Editing Mark Twain (section)

===Later life and death===
{{Quote frame|align=right|The report of my death was an exaggeration. 1897|author=Twain<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562400/reports-mark-twains-quote-about-mark-twains-death-are-greatly-exaggerated|title=Reports of Mark Twain's Quote About His Own Death Are Greatly Exaggerated|last=Petsko|first=Emily|date=November 2, 2018|access-date=20 July 2021|archive-date=July 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715163816/https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562400/reports-mark-twains-quote-about-mark-twains-death-are-greatly-exaggerated|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>"Chapters from My Autobiography", ''North American Review'', September 21, 1906, p. 160. Mark Twain</ref>}}
In his later years, Twain lived at 14 West 10th Street in [[Manhattan]].<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=April 14, 2017 |title=Find out if New York's greatest writers lived next door |url=https://nypost.com/2017/04/14/find-out-if-new-yorks-greatest-writers-lived-next-door/ |access-date=June 13, 2023 |language=en-US |archive-date=January 20, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180120070757/https://nypost.com/2017/04/14/find-out-if-new-yorks-greatest-writers-lived-next-door/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He passed through a period of deep depression which began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of [[meningitis]]. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's on December 24, 1909, deepened Twain's gloom.<ref name="housebio" /> On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers died suddenly.<ref name=obit>{{cite news |title=Apoplexy Carries Off the Financier Famous in Standard Oil, Railways, Gas, and Copper. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B02E3D8153EE733A25753C2A9639C946897D6CF |quote=Henry Huttleston Rogers, one of the foremost of the country's captains of industry, and a notable figure for many years in financial and corporation development in this country, died suddenly at his home, 3 East Seventy-eighth Street, at 7:20 o'clock yesterday morning, following a stroke of [[apoplexy]], the second one he had suffered. |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=July 1, 2022 |date=May 20, 1909 |archive-date=May 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504184136/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B02E3D8153EE733A25753C2A9639C946897D6CF |url-status=live }}</ref>

In April 1906, Twain heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all that she owned in the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake]], and he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid Coolbrith, [[George Wharton James]] visited Twain in New York and arranged for a new portrait session. Twain was resistant initially, but he eventually admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.<ref>TwainQuotes.com [http://www.twainquotes.com/Bradley/bradley.html ''The Story Behind the A. F. Bradley Photos''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080724224241/http://www.twainquotes.com/Bradley/bradley.html |date=July 24, 2008 }}, Retrieved on July 10, 2009.</ref> In September, Twain started publishing [[Chapters from My Autobiography|chapters from his autobiography]] in the ''[[North American Review]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain's own autobiography: the chapters from the North American review|last=Twain|first=Mark|date=2010|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|editor-last=Kiskis|editor-first=Michael J.|isbn=9780299234737|edition= 2nd|location=Madison|oclc=608692466}}</ref> The same year, [[Charlotte Teller]], a writer living with her grandmother at 3 Fifth Avenue, began an acquaintanceship with him which "lasted several years and may have included romantic intentions" on his part.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kaser|first=James A.|title=The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WqlgaZqW67EC|year=2011|page=501|publisher=The Scarecrow Press|isbn=9780810877245}}</ref>

[[File:Autochrome of Mark Twain.jpg|left|thumb|Twain photographed in 1908 via the [[Autochrome Lumiere]] process]]
In 1906, Twain formed the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club, for girls whom he viewed as surrogate granddaughters. Its dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight".<ref name="lemaster"/>{{Rp|28}} In 1907, he met [[Dorothy Quick]] (then age 11) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning "a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death".<ref>''[[The New York Times]]'', March 16, 1962, [http://www.twainquotes.com/19620316.html DOROTHY QUICK, POET AND AUTHOR: Mystery Writer Dies – Was Friend of Mark Twain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140923142851/http://www.twainquotes.com/19620316.html |date=September 23, 2014}}</ref>

[[File:Mark Twain DLitt.jpg|thumb|upright|Twain in academic regalia for acceptance of the [[D.Litt.]] degree awarded to him by [[Oxford University]] in 1907]]
Twain was awarded an honorary [[Doctor of Letters]] (D.Litt.) by [[Yale University]] in 1901 and a [[Doctor of Law]] by the [[University of Missouri]] in 1902. [[Oxford University]] awarded him a Doctorate of Law in 1907.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41582169|access-date=July 1, 2022|date=2003|title=In His Own Time: The Early Academic Reception of Mark Twain – The Mark Twain Annual No. 1|journal=The Mark Twain Annual|author=Terry Oggel|pages=45–60 [52, 58]|publisher=[[Penn State University Press]]|jstor=41582169|archive-date=July 1, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220701190457/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41582169|url-status=live}}</ref>

Twain was born two weeks after [[Halley's Comet]]'s closest approach in 1835; he said in 1909:<ref name="paine" />
{{blockquote|I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together". }}

Twain's prediction was eerily accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in [[Stormfield]], one day after the comet was at its closest to the Sun and a month before the comet passed the Earth.<ref name="greatcomets">{{Cite web |title=Great Comets in History |first=Donald Keith |last=Yeomans |publisher=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets |date=1998 |access-date=July 1, 2022 |archive-date=February 4, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204054558/http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[File:Graves of Olivia Langdon Clemens and Mark Twain.jpg|thumb|left|Twain and his wife are buried side by side in Elmira's [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]]]]
Upon hearing of Twain's death, President [[William Howard Taft]] said:<ref>{{cite web |url=http://classiclit.about.com/cs/profileswriters/p/aa_marktwain.htm |title=Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) |access-date=November 1, 2006 |author=Esther Lombardi, [[about.com]] |archive-date=September 5, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060905202410/http://classiclit.about.com/cs/profileswriters/p/aa_marktwain.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Mark Twain is Dead at 74. End Comes Peacefully at His New England Home After a Long Illness. |quote=[[Danbury, Connecticut]], April 21, 1910. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, "Mark Twain", died at 22 minutes after 6 to-night. Beside him on the bed lay a beloved book&nbsp;– it was Carlyle's ''French Revolution''&nbsp;– and near the book his glasses, pushed away with a weary sigh a few hours before. Too weak to speak clearly, he had written, "Give me my glasses", on a piece of paper. |work=The New York Times |date=April 22, 1910}}</ref>

{{blockquote|Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come ... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of [[American literature]].}}

Twain's funeral was at the [[Brick Presbyterian Church (New York City)|Brick Presbyterian Church]] on Fifth Avenue, New York.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years|first=Michael|last=Shelden|date=2010|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0679448006|edition=1st|location=New York|oclc=320952684|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainmaninwh0000shel}}</ref> He is buried in his wife's family plot at [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]] in [[Elmira, New York]]. The Langdon family plot is marked by a {{Convert|12|ft|m|adj=mid}} monument (two fathoms, or "mark twain") placed there by Twain's surviving daughter Clara.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.go-new-york.com/Elmira |title=Elmira Travel Information |publisher=Go-new-york.com |access-date=December 30, 2010 |archive-date=May 22, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110522094645/http://www.go-new-york.com/Elmira/ |url-status=live }}</ref> There is also a smaller headstone. He expressed a preference for cremation (for example, in ''Life on the Mississippi''), but he acknowledged that his surviving family would have the last word.

Officials in Connecticut and New York estimated the value of Twain's estate at $471,000 (${{Inflation|US-GDP|471,000|1910|r=-6|fmt=c}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}).<ref>{{cite news |title=Mark Twain Estate About Half Million; Largely in Stocks and Estimated Worth of the Mark Twain Company. |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1911/07/15/archives/mark-twain-estate-about-half-million-largely-in-stocks-and.html |access-date=March 26, 2022 |date=July 15, 1911 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220102124939/https://www.nytimes.com/1911/07/15/archives/mark-twain-estate-about-half-million-largely-in-stocks-and.html |archive-date=January 2, 2022 |quote=Deputy State Controller Julius Harburger filed with the Surrogates' Court yesterday the tax appraisal of the estate of Samuel L. Clements, (Mark Twain.) Mr. Clemens died at his home in Connecticut on April 21, 1910. He left in this State and Connecticut an estate aggregating $471,136.}}</ref>