CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY .-- XVI.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[_Dictated January 12th, 1905._] ...

But I am used to having my statements discounted.

My mother began it before I was seven years old.
Yet all through my life my facts have had a substratum of truth, and therefore they were not without preciousness.

Any person who is familiar with me knows how to strike my average, and therefore knows how to get at the jewel of any fact of mine and dig it out of its blue-clay matrix.
My mother knew that art.

When I was seven or eight, or ten, or twelve years old--along there--a neighbor said to her, "Do you ever believe anything that that boy says ?" My mother said, "He is the well-spring of truth, but you can't bring up the whole well with one bucket"-- and she added, "I know his average, therefore he never deceives me.