Jocelyn & I recently wrote about this, including scans of the original from Twain’s notebooks, courtesy of the Mark Twain Project:

https://marktwainstudies.com/madeallthedifference/

> On Sep 25, 2021, at 3:53 PM, Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> I posted this quote on Facebook without any explanation and got back some curious responses.  I'm wondering if anyone can add light to why-where-and/or when:
> 
> "Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter…people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing”
> 
> I suspect he was reacting to someone being referred to as a genius...