He drank two glasses of beer, which he really didn't like at all. He drank it out of respect for technique. The beer was quite good.

While we were leaving the tourist home in the morning we saw a small, old and not at all a well-to-do little town. It lay beautifully on hills going down to the Mississippi. The ascents and the slopes were quite as in a small town along the Volga, standing on a precipitous shore. We didn't learn the names of the little streets, but it seemed to us that they must be like the names of the streets along the Volga—Obvalnaya or Osypnaya.

So this was the city of Hannibal, the city of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn!

A remarkable thing! This city is famous not for its production of automobiles, like Detroit, nor for slaughter-houses and bandits, like Chicago! It was made famous by the literary heroes of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the most appealing and the happiest adventures that ever existed in world literature.

As everywhere else, there were almost no people on the streets. But 'those whom we did meet were real Twain types. Timorous and good-natured Negroes, an honourable judge who early in the morning attached himself to a cheap cigar that dangled between his teeth, and boys without end, in velvet-belted corduroy trousers that cannot be worn out, gathered in groups and huddles. The boys were playing some game. Judging by the way they were stealthily looking to the sides, they were playing for money.

The street where Mark Twain had passed his childhood as the barefooted, bare-legged Sam Clemens has been preserved in complete faithfulness. Over the entrance to the writer's house hangs a round white lantern with the inscription "Mark Twain House." By the way, Americans do not say Tven but Twain, and they don't say Tohm Sawyer but Tom Sawyer, and even the most serious, the most businesslike American, whenever he speaks of this world-renowned boy, begins to smile and his eyes become gentle.

In the house live two poor, almost impoverished, old women, distant kin of the Clemens family. They are so old and thin that they sway lib blades of grass. It is dangerous to take a deep breath in this little house because you might blow the old ladies out the window.

The two little rooms of the first floor were dusty and crowded. No, Mr. Clemens the Elder, Mark Twain's father, although he was the editor of the local Hannibal newspaper, must have lived very modestly. The easy-chairs with their springs sticking out and the shaky tables for photographs indicated that.

"In this chair," said one of the old ladies, "Aunt Polly always sat, and it was through this window that the cat Peter jumped out after Tom Sawyer gave him castor oil. It was at this table that the entire family sat when they thought that Tom had been drowned, while he was standing right there at the time and eavesdropping."

The old lady spoke as if everything that Twain had related in Tom Sawyer had actually occurred. She ended up by offering photographs for sale. The old ladies exist on the income from that. Each of us bought a half-dollar photograph.

"People come in here so rarely," said the old lady with a sigh. In the room nearest to the exit hung a memorial tablet with the image of the writer and an ideologically correct inscription composed by the local banker, a disinterested admirer of Mark Twain:

"The life of Mark Twain teaches us that poverty is a stimulus rather than a deterrent."

However, the appearance of the impoverished and forgotten old ladies eloquently refuted this stout philosophic concept.

Side by side with the house stood a low ordinary fence. But the enterprising Historical Society of the State of Missouri had already managed to attach to it a plaque which declared that this was the successor of the fence which Tom Sawyer had allowed his friends to paint in exchange for an apple, a blue glass ball, and other fine articles.

In brief the Historical Society of the State of Missouri was acting in a purely American manner. Everything was short and to the point. It did not write: "Here is the house where lived the girl who was the model for Becky Thatcher from Tom Sawyer." No, that would have been true, of course, but it would have been too wordy for the American tourist. He had to be told exactly whether that was or was not that particular girl. So, he was assured: "Yes, yes, don't worry! It's the very one. You did not use your petrol and time on this trip for nothing. This is she!"

And so at the house standing opposite the dwelling of old Clemens hangs another cast-iron board: "The house of Becky Thatcher, Tom Sawyer's first sweetheart."

The old ladies sold us several photographs. On one of these Becky Thatcher herself was represented in her old age. It seems that she had married an attorney. Some time before his death, Mark Twain came to Hannibal and was photographed with her. A large photograph of these two old people hangs in the museum with the touching inscription: "Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher."

On another photograph is represented an Indian portrayed by Twain under the name of "Indian Joe." This photograph was made in 1921. The Indian was then a hundred years old. So, at any rate, affirms the city of Hannibal.

Finally, we went to Cardiff Hill, where stands one of the rarest monuments in the world, a monument to literary heroes. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are on their way to some of their gay adventures. Not far from the monument fairly big boys were playing. They were in no way different from their cast-iron models. There was gay noise at the foot of the monument.

Itwas still quite early when we departed from Hannibal. Along the road sleepy travelling salesmen drove full-speed ahead. They work in the daytime, sleep in the evening, while at night they travel from place to place. At night the road is clear, and these demons of commerce take advantage of the possibility of racing.

We rode past cornfields and wheatfields recently harvested, past red barns and yards where metal windmills pump the water out of the wells, and toward the middle of the day we reached Kansas City. Roughly speaking, Kansas City is in the centre of America. It is approximately the same distance from there to New York, to San Francisco, to New Orleans and to the Canadian border.

And so, we were in the centre of the United States, in the centre of the prairies, in Kansas City, on the Missouri River. What could be more American than such a place? Nevertheless, the owner of the lunch-room into which we ran for a minute to warm up on a cup of coffee was a Bessarabian Jew from the city of Bendery. A microscopic Masonic star gleamed on the lapel of his coat. Bendery, Missouri, Bessarabia, Masonry - here was enough to make anyone's head whirl!

From his pocket he drew small brown photographs and showed them to us. These were his relatives who had remained in Bendery—two pro-vincial young men whose delicate curly heads were supported by upstanding collars. At the same time the owner of the restaurant showed us his Masonic card, and told us that he had come to America thirty years ago.

"Yes," he said, "I came to America to better myself, to get rich."

"Where is your fifty thousand dollars, then?" asked Mr. Adams gaily.

"What fifty thousand dollars?" asked the proprietor.

"No, no, sir, don't say 'what'! Yours! Your fifty thousand dollars! You came to America to make money. Where is that money? "

"In the bank!" replied the lunch-room proprietor with dark humour. "There all of it lies, to the last kopeck. But not in my name."

In his figure, buffeted by years and by struggle, in his desperate humour, we seemed to recognize something familiar. Afterward, while racing down the road to Amarillo, Texas, we remembered whom our Bendery Mason resembled.