare not speak.  Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted.  Look upon your candidate, Independents!  Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher!  Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your Loathsome Embracer!  Gaze upon him—­ponder him well—­and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!

There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep humiliation, I set about preparing to “answer” a mass of baseless charges and mean and wicked falsehoods.  But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house.  This threw me into a sort of panic.  Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened.  This drove me to the verge of distraction.  On top of this I was accused of employing toothless