Mark Twain

Mark Twain (Psued. of Samuel Clemens. United States, 1835-1910)

Photo of Mark Twain and Irene Gerken, one of the last
of many girls he befriended, in Bermuda, 6th March 1908.

Mark Twain and some of the Angel Fish girls, 1908.

Twain started and ran a long-lasting personal 'club' for young girls, documented in:
Mark Twain's Aquarium - The Samuel Clemens Angel Fish Correspondence, 1905-1910, edited by John Cooley (University Of Georgia Press. USA, 1991), and in:
and...
Cooley, John.
Mark Twain's angel-fish: innocence at home?
The Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 38, Winter 1984/85. pp. 3-19.
and...
Jones, M.
Mark Twain and Sexuality.
PMLA 71, (1956) pp. 595-616.
(Discussion of Twain's platonic love of young girls, and the less platonic aspects of his dreams, as given in his journal and the posthumously published in the heavily edited fragment My Platonic Sweetheart
There is also the evidence of Twain's personal secretary who once wrote about Twain;

"His first interest when he goes off to a new place is to find little girls" [...] "off he goes with a flash if he sees a new pair of slim little legs appear, and if the little girl wears butterfly bows of ribbon on the back of her head, then his delerium is complete." (Source: Irving Wallace.)

Twain also wrote of his recurring dreams of virginal young girls, and once wrote an article stating that the age-of-consent should be abolished (Harper's Weekly, July 5th 1902, p. 732.)
There has been an attempt to sheild Twain's reputation by promoting a 'paedophile attraction because senile' notion. But other evidence from his holiday in Bermuda suggests not: "The King [Twain] went in swimming [at Bermuda]. The King at 72 was as young and vigorous in his wide strokes as a youth would have been," wrote Isabel Lyon (yet another befriended girl) in her journal.
Although Twain wasn't above pretending to be senile when it suited him - here is an extract from Twain's Bermuda diary in which he has escaped the dull wintry weather of New York to sail south alone in January 1908, to Bermuda. On the first morning of his arrival, Twain came down to breakfast...

"As I entered the breakfast room the first person I saw in that spacious and far-reaching place was a little girl seated solitary at a table for two. I bent down and patted her cheek and said: "I don't seem to remember your name; what is it ?"
    By the sparkle in her brown eyes it amused her. She said: "Why, you've never know it, Mr Clemens, because you've never seen me before."
     "Why, that is true, now that I come to think; it certainly is true, and it must be one of the reasons why I have forgotten your name. But I remember it now perfectly -- it's Mary."
     She was amused again, amused beyond smiling; amused to a chuckle, and she said: "Oh no, it isn't; it's Margaret."
     I feigned to be ashamed of my mistake and said: "Ah well, I couldn't have made that mistake a few years ago; but I am old, and one of age's earliest infirmities is a damaged memory; but I am clearer now -- clearer-headed -- it all comes back to me just as if it were yesterday. It's Margaret Holcomb."
     She was surprised into a laugh this time, the rippling laugh that a happy brook makes when it breaks out of the shade into the sunshine, and she said: "Oh, you are wrong again; you don't get anything right. It isn't Holcomb, it's Blackmer,"
     I was ashamed again, and confessed it; then:
     "How old are you, dear ?"
     "Twelve, New Year's. Twelve and a month."
     We were close comrades -- inseparables in fact -- for eight days. Every day we made pedestrian excursions -- called them that anyway, and honestly they were intended for that, and that is what they would have been, but for the persistent intrusion of a grey and grave rough-coated donkey by the name of Maud."

Advice To Little Girls
By Mark Twain, 1865

Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.
If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.
You ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to his time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.
If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud - never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots.
If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the manner according to the dictates of your best judgment.
You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food, and your nice bed, and for your beautiful clothes, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much.
Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first.