

Mark Twain's Friendship with Hellen Keller - magda_wang
http://www.openculture.com/2015/05/mark-twain-helen-kellers-special-friendship.html

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ableal
(Quoted from the very end of the piece, split in two because I have very
important comments to make ;-)

 _Keller’s praise of her friend Twain was no less lofty. “I have been in Eden
three days and I saw a King,” she wrote in his guestbook during her visit to
Stormfield, “I knew he was a King the minute I touched him though I had never
touched a King before.”_

Interesting that such a firebrand would feel that way about a king. Certainly
not the standard prevalent republican view ...

 _The last words in Twain’s autobiography, the first volume anyway—which he
only allowed to be published in 2010—are Keller’s; “You once told me you were
a pessimist, Mr. Clemons,” he quotes her as saying, “but great men are usually
mistaken about themselves. You are an optimist.”_

If Mr. Clemens were an optimist, he'd be bitter and disappointed that a piece
about him could not go to print with his name spelled correctly. As a
pessimist, he'd expect it and laugh it off.

