So every volume of “My Memoirs,” every “Book of my Life” conforms to the strict convention. If, for the sake of a moment's variety, we hint at the possession of a vice, it resembles those of the Vicar of Wakefield, and “leans to virtue's side.”

The American publisher, whom we had playfully dubbed “Barabbas,” told us that Mark Twain had told him that he, Mark Twain, was writing a book of reminiscences, speaking quite frankly about everybody he had met. To avoid trouble all round, Twain was instructing his executors not to publish the book until twenty years after his death. Some time later, when I came to know Mark Twain, I asked him if it were true. “Quite true,” he answered; “I am going to speak of everybody I have met, exactly as I have found them, nothing extenuating.” He also added that he might, before he left London, be asking of me a loan, and hoped that, if he did, I should not turn out to be a mean-spirited skinflint. I still think the book was a myth, put about by Mark Twain for the purpose of keeping his friends nervous, and up to the mark. A sort of a book of the kind has, it is true, been published, since I wrote this chapter; but it isn't a bit the book he threatened. Anyhow, he never turned up for that loan.

The others drifted away, one by one. The old gentleman had retired to bed. Philip asked me to stop on awhile. I was living close by, in Tavistock Place. The site of the house is now occupied by the Passmore Edwards Institute. Passmore Edwards, who was then the proprietor and editor of The Echo, the first newspaper in London published at a halfpenny, had been a great friend of my father, back in the days when they were both young men.