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FREUD, IN NOVEMBER, 1938, less than a year before his death, wrote "A Comment on Anti-Semitism" for Die Zukunft, a German emigrant journal published in Paris. He was persuaded to do this, so the story goes, by Arthur Koestler during the previous summer (Jones, 1957). The article consists almost entirely of a quotation reconstructed from a précis Freud had taken from a certain essay on the subject. In his article Freud had "a remarkable confession to make. I am a very old man and my memory is no more what it was. I can no longer recall where I read the essay of which I made the précis nor who it was who was its author. Perhaps one of the readers of this periodical will be able to come to my help?" A "whisper" nearby specifying a possible source reaches his ears, but he rejects the suggestion and holds to his original assertion, "it cannot be that. What I am thinking of is a shorter pronouncement and one of very recent date." Then, less surely, he asks, "Or am I altogether at fault? Does nothing of the kind exist?" (1938b, pp. 292-293).
In his call for help, Freud seeks answers to two questions: Where did he read the essay, and who was its author? We think we are able to reply to the second question. The author is Mark Twain; the essay is Twain's "Concerning the Jews" (1899).
Twain had been in Vienna when the Austrian Parliament was torn by a riot which was accompanied by vicious anti-Semitism. His