GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

          ADDRESS AT A FAIR HELD AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK, IN
          OCTOBER, 1900, IN AID OF THE ORPHANS AT GALVESTON

I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and
would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a text
for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is proverbial
with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not come here,
and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without a text.  I
have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome faces, and--
but I won't continue that, for I could go on forever about attractive
faces, beautiful dresses, and other things.  But, after all, compliments
should be in order in a place like this.

I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition
of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being to
regulate the moral and political situation on this planet--put it on a
sound basis--and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it
requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you
have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position of
corking.  When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as
though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please
consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this, is
not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before.

When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the
elevated road.  Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it
there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about
fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye--a beautiful
eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had
a vocation.  He had with him a very fine little child of about four or
five years.  I was watching the affection which existed between those
two.  I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps.  It was really a pretty
child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her
he began to notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody
else would do--admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get
four times as much of his admiration.  Things went on very pleasantly.
I was making my way into his heart.

By-and-by, when he almost reached the station where he was to get off,
he got up, crossed over, and he said: "Now I am going to say something to
you which I hope you will regard as a compliment."  And then he went on
to say: "I have never seen Mark Twain, but I have seen a portrait of him,
and any friend of mine will tell you that when I have once seen a
portrait of a man I place it in my eye and store it away in my memory,
and I can tell you now that you look enough like Mark Twain to be his
brother.  Now," he said, "I hope you take this as a compliment.  Yes, you
are a very good imitation; but when I come to look closer, you are
probably not that man."

I said: "I will be frank with you.  In my desire to look like that
excellent character I have dressed for the character; I have been playing
a part."

He said: "That is all right, that is all right; you look very well on the
outside, but when it comes to the inside you are not in it with the
original"

So when I come to a place like this with nothing valuable to say I always
play a part.  But I will say before I sit down that when it comes to
saying anything here I will express myself in this way: I am heartily in
sympathy with you in your efforts to help those who were sufferers in
this calamity, and in your desire to heap those who were rendered
homeless, and in saying this I wish to impress on you the fact that I am
not playing a part.