The Jasper Weekly Courier

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

—Mark Twain is said by one who knows him well to be the most miserable of men. He is possessed of a wild, mad fear that ill-luck is bound to overtake him and deprive him of his fortune. It is said that he shed tears of despair when an old fourteen-dollar cow died a short time ago.

—Mrs. Delano A. Goddard, who died in Boston, was a lady of fine literary attainments and a linguist of unusual accomplishments. She was for many years the Boston correspondent of the Worcester Spy, and a part of her literary work was the compilation, with Harriet W. Preston, of a volume of poems, "Sea and Shore."

—They say Thomas Hood first planned the phonograph; as witness, this, from his "Comic Annual" for 1839: "In this century of inventions, when a self-acting drawing-paper has been discovered, for copying visible objects, who knows but that a future Niepce, or Daguerre, or Herschel, or Fox Talbott, may find out some sort of Boswellish writing paper, to repeat whatever it hears."

—Toward the end of his life, it is said, Charles Reade was accustomed to dictate his compositions to a secretary while he paced the room, suiting his actions to his words. In "Love and Money" the remark occurs in the dialogue, "There's a smut on your nose." The great dramatist gave the original exclamation off with such perfect intonation and gesture that his secretary was for once deceived. He rose, went to the mirror, handkerchief in hand, only to be laughed at by his employer.—N. Y. Tribune.

—An old book has just come to light which was written by Jay Gould, the railway magnate, before he was known to fame. It is entitled "A History of Delaware County and the Border Wars of New York." The book is loud in denunciation of aristocrats, and in praise of liberty, honest men and manual toil, containing, among other things, this sentiment:

"The noblest men I know in earth
Are men whose hands are brown with toil:
Who, backed by no ancestral graves,
Hew down the woods and till the soil.
And win thereby a prouder fame
Than follow kings' and warriors' name"

—General Lew Wallace and his wife are both handy with the pen, and busy with it, too, having each sent out two books during the year just ended. They made money. The Harrison biography, by the General, was well paid for, and the "Boyhood of Christ," a high-priced holiday book, has already gone into its fifteenth thousand. Mrs. Wallace's two books, "The Repose of Egypt" and "The Land of Pueblos," both sold well. It is said that the General has made at least sixty thousand dollars from his "Ben-Hur," and his "Fair God" has also turned him in a neat sum.