16. Quoted in Jeffrey J. Matthews, Alanson B. Houghton: Ambassador of the New Era (Wilmington, Del., 2004), 24; Manfred Putz, "Mark Twain and the Idea of American Superiority at the End of the Nineteenth Century," in Serge Ricard, ed., An American Empire: Expansionist Cultures and Politics (Aix-en-Provence, 1990), 215–35.