The announcement of the death of Mark Twain yesterday will be received with sorrow all over the world. His kindly humor won for him a unique place in American life. Aside from his literary work he was known and appreciated. Domestic sorrow weighed heavily on him, and the recent death of his close friend, Mr. H. H. Rogers, accentuated his burden of sorrows. Even so, Mark Twain was cheerful to the end, his optimism being present to the last. He will be greatly missed. There is no other to take his place.

We are now told by one of Mark Twain's publishers that the author probably left a fortune of more than a million dollars. It is estimated that over 5,000,000 of the humorist's books have been published in America, and abroad he was the best known and most widely read of all contemporaneous American authors, his works having been translated into many tongues. The publisher quoted says that the books of no other author, living or dead, are selling more rapidly to-day and he also tells us that no other author received more per work for his stories or was paid higher royalties for them in book form.

Acceptable information this, not only because all of us loved Mark Twain and rejoice to know that his labors were substantially rewarded, but because it is gratifying to discover that it is possible for a man to make a million dollars honestly, and with a pen! It may be just as well to note, however, that it was not the desire to make money which caused Mark Twain to adopt literature as a career.