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Subject:
From:
Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 27 Feb 1997 18:52:29 -0500
Content-Type:
TEXT/PLAIN
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TEXT/PLAIN (20 lines)
When Adlai E. Stevenson was running for President in 1952, it was
reported that he wrote a letter to Cyril Clemens blaming Mark Twain
for the confusion surrounding the mispronunciation of his
name:

While my grandfather, Adlai E. Stevenson, was Vice President -  Mark
Twain was at a luncheon where grandfather was a guest. The newspapers of
the time quoted Mark Twain as follows on the pronunciation of my first
name:

'Philologists sweat and lexicographers bray,
But the best they can do is to call him Ad-lay.
But at longshoremen's picnics, where accents are high,
Fair Harvard's not present, so they call him Ad-lie.'

Adlai Stevenson was Vice President 1893-1897.  Does anyone know the date or
occasion when Twain might made have made such a speech?

Barb

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