PARK AND CE METER} 
237 
the exact location where the monu- 
ment was to stand. He visited the 
site before the competition and made 
his sketches on the ground after a 
careful study of the plan, the prob- 
lem and the site. He was the only 
sculptor who was able to study the 
problem in this way, and his selec- 
tion does much to justify the prac- 
tice of first studying the site and de- 
signing the monument to fit its en- 
vironment. His conception of the 
subject was severely simple and di- 
rect. 
Mark Twain was known chiefly 
as our greatest American humorist, 
and his eccentricities and peculiari- 
ties of speech and of person had been 
a never-ending source of newspaper 
comment and illustration. So it was 
the lighter and more uncouth aspects 
of the man that the sculptors were 
at first tempted to reproduce. His 
long black cigar, his great shaggy 
head of white hair, and his habits of 
dress were easy to think of and to 
exaggerate, but as in the case of 
many of our memorials to Lincoln 
these uncouth externals fail to ex- 
press the real greatness of the man. 
The loose slippers, the cigar, the long 
hair, were exaggerated in some of the 
preliminary studies and a popular 
way of rendering the subject was 
seated with a roll of manuscript be- 
fore him. The committee and a num- 
ber of intimate friends of the great 
author who were consulted were of 
the opinion that showing Mark Twain 
as a plain, simple man, without any 
device, designation or peculiarity was 
the most monumental and typical way 
of rendering him for posterity, and 
Mr. Hibbard’s final model shows no 
accessories of conventional sculpture 
or peculiarities of form, clothes or 
pose. He stands simple, and erect, 
dressed plainly in the same kind of 
clothes as any other man and half 
turns his head to gaze down the great 
piver whose waters and shores he 
loved and made famous. 
The figure stands on a pyramidal 
pedestal, as simple, and plain as the 
statue, and is set on a wide platform 
terraced up from a winding road, and 
approached by a low flight of steps. 
This road which winds in many in- 
teresting turns along the bluff is an 
integral part of the composition, for 
on the other side of it is an outlook, 
built immediately on the edge of the 
bluff and giving a magnificent view 
both up and down the river, and at 
the same time forming a seat from 
which the spectator, turning about, is 
placed at just the right distance and 
in just the right situation to get a 
good view of the monument proper. 
The drive winds about the knoll on 
which the monument stands in almost 
a complete circle, giving an approach 
PLAN FOR IMPROVEMENT OF SITE OF MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL AND SEC- 
TION THROUGH THE SITE ON CENTER LINE OF MONUMENT. 
Scale: Plan, one inch=20 feet; section, one inch=10 feet. 
O. C. Simonds, Landscape Architect. 
