to office, and so I beg permission to hope that you will retain Mr. Douglass in his present office of Marshall of the District of Columbia, if such a course will not clash with your own preferences or with the expediencies and interest of your administration.  I offer this petition with peculiar pleasure and strong desire, because I so honor this man’s high and blemishless character and so admire his brave, long crusade for the liberties and elevation of his race.

He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point, his
history would move me to say these things without that, and I feel them
too. 
               With great respect
                         I am, General,
                                   Yours truly,
                                        S. L. Clemens.

Clemens would go out of his way any time to grant favor to the colored race.  His childhood associations were partly accountable for this, but he also felt that the white man owed the negro a debt for generations of enforced bondage.  He would lecture any time in a colored church, when he would as likely as not refuse point-blank to speak for a white congregation.  Once, in Elmira, he received a request, poorly and none too politely phrased, to speak for one of the churches.  He was annoyed and about to send a brief refusal, when Mrs. Clemens, who was present, said: 

“I think I know that church, and if so this preacher is a colored man; he does not know how to write a polished letter—­how should he?” Her husband’s manner changed so suddenly that she added:  “I will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will adopt it:  Consider every man colored until he is proved white.”

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Feb. 27, 1881.  My dear Howells,—­I go to West Point with Twichell tomorrow, but shall be back Tuesday or Wednesday; and then just as soon thereafter as you and Mrs. Howells and Winny can come you will find us ready and most glad to see you—­and the longer you can stay the gladder we shall be.  I am not going to have a thing to do, but you shall work if you want to.  On the evening of March 10th, I am going to read to the colored folk in the African Church here (no whites admitted except such as I bring with me), and a choir of colored folk will sing jubilee songs.  I count on a good time, and shall hope to have you folks there, and Livy.  I read in Twichell’s chapel Friday night and had a most rattling high time—­but the thing that went best of all was Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby.  I mean to try that on my dusky audience.  They’ve all heard that tale from childhood —­at least the older members have.