initial commit of ebook 2983HEADmain

1 files changed, 9110 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/2983.txt b/2983.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df6700b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2983.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9110 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 2,
+1866-1875, by Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part 2, 1866-1875
+       The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
+
+Author: Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #2983]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
+
+By Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+
+
+VOLUME I, Part 2: 1866-1875
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+THE LECTURER
+
+It was not easy to take up the daily struggle again, but it was
+necessary.--[Clemens once declared he had been so blue at this period
+that one morning he put a loaded pistol to his head, but found he lacked
+courage to pull the trigger.]--Out of the ruck of possibilities (his
+brain always thronged with plans) he constructed three or four resolves.
+The chief of these was the trip around the world; but that lay months
+ahead, and in the mean time ways and means must be provided. Another
+intention was to finish the Hornet article, and forward it to Harper's
+Magazine--a purpose carried immediately into effect. To his delight the
+article found acceptance, and he looked forward to the day of its
+publication as the beginning of a real career. He intended to follow it
+up with a series on the islands, which in due time might result in a book
+and an income. He had gone so far as to experiment with a dedication for
+the book--an inscription to his mother, modified later for use in 'The
+Innocents Abroad'. A third plan of action was to take advantage of the
+popularity of the Hawaiian letters, and deliver a lecture on the same
+subject. But this was a fearsome prospect--he trembled when he thought
+of it. As Governor of the Third House he had been extravagantly received
+and applauded, but in that case the position of public entertainer had
+been thrust upon him. To come forward now, offering himself in the same
+capacity, was a different matter. He believed he could entertain, but he
+lacked the courage to declare himself; besides, it meant a risk of his
+slender capital. He confided his situation to Col. John McComb, of the
+Alta California, and was startled by McComb's vigorous endorsement.
+
+"Do it, by all means!" urged McComb. "It will be a grand success--I know
+it! Take the largest house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket."
+
+Frightened but resolute, he went to the leading theater manager the same
+Tom Maguire of his verses--and was offered the new opera-house at half
+rates. The next day this advertisement appeared:
+
+                MAGUIRE'S ACADEMY OF MUSIC
+               PINE STREET, NEAR MONTGOMERY
+
+                  THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
+
+                      MARK TWAIN
+
+        (HONOLULU CORRESPONDENT OF THE SACRAMENTO UNION)
+                    WILL DELIVER A
+              LECTURE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
+
+                AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC
+               ON TUESDAY EVENING, OCT. 2d
+                       (1866)
+
+ In which passing mention will be made of Harris, Bishop Staley, the
+American missionaries, etc., and the absurd customs and characteristics
+  of the natives duly discussed and described. The great volcano of
+         Kilauea will also receive proper attention.
+
+                  A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA
+            is in town, but has not been engaged
+                       ALSO
+               A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS
+           will be on exhibition in the next block
+                  MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS
+were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned
+               A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION
+ may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever
+                     they please.
+
+           Dress Circle, $1.00  Family Circle, 50c
+    Doors open at 7 o'clock  The Trouble to begin at 8 o'clock
+
+The story of that first lecture, as told in Roughing It, is a faithful
+one, and need only be summarized here.
+
+Expecting to find the house empty, he found it packed from the footlights
+to the walls. Sidling out from the wings--wobbly-kneed and dry of
+tongue--he was greeted by a murmur, a roar, a very crash of applause that
+frightened away his remaining vestiges of courage. Then, came reaction
+--these were his friends, and he began to talk to them. Fear melted
+away, and as tide after tide of applause rose and billowed and came
+breaking at his feet, he knew something of the exaltation of Monte Cristo
+when he declared "The world is mine!"
+
+It was a vast satisfaction to have succeeded. It was particularly
+gratifying at this time, for he dreaded going back into newspaper
+harness. Also; it softened later the disappointment resulting from
+another venture; for when the December Harper appeared, with his article,
+the printer and proof-reader had somehow converted Mark Twain into "Mark
+Swain," and his literary dream perished.
+
+As to the literary value of his lecture, it was much higher than had,
+been any portion of his letters, if we may judge from its few remaining
+fragments. One of these--a part of the description of the great volcano
+Haleakala, on the island of Maui--is a fair example of his eloquence.
+
+It is somewhat more florid than his later description of the same scene
+in Roughing It, which it otherwise resembles; and we may imagine that its
+poetry, with the added charm of its delivery, held breathless his
+hearers, many of whom believed that no purer eloquence had ever been
+uttered or written.
+
+It is worth remembering, too, that in this lecture, delivered so long
+ago, he advocated the idea of American ownership of these islands,
+dwelling at considerable length on his reasons for this ideal.
+
+--[For fragmentary extracts from this first lecture of Mark Twain and
+news comment, see Appendix D, end of last volume.]--There was a gross
+return from his venture of more than $1,200, but with his usual business
+insight, which was never foresight, he had made an arrangement by which,
+after paying bills and dividing with his manager, he had only about
+one-third of, this sum left. Still, even this was prosperity and
+triumph. He had acquired a new and lucrative profession at a bound. The
+papers lauded him as the "most piquant and humorous writer and lecturer
+on the Coast since the days of the lamented John Phoenix." He felt that
+he was on the highroad at last.
+
+Denis McCarthy, late of the Enterprise, was in San Francisco, and was
+willing to become his manager. Denis was capable and honest, and Clemens
+was fond of him. They planned a tour of the near-by towns, beginning
+with Sacramento, extending it later even to the mining camps, such as Red
+Dog and Grass Valley; also across into Nevada, with engagements at Carson
+City, Virginia, and Gold Hill. It was an exultant and hilarious
+excursion--that first lecture tour made by Denis McCarthy and Mark Twain.
+Success traveled with them everywhere, whether the lecturer looked across
+the footlights of some pretentious "opera-house" or between the two
+tallow candles of some camp "academy." Whatever the building, it was
+packed, and the returns were maximum.
+
+Those who remember him as a lecturer in that long-ago time say that his
+delivery was more quaint, his drawl more exaggerated, even than in later
+life; that his appearance and movements on the stage were natural, rather
+than graceful; that his manuscript, which he carried under his arm,
+looked like a ruffled hen. It was, in fact, originally written on sheets
+of manila paper, in large characters, so that it could be read easily by
+dim light, and it was doubtless often disordered.
+
+There was plenty of amusing experience on this tour. At one place, when
+the lecture was over, an old man came to him and said:
+
+"Be them your natural tones of eloquence?"
+
+At Grass Valley there was a rival show, consisting of a lady tight-rope
+walker and her husband. It was a small place, and the tight-rope
+attraction seemed likely to fail. The lady's husband had formerly been a
+compositor on the Enterprise, so that he felt there was a bond of
+brotherhood between him and Mark Twain.
+
+"Look here," he said. "Let's combine our shows. I'll let my wife do the
+tight-rope act outside and draw a crowd, and you go inside and lecture."
+
+The arrangement was not made.
+
+Following custom, the lecturer at first thought it necessary to be
+introduced, and at each place McCarthy had to skirmish around and find
+the proper person. At Red Dog, on the Stanislaus, the man selected
+failed to appear, and Denis had to provide another on short notice. He
+went down into the audience and captured an old fellow, who ducked and
+dodged but could not escape. Denis led him to the stage, a good deal
+frightened.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this is the celebrated Mark Twain from
+the celebrated city of San Francisco, with his celebrated lecture about
+the celebrated Sandwich Islands."
+
+That was as far as he could go; but it was far enough. Mark Twain never
+had a better introduction. The audience was in a shouting humor from the
+start.
+
+Clemens himself used to tell of an introduction at another camp, where
+his sponsor said:
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, I know only two things about this man: the first
+is that he's never been in jail, and the second is I don't know why."
+
+But this is probably apocryphal; there is too much "Mark Twain" in it.
+
+When he reached Virginia, Goodman said to him:
+
+"Sam, you do not need anybody to introduce you. There's a piano on the
+stage in the theater. Have it brought out in sight, and when the curtain
+rises you be seated at the piano, playing and singing that song of yours,
+'I Had an Old Horse Whose Name Was Methusalem,' and don't seem to notice
+that the curtain is up at first; then be surprised when you suddenly find
+out that it is up, and begin talking, without any further preliminaries."
+
+This proved good advice, and the lecture, thus opened, started off with
+general hilarity and applause.
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+HIGHWAY ROBBERY
+
+His Nevada, lectures were bound to be immensely successful. The people
+regarded him as their property over there, and at Carson and Virginia the
+houses overflowed. At Virginia especially his friends urged and begged
+him to repeat the entertainment, but he resolutely declined.
+
+"I have only one lecture yet," he said. "I cannot bring myself to give
+it twice in the same town."
+
+But that irresponsible imp, Steve Gillis, who was again in Virginia,
+conceived a plan which would make it not only necessary for him to
+lecture again, but would supply him with a subject. Steve's plan was
+very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer of his funds by a friendly
+highway robbery, and let an account of the adventure furnish the new
+lecture.
+
+In 'Roughing It' Mark Twain has given a version of this mock robbery
+which is correct enough as far as it goes; but important details are
+lacking. Only a few years ago (it was April, 1907), in his cabin on
+jackass Hill, with Joseph Goodman and the writer of this history present,
+Steve Gillis made his "death-bed" confession as is here set down:
+
+"Mark's lecture was given in Piper's Opera House, October 30, 1866. The
+Virginia City people had heard many famous lectures before, but they were
+mere sideshows compared with Mark's. It could have been run to crowded
+houses for a week. We begged him to give the common people a chance; but
+he refused to repeat himself. He was going down to Carson, and was
+coming back to talk in Gold Hill about a week later, and his agent, Denis
+McCarthy, and I laid a plan to have him robbed on the Divide between Gold
+Hill and Virginia, after the Gold Hill lecture was over and he and Denis
+would be coming home with the money. The Divide was a good lonely place,
+and was famous for its hold-ups. We got City Marshal George Birdsall
+into it with us, and took in Leslie Blackburn, Pat Holland, Jimmy
+Eddington, and one or two more of Sam's old friends. We all loved him,
+and would have fought for him in a moment. That's the kind of friends
+Mark had in Nevada. If he had any enemies I never heard of them.
+
+"We didn't take in Dan de Quille, or Joe here, because Sam was Joe's
+guest, and we were afraid he would tell him. We didn't take in Dan
+because we wanted him to write it up as a genuine robbery and make a big
+sensation. That would pack the opera-house at two dollars a seat to hear
+Mark tell the story.
+
+"Well, everything went off pretty well. About the time Mark was
+finishing his lecture in Gold Hill the robbers all went up on the Divide
+to wait, but Mark's audience gave him a kind of reception after his
+lecture, and we nearly froze to death up there before he came along. By
+and by I went back to see what was the matter. Sam and Denis were
+coming, and carrying a carpet-sack about half full of silver between
+them. I shadowed them and blew a policeman's whistle as a signal to the
+boys when the lecturers were within about a hundred yards of the place. I
+heard Sam say to Denis:
+
+"'I'm glad they've got a policeman on the Divide. They never had one in
+my day.'
+
+"Just about that time the boys, all with black masks on and silver
+dollars at the sides of their tongues to disguise their voices, stepped
+out and stuck six-shooters at Sam and Denis and told them to put up their
+hands. The robbers called each other 'Beauregard' and 'Stonewall
+Jackson.' Of course Denis's hands went up, and Mark's, too, though Mark
+wasn't a bit scared or excited. He talked to the robbers in his regular
+fashion. He said:
+
+"'Don't flourish those pistols so promiscuously. They might go off by
+accident.'
+
+"They told him to hand over his watch and money; but when he started to
+take his hands down they made him put them up again. Then he asked how
+they expected him to give them his valuables with his hands up in the
+sky. He said his treasures didn't lie in heaven. He told them not to
+take his watch, which was the one Sandy Baldwin and Theodore Winters had
+given him as Governor of the Third House, but we took it all the same.
+
+"Whenever he started to put his hands down we made him put them up again.
+Once he said:
+
+"'Don't you fellows be so rough. I was tenderly reared.'
+
+"Then we told him and Denis to keep their hands up for fifteen minutes
+after we were gone--this was to give us time to get back to Virginia and
+be settled when they came along. As we were going away Mark called:
+
+"'Say, you forgot something.'
+
+"'What is it?'
+
+"Why, the carpet-bag.'
+
+"He was cool all the time. Senator Bill Stewart, in his Autobiography,
+tells a great story of how scared Mark was, and how he ran; but Stewart
+was three thousand miles from Virginia by that time, and later got mad at
+Mark because he made a joke about him in 'Roughing It'.
+
+"Denis wanted to take his hands down pretty soon after we were gone, but
+Mark said:
+
+"'No, Denis, I'm used to obeying orders when they are given in that
+convincing way; we'll just keep our hands up another fifteen minutes or
+so for good measure.'
+
+"We were waiting in a big saloon on C Street when Mark and Denis came
+along. We knew they would come in, and we expected Mark would be
+excited; but he was as unruffled as a mountain lake. He told us they had
+been robbed, and asked me if I had any money. I gave him a hundred
+dollars of his own money, and he ordered refreshments for everybody. Then
+we adjourned to the Enterprise office, where he offered a reward, and Dan
+de Quille wrote up the story and telegraphed it to the other newspapers.
+Then somebody suggested that Mark would have to give another lecture now,
+and that the robbery would make a great subject. He entered right into
+the thing, and next day we engaged Piper's Opera House, and people were
+offering five dollars apiece for front seats. It would have been the
+biggest thing that ever came to Virginia if it had come off. But we made
+a mistake, then, by taking Sandy Baldwin into the joke. We took in Joe
+here, too, and gave him the watch and money to keep, which made it hard
+for Joe afterward. But it was Sandy Baldwin that ruined us. He had Mark
+out to dinner the night before the show was to come off, and after he got
+well warmed up with champagne he thought it would be a smart thing to let
+Mark into what was really going on.
+
+"Mark didn't see it our way. He was mad clear through."
+
+At this point Joseph Goodman took up the story. He said:
+
+"Those devils put Sam's money, watch, keys, pencils, and all his things
+into my hands. I felt particularly mean at being made accessory to the
+crime, especially as Sam was my guest, and I had grave doubts as to how
+he would take it when he found out the robbery was not genuine.
+
+"I felt terribly guilty when he said:
+
+"'Joe, those d--n thieves took my keys, and I can't get into my trunk. Do
+you suppose you could get me a key that would fit my trunk?'
+
+"I said I thought I could during the day, and after Sam had gone I took
+his own key, put it in the fire and burnt it to make it look black. Then
+I took a file and scratched it here and there, to make it look as if I
+had been fitting it to the lock, feeling guilty all the time, like a man
+who is trying to hide a murder. Sam did not ask for his key that day,
+and that evening he was invited to judge Baldwin's to dinner. I thought
+he looked pretty silent and solemn when he came home; but he only said:
+
+"'Joe, let's play cards; I don't feel sleepy.'
+
+"Steve here, and two or three of the other boys who had been active in
+the robbery, were present, and they did not like Sam's manner, so they
+excused themselves and left him alone with me. We played a good while;
+then he said:
+
+"'Joe, these cards are greasy. I have got some new ones in my trunk. Did
+you get that key to-day?'
+
+"I fished out that burnt, scratched-up key with fear and trembling. But
+he didn't seem to notice it at all, and presently returned with the
+cards. Then we played, and played, and played--till one o'clock--two
+o'clock--Sam hardly saying a word, and I wondering what was going to
+happen. By and by he laid down his cards and looked at me, and said:
+
+"'Joe, Sandy Baldwin told me all about that robbery to-night. Now, Joe,
+I have found out that the law doesn't recognize a joke, and I am going to
+send every one of those fellows to the penitentiary.'
+
+"He said it with such solemn gravity, and such vindictiveness, that I
+believed he was in dead earnest.
+
+"I know that I put in two hours of the hardest work I ever did, trying to
+talk him out of that resolution. I used all the arguments about the boys
+being his oldest friends; how they all loved him, and how the joke had
+been entirely for his own good; I pleaded with him, begged him to
+reconsider; I went and got his money and his watch and laid them on the
+table; but for a time it seemed hopeless. And I could imagine those
+fellows going behind the bars, and the sensation it would make in
+California; and just as I was about to give it up he said:
+
+"'Well, Joe, I'll let it pass--this time; I'll forgive them again; I've
+had to do it so many times; but if I should see Denis McCarthy and Steve
+Gillis mounting the scaffold to-morrow, and I could save them by turning
+over my hand, I wouldn't do it!'
+
+"He canceled the lecture engagement, however, next morning, and the day
+after left on the Pioneer Stage, by the way of Donner Lake, for
+California. The boys came rather sheepishly to see him off; but he would
+make no show of relenting. When they introduced themselves as
+Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, etc., he merely said:
+
+"'Yes, and you'll all be behind the bars some day. There's been a good
+deal of robbery around here lately, and it's pretty clear now who did
+it.' They handed him a package containing the masks which the robbers
+had worn. He received it in gloomy silence; but as the stage drove away
+he put his head out of the window, and after some pretty vigorous
+admonition resumed his old smile, and called out: 'Good-by, friends;
+good-by, thieves; I bear you no malice.' So the heaviest joke was on his
+tormentors after all."
+
+This is the story of the famous Mark Twain robbery direct from
+headquarters. It has been garbled in so many ways that it seems worth
+setting down in full. Denis McCarthy, who joined him presently in San
+Francisco, received a little more punishment there.
+
+"What kind of a trip did you boys have?" a friend asked of them.
+
+Clemens, just recovering from a cold which the exposure on the Divide had
+given him, smiled grimly:
+
+"Oh, pretty good, only Denis here mistook it for a spree."
+
+He lectured again in San Francisco, this time telling the story of his
+Overland trip in 1861, and he did the daring thing of repeating three
+times the worn-out story of Horace Greeley's ride with Hank Monk, as
+given later in 'Roughing It'. People were deadly tired of that story out
+there, and when he told it the first time, with great seriousness, they
+thought he must be failing mentally. They did not laugh--they only felt
+sorry. He waited a little, as if expecting a laugh, and presently led
+around to it and told it again. The audience was astonished still more,
+and pitied him thoroughly. He seemed to be waiting pathetically in the
+dead silence for their applause, then went on with his lecture; but
+presently, with labored effort, struggled around to the old story again,
+and told it for the third time. The audience suddenly saw the joke then,
+and became vociferous and hysterical in their applause; but it was a
+narrow escape. He would have been hysterical himself if the relief had
+not came when it did.
+
+--[A side-light on the Horace Greeley story and on Mr. Greeley's
+eccentricities is furnished by Mr. Goodman:
+
+When I was going East in 1869 I happened to see Hank Monk just before I
+started. "Mr. Goodman," he said, "you tell Horace Greeley that I want to
+come East, and ask him to send me a pass." "All right, Hank," I said, "I
+will." It happened that when I got to New York City one of the first men
+I met was Greeley. "Mr. Greeley," said, "I have a message for you from
+Hank Monk." Greeley bristled and glared at me. "That--rascal?" he said,
+"He has done me more injury than any other man in America."]
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+BACK TO THE STATES
+
+In the mean time Clemens had completed his plan for sailing, and had
+arranged with General McComb, of the Alta California, for letters during
+his proposed trip around the world. However, he meant to visit his
+people first, and his old home. He could go back with means now, and
+with the prestige of success.
+
+"I sail to-morrow per Opposition--telegraphed you to-day," he wrote on
+December 14th, and a day later his note-book entry says:
+
+    Sailed from San Francisco in Opposition (line) steamer America,
+    Capt. Wakeman, at noon, 15th Dec., 1866. Pleasant sunny day, hills
+    brightly clad with green grass and shrubbery.
+
+So he was really going home at last! He had been gone five and a half
+years--eventful, adventurous years that had made him over completely, at
+least so far as ambitions and equipment were concerned. He had came
+away, in his early manhood, a printer and a pilot, unknown outside of his
+class. He was returning a man of thirty-one, with a fund of hard
+experience, three added professions--mining, journalism, and lecturing
+--also with a new name, already famous on the sunset slopes of its
+adoption, and beginning to be heard over the hills and far away. In some
+degree, at least, he resembled the prince of a fairy tale who, starting
+out humble and unnoticed, wins his way through a hundred adventures and
+returns with gifts and honors.
+
+The homeward voyage was a notable one. It began with a tempest a little
+way out of San Francisco--a storm terrible but brief, that brought the
+passengers from their berths to the deck, and for a time set them
+praying. Then there was Captain Ned Wakeman, a big, burly, fearless
+sailor, who had visited the edges of all continents and archipelagos; who
+had been born at sea, and never had a day's schooling in his life, but
+knew the Bible by heart; who was full of human nature and profanity, and
+believed he was the only man on the globe who knew the secret of the
+Bible miracles. He became a distinct personality in Mark Twain's work
+--the memory of him was an unfailing delight. Captain "Ned Blakely," in
+'Roughing It', who with his own hands hanged Bill Noakes, after reading
+him promiscuous chapters from the Bible, was Captain Wakeman. Captain
+"Stormfield," who had the marvelous visit to heaven, was likewise Captain
+Wakeman; and he appears in the "Idle Excursion" and elsewhere.
+
+Another event of the voyage was crossing the Nicaragua Isthmus--the trip
+across the lake and down the San Juan River--a brand-new experience,
+between shores of splendid tropic tangle, gleaming with vivid life. The
+luxuriance got into his note-book.
+
+Dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels, temples, columns, pillars, towers,
+pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds, domes, walls, in endless confusion
+of vine-work--no shape known to architecture unimitated--and all so
+webbed together that short distances within are only gained by glimpses.
+Monkeys here and there; birds warbling; gorgeous plumaged birds on the
+wing; Paradise itself, the imperial realm of beauty-nothing to wish for
+to make it perfect.
+
+But it was beyond the isthmus that the voyage loomed into proportions
+somber and terrible. The vessel they took there, the San Francisco,
+sailed from Greytown January 1, 1867, the beginning of a memorable year
+in Mark Twain's life. Next day two cases of Asiatic cholera were
+reported in the steerage. There had been a rumor of it in Nicaragua, but
+no one expected it on the ship.
+
+The nature of the disease was not hinted at until evening, when one of
+the men died. Soon after midnight, the other followed. A minister
+making the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler, read the burial service. The
+gaiety of the passengers, who had become well acquainted during the
+Pacific voyage, was subdued. When the word "cholera" went among them,
+faces grew grave and frightened. On the morning of January 4th Reverend
+Fackler's services were again required. The dead man was put overboard
+within half an hour after he had ceased to breathe.
+
+Gloom settled upon the ship. All steam was made to put into Key West.
+Then some of the machinery gave way and the ship lay rolling, helplessly
+becalmed in the fierce heat of the Gulf, while repairs were being made.
+The work was done at a disadvantage, and the parts did not hold. Time
+and again they were obliged to lie to, in the deadly tropic heat,
+listening to the hopeless hammering, wondering who would be the next to
+be sewed up hastily in a blanket and slipped over the ship's side. On
+the 5th seven new cases of illness were reported. One of the crew, a man
+called "Shape," was said to be dying. A few hours later he was dead. By
+this time the Reverend Fackler himself had been taken.
+
+"So they are burying poor 'Shape' without benefit of clergy," says the
+note-book.
+
+General consternation now began to prevail. Then it was learned that the
+ship's doctor had run out of medicines. The passengers became
+demoralized. They believed their vessel was to become a charnel ship.
+Strict sanitary orders were issued, and a hospital was improvised.
+
+    Verily the ship is becoming a floating hospital herself--not an hour
+    passes but brings its fresh sensation, its new disaster, its
+    melancholy tidings. When I think of poor "Shape" and the preacher,
+    both so well when I saw them yesterday evening, I realize that I
+    myself may be dead to-morrow.
+
+    Since the last two hours all laughter, all levity, has ceased on the
+    ship--a settled gloom is upon the faces of the passengers.
+
+By noon it was evident that the minister could not survive. He died at
+two o'clock next morning; the fifth victim in less than five days. The
+machinery continued to break and the vessel to drag. The ship's doctor
+confessed to Clemens that he was helpless. There were eight patients in
+the hospital.
+
+But on January 6th they managed to make Key West, and for some reason
+were not quarantined. Twenty-one passengers immediately deserted the
+ship and were heard of no more.
+
+"I am glad they are gone. D--n them," says the notebook. Apparently he
+had never considered leaving, and a number of others remained. The
+doctor restocked his medicine-locker, and the next day they put to sea
+again. Certainly they were a daring lot of voyagers. On the 8th another
+of the patients died. Then the cooler weather seemed to check the
+contagion, and it was not until the night of the 11th, when the New York
+harbor lights were in view, that the final death occurred. There were no
+new cases by this time, and the other patients were convalescent. A
+certificate was made out that the last man had died of "dropsy." There
+would seem to have been no serious difficulty in docking the vessel and
+landing the passengers. The matter would probably be handled differently
+to-day.
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+OLD FRIENDS AND NEW PLANS
+
+It had been more than thirteen years since his first arrival in New York.
+Then he had been a youth, green, untraveled, eager to get away from home.
+Now a veteran, he was as eager to return.
+
+He stopped only long enough in New York to see Charles Henry Webb, late
+of California, who had put together a number of the Mark Twain sketches,
+including "The Jumping Frog," for book publication. Clemens himself
+decided to take the book to Carleton, thinking that, having missed the
+fame of the "Frog" once, he might welcome a chance to stand sponsor for
+it now. But Carleton was wary; the "Frog" had won favor, and even fame,
+in its fugitive, vagrant way, but a book was another matter. Books were
+undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration in those days.
+Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland, Carleton said to Mark Twain:
+
+"My chief claim to immortality is the distinction of having declined your
+first book."
+
+Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when Carleton declined it,
+but Webb said he would publish it himself, and he set about it forthwith.
+The author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis, and was soon
+with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen since that eventful
+first year of the war. They thought he looked old, which was true
+enough, but they found him unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full of
+banter and gravely quaint remarks--he was always the same. Jane Clemens
+had grown older, too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen and
+vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical) of this handsome,
+brilliant man of new name and fame who had been her mischievous, wayward
+boy. She petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and inquired
+searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn he petted, comforted,
+and teased her. She decided that he was the same Sam, and always would
+be--a true prophecy.
+
+He went up to Hannibal to see old friends. Many were married; some had
+moved away; some were dead--the old story. He delivered his lecture
+there, and was the center of interest and admiration--his welcome might
+have satisfied even Tom Sawyer. From Hannibal he journeyed to Keokuk,
+where he lectured again to a crowd of old friends and new, then returned
+to St. Louis for a more extended visit.
+
+It was while he was in St. Louis that he first saw the announcement of
+the Quaker City Holy Land Excursion, and was promptly fascinated by what
+was then a brand-new idea in ocean travel--a splendid picnic--a choice
+and refined party that would sail away for a long summer's journeying to
+the most romantic of all lands and seas, the shores of the Mediterranean.
+No such argosy had ever set out before in pursuit of the golden fleece of
+happiness.
+
+His projected trip around the world lost its charm in the light of this
+idyllic dream. Henry Ward Beecher was advertised as one of the party;
+General Sherman as another; also ministers, high-class journalists--the
+best minds of the nation. Anson Burlingame had told him to associate
+with persons of refinement and intellect. He lost no time in writing to
+the Alta, proposing that they send him in this select company.
+
+Noah Brooks, who was then on the Alta, states--[In an article published
+in the Century Magazine.]--that the management was staggered by the
+proposition, but that Col. John McComb insisted that the investment in
+Mark Twain would be sound. A letter was accordingly sent, stating that a
+check for his passage would be forwarded in due season, and that meantime
+he could contribute letters from New York City. The rate for all letters
+was to be twenty dollars each. The arrangement was a godsend, in the
+fullest sense of the word, to Mark Twain.
+
+It was now April, and he was eager to get back to New York to arrange his
+passage. The Quaker City would not sail for two months yet (two eventful
+months), but the advertisement said that passages must be secured by the
+5th, and he was there on that day. Almost the first man he met was the
+chief of the New York Alta bureau with a check for twelve hundred and
+fifty dollars (the amount of his ticket) and a telegram saying, "Ship
+Mark Twain in the Holy Land Excursion and pay his passage."
+
+    --[The following letter, which bears no date, was probably handed to
+    him later in the New York Alta office as a sort of credential:
+
+    ALTA CALIFORNIA OFFICE, 42 JOHN STREET, NEW YORK.
+
+    Sam'l Clemens, Esq., New York.
+
+    DEAR SIR,--I have the honor to inform you that Fred'k. MacCrellish
+    & Co., Proprietors of Alta California, San Francisco, Cal., desire
+    to engage your services as Special Correspondent on the pleasure
+    excursion now about to proceed from this City to the Holy Land. In
+    obedience to their instructions I have secured a passage for you on
+    the vessel about to convey the excursion party referred to, and made
+    such arrangements as I hope will secure your comfort and
+    convenience. Your only instructions are that you will continue to
+    write at such times and from such places as you deem proper, and in
+    the same style that heretofore secured you the favor of the readers
+    of the Alta California. I have the honor to remain, with high
+    respect and esteem,
+
+    Your ob'dt. Servant,
+
+    JOHN J. MURPHY.]
+
+The Alta, it appears, had already applied for his berth; but, not having
+been vouched for by Mr. Beecher or some other eminent divine, Clemens was
+fearful he might not be accepted. Quite casually he was enlightened on
+this point. While waiting for attention in the shipping-office, with the
+Alta agent, he heard a newspaper man inquire what notables were going. A
+clerk, with evident pride, rattled off the names:
+
+"Lieutenant-General Sherman, Henry Ward Beecher, and Mask Twain; also
+probably General Banks."
+
+So he was billed as an attraction. It was his first surreptitious taste
+of fame on the Atlantic coast, and not without its delight. The story
+often told of his being introduced by Ned House, of the Tribune, as a
+minister, though often repeated by Mark Twain himself, was in the nature
+of a joke, and mainly apocryphal. Clemens was a good deal in House's
+company at the time, for he had made an arrangement to contribute
+occasional letters to the Tribune, and House no doubt introduced him
+jokingly as one of the Quaker City ministers.
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+A NEW BOOK AND A LECTURE
+
+Webb, meantime, had pushed the Frog book along. The proofs had been read
+and the volume was about ready for issue. Clemens wrote to his mother
+April 15th:
+
+    My book will probably be in the bookseller's hands in about two
+    weeks. After that I shall lecture. Since I have been gone, the
+    boys have gotten up a "call" on me signed by two hundred
+    Californians.
+
+The lecture plan was the idea of Frank Fuller, who as acting Governor of
+Utah had known Mark Twain on the Comstock, and prophesied favorably of
+his future career. Clemens had hunted up Fuller on landing in New York
+in January, and Fuller had encouraged the lecture then; but Clemens was
+doubtful.
+
+"I have no reputation with the general public here," he said. "We
+couldn't get a baker's dozen to hear me."
+
+But Fuller was a sanguine person, with an energy and enthusiasm that were
+infectious. He insisted that the idea was sound. It would solidify Mark
+Twain's reputation on the Atlantic coast, he declared, insisting that the
+largest house in New York, Cooper Union, should be taken. Clemens had
+partially consented, and Fuller had arranged with all the Pacific slope
+people who had come East, headed by ex-Governor James W. Nye (by this
+time Senator at Washington), to sign a call for the "Inimitable Mark
+Twain" to appear before a New York audience. Fuller made Nye agree to be
+there and introduce the lecturer, and he was burningly busy and happy in
+the prospect.
+
+But Mark Twain was not happy. He looked at that spacious hall and
+imagined the little crowd of faithful Californian stragglers that might
+gather in to hear him, and the ridicule of the papers next day. He
+begged Fuller to take a smaller hall, the smallest he could get. But
+only the biggest hall in New York would satisfy Fuller. He would have
+taken a larger one if he could have found it. The lecture was announced
+for May 6th. Its subject was "Kanakadom, or the Sandwich Islands"
+--tickets fifty cents. Fuller timed it to follow a few days after Webb's
+book should appear, so that one event might help the other.
+
+Mark Twain's first book, 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveyas
+County, and Other Sketches', was scheduled for May 1st, and did, in fact,
+appear on that date; but to the author it was no longer an important
+event. Jim Smiley's frog as standard-bearer of his literary procession
+was not an interesting object, so far as he was concerned--not with that
+vast, empty hall in the background and the insane undertaking of trying
+to fill it. The San Francisco venture had been as nothing compared with
+this. Fuller was working night and day with abounding joy, while the
+subject of his labor felt as if he were on the brink of a fearful
+precipice, preparing to try a pair of wings without first learning to
+fly. At one instant he was cold with fright, the next glowing with an
+infection of Fuller's faith. He devised a hundred schemes for the sale
+of seats. Once he came rushing to Fuller, saying:
+
+"Send a lot of tickets down to the Chickering Piano Company. I have
+promised to put on my programme, 'The piano used at this entertainment is
+manufactured by Chickering."'
+
+"But you don't want a piano, Mark," said Fuller, "do you?"
+
+"No, of course not; but they will distribute the tickets for the sake of
+the advertisement, whether we have the piano or not."
+
+Fuller got out a lot of handbills and hung bunches of them in the stages,
+omnibuses, and horse-cars. Clemens at first haunted these vehicles to
+see if anybody noticed the bills. The little dangling bunches seemed
+untouched. Finally two men came in; one of them pulled off a bill and
+glanced at it. His friend asked:
+
+"Who's Mark Twain?"
+
+"God knows; I don't!"
+
+The lecturer could not ride any more. He was desperate.
+
+"Fuller," he groaned, "there isn't a sign--a ripple of interest."
+
+Fuller assured him that everything was working all right "working
+underneath," Fuller said--but the lecturer was hopeless. He reported his
+impressions to the folks at home:
+
+    Everything looks shady, at least, if not dark; I have a good agent;
+    but now, after we have hired the Cooper Institute, and gone to an
+    expense in one way or another of $500, it comes out that I have got
+    to play against Speaker Colfax at Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the
+    double troop of Japanese jugglers, the latter opening at the great
+    Academy of Music--and with all this against me I have taken the
+    largest house in New York and cannot back water.
+
+He might have added that there were other rival entertainments: "The
+Flying Scud" was at Wallack's, the "Black Crook" was at Niblo's, John
+Brougham at the Olympic; and there were at least a dozen lesser
+attractions. New York was not the inexhaustible city in those days;
+these things could gather in the public to the last man. When the day
+drew near, and only a few tickets had been sold, Clemens was desperate.
+
+"Fuller," he said, "there'll be nobody in the Cooper Union that night but
+you and me. I am on the verge of suicide. I would commit suicide if I
+had the pluck and the outfit. You must paper the house, Fuller. You
+must send out a flood of complementaries."
+
+"Very well," said Fuller; "what we want this time is reputation anyway
+--money is secondary. I'll put you before the choicest, most intelligent
+audience that ever was gathered in New York City. I will bring in the
+school-instructors--the finest body of men and women in the world."
+
+Fuller immediately sent out a deluge of complimentary tickets, inviting
+the school-teachers of New York and Brooklyn, and all the adjacent
+country, to come free and hear Mark Twain's great lecture on Kanakadom.
+This was within forty-eight hours of the time he was to appear.
+
+Senator Nye was to have joined Clemens and Fuller at the Westminster,
+where Clemens was stopping, and they waited for him there with a
+carriage, fuming and swearing, until it was evident that he was not
+coming. At last Clemens said:
+
+"Fuller, you've got to introduce me."
+
+"No," suggested Fuller; "I've got a better scheme than that. You get up
+and begin by bemeaning Nye for not being there. That will be better
+anyway."
+
+Clemens said:
+
+"Well, Fuller, I can do that. I feel that way. I'll try to think up
+something fresh and happy to say about that horse-thief."
+
+They drove to Cooper Union with trepidation. Suppose, after all, the
+school-teachers had declined to come? They went half an hour before the
+lecture was to begin. Forty years later Mark Twain said:
+
+"I couldn't keep away. I wanted to see that vast Mammoth cave and die.
+But when we got near the building I saw that all the streets were blocked
+with people, and that traffic had stopped. I couldn't believe that these
+people were trying to get into Cooper Institute; but they were, and when
+I got to the stage at last the house was jammed full-packed; there wasn't
+room enough left for a child.
+
+"I was happy and I was excited beyond expression. I poured the Sandwich
+Islands out on those people, and they laughed and shouted to my entire
+content. For an hour and fifteen minutes I was in paradise."
+
+And Fuller to-day, alive and young, when so many others of that ancient
+time and event have vanished, has added:
+
+"When Mark appeared the Californians gave a regular yell of welcome. When
+that was over he walked to the edge of the platform, looked carefully
+down in the pit, round the edges as if he were hunting for something.
+Then he said: 'There was to have been a piano here, and a senator to
+introduce me. I don't seem to discover them anywhere. The piano was a
+good one, but we will have to get along with such music as I can make
+with your help. As for the senator--Then Mark let himself go and did as
+he promised about Senator Nye. He said things that made men from the
+Pacific coast, who had known Nye, scream with delight. After that came
+his lecture. The first sentence captured the audience. From that moment
+to the end it was either in a roar of laughter or half breathless by his
+beautiful descriptive passages. People were positively ill for days,
+laughing at that lecture."
+
+So it was a success: everybody was glad to have been there; the papers
+were kind, congratulations numerous.
+
+--[Kind but not extravagant; those were burning political times, and the
+doings of mere literary people did not excite the press to the extent of
+headlines. A jam around Cooper Union to-day, followed by such an
+artistic triumph, would be a news event. On the other hand, Schuyler
+Colfax, then Speaker of the House, was reported to the extent of a
+column, nonpareil. His lecture was of no literary importance, and no
+echo of it now remains. But those were political, not artistic, days.
+
+Of Mark Twain's lecture the Times notice said:
+
+"Nearly every one present came prepared for considerable provocation for
+enjoyable laughter, and from the appearance of their mirthful faces
+leaving the hall at the conclusion of the lecture but few were
+disappointed, and it is not too much to say that seldom has so large an
+audience been so uniformly pleased as the one that listened to Mark
+Twain's quaint remarks last evening. The large hall of the Union was
+filled to its utmost capacity by fully two thousand persons, which fact
+spoke well for the reputation of the lecturer and his future success.
+Mark Twain's style is a quaint one both in manner and method, and through
+his discourse he managed to keep on the right side of the audience, and
+frequently convulsed it with hearty laughter.... During a description of
+the topography of the Sandwich Islands the lecturer surprised his hearers
+by a graphic and eloquent description of the eruption of the great
+volcano, which occurred in 1840, and his language was loudly applauded.
+
+"Judging from the success achieved by the lecturer last evening, he
+should repeat his experiment at an early date."]
+
+                   COOPER INSTITUTE
+    By Invitation of s large number of prominent Californians and
+                  Citizens of New York,
+
+                      MARK TWAIN
+
+                    WILL DELIVER A
+                  SERIO-HUMEROUS LECTURE
+                      CONERNING
+
+                      KANAKDOM
+                         OR
+                  THE SANDWICH ISLANDS,
+
+                   COOPER INSTITUTE,
+               On Monday Evening, May 6,1867.
+
+                  TICKETS FIFTY GENTS.
+ For Sale at Chickering and Sons, 852 Broadway, and at the Principal
+                       Hotel
+
+    Doors open at 7 o'clock.  The Wisdom will begin to flow at 8.
+
+Mark Twain always felt grateful to the school-teachers for that night.
+Many years later, when they wanted him to read to them in Steinway Hall,
+he gladly gave his services without charge.
+
+Nor was the lecture a complete financial failure. In spite of the flood
+of complementaries, there was a cash return of some three hundred dollars
+from the sale of tickets--a substantial aid in defraying the expenses
+which Fuller assumed and insisted on making good on his own account. That
+was Fuller's regal way; his return lay in the joy of the game, and in the
+winning of the larger stake for a friend.
+
+"Mark," he said, "it is all right. The fortune didn't come, but it will.
+The fame has arrived; with this lecture and your book just out you are
+going to be the most talked-of man in the country. Your letters for the
+Alta and the Tribune will get the widest reception of any letters of
+travel ever written."
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+THE FIRST BOOK
+
+With the shadow of the Cooper Institute so happily dispelled, The
+Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and his following of Other
+Sketches, became a matter of more interest. The book was a neat
+blue-and-gold volume printed by John A. Gray & Green, the old firm for
+which the boy, Sam Clemens, had set type thirteen years before. The
+title-page bore Webb's name as publisher, with the American News Company
+as selling agents. It further stated that the book was edited by "John
+Paul," that is to say by Webb himself. The dedication was in keeping
+with the general irresponsible character of the venture. It was as
+follows:
+
+                         TO
+                      JOHN SMITH
+            WHOM I HAVE KNOWN IN DIVERS AND SUNDRY
+             PLACES ABOUT THE WORLD, AND WHOSE
+               MANY AND MANIFOLD VIRTUES DID
+                ALWAYS COMMAND MY ESTEEM,
+                  I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+
+It is said that the man to whom a volume is dedicated always buys a copy.
+If this prove true in the present instance, a princely affluence is about
+to burst upon
+                                   THE AUTHOR.
+
+The "advertisement" stated that the author had "scaled the heights of
+popularity at a single jump, and won for himself the sobriquet of the
+'Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope'; furthermore, that he was known to
+fame as the 'Moralist of the Main,'" and that as such he would be likely
+to go down to posterity, adding that it was in his secondary character,
+as humorist, rather than in his primal one of moralist, that the volume
+aimed to present him.--[The advertisement complete, with extracts from
+the book, may be found under Appendix E, at the end of last volume.]
+
+Every little while, during the forty years or more that have elapsed
+since then, some one has come forward announcing Mark Twain to be as much
+a philosopher as a humorist, as if this were a new discovery. But it was
+a discovery chiefly to the person making the announcement. Every one who
+ever knew Mark Twain at any period of his life made the same discovery.
+Every one who ever took the trouble to familiarize himself with his work
+made it. Those who did not make it have known his work only by hearsay
+and quotation, or they have read it very casually, or have been very
+dull. It would be much more of a discovery to find a book in which he
+has not been serious--a philosopher, a moralist, and a poet. Even in the
+Jumping Frog sketches, selected particularly for their inconsequence, the
+under-vein of reflection and purpose is not lacking. The answer to Moral
+Statistician--[In "Answers to Correspondents," included now in Sketches
+New and Old. An extract from it, and from "A Strange Dream," will be
+found in Appendix E.]--is fairly alive with human wisdom and righteous
+wrath. The "Strange Dream," though ending in a joke, is aglow with
+poetry. Webb's "advertisement" was playfully written, but it was
+earnestly intended, and he writes Mark Twain down a moralist--not as a
+discovery, but as a matter of course. The discoveries came along later,
+when the author's fame as a humorist had dazzled the nations.
+
+It is as well to say it here as anywhere, perhaps, that one reason why
+Mark Twain found it difficult to be accepted seriously was the fact that
+his personality was in itself so essentially humorous. His physiognomy,
+his manner of speech, this movement, his mental attitude toward events
+--all these were distinctly diverting. When we add to this that his
+medium of expression was nearly always full of the quaint phrasing and
+those surprising appositions which we recognize as amusing, it is not so
+astonishing that his deeper, wiser, more serious purpose should be
+overlooked. On the whole these unabated discoverers serve a purpose, if
+only to make the rest of their species look somewhat deeper than the
+comic phrase.
+
+The little blue-and-gold volume which presented the Frog story and
+twenty-six other sketches in covers is chiefly important to-day as being
+Mark Twain's first book. The selections in it were made for a public
+that had been too busy with a great war to learn discrimination, and most
+of them have properly found oblivion. Fewer than a dozen of them were
+included in his collected Sketches issued eight years later, and some
+even of those might have been spared; also some that were added, for that
+matter; but detailed literary criticism is not the province of this work.
+The reader may investigate and judge for himself.
+
+Clemens was pleased with the appearance of his book. To Bret Harte he
+wrote:
+
+The book is out and it is handsome. It is full of damnable errors of
+grammar and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketch,
+because I was away and did not read proofs; but be a friend and say
+nothing about these things. When my hurry is over, I will send you a
+copy to pisen the children with.
+
+That he had no exaggerated opinion of the book's contents or prospects we
+may gather from his letter home:
+
+As for the Frog book, I don't believe it will ever pay anything worth a
+cent. I published it simply to advertise myself, and not with the hope
+of making anything out of it.
+
+He had grown more lenient in his opinion of the merits of the Frog story
+itself since it had made friends in high places, especially since James
+Russell Lowell had pronounced it "the finest piece of humorous writing
+yet produced in America"; but compared with his lecture triumph, and his
+prospective journey to foreign seas, his book venture, at best, claimed
+no more than a casual regard. A Sandwich Island book (he had collected
+his Union letters with the idea of a volume) he gave up altogether after
+one unsuccessful offer of it to Dick & Fitzgerald.
+
+Frank Fuller's statement, that the fame had arrived, had in it some
+measure of truth. Lecture propositions came from various directions.
+Thomas Nast, then in the early day of his great popularity, proposed a
+joint tour, in which Clemens would lecture, while he, Nast, illustrated
+the remarks with lightning caricatures. But the time was too short; the
+Quaker City would sail on the 8th of June, and in the mean time the Alta
+correspondent was far behind with his New York letters. On May 29th he
+wrote:
+
+I am 18 Alta letters behind, and I must catch up or bust. I have refused
+all invitations to lecture. Don't know how my book is coming on.
+
+He worked like a slave for a week or so, almost night and day, to clean
+up matters before his departure. Then came days of idleness and
+reaction-days of waiting, during which his natural restlessness and the
+old-time regret for things done and undone, beset him.
+
+    My passage is paid, and if the ship sails I sail on her; but I make
+    no calculations, have bought no cigars, no sea-going clothing--have
+    made no preparations whatever--shall not pack my trunk till the
+    morning we sail.
+
+    All I do know or feel is that I am wild with impatience to move
+    --move--move! Curse the endless delays! They always kill me--they
+    make me neglect every duty, and then I have a conscience that tears
+    me like a wild beast. I wish I never had to stop anywhere a month.
+    I do more mean things the moment I get a chance to fold my hands and
+    sit down than ever I get forgiveness for.
+
+    Yes, we are to meet at Mr. Beach's next Thursday night, and I
+    suppose we shall have to be gotten up regardless of expense, in
+    swallow-tails, white kids and everything 'en regle'.
+
+    I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's
+    supervision. I don't mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid,
+    immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless roommate who is as
+    good and true and right-minded a man as ever lived--a man whose
+    blameless conduct and example will always be an eloquent sermon to
+    all who shall come within their influence. But send on the
+    professional preachers--there are none I like better to converse
+    with; if they're not narrowminded and bigoted they make good
+    companions.
+
+The "splendid immoral room-mate" was Dan Slote--"Dan," of The Innocents,
+a lovable character--all as set down. Samuel Clemens wrote one more
+letter to his mother and sister--a conscience-stricken, pessimistic
+letter of good-by written the night before sailing. Referring to the
+Alta letters he says:
+
+    I think they are the stupidest letters ever written from New York.
+    Corresponding has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the
+    States. If it continues abroad, I don't know what the Tribune and
+    Alta folk will think.
+
+He remembers Orion, who had been officially eliminated when Nevada had
+received statehood.
+
+    I often wonder if his law business is going satisfactorily. I wish
+    I had gone to Washington in the winter instead of going West. I
+    could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewart for him, and that
+    would have atoned for the loss of my home visit. But I am so
+    worthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish
+    anything that lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is
+    stored full of unworthy conduct toward Orion and toward you all, and
+    an accusing conscience gives me peace only in excitement and
+    restless moving from place to place. If I could only say I had done
+    one thing for any of you that entitled me to your good opinions (I
+    say nothing of your love, for I am sure of that, no matter how
+    unworthy of it I may make myself--from Orion down, you have always
+    given me that; all the days of my life, when God Almighty knows I
+    have seldom deserved it), I believe I could go home and stay there
+    --and I know I would care little for the world's praise or blame.
+    There is no satisfaction in the world's praise anyhow, and it has no
+    worth to me save in the way of business. I tried to gather up its
+    compliments to send you, but the work was distasteful and I dropped
+    it.
+
+    You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that
+    is angry with me and gives me freely its contempt. I can get away
+    from that at sea, and be tranquil and satisfied; and so, with my
+    parting love and benediction for Orion and all of you, I say good-by
+    and God bless you all-and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul
+    to the sunny lands of the Mediterranean!
+
+                     Yrs. forever,
+                                SAM
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+THE INNOCENTS AT SEA
+
+       HOLY LAND PLEASURE EXCURSION
+
+       Steamer: Quaker City.
+
+       Captain C. C. Duncan.
+
+       Left New York at 2 P.m., June 8, 1867.
+
+       Rough weather--anchored within the harbor to lay all night.
+
+That first note recorded an event momentous in Mark Twain's career--an
+event of supreme importance; if we concede that any link in a chain
+regardless of size is of more importance than any other link. Undoubtedly
+it remains the most conspicuous event, as the world views it now, in
+retrospect.
+
+The note further heads a new chapter of history in sea-voyaging. No such
+thing as the sailing of an ocean steamship with a pleasure-party on a
+long transatlantic cruise had ever occurred before. A similar project
+had been undertaken the previous year, but owing to a cholera scare in
+the East it had been abandoned. Now the dream had become a fact--a
+stupendous fact when we consider it. Such an important beginning as that
+now would in all likelihood furnish the chief news story of the day.
+
+But they had different ideas of news in those days. There were no
+headlines announcing the departure of the Quaker City--only the barest
+mention of the ship's sailing, though a prominent position was given to
+an account of a senatorial excursion-party which set out that same
+morning over the Union Pacific Railway, then under construction. Every
+name in that political party was set dawn, and not one of them except
+General Hancock will ever be heard of again. The New York Times,
+however, had some one on its editorial staff who thought it worth while
+to comment a little on the history-making Quaker City excursion. The
+writer was pleasantly complimentary to officers and passengers. He
+referred to Moses S. Beach, of the Sun, who was taking with him type and
+press, whereby he would "skilfully utilize the brains of the company for
+their mutual edification." Mr. Beecher and General Sherman would find
+talent enough aboard to make the hours go pleasantly (evidently the
+writer had not interested himself sufficiently to know that these
+gentlemen were not along), and the paragraph closed by prophesying other
+such excursions, and wishing the travelers "good speed, a happy voyage,
+and a safe return."
+
+That was handsome, especially for those days; only now, some fine day,
+when an airship shall start with a band of happy argonauts to land beyond
+the sunrise for the first time in history, we shall feature it and
+emblazon it with pictures in the Sunday papers, and weeklies, and in the
+magazines.--[The Quaker City idea was so unheard-of that in some of the
+foreign ports visited, the officials could not believe that the vessel
+was simply a pleasure-craft, and were suspicious of some dark, ulterior
+purpose.]
+
+That Henry Ward Beecher and General Sherman had concluded not to go was a
+heavy disappointment at first; but it proved only a temporary disaster.
+The inevitable amalgamation of all ship companies took place. The
+sixty-seven travelers fell into congenial groups, or they mingled and
+devised amusements, and gossiped and became a big family, as happy and as
+free from contention as families of that size are likely to be.
+
+The Quaker City was a good enough ship and sizable for her time. She was
+registered eighteen hundred tons--about one-tenth the size of
+Mediterranean excursion-steamers today--and when conditions were
+favorable she could make ten knots an hour under steam--or, at least, she
+could do it with the help of her auxiliary sails. Altogether she was a
+cozy, satisfactory ship, and they were a fortunate company who had her
+all to themselves and went out on her on that long-ago ocean gipsying.
+She has grown since then, even to the proportions of the Mayflower. It
+was necessary for her to grow to hold all of those who in later times
+claimed to have sailed in her on that voyage with Mark Twain.--[The
+Quaker City passenger list will be found under Appendix F, at the end of
+last volume.]
+
+They were not all ministers and deacons aboard the Quaker City. Clemens
+found other congenial spirits be sides his room-mate Dan Slote--among
+them the ship's surgeon, Dr. A. Reeve Jackson (the guide-destroying
+"Doctor" of The Innocents); Jack Van Nostrand, of New Jersey ("Jack");
+Julius Moulton, of St. Louis ("Moult"), and other care-free fellows, the
+smoking-room crowd which is likely to make comradeship its chief
+watchword. There were companionable people in the cabin crowd also
+--fine, intelligent men and women, especially one of the latter, a
+middle-aged, intellectual, motherly soul--Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, of
+Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Fairbanks--herself a newspaper correspondent for
+her husband's paper, the Cleveland Herald had a large influence on the
+character and general tone of those Quaker City letters which established
+Mark Twain's larger fame. She was an able writer herself; her judgment
+was thoughtful, refined, unbiased--altogether of a superior sort. She
+understood Samuel Clemens, counseled him, encouraged him to read his
+letters aloud to her, became in reality "Mother Fairbanks," as they
+termed her, to him and to others of that ship who needed her kindly
+offices.
+
+In one of his home letters, later, he said of her:
+
+    She was the most refined, intelligent, cultivated lady in the ship,
+    and altogether the kindest and best. She sewed my buttons on, kept
+    my clothing in presentable trim, fed me on Egyptian jam (when I
+    behaved), lectured me awfully on the quarter-deck on moonlit
+    promenading evenings, and cured me of several bad habits. I am
+    under lasting obligations to her. She looks young because she is so
+    good, but she has a grown son and daughter at home.
+
+In one of the early letters which Mrs. Fairbanks wrote to her paper she
+is scarcely less complimentary to him, even if in a different way.
+
+    We have D.D.'s and M.D.'s--we have men of wisdom and men of wit.
+    There is one table from which is sure to come a peal of laughter,
+    and all eyes are turned toward Mark Twain, whose face is, perfectly
+    mirth-provoking. Sitting lazily at the table, scarcely genteel in
+    his appearance, there is something, I know not what, that interests
+    and attracts. I saw to-day at dinner venerable divines and sage-
+    looking men convulsed with laughter at his drolleries and quaint,
+    odd manners.
+
+It requires only a few days on shipboard for acquaintances to form, and
+presently a little afternoon group was gathering to hear Mark Twain read
+his letters. Mrs. Fairbanks was there, of course, also Mr. and Mrs. S.
+L. Severance, likewise of Cleveland, and Moses S. Beach, of the Sun, with
+his daughter Emma, a girl of seventeen. Dan Slote was likely to be
+there, too, and Jack, and the Doctor, and Charles J. Langdon, of Elmira,
+New York, a boy of eighteen, who had conceived a deep admiration for the
+brilliant writer. They were fortunate ones who first gathered to hear
+those daring, wonderful letters.
+
+But the benefit was a mutual one. He furnished a priceless entertainment,
+and he derived something equally priceless in return--the test of
+immediate audience and the boon of criticism. Mrs. Fairbanks especially
+was frankly sincere. Mr. Severance wrote afterward:
+
+    One afternoon I saw him tearing up a bunch of the soft, white paper-
+    copy paper, I guess the newspapers call it-on which he had written
+    something, and throwing the fragments into the Mediterranean. I
+    inquired of him why he cast away the fruits of his labors in that
+    manner.
+
+"Well," he drawled, "Mrs. Fairbanks thinks it oughtn't to be printed,
+and, like as not, she is right."
+
+And Emma Beach (Mrs. Abbott Thayer) remembers hearing him say:
+
+"Well, Mrs. Fairbanks has just destroyed another four hours' work for
+me."
+
+Sometimes he played chess with Emma Beach, who thought him a great hero
+because, once when a crowd of men were tormenting a young lad, a
+passenger, Mark Twain took the boy's part and made them desist.
+
+"I am sure I was right, too," she declares; "heroism came natural to
+him."
+
+Mr. Severance recalls another incident which, as he says, was trivial
+enough, but not easy to forget:
+
+We were having a little celebration over the birthday anniversary of Mrs.
+Duncan, wife of our captain. Mark Twain got up and made a little speech,
+in which he said Mrs. Duncan was really older than Methuselah because she
+knew a lot of things that Methuselah never heard of. Then he mentioned a
+number of more or less modern inventions, and wound up by saying, "What
+did Methuselah know about a barbed-wire fence?"
+
+Except Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad comes nearer to being
+history than any other of Mark Twain's travel-books. The notes for it
+were made on the spot, and there was plenty of fact, plenty of fresh, new
+experience, plenty of incident to set down. His idea of descriptive
+travel in those days was to tell the story as it happened; also, perhaps,
+he had not then acquired the courage of his inventions. We may believe
+that the adventures with Jack, Dan, and the Doctor are elaborated here
+and there; but even those happened substantially as recorded. There is
+little to add, then, to the story of that halcyon trip, and not much to
+elucidate.
+
+The old note-books give a light here and there that is interesting. It
+is curious to be looking through them now, trying to realize that these
+penciled memoranda were the fresh, first impressions that would presently
+grow into the world's most delightful book of travel; that they were set
+down in the very midst of that care-free little company that frolicked
+through Italy, climbed wearily the arid Syrian hills. They are all dead
+now; but to us they are as alive and young to-day as when they followed
+the footprints of the Son of Man through Palestine, and stood at last
+before the Sphinx, impressed and awed by its "five thousand
+slow-revolving years."
+
+Some of the items consist of no more than a few terse, suggestive words
+--serious, humorous, sometimes profane. Others are statistical,
+descriptive, elaborated. Also there are drawings--"not copied," he marks
+them, with a pride not always justified by the result. The earlier notes
+are mainly comments on the "pilgrims," the freak pilgrims: "the
+Frenchy-looking woman who owns a dog and keeps up an interminable
+biography of him to the passengers"; the "long-legged, simple,
+wide-mouthed, horse-laughing young fellow who once made a sea voyage to
+Fortress Monroe, and quotes eternally from his experiences"; also, there
+is reference to another young man, "good, accommodating, pleasant but
+fearfully green." This young person would become the "Interrogation
+Point," in due time, and have his picture on page 71 (old edition), while
+opposite him, on page 70, would appear the "oracle," identified as one
+Doctor Andrews, who (the note-book says) had the habit of "smelling in
+guide-books for knowledge and then trying to play it for old information
+that has been festering in his brain." Sometimes there are abstract
+notes such as:
+
+How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing that no one had
+ever said it before.
+
+Of the "character" notes, the most important and elaborated is that which
+presents the "Poet Lariat." This is the entry, somewhat epitomized:
+
+                  BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER
+
+    He is fifty years old, and small of his age. He dresses in
+    homespun, and is a simple-minded, honest, old-fashioned farmer, with
+    a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He writes them on all
+    possible subjects, and gets them printed on slips of paper, with his
+    portrait at the head. These he will give to any man who comes
+    along, whether he has anything against him or not . . . .
+
+    Dan said:
+
+    "It must be a great happiness to you to sit down at the close of day
+    and put its events all down in rhymes and poetry, like Byron and
+    Shakespeare and those fellows."
+
+    "Oh yes, it is--it is--Why, many's the time I've had to get up in
+    the night when it comes on me:
+
+       Whether we're on the sea or the land
+       We've all got to go at the word of command--
+
+    "Hey! how's that?"
+
+A curious character was Cutter--a Long Island farmer with the obsession
+of rhyme. In his old age, in an interview, he said:
+
+"Mark was generally writing and he was glum. He would write what we were
+doing, and I would write poetry, and Mark would say:
+
+"'For Heaven's sake, Cutter, keep your poems to yourself.'
+
+"Yes, Mark was pretty glum, and he was generally writing."
+
+Poor old Poet Lariat--dead now with so many others of that happy crew. We
+may believe that Mark learned to be "glum" when he saw the Lariat
+approaching with his sheaf of rhymes. We may believe, too, that he was
+"generally writing." He contributed fifty-three letters to the Alta
+during that five months and six to the Tribune. They would average about
+two columns nonpareil each, which is to say four thousand words, or
+something like two hundred and fifty thousand words in all. To turn out
+an average of fifteen hundred words a day, with continuous sight-seeing
+besides, one must be generally writing during any odd intervals; those
+who are wont to regard Mark Twain as lazy may consider these statistics.
+That he detested manual labor is true enough, but at the work for which
+he was fitted and intended it may be set down here upon authority (and
+despite his own frequent assertions to the contrary) that to his last
+year he was the most industrious of men.
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
+
+It was Dan, Jack, and the Doctor who with Mark Twain wandered down
+through Italy and left moral footprints that remain to this day. The
+Italian guides are wary about showing pieces of the True Cross, fragments
+of the Crown of Thorns, and the bones of saints since then. They show
+them, it is true, but with a smile; the name of Mark Twain is a
+touch-stone to test their statements. Not a guide in Italy but has heard
+the tale of that iconoclastic crew, and of the book which turned their
+marvels into myths, their relics into bywords.
+
+It was Doctor Jackson, Colonel Denny, Doctor Birch, and Samuel Clemens
+who evaded the quarantine and made the perilous night trip to Athens and
+looked upon the Parthenon and the sleeping city by moonlight. It is all
+set down in the notes, and the account varies little from that given in
+the book; only he does not tell us that Captain Duncan and the
+quartermaster, Pratt, connived at the escapade, or how the latter watched
+the shore in anxious suspense until he heard the whistle which was their
+signal to be taken aboard. It would have meant six months' imprisonment
+if they had been captured, for there was no discretion in the Greek law.
+
+It was T. D. Crocker, A. N. Sanford, Col. Peter Kinney, and William
+Gibson who were delegated to draft the address to the Emperor of Russia
+at Yalta, with Samuel L. Clemens as chairman of that committee. The
+chairman wrote the address, the opening sentence of which he grew so
+weary of hearing:
+
+    We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply
+    for recreation, and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial
+    state.
+
+The address is all set down in the notes, and there also exists the first
+rough draft, with the emendations in his own hand. He deplores the time
+it required:
+
+    That job is over. Writing addresses to emperors is not my strong
+    suit. However, if it is not as good as it might be it doesn't
+    signify--the other committeemen ought to have helped me write it;
+    they had nothing to do, and I had my hands full. But for bothering
+    with this I would have caught up entirely with my New York Tribune
+    correspondence and nearly up with the San Francisco.
+
+They wanted him also to read the address to the Emperor, but he pointed
+out that the American consul was the proper person for that office. He
+tells how the address was presented:
+
+August 26th. The Imperial carriages were in waiting at eleven, and at
+twelve we were at the palace....
+
+The Consul for Odessa read the address and the Czar said frequently,
+"Good--very good; indeed"--and at the close, "I am very, very grateful."
+
+It was not improper for him to set down all this, and much more, in his
+own note-book--not then for publication. It was in fact a very proper
+record--for today.
+
+One incident of the imperial audience Mark Twain omitted from his book,
+perhaps because the humor of it had not yet become sufficiently evident.
+"The humorous perception of a thing is a pretty slow growth sometimes,"
+he once remarked. It was about seventeen years before he could laugh
+enjoyably at a slight mistake he made at the Emperor's reception. He set
+down a memorandum of it, then, for fear it might be lost:
+
+    There were a number of great dignitaries of the Empire there, and
+    although, as a general thing, they were dressed in citizen's
+    clothing, I observed that the most of them wore a very small piece
+    of ribbon in the lapels of their coats. That little touch of color
+    struck my fancy, and it seemed to me a good idea to add it to my own
+    attractions; not imagining that it had any special significance. So
+    I stepped aside, hunted up a bit of red ribbon, and ornamented my
+    lapel with it. Presently, Count Festetics, the Grand Master of
+    ceremonies, and the only man there who was gorgeously arrayed, in
+    full official costume, began to show me a great many attentions. He
+    was particularly polite, and pleasant, and anxious to be of service
+    to me. Presently, he asked me what order of nobility I belonged to?
+    I said, "I didn't belong to any." Then he asked me what order of
+    knighthood I belonged to? I said, "None." Then he asked me what
+    the red ribbon in my buttonhole stood for? I saw, at once, what an
+    ass I had been making of myself, and was accordingly confused and
+    embarrassed. I said the first thing that came into my mind, and
+    that was that the ribbon was merely the symbol of a club of
+    journalists to which I belonged, and I was not pursued with any more
+    of Count Festetic's attentions.
+
+    Later, I got on very familiar terms with an old gentleman, whom I
+    took to be the head gardener, and walked him all about the gardens,
+    slipping my arm into his without invitation, yet without demur on
+    his part, and by and by was confused again when I found that he was
+    not a gardener at all, but the Lord High Admiral of Russia! I
+    almost made up my mind that I would never call on an Emperor again.
+
+Like all Mediterranean excursionists, those first pilgrims were
+insatiable collectors of curios, costumes, and all manner of outlandish
+things. Dan Slote had the stateroom hung and piled with such gleanings.
+At Constantinople his room-mate writes:
+
+    I thought Dan had got the state-room pretty full of rubbish at last,
+    but awhile ago his dragoman arrived with a brand-new ghastly
+    tombstone of the Oriental pattern, with his name handsomely carved
+    and gilted on it in Turkish characters. That fellow will buy a
+    Circassian slave next.
+
+It was Church, Denny, Jack, Davis, Dan, Moult, and Mark Twain who made
+the "long trip" through Syria from Beirut to Jerusalem with their
+elaborate camping outfit and decrepit nags "Jericho," "Baalbec," and the
+rest. It was better camping than that Humboldt journey of six years
+before, though the horses were not so dissimilar, and altogether it was a
+hard, nerve-racking experience, climbing the arid hills of Palestine in
+that torrid summer heat. Nobody makes that trip in summer-time now.
+Tourists hurry out of Syria before the first of April, and they do not go
+back before November. One brief quotation from Mark Twain's book gives
+us an idea of what that early party of pilgrims had to undergo:
+
+    We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a couple of
+    hours, and then the party stopped a while in the shade of some fig-
+    trees to give me a chance to rest. It was the hottest day we had
+    seen yet--the sun-flames shot down like the shafts of fire that
+    stream out before a blow-pipe; the rays seemed to fall in a deluge
+    on the head and pass downward like rain from a roof. I imagined I
+    could distinguish between the floods of rays. I thought I could
+    tell when each flood struck my head, when it reached my shoulders,
+    and when the next one came. It was terrible.
+
+He had been ill with cholera at Damascus, a light attack; but any attack
+of that dread disease is serious enough. He tells of this in the book,
+but he does not mention, either in the book or in his notes, the attack
+which Dan Slote had some days later. It remained for William F. Church,
+of the party, to relate that incident, for it was the kind of thing that
+Mark Twain was not likely to record, or even to remember. Doctor Church
+was a deacon with orthodox views and did not approve of Mark Twain; he
+thought him sinful, irreverent, profane.
+
+"He was the worst man I ever knew," Church said; then he added, "And the
+best."
+
+What happened was this: At the end of a terrible day of heat, when the
+party had camped on the edge of a squalid Syrian village, Dan was taken
+suddenly ill. It was cholera, beyond doubt. Dan could not go on--he
+might never go on. The chances were that way. It was a serious matter
+all around. To wait with Dan meant to upset their travel schedule--it
+might mean to miss the ship. Consultation was held and a resolution
+passed (the pilgrims were always passing resolutions) to provide for Dan
+as well as possible, and leave him behind. Clemens, who had remained
+with Dan, suddenly appeared and said:
+
+"Gentlemen, I understand that you are going to leave Dan Slote here
+alone. I'll be d---d if I do!"
+
+And he didn't. He stayed there and brought Dan into Jerusalem, a few
+days late, but convalescent.
+
+Perhaps most of them were not always reverent during that Holy Land trip.
+It was a trying journey, and after fierce days of desert hills the
+reaction might not always spare even the holiest memories. Jack was
+particularly sinful. When they learned the price for a boat on Galilee,
+and the deacons who had traveled nearly half around the world to sail on
+that sacred water were confounded by the charge, Jack said:
+
+"Well, Denny, do you wonder now that Christ walked?"
+
+It was the irreverent Jack who one morning (they had camped the night
+before by the ruins of Jericho) refused to get up to see the sun rise
+across the Jordan. Deacon Church went to his tent.
+
+"Jack, my boy, get up. Here is the place where the Israelites crossed
+over into the Promised Land, and beyond are the mountains of Moab, where
+Moses lies buried."
+
+"Moses who!" said Jack.
+
+"Oh, Jack, my boy, Moses, the great lawgiver--who led the Israelites out
+of Egypt-forty years through the wilderness--to the Promised Land."
+
+"Forty years!" said Jack. "How far was it?"
+
+"It was three hundred miles, Jack; a great wilderness, and he brought
+them through in safety."
+
+Jack regarded him with scorn. "Huh, Moses--three hundred miles forty
+years--why, Ben Holiday would have brought them through in thirty-six
+hours!"--[Ben Holiday, owner of the Overland stages, and a man of great
+executive ability. This incident, a true one, is more elaborately told
+in Roughing It, but it seems pertinent here.]
+
+Jack probably learned more about the Bible during that trip-its history
+and its heroes-than during all his former years. Nor was Jack the only
+one of that group thus benefited. The sacred landmarks of Palestine
+inspire a burning interest in the Scriptures, and Mark Twain probably did
+not now regret those early Sunday-school lessons; certainly he did not
+fail to review them exhaustively on that journey. His note-books fairly
+overflow with Bible references; the Syrian chapters in The Innocents
+Abroad are permeated with the poetry and legendary beauty of the Bible
+story. The little Bible he carried on that trip, bought in
+Constantinople, was well worn by the time they reached the ship again at
+Jaffa. He must have read it with a large and persistent interest; also
+with a double benefit. For, besides the knowledge acquired, he was
+harvesting a profit--probably unsuspected at the time---viz., the
+influence of the most direct and beautiful English--the English of the
+King James version--which could not fail to affect his own literary
+method at that impressionable age. We have already noted his earlier
+admiration for that noble and simple poem, "The Burial of Moses," which
+in the Palestine note-book is copied in full. All the tendency of his
+expression lay that way, and the intense consideration of stately Bible
+phrase and imagery could hardly fail to influence his mental processes.
+The very distinct difference of style, as shown in The Innocents Abroad
+and in his earlier writings, we may believe was in no small measure due
+to his study of the King James version during those weeks in Palestine.
+
+He bought another Bible at Jerusalem; but it was not for himself. It was
+a little souvenir volume bound in olive and balsam wood, and on the
+fly-leaf is inscribed:
+
+    Mrs. Jane Clemens from her son. Jerusalem, Sept. 24, 1867.
+
+There is one more circumstance of that long cruise-recorded neither in
+the book nor the notes--an incident brief, but of more importance in the
+life of Samuel Clemens than any heretofore set down. It occurred in the
+beautiful Bay of Smyrna, on the fifth or sixth of September, while the
+vessel lay there for the Ephesus trip.
+
+Reference has been made to young Charles Langdon, of Elmira (the
+"Charley" once mentioned in the Innocents), as an admirer of Mark Twain.
+There was a good deal of difference in their ages, and they were seldom
+of the same party; but sometimes the boy invited the journalist to his
+cabin and, boy-like, exhibited his treasures. He had two sisters at
+home; and of Olivia, the youngest, he had brought a dainty miniature done
+on ivory in delicate tints--a sweet-pictured countenance, fine and
+spiritual. On that fateful day in the day of Smyrna, Samuel Clemens,
+visiting in young Langdon's cabin, was shown this portrait. He looked at
+it with long admiration, and spoke of it reverently, for the delicate
+face seemed to him to be something more than a mere human likeness. Each
+time he came, after that, he asked to see the picture, and once even
+begged to be allowed to take it away with him. The boy would not agree
+to this, and the elder man looked long and steadily at the miniature,
+resolving in his mind that some day he would meet the owner of that
+lovely face--a purpose for once in accord with that which the fates had
+arranged for him, in the day when all things were arranged, the day of
+the first beginning.
+
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIMS
+
+The last note-book entry bears date of October 11th:
+
+    At sea, somewhere in the neighborhood of Malta. Very stormy.
+
+    Terrible death to be talked to death. The storm has blown two small
+    land birds and a hawk to sea and they came on board. Sea full of
+    flying-fish.
+
+That is all. There is no record of the week's travel in Spain, which a
+little group of four made under the picturesque Gibraltar guide, Benunes,
+still living and quite as picturesque at last accounts. This side-trip
+is covered in a single brief paragraph in the Innocents, and the only
+account we have of it is in a home letter, from Cadiz, of October 24th:
+
+    We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to Algeciras (4 hours), thus
+    dodging the quarantine--took dinner, and then rode horseback all
+    night in a swinging trot, and at daylight took a caleche (a-wheeled
+    vehicle), and rode 5 hours--then took cars and traveled till twelve
+    at night. That landed us at Seville, and we were over the hard part
+    of our trip and somewhat tired. Since then we have taken things
+    comparatively easy, drifting around from one town to another and
+    attracting a good deal of attention--for I guess strangers do not
+    wander through Andalusia and the other southern provinces of Spain
+    often. The country is precisely what it was when Don Quixote and
+    Sancho Panza were possible characters.
+
+    But I see now what the glory of Spain must have been when it was
+    under Moorish domination. No, I will not say that--but then when
+    one is carried away, infatuated, entranced, with the wonders of the
+    Alhambra and the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is apt to
+    overflow with admiration for the splendid intellects that created
+    them.
+
+We may wish that he had left us a chapter of that idyllic journey, but it
+will never be written now. A night or two before the vessel reached New
+York there was the usual good-by assembly, and for this occasion, at Mrs.
+Severance's request, Mark Twain wrote some verses. They were not
+especially notable, for meter and rhyme did not come easy to him, but one
+prophetic stanza is worth remembering. In the opening lines the
+passengers are referred to as a fleet of vessels, then follows:
+
+       Lo! other ships of that parted fleet
+       Shall suffer this fate or that:
+       One shall be wrecked, another shall sink,
+       Or ground on treacherous flat.
+       Some shall be famed in many lands
+       As good ships, fast and fair,
+       And some shall strangely disappear,
+       Men know not when or where.
+
+The Quaker City returned to America on November 19, 1867, and Mark Twain
+found himself, if not famous, at least in very wide repute. The
+fifty-three letters to the Alta and the half-dozen to the New York
+Tribune had carried his celebrity into every corner of the States and
+Territories. Vivid, fearless, full of fresh color, humor, poetry, they
+came as a revelation to a public weary of the driveling, tiresome
+travel-letters of that period. They preached a new gospel in
+travel-literature: the gospel of seeing with an overflowing honesty; a
+gospel of sincerity in according praises to whatever seemed genuine, and
+ridicule to the things considered sham. It was the gospel that Mark
+Twain would continue to preach during his whole career. It became his
+chief literary message to the world-a world waiting for that message.
+
+Moreover, the letters were literature. He had received, from whatever
+source, a large and very positive literary impulse, a loftier conception
+and expression. It was at Tangier that he first struck the grander
+chord, the throbbing cadence of human story.
+
+Here is a crumbling wall that was old when Columbus discovered America;
+old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to
+arm for the first Crusade; old when Charlemagne and his paladins
+beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and genii in the
+fabled days of the olden time; old when Christ and his disciples walked
+the earth; stood where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were
+vocal and men bought and sold in the streets of ancient Thebes.
+
+This is pure poetry. He had never touched so high a strain before, but
+he reached it often after that, and always with an ever-increasing
+mastery and confidence. In Venice, in Rome, in Athens, through the Holy
+Land, his retrospection becomes a stately epic symphony, a processional
+crescendo that swings ever higher until it reaches that sublime strain,
+the ageless contemplation of the Sphinx. We cannot forego a paragraph or
+two of that word-picture:
+
+    After years of waiting it was before me at last. The great face was
+    so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not
+    of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as
+    never anything human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient.
+    If ever image of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking
+    toward the verge of the landscape, yet looking at nothing--nothing
+    but distance and vacancy. It was looking over and beyond everything
+    of the present, and far into the past.... It was thinking of the
+    wars of the departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and
+    destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose
+    progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy
+    and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five
+    thousand slow-revolving years . . . .
+
+    The Sphinx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its
+    magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its
+    story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this
+    eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of
+    all ages, which reveals to one something of what we shall feel when
+    we shall stand at last in the awful presence of God.
+
+Then that closing word of Egypt. He elaborated it for the book, and did
+not improve it. Let us preserve here its original form.
+
+    We are glad to have seen Egypt. We are glad to have seen that old
+    land which taught Greece her letters--and through Greece, Rome--and
+    through Rome, the world--that venerable cradle of culture and
+    refinement which could have humanized and civilized the Children of
+    Israel, but allowed them to depart out of her borders savages--those
+    Children whom we still revere, still love, and whose sad
+    shortcomings we still excuse--not because they were savages, but
+    because they were the chosen savages of God.
+
+The Holy Land letters alone would have brought him fame. They presented
+the most graphic and sympathetic picture of Syrian travel ever written
+--one that will never become antiquated or obsolete so long as human
+nature remains unchanged. From beginning to end the tale is rarely,
+reverently told. Its closing paragraph has not been surpassed in the
+voluminous literature of that solemn land:
+
+    Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of
+    a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.
+    Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers that solemn
+    sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing
+    exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs
+    motionless and dead--about whose borders nothing grows but weeds and
+    scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises
+    refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch.
+    Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of
+    Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing one finds
+    only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the
+    accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle left
+    it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in
+    their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to
+    remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's
+    presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks
+    by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, goodwill to men,
+    is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature
+    that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the
+    stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and
+    is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer
+    there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the
+    wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel is
+    gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on
+    that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the
+    Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode
+    at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships,
+    was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its
+    borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin;
+    Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have
+    vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them
+    where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate
+    the miraculous bread sleep in the hush of a solitude that is
+    inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
+
+    Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?
+    Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?
+
+It would be easy to quote pages here--a pictorial sequence from Gibraltar
+to Athens, from Athens to Egypt, a radiant panoramic march. In time he
+would write technically better. He would avoid solecism, he would become
+a greater master of vocabulary and phrase, but in all the years ahead he
+would never match the lambent bloom and spontaneity of those fresh, first
+impressions of Mediterranean lands and seas. No need to mention the
+humor, the burlesque, the fearless, unrestrained ridicule of old masters
+and of sacred relics, so called. These we have kept familiar with much
+repetition. Only, the humor had grown more subtle, more restrained; the
+burlesque had become impersonal and harmless, the ridicule so frank and
+good-natured, that even the old masters themselves might have enjoyed it,
+while the most devoted churchman, unless blinded by bigotry, would find
+in it satisfaction, rather than sacrilege.
+
+The final letter was written for the New York Herald after the arrival,
+and was altogether unlike those that preceded it. Gaily satirical and
+personal--inclusively so--it might better have been left unwritten, for
+it would seem to have given needless offense to a number of goodly
+people, whose chief sin was the sedateness of years. However, it is all
+past now, and those who were old then, and perhaps queer and pious and
+stingy, do not mind any more, and those who were young and frivolous have
+all grown old too, and most of them have set out on the still farther
+voyage. Somewhere, it may be, they gather, now; and then, and lightly,
+tenderly recall their old-time journeying.
+
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+IN WASHINGTON--A PUBLISHING PROPOSITION
+
+Clemens remained but one day in New York. Senator Stewart had written,
+about the time of the departure of the Quaker City, offering him the
+position of private secretary--a position which was to give him leisure
+for literary work, with a supporting salary as well. Stewart no doubt
+thought it would be considerably to his advantage to have the brilliant
+writer and lecturer attached to his political establishment, and Clemens
+likewise saw possibilities in the arrangement. From Naples, in August,
+he had written accepting Stewart's offer; he lost no time now in
+discussing the matter in person.--[In a letter home, August 9th, he
+referred to the arrangement: "I wrote to Bill Stewart to-day accepting
+his private secretaryship in Washington, next winter."]
+
+There seems to have been little difficulty in concluding the arrangement.
+When Clemens had been in Washington a week we find him writing:
+
+    DEAR FOLKS, Tired and sleepy--been in Congress all day and making
+    newspaper acquaintances. Stewart is to look up a clerkship in the
+    Patent Office for Orion. Things necessarily move slowly where there
+    is so much business and such armies of office-seekers to be attended
+    to. I guess it will be all right. I intend it shall be all right.
+
+    I have 18 invitations to lecture, at $100 each, in various parts
+    of the Union--have declined them all. I am for business now.
+
+    Belong on the Tribune Staff, and shall write occasionally. Am
+    offered the same berth to-day on the Herald by letter. Shall write
+    Mr. Bennett and accept, as soon as I hear from Tribune that it will
+    not interfere. Am pretty well known now--intend to be better known.
+    Am hobnobbing with these old Generals and Senators and other humbugs
+    for no good purpose. Don't have any more trouble making friends
+    than I did in California. All serene. Good-by. Shall continue on
+    the Alta.
+                     Yours affectionately,
+                                   SAM.
+
+    P.S.--I room with Bill Stewart and board at Willard's Hotel.
+
+But the secretary arrangement was a brief matter. It is impossible to
+conceive of Mark Twain as anybody's secretary, especially as the
+secretary of Senator Stewart.
+
+--[In Senator Stewart's memoirs he refers unpleasantly to Mark Twain, and
+after relating several incidents that bear only strained relations to the
+truth, states that when the writer returned from the Holy Land he
+(Stewart) offered him a secretaryship as a sort of charity. He adds that
+Mark Twain's behavior on his premises was such that a threat of a
+thrashing was necessary. The reason for such statements becomes
+apparent, however, when he adds that in 'Roughing It' the author accuses
+him of cheating, prints a picture of him with a hatch over his eye, and
+claims to have given him a sound thrashing, none of which statements,
+save only the one concerning the picture (an apparently unforgivable
+offense to his dignity), is true, as the reader may easily ascertain for
+himself.]
+
+Within a few weeks he was writing humorous accounts of "My Late
+Senatorial Secretaryship," "Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation,"
+etc., all good-natured burlesque, but inspired, we may believe, by the
+change: These articles appeared in the New York Tribune, the New York
+Citizen, and the Galaxy Magazine.
+
+There appears to have been no ill-feeling at this time between Clemens
+and Stewart. If so, it is not discoverable in any of the former's
+personal or newspaper correspondence. In fact, in his article relating
+to his "late senatorial secretaryship" he puts the joke, so far as it is
+a joke, on Senator James W. Nye, probably as an additional punishment for
+Nye's failure to appear on the night of his lecture. He established
+headquarters with a brilliant newspaper correspondent named Riley. "One
+of the best men in Washington--or elsewhere," he tells us in a brief
+sketch of that person.--[See Riley, newspaper correspondent. Sketches
+New and Old.]--He had known Riley in San Francisco; the two were
+congenial, and settled down to their several undertakings.
+
+Clemens was chiefly concerned over two things: he wished to make money
+and he wished to secure a government appointment for Orion. He had used
+up the most of his lecture accumulations, and was moderately in debt. His
+work was in demand at good rates, for those days, and with working
+opportunity he could presently dispose of his financial problem. The
+Tribune was anxious for letters; the Enterprise and Alta were waiting for
+them; the Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the magazines--all had solicited
+contributions; the lecture bureaus pursued him. Personally his outlook
+was bright.
+
+The appointment for Orion was a different matter. The powers were not
+especially interested in a brother; there were too many brothers and
+assorted relatives on the official waiting-list already. Clemens was
+offered appointments for himself--a consulship, a post-mastership; even
+that of San Francisco. From the Cabinet down, the Washington political
+contingent had read his travel-letters, and was ready to recognize
+officially the author of them in his own person and personality.
+
+Also, socially: Mark Twain found himself all at once in the midst of
+receptions, dinners, and speech-making; all very exciting for a time at
+least, but not profitable, not conducive to work. At a dinner of the
+Washington Correspondents Club his response to the toast, "Women," was
+pronounced by Schuyler Colfax to be "the best after dinner speech ever
+made." Certainly it was a refreshing departure from the prosy or
+clumsy-witted efforts common to that period. He was coming altogether
+into his own.--[This is the first of Mark Twain's after-dinner speeches
+to be preserved. The reader will find it complete, as reported next day,
+in Appendix G, at the end of last volume.]
+
+He was not immediately interested in the matter of book publication. The
+Jumping Frog book was popular, and in England had been issued by
+Routledge; but the royalty returns were modest enough and slow in
+arrival. His desire was for prompter results. His interest in book
+publication had never been an eager one, and related mainly to the
+advertising it would furnish, which he did not now need; or to the money
+return, in which he had no great faith. Yet at this very moment a letter
+for him was lying in the Tribune office in New York which would bring the
+book idea into first prominence and spell the beginning of his fortune.
+
+Among those who had read and found delight in the Tribune letters was
+Elisha Bliss, Jr., of the American Publishing Company, of Hartford. Bliss
+was a shrewd and energetic man, with a keen appreciation for humor and
+the American fondness for that literary quality. He had recently
+undertaken the management of a Hartford concern, and had somewhat alarmed
+its conservative directorate by publishing books that furnished
+entertainment to the reader as well as moral instruction. Only his
+success in paying dividends justified this heresy and averted his
+downfall. Two days after the arrival of the Quaker City Bliss wrote the
+letter above mentioned. It ran as follows:
+
+                  OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.
+                  HARTFORD, CONN., November 21, 1867.
+
+SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ., Tribune Office, New York.
+
+DEAR SIR,--We take the liberty to address you this, in place of a letter
+which we had recently written and were about to forward to you, not
+knowing your arrival home was expected so soon. We are desirous of
+obtaining from you a work of some kind, perhaps compiled from your
+letters from the past, etc., with such interesting additions as may be
+proper. We are the publishers of A. D. Richardson's works, and flatter
+ourselves that we can give an author a favorable term and do as full
+justice to his productions as any other house in the country. We are
+perhaps the oldest subscription house in the country, and have never
+failed to give a book an immense circulation. We sold about 100,000
+copies of Richardson's F. D. and E. ('Field, Dungeon and Escape'), and
+are now printing 41,000 of 'Beyond the Mississippi', and large orders
+ahead. If you have any thought of writing a book, or could be induced to
+do so, we should be pleased to see you, and will do so. Will you do us
+the favor of reply at once, at your earliest convenience.
+
+                         Very truly etc.,
+
+                            E. BLISS, JR.,
+                            Secretary.
+
+After ten days' delay this letter was forwarded to the Tribune bureau in
+Washington, where Clemens received it. He replied promptly.
+
+                     WASHINGTON, December 2, 1867.
+
+E. BLISS, JR., ESQ., Secretary American Publishing Co.
+
+DEAR SIR,--I only received your favor of November 21st last night, at the
+rooms of the Tribune Bureau here. It was forwarded from the Tribune
+office, New York where it had lain eight or ten days. This will be a
+sufficient apology for the seeming discourtesy of my silence.
+
+I wrote fifty-two letters for the San Francisco Alta California during
+the Quaker City excursion, about half of which number have been printed
+thus far. The Alta has few exchanges in the East, and I suppose scarcely
+any of these letters have been copied on this side of the Rocky
+Mountains. I could weed them of their chief faults of construction and
+inelegancies of expression, and make a volume that would be more
+acceptable in many respects than any I could now write. When those
+letters were written my impressions were fresh, but now they have lost
+that freshness; they were warm then, they are cold now. I could strike
+out certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to supply their places.
+If you think such a book would suit your purpose, please drop me a line,
+specifying the size and general style of the volume--when the matter
+ought to be ready; whether it should have pictures in it or not; and
+particularly what your terms with me would be, and what amount of money I
+might possibly make out of it. The latter clause has a degree of
+importance for me which is almost beyond my own comprehension. But you
+understand that, of course.
+
+I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted the propriety of
+interfering with good newspaper engagements, except my way as an author
+could be demonstrated to be plain before me. But I know Richardson, and
+learned from him some months ago something of an idea of the subscription
+plan of publishing. If that is your plan invariably it looks safe.
+
+I am on the New York Tribune staff here as an "occasional," among other
+things, and a note from you addressed to
+              Very truly, etc.,
+                         SAM. L. CLEMENS,
+                         New York Tribune Bureau, Washington
+will find me, without fail.
+
+The exchange of those two letters marked the beginning of one of the most
+notable publishing connections in American literary history.
+
+Consummation, however, was somewhat delayed. Bliss was ill when the
+reply came, and could not write again in detail until nearly a month
+later. In this letter he recited the profits made by Richardson and
+others through subscription publication, and named the royalties paid.
+Richardson had received four per cent. of the sale price, a small enough
+rate for these later days; but the cost of manufacture was larger then,
+and the sale and delivery of books through agents has ever been an
+expensive process. Even Horace Greeley had received but a fraction more
+on his Great American Conflict. Bliss especially suggested and
+emphasized a "humorous work--that is to say, a work humorously inclined."
+He added that they had two arrangements for paying authors: outright
+purchase, and royalty. He invited a meeting in New York to arrange
+terms.
+
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+OLIVIA LANGDON
+
+Clemens did in fact go to New York that same evening, to spend Christmas
+with Dan Slote, and missed Bliss's second letter. It was no matter. Fate
+had his affairs properly in hand, and had prepared an event of still
+larger moment than the publication even of Innocents Abroad. There was a
+pleasant reunion at Dan Slote's. He wrote home about it:
+
+    Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan and I (all Quaker City
+    night-hawks) had a blow-out at Dan's house and a lively talk over
+    old times. I just laughed till my sides ached at some of our
+    reminiscences. It was the unholiest gang that ever cavorted through
+    Palestine, but those are the best boys in the world.
+
+This, however, was not the event; it was only preliminary to it. We are
+coming to that now. At the old St. Nicholas Hotel, which stood on the
+west of Broadway between Spring and Broome streets, there were stopping
+at this time Jervis Langdon, a wealty coal-dealer and mine-owner of
+Elmira, his son Charles and his daughter Olivia, whose pictured face
+Samuel Clemens had first seen in the Bay of Smyrna one September day.
+Young Langdon had been especially anxious to bring his distinguished
+Quaker City friend and his own people together, and two days before
+Christmas Samuel Clemens was invited to dine at the hotel. He went very
+willingly. The lovely face of that miniature had been often a part of his
+waking dreams. For the first time now he looked upon its reality. Long
+afterward he said:
+
+"It is forty years ago. From that day to this she has never been out of
+my mind."
+
+Charles Dickens was in New York then, and gave a reading that night in
+Steinway Hall. The Langdons went, and Samuel Clemens accompanied them.
+He remembered afterward that Dickens wore a black velvet coat with a
+fiery red flower in his buttonhole, and that he read the storm scene from
+Copperfield--the death of James Steerforth. But he remembered still more
+clearly the face and dress of that slender girlish figure at his side.
+
+Olivia Langdon was twenty-two years old at this time, delicate as the
+miniature he had seen, fragile to look upon, though no longer with the
+shattered health of her girlhood. At sixteen, through a fall upon the
+ice, she had become a complete invalid, confined to her bed for two
+years, unable to sit, even when supported, unable to lie in any position
+except upon her back. Great physicians and surgeons, one after another,
+had done their best for her but she had failed steadily until every hope
+had died. Then, when nothing else was left to try, a certain Doctor
+Newton, of spectacular celebrity, who cured by "laying on of hands," was
+brought to Elmira to see her. Doctor Newton came into the darkened room
+and said:
+
+"Open the windows--we must have light!"
+
+They protested that she could not bear the light, but the windows were
+opened. Doctor Newton came to the bedside of the helpless girl,
+delivered a short, fervent prayer, put his arm under her shoulders, and
+bade her sit up. She had not moved for two years, and the family were
+alarmed, but she obeyed, and he assisted her into a chair. Sensation
+came back to her limbs. With his assistance she even made a feeble
+attempt to walk. He left then, saying that she would gradually improve,
+and in time be well, though probably never very strong. On the same day
+he healed a boy, crippled and drawn with fever.
+
+It turned out as he had said. Olivia Langdon improved steadily, and now
+at twenty-two, though not robust--she was never that--she was
+comparatively well. Gentle, winning, lovable, she was the family idol,
+and Samuel Clemens joined in their worship from the moment of that first
+meeting.
+
+Olivia Langdon, on her part, was at first dazed and fascinated, rather
+than attracted, by this astonishing creature, so unlike any one she had
+ever known. Her life had been circumscribed, her experiences of a simple
+sort. She had never seen anything resembling him before. Indeed, nobody
+had. Somewhat carelessly, even if correctly, attired; eagerly, rather
+than observantly, attentive; brilliant and startling, rather than
+cultured, of speech--a blazing human solitaire, unfashioned, unset,
+tossed by the drift of fortune at her feet. He disturbed rather than
+gratified her. She sensed his heresy toward the conventions and forms
+which had been her gospel; his bantering, indifferent attitude toward
+life--to her always so serious and sacred; she suspected that he even
+might have unorthodox views on matters of religion. When he had gone she
+somehow had the feeling that a great fiery meteor of unknown portent had
+swept across her sky.
+
+To her brother, who was eager for her approval of his celebrity, Miss
+Langdon conceded admiration. As for her father, he did not qualify his
+opinion. With hearty sense of humor, and a keen perception of verity and
+capability in men, Jervis Langdon accepted Samuel Clemens from the start,
+and remained his stanch admirer and friend. Clemens left that night with
+an invitation to visit Elmira by and by, and with the full intention of
+going--soon. Fate, however, had another plan. He did not see Elmira for
+the better part of a year.
+
+He saw Miss Langdon again within the week. On New-Year's Day he set
+forth to pay calls, after the fashion of the time--more lavish then than
+now. Miss Langdon was receiving with Miss Alice Hooker, a niece of Henry
+Ward Beecher, at the home of a Mrs. Berry; he decided to go there first.
+With young Langdon he arrived at eleven o'clock in the morning, and they
+did not leave until midnight. If his first impression upon Olivia
+Langdon had been meteoric, it would seem that he must now have become to
+her as a streaming comet that swept from zenith to horizon. One thing is
+certain: she had become to him the single, unvarying beacon of his future
+years. He visited Henry Ward Beecher on that trip and dined with him by
+invitation. Harriet Beecher Stowe was present, and others of that
+eminent family. Likewise his old Quaker City comrades, Moses S. and
+Emma Beach. It was a brilliant gathering, a conclave of intellectual
+gods--a triumph to be there for one who had been a printer-boy on the
+banks of the Mississippi, and only a little while before a miner with
+pick and shovel. It was gratifying to be so honored; it would be
+pleasant to write home; but the occasion lacked something too
+--everything, in fact--for when he ran his eye around the board the face
+of the minature was not there.
+
+Still there were compensations; inadequate, of course, but pleasant
+enough to remember. It was Sunday evening and the party adjourned to
+Plymouth Church. After services Mr. Beecher invited him to return home
+with him for a quiet talk. Evidently they had a good time, for in the
+letter telling of these things Samuel Clemens said: "Henry Ward Beecher
+is a brick."
+
+
+
+
+LXV
+
+A CONTRACT WITH ELISHA BLISS, JR.
+
+He returned to Washington without seeing Miss Langdon again, though he
+would seem to have had permission to write--friendly letters. A little
+later (it was on the evening of January 9th) he lectured in Washington
+--on very brief notice indeed. The arrangement for his appearance had
+been made by a friend during his absence--"a friend," Clemens declared
+afterward, "not entirely sober at the time." To his mother he wrote:
+
+I scared up a doorkeeper and was ready at the proper time, and by pure
+good luck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved. I hardly
+knew what I was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style.
+
+The title of the lecture delivered was "The Frozen Truth"--"more truth in
+the title than in the lecture," according to his own statement. What it
+dealt with is not remembered now. It had to do with the Quaker City
+trip, perhaps, and it seems to have brought a financial return which was
+welcome enough. Subsequently he delivered it elsewhere; though just how
+far the tour extended cannot be learned from the letters, and he had but
+little memory of it in later years.
+
+There was some further correspondence with Bliss, then about the 21st of
+January (1868) Clemens made a trip to Hartford to settle the matter.
+Bliss had been particularly anxious to meet him, personally and was a
+trifle disappointed with his appearance. Mark Twain's traveling costume
+was neither new nor neat, and he was smoking steadily a pipe of power.
+His general make-up was hardly impressive.
+
+Bliss's disturbance was momentary. Once he began to talk the rest did
+not matter. He was the author of those letters, and Bliss decided that
+personally he was even greater than they. The publisher, confined to his
+home with illness, offered him the hospitality of his household. Also,
+he made him two propositions: he would pay him ten thousand dollars cash
+for his copyright, or he would pay five per cent. royalty, which was a
+fourth more than Richardson had received. He advised the latter
+arrangement.
+
+Clemens had already taken advice and had discussed the project a good
+deal with Richardson. The ten thousand dollars was a heavy temptation,
+but he withstood it and closed on the royalty basis--"the best business
+judgment I ever displayed," he was wont to declare. A letter written to
+his mother and sister near the end of this Hartford stay is worth quoting
+pretty fully here, for the information and "character" it contains. It
+bears date of January 24th.
+
+    This is a good week for me. I stopped in the Herald office, as I
+    came through New York, to see the boys on the staff, and young James
+    Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for the
+    Herald, and said if I would I might have full swing, and about
+    anybody and everything I wanted to. I said I must have the very
+    fullest possible swing, and he said, "All right." I said, "It's a
+    contract--" and that settled that matter.
+
+    I'll make it a point to write one letter a week anyhow. But the
+    best thing that has happened is here. This great American
+    Publishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till
+    I thought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I
+    met Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled
+    way of dropping his own work to give other people a lift when he
+    gets a chance, he said: "Now, here, you are one of the talented men
+    of the age--nobody is going to deny that--but in matters of business
+    I don't suppose you know more than enough to come in when it rains.
+    I'll tell you what to do and how to do it." And he did.
+
+    And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid
+    contract for a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with
+    illustrations, the manuscript to be placed in the publisher's hands
+    by the middle of July.--[The contract was not a formal one. There
+    was an exchange of letters agreeing to the terms, but no joint
+    document was drawn until October 16 (1868).]--My percentage is to
+    be a fourth more than they have ever paid any author except Greeley.
+    Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hears this.
+
+    These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their books
+    you can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every
+    week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week,
+    occasionally to the Tribune and the magazines (I have a stupid
+    article in the Galaxy, just issued), but I am not going to write to
+    this and that and the other paper any more.
+
+    I have had a tiptop time here for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno.
+    Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives--in a general way of Mr. Bliss
+    also, who is head of the publishing firm). Puritans are mighty
+    straight-laced, and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but the
+    Almighty don't make any better people.
+
+    I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of
+    May.
+
+So the book, which would establish his claim to a peerage in the literary
+land, was arranged for, and it remained only to prepare the manuscript, a
+task which he regarded as not difficult. He had only to collate the Alta
+and Tribune letters, edit them, and write such new matter as would be
+required for completeness.
+
+Returning to Washington, he plunged into work with his usual terrific
+energy, preparing the copy--in the mean time writing newspaper
+correspondence and sketches that would bring immediate return. In
+addition to his regular contributions, he entered into a syndicate
+arrangement with John Swinton (brother of William Swinton, the historian)
+to supply letters to a list of newspapers.
+
+"I have written seven long newspaper letters and a short magazine article
+in less than two days," he wrote home, and by the end of January he had
+also prepared several chapters of his book.
+
+The San Francisco post-mastership was suggested to him again, but he put
+the temptation behind him. He refers to this more than once in his home
+letters, and it is clear that he wavered.
+
+    Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me the
+    President's appointment, and Senator Corners said he would guarantee
+    me the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it
+    would render it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to
+    drop the idea....
+
+    And besides I did not want the office.
+
+He made this final decision when he heard that the chief editor of the
+Alta wanted the place, and he now threw his influence in that quarter. "I
+would not take ten thousand dollars out of a friend's pocket," he said.
+
+But then suddenly came the news from Goodman that the Alta publishers had
+copyrighted his Quaker City letters and proposed getting them out in a
+book, to reimburse themselves still further on their investment. This
+was sharper than a serpent's tooth. Clemens got confirmation of the
+report by telegraph. By the same medium he protested, but to no purpose.
+Then he wrote a letter and sat down to wait. He reported his troubles to
+Orion:
+
+    I have made a superb contract for a book, and have prepared the
+    first ten chapters of the sixty or eighty, but I will bet it never
+    sees the light. Don't you let the folks at home hear that. That
+    thieving Alta copyrighted the letters, and now shows no disposition
+    to let me use them. I have done all I can by telegraph, and now
+    await the final result by mail. I only charged them for 50 letters
+    what (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand
+    dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Eastern
+    papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form
+    themselves to get back that pitiful sum.
+
+Orion was by this time back from Nevada, setting type in St. Louis. He
+was full of schemes, as usual, and his brother counsels him freely. Then
+he says:
+
+    We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we
+    learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.
+
+    I am in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am
+    done with literature and all other bosh--that is, literature
+    wherewith to please the general public.
+
+    I shall write to please myself then.
+
+He closes by saying that he rather expects to go with Anson Burlingame on
+the Chinese embassy. Clearly he was pretty hopeless as to his book
+prospects.
+
+His first meeting with General Grant occurred just at this time. In one
+of his home letters he mentions, rather airily, that he will drop in
+someday on the General for an interview; and at last, through Mrs. Grant,
+an appointment was made for a Sunday evening when the General would be at
+home. He was elated with the prospect of an interview; but when he
+looked into the imperturbable, square, smileless face of the soldier he
+found himself, for the first time in his life, without anything
+particular to say. Grant nodded slightly and waited. His caller wished
+something would happen. It did. His inspiration returned.
+
+"General," he said, "I seem to be a little embarrassed. Are you?"
+
+That broke the ice. There were no further difficulties.--[Mark Twain has
+variously related this incident. It is given here in accordance with the
+letters of the period.]
+
+
+
+
+LXVI
+
+BACK TO SAN FRANCISCO
+
+Reply came from the Alta, but it was not promising. It spoke rather
+vaguely of prior arrangements and future possibilities. Clemens gathered
+that under certain conditions he might share in the profits of the
+venture. There was but one thing to do; he knew those people--some of
+them--Colonel McComb and a Mr. McCrellish intimately. He must confer
+with them in person.
+
+He was weary of Washington, anyway. The whole pitiful machinery of
+politics disgusted him. In his notebook he wrote:
+
+    Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried
+    out in demagogues.
+
+And in a letter:
+
+    This is a place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There are
+    some pitiful intellects in this Congress! There isn't one man in
+    Washington in civil office who has the brains of Anson Burlingame,
+    and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his great talents to
+    the world this government would have discarded him when his time was
+    up.--[Anson Burlingame had by this time become China's special
+    ambassador to the nations.]
+
+Furthermore, he was down on the climate of Washington. He decided to go
+to San Francisco and see "those Alta thieves face to face." Then, if a
+book resulted, he could prepare it there among friends. Also, he could
+lecture.
+
+He had been anxious to visit his people before sailing, but matters were
+too urgent to permit delay. He obtained from Bliss an advance of royalty
+and took passage, by way of Aspinwall, on the sidewheel steamer Henry
+Chauncey, a fine vessel for those days. The name of Mark Twain was
+already known on the isthmus, and when it was learned he had arrived on
+the Chauncey a delegation welcomed him on the wharf, and provided him
+with refreshments and entertainment. Mr. Tracy Robinson, a poet, long a
+resident of that southern land, was one of the group. Beyond the isthmus
+Clemens fell in again with his old captain, Ned Wakeman, who during the
+trip told him the amazing dream that in due time would become Captain
+Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. He made the first draft of this story soon
+after his arrival in San Francisco, as a sort of travesty of Elizabeth
+Stuart Phelps's Gates Ajar, then very popular. Clemens, then and later,
+had a high opinion of Capt. Ned Wakeman's dream, but his story of it
+would pass through several stages before finally reaching the light of
+publication.--[Mr. John P. Vollmer, now of Lewiston, Idaho, a companion
+of that voyage, writes of a card game which took place beyond the
+isthmus. The notorious crippled gambler, "Smithy," figured in it, and it
+would seem to have furnished the inspiration for the exciting story in
+Chapter XXXVI of the Mississippi book.]
+
+In San Francisco matters turned out as he had hoped. Colonel McComb was
+his stanch friend; McCrellish and Woodward, the proprietors, presently
+conceded that they had already received good value for the money paid.
+The author agreed to make proper acknowledgments to the Alta in his
+preface, and the matter was settled with friendliness all around.
+
+The way was now clear, the book assured. First, however, he must provide
+himself with funds. He delivered a lecture, with the Quaker City
+excursion as his subject. On the 5th of May he wrote to Bliss:
+
+I lectured here on the trip the other night; over $1,600 in gold in the
+house; every seat taken and paid for before night.
+
+He reports that he is steadily at work, and expects to start East with
+the completed manuscript about the middle of June.
+
+But this was a miscalculation. Clemens found that the letters needed
+more preparation than he had thought. His literary vision and equipment
+had vastly altered since the beginning of that correspondence. Some of
+the chapters he rewrote; others he eliminated entirely. It required two
+months of fairly steady work to put the big manuscript together.
+
+Some of the new chapters he gave to Bret Harte for the Overland Monthly,
+then recently established. Harte himself was becoming a celebrity about
+this time. His "Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat,"
+published in early numbers of the Overland, were making a great stir in
+the East, arousing there a good deal more enthusiasm than in the magazine
+office or the city of their publication. That these two friends, each
+supreme in his own field, should have entered into their heritage so
+nearly at the same moment, is one of the many seemingly curious
+coincidences of literary history.
+
+Clemens now concluded to cover his lecture circuit of two years before.
+He was assured that it would be throwing away a precious opportunity not
+to give his new lecture to his old friends. The result justified that
+opinion. At Virginia, at Carson, and elsewhere he was received like a
+returned conqueror. He might have been accorded a Roman triumph had
+there been time and paraphernalia. Even the robbers had reformed, and
+entire safety was guaranteed him on the Divide between Virginia and Gold
+Hill. At Carson he called on Mrs. Curry, as in the old days, and among
+other things told her how snow from the Lebanon Mountains is brought to
+Damascus on the backs of camels.
+
+"Sam," she said, "that's just one of your yarns, and if you tell it in
+your lecture to-night I'll get right up and say so."
+
+But he did tell it, for it was a fact; and though Mrs. Curry did not rise
+to deny it she shook her finger at him in a way he knew.
+
+He returned to San Francisco and gave one more lecture, the last he would
+ever give in California. His preparatory advertising for that occasion
+was wholly unique, characteristic of him to the last degree. It assumed
+the form of a handbill of protest, supposed to have been issued by the
+foremost citizens of San Francisco, urging him to return to the States
+without inflicting himself further upon them. As signatures he made free
+with the names of prominent individuals, followed by those of
+organizations, institutions, "Various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on
+Foot and Horseback, and fifteen hundred in the Steerage."
+
+Following this (on the same bill) was his reply, "To the fifteen hundred
+and others," in which he insisted on another hearing:
+
+    I will torment the people if I want to.... It only costs the people
+    $1 apiece, and if they can't stand it what do they stay here for?...
+    My last lecture was not as fine as I thought it was, but I have
+    submitted this discourse to several able critics, and they have
+    pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I withhold it?
+
+He promised positively to sail on the 6th of July if they would let him
+talk just this once. Continuing, the handbill presented a second
+protest, signed by the various clubs and business firms; also others
+bearing variously the signatures of the newspapers, and the clergy,
+ending with the brief word:
+
+    You had better go.  Yours,  CHIEF OF POLICE.
+
+All of which drollery concluded with his announcement of place and date
+of his lecture, with still further gaiety at the end. Nothing short of a
+seismic cataclysm--an earthquake, in fact--could deter a San Francisco
+audience after that. Mark Twain's farewell address, given at the
+Mercantile Library July 2 (1868), doubtless remains today the leading
+literary event in San Francisco's history.--[Copy of the lecture
+announcement, complete, will be found in Appendix H, at the end of last
+volume.]
+
+He sailed July 6th by the Pacific mail steamer Montana to Acapulco,
+caught the Henry Chauncey at Aspinwall, reached New York on the 28th, and
+a day or two later had delivered his manuscript at Hartford.
+
+But a further difficulty had arisen. Bliss was having troubles himself,
+this time, with his directors. Many reports of Mark Twain's new book had
+been traveling the rounds of the press, some of which declared it was to
+be irreverent, even blasphemous, in tone. The title selected, The New
+Pilgrim's Progress, was in itself a sacrilege. Hartford was a
+conservative place; the American Publishing Company directors were of
+orthodox persuasion. They urged Bliss to relieve the company of this
+impending disaster of heresy. When the author arrived one or more of
+them labored with him in person, without avail. As for Bliss, he was
+stanch; he believed in the book thoroughly, from every standpoint. He
+declared if the company refused to print it he would resign the
+management and publish the book himself. This was an alarming suggestion
+to the stockholders. Bliss had returned dividends--a boon altogether too
+rare in the company's former history. The objectors retired and were
+heard of no more. The manuscript was placed in the hands of Fay and Cox,
+illustrators, with an order for about two hundred and fifty pictures.
+
+Fay and Cox turned it over to True Williams, one of the well-known
+illustrators of that day. Williams was a man of great talent--of fine
+imagination and sweetness of spirit--but it was necessary to lock him in
+a room when industry was required, with nothing more exciting than cold
+water as a beverage. Clemens himself aided in the illustrating by
+obtaining of Moses S. Beach photographs from the large collection he had
+brought home.
+
+
+
+
+LXVII
+
+A VISIT TO ELMIRA
+
+Meantime he had skilfully obtained a renewal of the invitation to spend a
+week in the Langdon home.
+
+He meant to go by a fast train, but, with his natural gift for
+misunderstanding time-tables, of course took a slow one, telegraphing his
+approach from different stations along the road. Young Langdon concluded
+to go down the line as far as Waverly to meet him. When the New York
+train reached there the young man found his guest in the smoking-car,
+travel-stained and distressingly clad. Mark Twain was always
+scrupulously neat and correct of dress in later years, but in that
+earlier day neatness and style had not become habitual and did not give
+him comfort. Langdon greeted him warmly but with doubt. Finally he
+summoned courage to say, hesitatingly--"You've got some other clothes,
+haven't you?"
+
+The arriving guest was not in the least disturbed.
+
+"Oh yes," he said with enthusiasm, "I've got a fine brand-new outfit in
+this bag, all but a hat. It will be late when we get in, and I won't see
+any one to-night. You won't know me in the morning. We'll go out early
+and get a hat."
+
+This was a large relief to the younger man, and the rest of the journey
+was happy enough. True to promise, the guest appeared at daylight
+correctly, even elegantly clad, and an early trip to the shops secured
+the hat. A gay and happy week followed--a week during which Samuel
+Clemens realized more fully than ever that in his heart there was room
+for only one woman in all the world: Olivia Langdon--"Livy," as they all
+called her--and as the day of departure drew near it may be that the
+gentle girl had made some discoveries, too.
+
+No word had passed between them. Samuel Clemens had the old-fashioned
+Southern respect for courtship conventions, and for what, in that day at
+least, was regarded as honor. On the morning of the final day he said to
+young Langdon:
+
+"Charley, my week is up, and I must go home."
+
+The young man expressed a regret which was genuine enough, though not
+wholly unqualified. His older sister, Mrs. Crane, leaving just then for
+a trip to the White Mountains, had said:
+
+"Charley, I am sure Mr. Clemens is after our Livy. You mustn't let him
+carry her off before our return."
+
+The idea was a disturbing one. The young man did not urge his guest to
+prolong his-visit. He said:
+
+"We'll have to stand it, I guess, but you mustn't leave before to-night."
+
+"I ought to go by the first train," Clemens said, gloomily. "I am in
+love."
+
+"In what!"
+
+"In love-with your sister, and I ought to get away from here."
+
+The young man was now very genuinely alarmed. To him Mark Twain was a
+highly gifted, fearless, robust man--a man's man--and as such altogether
+admirable--lovable. But Olivia--Livy--she was to him little short of a
+saint. No man was good enough for her, certainly not this adventurous
+soldier of letters from the West. Delightful he was beyond doubt,
+adorable as a companion, but not a companion for Livy.
+
+"Look here, Clemens," he said, when he could get his voice. "There's a
+train in half an hour. I'll help you catch it. Don't wait till
+to-night. Go now."
+
+Clemens shook his head.
+
+"No, Charley," he said, in his gentle drawl, "I want to enjoy your
+hospitality a little longer. I promise to be circumspect, and I'll go
+to-night."
+
+That night, after dinner, when it was time to take the New York train, a
+light two-seated wagon was at the gate. The coachman was in front, and
+young Langdon and his guest took the back seat. For some reason the seat
+had not been locked in its place, and when, after the good-bys, the
+coachman touched the horse it made a quick spring forward, and the back
+seat, with both passengers, described a half-circle and came down with
+force on the cobbled street. Neither passenger was seriously hurt;
+Clemens not at all--only dazed a little for a moment. Then came an
+inspiration; here was a chance to prolong his visit. Evidently it was
+not intended that he should take that train. When the Langdon household
+gathered around with restoratives he did not recover too quickly. He
+allowed them to support or carry him into the house and place him in an
+arm-chair and apply remedies. The young daughter of the house especially
+showed anxiety and attention. This was pure happiness. He was perjuring
+himself, of course, but they say Jove laughs at such things.
+
+He recovered in a day or two, but the wide hospitality of the handsome
+Langdon home was not only offered now; it was enforced. He was still
+there two weeks later, after which he made a trip to Cleveland to confide
+in Mrs. Fairbanks how he intended to win Livy Langdon for his wife.
+
+
+
+
+LXVIII
+
+THE REV. "JOE" TWICHELL
+
+He returned to Hartford to look after the progress of his book. Some of
+it was being put into type, and with his mechanical knowledge of such
+things he was naturally interested in the process.
+
+He made his headquarters with the Blisses, then living at 821 Asylum
+Avenue, and read proof in a little upper room, where the lamp was likely
+to be burning most of the time, where the atmosphere was nearly always
+blue with smoke, and the window-sill full of cigar butts. Mrs. Bliss
+took him into the quiet social life of the neighborhood--to small church
+receptions, society gatherings and the like--all of which he seemed to
+enjoy. Most of the dwellers in that neighborhood were members of the
+Asylum Hill Congregational Church, then recently completed; all but the
+spire. It was a cultured circle, well-off in the world's goods, its male
+members, for the most part, concerned in various commercial ventures.
+
+The church stood almost across the way from the Bliss home, and Mark
+Twain, with his picturesque phrasing, referred to it as the "stub-tailed
+church," on account of its abbreviated spire; also, later, with a
+knowledge of its prosperous membership, as the "Church of the Holy
+Speculators." He was at an evening reception in the home of one of its
+members when he noticed a photograph of the unfinished building framed
+and hanging on the wall.
+
+"Why, yes," he commented, in his slow fashion, "this is the 'Church of
+the Holy Speculators.'"
+
+"Sh," cautioned Mrs. Bliss. "Its pastor is just behind you. He knows
+your work and wants to meet you." Turning, she said: "Mr. Twichell, this
+is Mr. Clemens. Most people know him as Mark Twain."
+
+And so, in this casual fashion, he met the man who was presently to
+become his closest personal friend and counselor, and would remain so for
+more than forty years.
+
+Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a man about his own age, athletic and
+handsome, a student and a devout Christian, yet a man familiar with the
+world, fond of sports, with an exuberant sense of humor and a wide
+understanding of the frailties of humankind. He had been "port waist
+oar" at Yale, and had left college to serve with General "Dan" Sickles as
+a chaplain who had followed his duties not only in the camp, but on the
+field.
+
+Mention has already been made of Mark Twain's natural leaning toward
+ministers of the gospel, and the explanation of it is easier to realize
+than to convey. He was hopelessly unorthodox--rankly rebellious as to
+creeds. Anything resembling cant or the curtailment of mental liberty
+roused only his resentment and irony. Yet something in his heart always
+warmed toward any laborer in the vineyard, and if we could put the
+explanation into a single sentence, perhaps we might say it was because
+he could meet them on that wide, common ground sympathy with mankind.
+Mark Twain's creed, then and always, may be put into three words,
+"liberty, justice, humanity." It may be put into one word, "humanity."
+
+Ministers always loved Mark Twain. They did not always approve of him,
+but they adored him: The Rev. Mr. Rising, of the Comstock, was an early
+example of his ministerial friendships, and we have seen that Henry Ward
+Beecher cultivated his company. In a San Francisco letter of two years
+before, Mark Twain wrote his mother, thinking it would please her:
+
+I am as thick as thieves with the Reverend Stebbins. I am laying for the
+Reverend Scudder and the Reverend Doctor Stone. I am running on
+preachers now altogether, and I find them gay.
+
+So it may be that his first impulse toward Joseph Twichell was due to the
+fact that he was a young member of that army whose mission is to comfort
+and uplift mankind. But it was only a little time till the impulse had
+grown into a friendship that went beyond any profession or doctrine, a
+friendship that ripened into a permanent admiration and love for "Joe"
+Twichell himself, as one of the noblest specimens of his race.
+
+He was invited to the Twichell home, where he met the young wife and got
+a glimpse of the happiness of that sweet and peaceful household. He had
+a neglected, lonely look, and he loved to gather with them at their
+fireside. He expressed his envy of their happiness, and Mrs. Twichell
+asked him why, since his affairs were growing prosperous, he did not
+establish a household of his own. Long afterward Mr. Twichell wrote:
+
+    Mark made no answer for a little, but, with his eyes bent on the
+    floor, appeared to be deeply pondering. Then he looked up, and said
+    slowly, in a voice tremulous with earnestness (with what sympathy he
+    was heard may be imagined): "I am taking thought of it. I am in
+    love beyond all telling with the dearest and best girl in the whole
+    world. I don't suppose she will marry me. I can't think it
+    possible. She ought not to. But if she doesn't I shall be sure
+    that the best thing I ever did was to fall in love with her, and
+    proud to have it known that I tried to win her!"
+
+It was only a brief time until the Twichell fireside was home to him. He
+came and went, and presently it was "Mark" and "Joe," as by and by it
+would be "Livy" and "Harmony," and in a few years "Uncle Joe" and "Uncle
+Mark," "Aunt Livy" and "Aunt Harmony," and so would remain until the
+end.
+
+
+
+
+LXIX
+
+A LECTURE TOUR
+
+James Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, was the leading
+lecture agent of those days, and controlled all, or nearly all, of the
+platform celebrities. Mark Twain's success at the Cooper Union the year
+before had interested Redpath. He had offered engagements then and
+later, but Clemens had not been free for the regular circuit. Now there
+was no longer a reason for postponement of a contract. Redpath was eager
+for the new celebrity, and Clemens closed with him for the season of
+1868-9. With his new lecture, "The Vandal Abroad," he was presently
+earning a hundred dollars and more a night, and making most of the nights
+count.
+
+This was affluence indeed. He had become suddenly a person of
+substance-an associate of men of consequence, with a commensurate income.
+He could help his mother lavishly now, and he did.
+
+His new lecture was immensely popular. It was a resume of the 'Quaker
+City' letters--a foretaste of the book which would presently follow.
+Wherever he went, he was hailed with eager greetings. He caught such
+drifting exclamations as, "There he is! There goes Mark Twain!" People
+came out on the street to see him pass. That marvelous miracle which we
+variously call "notoriety," "popularity," "fame," had come to him. In
+his notebook he wrote, "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the
+only, earthly certainty oblivion."
+
+The newspapers were filled with enthusiasm both as to his matter and
+method. His delivery was described as a "long, monotonous drawl, with
+the fun invariably coming in at the end of a sentence--after a pause."
+His appearance at this time is thus set down:
+
+    Mark Twain is a man of medium height, about five feet ten, sparsely
+    built, with dark reddish-brown hair and mustache. His features are
+    fair, his eyes keen and twinkling. He dresses in scrupulous evening
+    attire. In lecturing he hangs about the desk, leaning on it or
+    flirting around the corners of it, then marching and countermarching
+    in the rear of it. He seldom casts a glance at his manuscript.
+
+No doubt this fairly presents Mark Twain, the lecturer of that day. It
+was a new figure on the platform, a man with a new method. As to his
+manuscript, the item might have said that he never consulted it at all.
+He learned his lecture; what he consulted was merely a series of
+hieroglyphics, a set of crude pictures drawn by himself, suggestive of
+the subject-matter underneath new head. Certain columns represented the
+Parthenon; the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on. His manuscript lay there
+in case of accident, but the accident did not happen.
+
+A number of his engagements were in the central part of New York, at
+points not far distant from Elmira. He had a standing invitation to
+visit the Langdon home, and he made it convenient to avail himself of
+that happiness.
+
+His was not an unruffled courtship. When at last he reached the point of
+proposing for the daughter of the house, neither the daughter nor the
+household offered any noticeable encouragement to his suit. Many absurd
+anecdotes have been told of his first interview with Mr. Langdon on the
+subject, but they are altogether without foundation. It was a proper and
+dignified discussion of a very serious matter. Mr. Langdon expressed
+deep regard for him and friendship but he was not inclined to add him to
+the family; the young lady herself, in a general way, accorded with these
+views. The applicant for favor left sadly enough, but he could not
+remain discouraged or sad. He lectured at Cleveland with vast success,
+and the news of it traveled quickly to Elmira. He was referred to by
+Cleveland papers as a "lion" and "the coming man of the age." Two days
+later, in Pittsburgh (November 19th), he "played" against Fanny Kemble,
+the favorite actress of that time, with the result that Miss Kemble had
+an audience of two hundred against nearly ten times the number who
+gathered to hear Mark Twain. The news of this went to Elmira, too. It
+was in the papers there next morning; surely this was a conquering hero
+--a gay Lochinvar from out of the West--and the daughter of the house
+must be guarded closely, that he did not bear her away. It was on the
+second morning following the Pittsburgh triumph, when the Langdon family
+were gathered at breakfast, that a bushy auburn head poked fearfully in
+at the door, and a low, humble voice said:
+
+"The calf has returned; may the prodigal have some breakfast?"
+
+No one could be reserved or reprovingly distant, or any of those
+unfriendly things with a person like that; certainly not Jervis Langdon,
+who delighted in the humor and the tricks and turns and oddities of this
+eccentric visitor. Giving his daughter to him was another matter, but
+even that thought was less disturbing than it had been at the start. In
+truth, the Langdon household had somehow grown to feel that he belonged
+to them. The elder sister's husband, Theodore Crane, endorsed him fully.
+He had long before read some of the Mark Twain sketches that had traveled
+eastward in advance of their author, and had recognized, even in the
+crudest of them, a classic charm. As for Olivia Langdon's mother and
+sister, their happiness lay in hers. Where her heart went theirs went
+also, and it would appear that her heart, in spite of herself, had found
+its rightful keeper. Only young Langdon was irreconciled, and eventually
+set out for a voyage around the world to escape the situation.
+
+There was only a provisional engagement at first. Jervis Langdon
+suggested, and Samuel Clemens agreed with him, that it was proper to know
+something of his past, as well as of his present, before the official
+parental sanction should be given. When Mr. Langdon inquired as to the
+names of persons of standing to whom he might write for credentials,
+Clemens pretty confidently gave him the name of the Reverend Stebbins and
+others of San Francisco, adding that he might write also to Joe Goodman
+if he wanted to, but that he had lied for Goodman a hundred times and
+Goodman would lie for him if necessary, so his testimony would be of no
+value. The letters to the clergy were written, and Mr. Langdon also
+wrote one on his own account.
+
+It was a long mail-trip to the Coast and back in those days. It might be
+two months before replies would come from those ministers. The lecturer
+set out again on his travels, and was radiantly and happily busy. He
+went as far west as Illinois, had crowded houses in Chicago, visited
+friends and kindred in Hannibal, St. Louis, and Keokuk, carrying the
+great news, and lecturing in old familiar haunts.
+
+
+
+
+LXX
+
+INNOCENTS AT HOME--AND "THE INNOCENTS ABROAD"
+
+He was in Jacksonville, Illinois, at the end of January (1869), and in a
+letter to Bliss states that he will be in Elmira two days later, and asks
+that proofs of the book be sent there. He arrived at the Langdon home,
+anxious to hear the reports that would make him, as the novels might say,
+"the happiest or the most miserable of men." Jervis Langdon had a rather
+solemn look when they were alone together. Clemens asked:
+
+"You've heard from those gentlemen out there?"
+
+"Yes, and from another gentleman I wrote concerning you."
+
+"They don't appear to have been very enthusiastic, from your manner."
+
+"Well, yes, some of them were."
+
+"I suppose I may ask what particular form their emotion took?"
+
+"Oh yes, yes; they agree unanimously that you are a brilliant, able man,
+a man with a future, and that you would make about the worst husband on
+record."
+
+The applicant for favor had a forlorn look.
+
+"There's nothing very evasive about that," he said:
+
+There was a period of reflective silence. It was probably no more than a
+few seconds, but it seemed longer.
+
+"Haven't you any other friend that you could suggest?" Langdon said.
+
+"Apparently none whose testimony would be valuable."
+
+Jervis Langdon held out his hand. "You have at least one," he said. "I
+believe in you. I know you better than they do."
+
+And so came the crown of happiness. The engagement of Samuel Langhorne
+Clemens and Olivia Lewis Langdon was ratified next day, February 4, 1869.
+
+But if the friends of Mark Twain viewed the idea of the marriage with
+scant favor, the friends of Miss Langdon regarded it with genuine alarm.
+Elmira was a conservative place--a place of pedigree and family
+tradition; that a stranger, a former printer, pilot, miner, wandering
+journalist and lecturer, was to carry off the daughter of one of the
+oldest and wealthiest families, was a thing not to be lightly permitted.
+The fact that he had achieved a national fame did not count against other
+considerations. The social protest amounted almost to insurrection, but
+it was not availing. The Langdon family had their doubts too, though of
+a different sort. Their doubts lay in the fear that one, reared as their
+daughter had been, might be unable to hold a place as the wife of this
+intellectual giant, whom they felt that the world was preparing to honor.
+That this delicate, sheltered girl could have the strength of mind and
+body for her position seemed hard to believe. Their faith overbore such
+questionings, and the future years proved how fully it was justified.
+
+To his mother Samuel Clemens wrote:
+
+    She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer in Christendom.
+    I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion
+    imperatively demands a two-hundred-dollar diamond one, and told her
+    it was typical of her future life-namely, that she would have to
+    flourish on substance, rather than luxuries (but you see I know the
+    girl--she don't care anything about luxuries).... She spends no
+    money but her astral year's allowance, and spends nearly every cent
+    of that on other people. She will be a good, sensible little wife,
+    without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her
+    beforehand, and ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in
+    that--you couldn't help it if you were to try. I warn you that
+    whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature is
+    her willing slave forevermore.
+
+To Mrs. Crane, absent in March, her father wrote:
+
+    DEAR SUE,--I received your letter yesterday with a great deal of
+    pleasure, but the letter has gone in pursuit of one S. L. Clemens,
+    who has been giving us a great deal of trouble lately. We cannot
+    have a joy in our family without a feeling, on the part of the
+    little incorrigible in our family, that this wanderer must share it,
+    so, as soon as read, into her pocket and off upstairs goes your
+    letter, and in the next two minutes into the mail, so it is
+    impossible for me now to refer to it, or by reading it over gain an
+    inspiration in writing you. . .
+
+Clemens closed his lecture tour in March, acid went immediately to
+Elmira. He had lectured between fifty and sixty times, with a return of
+something more than $8,000, not a bad aggregate for a first season on the
+circuit. He had planned to make a spring tour to California, but the
+attraction at Elmira was of a sort that discouraged distant travel.
+Furthermore, he disliked the platform, then and always. It was always a
+temptation to him because of its quick and abundant return, but it was
+none the less distasteful. In a letter of that spring he wrote:
+
+    I most cordially hate the lecture field. And after all, I shudder
+    to think I may never get out of it. In all conversation with Gough,
+    and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips,
+    and the other old stagers, I could not observe that they ever
+    expected or hoped to get out of the business. I don't want to get
+    wedded to it as they are.
+
+He declined further engagements on the excuse that he must attend to
+getting out his book. The revised proofs were coming now, and he and
+gentle Livy Langdon read them together. He realized presently that with
+her sensitive nature she had also a keen literary perception. What he
+lacked in delicacy--and his lack was likely to be large enough in that
+direction--she detected, and together they pruned it away. She became
+his editor during those happy courtship days--a position which she held
+to her death. The world owed a large debt of gratitude to Mark Twain's
+wife, who from the very beginning--and always, so far as in her strength
+she was able--inspired him to give only his worthiest to the world,
+whether in written or spoken word, in counsel or in deed. Those early
+days of their close companionship, spiritual and mental, were full of
+revelation to Samuel Clemens, a revelation that continued from day to
+day, and from year to year, even to the very end.
+
+The letter to Bliss and the proofs were full of suggested changes that
+would refine and beautify the text. In one of them he settles the
+question of title, which he says is to be:
+
+                  THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
+                         or
+                THE NEW PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
+
+and we may be sure that it was Olivia Langdon's voice that gave the
+deciding vote for the newly adopted chief title, which would take any
+suggestion of irreverence out of the remaining words.
+
+The book was to have been issued in the spring, but during his wanderings
+proofs had been delayed, and there was now considerable anxiety about it,
+as the agencies had become impatient for the canvass. At the end of
+April Clemens wrote: "Your printers are doing well. I will hurry the
+proofs"; but it was not until the early part of June that the last
+chapters were revised and returned. Then the big book, at last
+completed, went to press on an edition of twenty thousand, a large number
+for any new book, even to-day.
+
+In later years, through some confusion of circumstance, Mark Twain was
+led to believe that the publication of The Innocents Abroad was long and
+unnecessarily delayed. But this was manifestly a mistake. The book went
+to press in June. It was a big book and a large edition. The first copy
+was delivered July 20 (1869), and four hundred and seventeen bound
+volumes were shipped that month. Even with the quicker mechanical
+processes of to-day a month or more is allowed for a large book between
+the final return of proofs and the date of publication. So it is only
+another instance of his remembering, as he once quaintly put it, "the
+thing that didn't happen."--[In an article in the North American Review
+(September 21, 1906) Mr. Clemens stated that he found it necessary to
+telegraph notice that he would bring suit if the book was not immediately
+issued. In none of the letters covering this period is there any
+suggestion of delay on the part of the publishers, and the date of the
+final return of proofs, together with the date of publication, preclude
+the possibility of such a circumstance. At some period of his life he
+doubtless sent, or contemplated sending, such a message, and this fact,
+through some curious psychology, became confused in his mind with the
+first edition of The Innocents Abroad.]
+
+
+
+
+LXXI
+
+THE GREAT BOOK OF TRAVEL
+
+'The Innocents Abroad' was a success from the start. The machinery for
+its sale and delivery was in full swing by August 1, and five thousand
+one hundred and seventy copies were disposed of that month--a number that
+had increased to more than thirty-one thousand by the first of the year.
+It was a book of travel; its lowest price was three and a half dollars.
+No such record had been made by a book of that description; none has
+equaled it since.--[One must recall that this was the record only up to
+1910. D.W.]
+
+If Mark Twain was not already famous, he was unquestionably famous now.
+As the author of The New Pilgrim's Progress he was swept into the domain
+of letters as one riding at the head of a cavalcade--doors and windows
+wide with welcome and jubilant with applause. Newspapers chorused their
+enthusiasm; the public voiced universal approval; only a few of the more
+cultured critics seemed hesitant and doubtful.
+
+They applauded--most of them--but with reservation. Doctor Holland
+regarded Mark Twain as a mere fun maker of ephemeral popularity, and was
+not altogether pleasant in his dictum. Doctor Holmes, in a letter to the
+author, speaks of the "frequently quaint and amusing conceits," but does
+not find it in his heart to refer to the book as literature. It was
+naturally difficult for the East to concede a serious value to one who
+approached his subject with such militant aboriginality, and occasionally
+wrote "those kind." William Dean Howells reviewed the book in the
+Atlantic, which was of itself a distinction, whether the review was
+favorable or otherwise. It was favorable on the whole, favorable to the
+humor of the book, its "delicious impudence," the charm of its
+good-natured irony. The review closed:
+
+    It is no business of ours to fix his rank among the humorists
+    California has given us, but we think he is, in an entirely
+    different way from all the others, quite worthy of the company of
+    the best.
+
+This is praise, but not of an intemperate sort, nor very inclusive. The
+descriptive, the poetic, the more pretentious phases of the book did not
+receive attention. Mr. Howells was perhaps the first critic of eminence
+to recognize in Mark Twain not only the humorist, but the supreme
+genius-the "Lincoln of our literature." This was later. The public--the
+silent public--with what Howells calls "the inspired knowledge of the
+simple-hearted multitude," reached a similar verdict forthwith. And on
+sufficient evidence: let the average unprejudiced person of to-day take
+up the old volume and read a few chapters anywhere and decide whether it
+is the work of a mere humorist, or also of a philosopher, a poet, and a
+seer. The writer well remembers a little group of "the simple-hearted
+multitude" who during the winter of '69 and '70 gathered each evening to
+hear the Innocents read aloud, and their unanimous verdict that it was
+the "best book of modern times."
+
+It was the most daring book of its day. Passages of it were calculated
+to take the breath of the orthodox reader; only, somehow, it made him
+smile, too. It was all so good-natured, so openly sincere. Without
+doubt it preached heresy--the heresy of viewing revered landmarks and
+relics joyously, rather than lugubriously; reverentially, when they
+inspired reverence; satirically, when they invited ridicule, and with
+kindliness always.
+
+The Innocents Abroad is Mark Twain's greatest book of travel. The
+critical and the pure in speech may object to this verdict. Brander
+Matthews regards it second to A Tramp Abroad, the natural viewpoint of
+the literary technician. The 'Tramp' contains better usage without
+doubt, but it lacks the "color" which gives the Innocents its perennial
+charm. In the Innocents there is a glow, a fragrance, a romance of
+touch, a subtle something which is idyllic, something which is not quite
+of reality, in the tale of that little company that so long ago sailed
+away to the harbors of their illusions beyond the sea, and, wandered
+together through old palaces and galleries, and among the tombs of the
+saints, and down through ancient lands. There is an atmosphere about it
+all, a dream-like quality that lies somewhere in the telling, maybe, or
+in the tale; at all events it is there, and the world has felt it ever
+since. Perhaps it could be defined in a single word, perhaps that word
+would be "youth." That the artist, poor True Williams, felt its
+inspiration is certain. We may believe that Williams was not a great
+draftsman, but no artist ever caught more perfectly the light and spirit
+of the author's text. Crude some of the pictures are, no doubt, but they
+convey the very essence of the story; they belong to it, they are a part
+of it, and they ought never to perish. 'A Tramp Abroad' is a rare book,
+but it cannot rank with its great predecessor in human charm. The
+public, which in the long run makes mistakes, has rendered that verdict.
+The Innocents by far outsells the Tramp, and, for that matter, any other
+book of travel.
+
+
+
+THE PURCHASE OF A PAPER.
+
+It is curious to reflect that Mark Twain still did not regard himself as
+a literary man. He had no literary plans for the future; he scarcely
+looked forward to the publication of another book. He considered himself
+a journalist; his ambition lay in the direction of retirement in some
+prosperous newspaper enterprise, with the comforts and companionship of a
+home. During his travels he had already been casting about for a
+congenial and substantial association in newspaperdom, and had at one
+time considered the purchase of an interest in the Cleveland Herald. But
+Buffalo was nearer Elmira, and when an opportunity offered, by which he
+could acquire a third interest in the Buffalo Express for $25,000, the
+purchase was decided upon. His lack of funds prompted a new plan for a
+lecture tour to the Pacific coast, this time with D. R. Locke (Nasby),
+then immensely popular, in his lecture "Cussed Be Canaan."
+
+Clemens had met Nasby on the circuit, and was very fond of him. The two
+had visited Boston together, and while there had called on Doctor Holmes;
+this by the way. Nasby was fond of Clemens too, but doubtful about the
+trip-doubtful about his lecture:
+
+    Your proposition takes my breath away. If I had my new lecture
+    completed I wouldn't hesitate a moment, but really isn't "Cussed Be
+    Canaan" too old? You know that lemon, our African brother, juicy as
+    he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs
+    after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the
+    "damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first
+    table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You
+    see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed Be
+    Canaan." I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living
+    issue, for I felt all that I said and a great deal more; but now
+    that we have won our fight why dance frantically on the dead corpse
+    of our enemy? The Reliable Contraband is contraband no more, but a
+    citizen of the United States, and I speak of him no more.
+
+    Give me a week to think of your proposition. If I can jerk a
+    lecture in time I will go with you. The Lord knows I would like to.
+    --[Nasby's lecture, "Cussed Be Canaan," opened, "We are all
+    descended from grandfathers!" He had a powerful voice, and always
+    just on the stroke of eight he rose and vigorously delivered this
+    sentence. Once, after lecturing an entire season--two hundred and
+    twenty-five nights--he went home to rest. That evening he sat,
+    musingly drowsing by the fire, when the clock struck eight. Without
+    a moment's thought Nasby sprang to his feet and thundered out, "We
+    are all descended from grandfathers!"]
+
+Nasby did not go, and Clemens's enthusiasm cooled at the prospect of
+setting out alone on that long tour. Furthermore, Jervis Langdon
+promptly insisted on advancing the money required to complete the
+purchase of the Express, and the trade was closed.--[Mr. Langdon is just
+as good for $25,000 for me, and has already advanced half of it in cash.
+I wrote and asked whether I had better send him my note, or a due bill,
+or how he would prefer to have the indebtedness made of record, and he
+answered every other topic in the letter pleasantly, but never replied to
+that at all. Still, I shall give my note into a hands of his business
+agent here, and pay him the interest as it falls due.--S. L. C. to his
+mother.]
+
+The Buffalo Express was at this time in the hands of three men--Col.
+George F. Selkirk, J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett. Colonel Selkirk
+was business manager, Lamed was political editor. With the purchase of
+Kennett's share Clemens became a sort of general and contributing editor,
+with a more or less "roving commission"--his hours and duties not very
+clearly defined. It was believed by his associates, and by Clemens
+himself, that his known connection with the paper would give it prestige
+and circulation, as Nasby's connection had popularized the Toledo Blade.
+The new editor entered upon his duties August 14 (1869). The members of
+the Buffalo press gave him a dinner that evening, and after the manner of
+newspaper men the world over, were handsomely cordial to the "new enemy
+in their midst."
+
+There is an anecdote which relates that next morning, when Mark Twain
+arrived in the Express office (it was then at 14 Swan Street), there
+happened to be no one present who knew him. A young man rose very
+bruskly and asked if there was any one he would like to see. It is
+reported that he replied, with gentle deliberation:
+
+"Well, yes, I should like to see some young man offer the new editor a
+chair."
+
+It is so like Mark Twain that we are inclined to accept it, though it
+seems of doubtful circumstance. In any case it deserves to be true. His
+"Salutatory" (August 18th) is sufficiently genuine:
+
+    Being a stranger, it would be immodest for me to suddenly and
+    violently assume the associate editorship of the Buffalo Express
+    without a single word of comfort or encouragement to the unoffending
+    patrons of the paper, who are about to be exposed to constant
+    attacks of my wisdom and learning. But the word shall be as brief
+    as possible. I only want to assure parties having a friendly
+    interest in the prosperity of the journal that I am not going to
+    hurt the paper deliberately and intentionally at any time. I am not
+    going to introduce any startling reforms, nor in any way attempt to
+    make trouble.... I shall not make use of slang and vulgarity upon
+    any occasion or under any circumstances, and shall never use
+    profanity except when discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon
+    a second thought, I shall not use it even then, for it is
+    unchristian, inelegant, and degrading; though, to speak truly, I do
+    not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a
+    cent without it. I shall not often meddle with politics, because we
+    have a political Editor who is already excellent and only needs to
+    serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect. I shall not
+    write any poetry unless I conceive a spite against the subscribers.
+
+    Such is my platform. I do not see any use in it, but custom is law
+    and must be obeyed.
+
+John Harrison Mills, who was connected with the Express in those days,
+has written:
+
+    I cannot remember that there was any delay in getting down to his
+    work. I think within five minutes the new editor had assumed the
+    easy look of one entirely at home, pencil in hand and a clutch of
+    paper before him, with an air of preoccupation, as of one intent on
+    a task delayed. It was impossible to be conscious of the man
+    sitting there, and not feel his identity with all that he had
+    enjoyed, and the reminiscence of it he that seemed to radiate; for
+    the personality was so absolutely in accord with all the record of
+    himself and his work. I cannot say he seemed to be that vague thing
+    they call a type in race or blood, though the word, if used in his
+    case for temperament, would decidedly mean what they used to call
+    the "sanguine."
+
+    I thought that, pictorially, the noble costume of the Albanian would
+    have well become him. Or he might have been a Goth, and worn the
+    horned bull-pate helmet of Alaric's warriors; or stood at the prow
+    of one of the swift craft of the Vikings. His eyes, which have been
+    variously described, were, it seemed to me, of an indescribable
+    depth of the bluish moss-agate, with a capacity of pupil dilation
+    that in certain lights had the effect of a deep black....
+
+Mr. Mills adds that in dress he was now "well groomed," and that
+consequently they were obliged to revise their notions as to the careless
+negligee which gossip had reported.--[From unpublished Reminiscences
+kindly lent to the author by Mr. Mills]
+
+
+
+
+LXXIII
+
+THE FIRST MEETING WITH HOWELLS
+
+Clemens' first period of editorial work was a brief one, though he made
+frequent contributions to the paper: sketches, squibs, travel-notes, and
+experiences, usually humorous in character. His wedding-day had been set
+for early in the year, and it was necessary to accumulate a bank account
+for that occasion. Before October he was out on the lecture circuit,
+billed now for the first time for New England, nervous and apprehensive
+in consequence, though with good hope. To Pamela he wrote (November
+9th):
+
+To-morrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience
+--4,000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends my future
+success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same
+boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just
+left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatly depressed. I
+have convinced him that he has little to fear.
+
+Whatever alarm Mark Twain may have felt was not warranted. His success
+with the New England public was immediate and complete. He made his
+headquarters in Boston, at Redpath's office, where there was pretty sure
+to be a congenial company, of which he was presently the center.
+
+It was during one of these Boston sojourns that he first met William Dean
+Howells, his future friend and literary counselor. Howells was assistant
+editor of the Atlantic at this time; James T. Fields, its editor. Clemens
+had been gratified by the Atlantic review, and had called to express his
+thanks for it. He sat talking to Fields, when Howells entered the
+editorial rooms, and on being presented to the author of the review,
+delivered his appreciation in the form of a story, sufficiently
+appropriate, but not qualified for the larger types.--[He said: "When I
+read that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby
+had come white."]
+
+His manner, his humor, his quaint colloquial forms all delighted Howells
+--more, in fact, than the opulent sealskin overcoat which he affected at
+this period--a garment astonishing rather than esthetic, as Mark Twain's
+clothes in those days of his first regeneration were likely to be
+startling enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere of the
+Atlantic rooms. And Howells--gentle, genial, sincere--filled with the
+early happiness of his calling, won the heart of Mark Twain and never
+lost it, and, what is still more notable, won his absolute and unvarying
+confidence in all literary affairs. It was always Mark Twain's habit to
+rely on somebody, and in matters pertaining to literature and to literary
+people in general he laid his burden on William Dean Howells from that
+day. Only a few weeks after that first visit we find him telegraphing to
+Howells, asking him to look after a Californian poet, then ill and
+friendless in Brooklyn. Clemens states that he does not know the poet,
+but will contribute fifty dollars if Howells will petition the steamboat
+company for a pass; and no doubt Howells complied, and spent a good deal
+more than fifty dollars' worth of time to get the poet relieved and
+started; it would be like him.
+
+
+
+
+LXXIV
+
+THE WEDDING-DAY
+
+The wedding was planned, at first, either for Christmas or New-Year's
+Day; but as the lecture engagements continued into January it was decided
+to wait until these were filled. February 2d, a date near the
+anniversary of the engagement, was agreed upon, also a quiet wedding with
+no "tour." The young people would go immediately to Buffalo, and take up
+a modest residence, in a boardinghouse as comfortable, even as luxurious,
+as the husband's financial situation justified. At least that was Samuel
+Clemens's understanding of the matter. He felt that he was heavily in
+debt--that his first duty was to relieve himself of that obligation.
+
+There were other plans in Elmira, but in the daily and happy letters he
+received there was no inkling of any new purpose.
+
+He wrote to J. D. F. Slee, of Buffalo, who was associated in business
+with Mr. Langdon, and asked him to find a suitable boarding-place, one
+that would be sufficiently refined for the woman who was to be his wife,
+and sufficiently reasonable to insure prosperity. In due time Slee
+replied that, while boarding was a "miserable business anyhow," he had
+been particularly fortunate in securing a place on one of the most
+pleasant streets--"the family a small one and choice spirits, with no
+predilection for taking boarders, and consenting to the present
+arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your company."
+The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a house
+on Delaware Avenue--still the fine residence street of Buffalo--had been
+bought and furnished throughout as a present to the bride and groom. It
+stands to-day practically unchanged--brick and mansard without, Eastlake
+within, a type then much in vogue--spacious and handsome for that period.
+It was completely appointed. Diagrams of the rooms had been sent to
+Elmira and Miss Langdon herself had selected the furnishings. Everything
+was put in readiness, including linen, cutlery, and utensils. Even the
+servants had been engaged and the pantry and cellar had been stocked.
+
+It must have been hard for Olivia Langdon to keep this wonderful surprise
+out of those daily letters. A surprise like that is always watching a
+chance to slip out unawares, especially when one is eagerly impatient to
+reveal it.
+
+However, the traveler remained completely in the dark. He may have
+wondered vaguely at the lack of enthusiasm in the boarding idea, and
+could he have been certain that the sales of the book would continue, or
+that his newspaper venture would yield an abundant harvest, he might have
+planned his domestic beginning on a more elaborate scale. If only the
+Tennessee land would yield the long-expected fortune now! But these were
+all incalculable things. All that he could be sure of was the coming of
+his great happiness, in whatever environment, and of the dragging weeks
+between.
+
+At last the night of the final lecture came, and he was off for Elmira
+with the smallest possible delay. Once there, the intervening days did
+not matter. He could join in the busy preparations; he could write
+exuberantly to his friends. To Laura Hawkins, long since Laura Frazer he
+sent a playful line; to Jim Gillis, still digging and washing on the
+slopes of the old Tuolumne hills, he wrote a letter which eminently
+belongs here:
+
+                     Elmira, N. Y., January 26, 1870.
+
+    DEAR Jim,--I remember that old night just as well! And somewhere
+    among my relics I have your remembrance stored away. It makes my
+    heart ache yet to call to mind some of those days. Still it
+    shouldn't, for right in the depths of their poverty and their
+    pocket-hunting vagabondage lay the germ of my coming good fortune.
+    You remember the one gleam of jollity that shot across our dismal
+    sojourn in the rain and mud of Angel's Camp--I mean that day we sat
+    around the tavern stove and heard that chap tell about the frog and
+    how they filled him with shot. And you remember how we quoted from
+    the yarn and laughed over it out there on the hillside while you and
+    dear old Stoker panned and washed. I jotted the story down in my
+    note-book that day, and would have been glad to get ten or fifteen
+    dollars for it--I was just that blind. But then we were so hard up.
+    I published that story, and it became widely known in America,
+    India, China, England, and the reputation it made for me has paid me
+    thousands and thousands of dollars since. Four or five months ago I
+    bought into the Express (I have ordered it sent to you as long as
+    you live, and if the bookkeeper sends you any bills you let me hear
+    of it). I went heavily in debt--never could have dared to do that,
+    Jim, if we hadn't heard the jumping Frog story that day.
+
+    And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the hand, and wouldn't I
+    love to see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition of
+    Rinalds in the "Burning Shame!" Where is Dick and what is he doing?
+    Give him my fervent love and warm old remembrances.
+
+    A week from to-day I shall be married-to a girl even better and
+    lovelier than the peerless "Chapparal Quails." You can't come so
+    far, Jim, but still I cordially invite you to come anyhow, and I
+    invite Dick too. And if you two boys were to land here on that
+    pleasant occasion we would make you right royally welcome.
+                     Truly your friend,
+                                SAML. L. CLEMENS.
+
+    P.S.---California plums are good. Jim, particularly when they are
+    stewed.
+
+It had been only five years before--that day in Angel's Camp--but how
+long ago and how far away it seemed to him now! So much had happened
+since then, so much of which that was the beginning--so little compared
+with the marvel of the years ahead, whose threshold he was now about to
+cross, and not alone.
+
+A day or two before the wedding he was asked to lecture on the night of
+February 2d. He replied that he was sorry to disappoint the applicant,
+but that he could not lecture on the night of February 2d, for the reason
+that he was going to marry a young lady on that evening, and that he
+would rather marry that young lady than deliver all the lectures in the
+world.
+
+And so came the wedding-day. It began pleasantly; the postman brought a
+royalty check that morning of $4,000, the accumulation of three months'
+sales, and the Rev. Joseph Twichell and Harmony, his wife, came from
+Hartford--Twichell to join with the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher in
+solemnizing the marriage. Pamela Moffett, a widow now, with her daughter
+Annie, grown to a young lady, had come all the way from St. Louis, and
+Mrs. Fairbanks from Cleveland.
+
+Yet the guests were not numerous, not more than a hundred at most, so it
+was a quiet wedding there in the Langdon parlors, those dim, stately
+rooms that in the future would hold so much of his history--so much of
+the story of life and death that made its beginning there.
+
+The wedding-service was about seven o'clock, for Mr. Beecher had a
+meeting at the church soon after that hour. Afterward followed the
+wedding-supper and dancing, and the bride's father danced with the bride.
+To the interested crowd awaiting him at the church Mr. Beecher reported
+that the bride was very beautiful, and had on the longest white gloves he
+had ever seen; he declared they reached to her shoulders.--[Perhaps for a
+younger generation it should be said that Thomas K. Beecher was a brother
+of Henry Ward Beecher. He lived and died in Elmira, the almost worshiped
+pastor of the Park Congregational Church. He was a noble, unorthodox
+teacher. Samuel Clemens at the time of his marriage already strongly
+admired him, and had espoused his cause in an article signed "S'cat!" in
+the Elmira Advertiser, when he (Beecher) had been assailed by the more
+orthodox Elmira clergy. For the "S'cat" article see Appendix I, at the
+end of last volume.]
+
+It was the next afternoon when they set out for Buffalo, accompanied by
+the bride's parents, the groom's relatives, the Beechers, and perhaps one
+or two others of that happy company. It was nine o'clock at night when
+they arrived, and found Mr. Slee waiting at the station with sleighs to
+convey the party to the "boarding-house" he had selected. They drove and
+drove, and the sleigh containing the bride and groom got behind and
+apparently was bound nowhere in particular, which disturbed the groom a
+good deal, for he thought it proper that they should arrive first, to
+receive their guests. He commented on Slee's poor judgment in selecting
+a house that was so hard to find, and when at length they turned into
+fashionable Delaware Avenue, and stopped before one of the most
+attractive places in the neighborhood, he was beset with fear concerning
+the richness of the locality.
+
+They were on the steps when the doors opened, and a perfect fairyland of
+lights and decoration was revealed within. The friends who had gone
+ahead came out with greetings, to lead in the bride and groom. Servants
+hurried forward to take bags and wraps. They were ushered inside; they
+were led through beautiful rooms, all newly appointed and garnished. The
+bridegroom was dazed, unable to understand the meaning of things, the
+apparent ownership and completeness of possession.
+
+At last the young wife put her hand upon his arm:
+
+"Don't you understand, Youth," she said; that was always her name for
+him. "Don't you understand? It is ours, all ours--everything--a gift
+from father!"
+
+But even then he could not grasp it; not at first, not until Mr. Langdon
+brought a little box and, opening it, handed them the deeds.
+
+Nobody quite remembers what was the first remark that Samuel Clemens made
+then; but either then or a little later he said:
+
+"Mr. Langdon, whenever you are in Buffalo, if it's twice a year, come
+right here. Bring your bag and stay overnight if you want to. It
+sha'n't cost you a cent!"
+
+They went in to supper then, and by and by the guests were gone and the
+young wedded pair were alone.
+
+Patrick McAleer, the young coachman, who would grow old in their employ,
+and Ellen, the cook, came in for their morning orders, and were full of
+Irish delight at the inexperience and novelty of it all. Then they were
+gone, and only the lovers in their new house and their new happiness
+remained.
+
+And so it was they entered the enchanted land.
+
+
+
+
+LXXV
+
+AS TO DESTINY
+
+If any reader has followed these chapters thus far, he may have wondered,
+even if vaguely, at the seeming fatality of events. Mark Twain had but
+to review his own life for justification of his doctrine of inevitability
+--an unbroken and immutable sequence of cause and effect from the
+beginning. Once he said:
+
+"When the first living atom found itself afloat on the great Laurentian
+sea the first act of that first atom led to the second act of that first
+atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life, until, if
+the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first act of that
+first atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing here in my
+dressing-gown at this instant talking to you."
+
+It seemed the clearest presentment ever offered in the matter of
+predestined circumstance--predestined from the instant when that primal
+atom felt the vital thrill. Mark Twain's early life, however imperfectly
+recorded, exemplifies this postulate. If through the years still ahead
+of us the course of destiny seems less clearly defined, it is only
+because thronging events make the threads less easy to trace. The web
+becomes richer, the pattern more intricate and confusing, but the line of
+fate neither breaks nor falters, to the end.
+
+
+
+
+LXXVI
+
+ON THE BUFFALO "EXPRESS"
+
+With the beginning of life in Buffalo, Mark Twain had become already a
+world character--a man of large consequence and events. He had no proper
+realization of this, no real sense of the size of his conquest; he still
+regarded himself merely as a lecturer and journalist, temporarily
+popular, but with no warrant to a permanent seat in the world's literary
+congress. He thought his success something of an accident. The fact
+that he was prepared to settle down as an editorial contributor to a
+newspaper in what was then only a big village is the best evidence of a
+modest estimate of his talents.
+
+He "worked like a horse," is the verdict of those who were closely
+associated with him on the Express. His hours were not regular, but they
+were long. Often he was at his desk at eight in the morning, and
+remained there until ten or eleven at night.
+
+His working costume was suited to comfort rather than show. With coat,
+vest, collar, and tie usually removed (sometimes even his shoes), he
+lounged in his chair, in any attitude that afforded the larger ease,
+pulling over the exchanges; scribbling paragraphs, editorials, humorous
+skits, and what not, as the notion came upon him. J. L. Lamed, his
+co-worker (he sat on the opposite side of the same table), remembers that
+Mark Twain enjoyed his work as he went along--the humor of it--and that
+he frequently laughed as some whimsicality or new absurdity came into his
+mind.
+
+"I doubt," writes Lamed, "if he ever enjoyed anything more than the
+jackknife engraving that he did on a piece of board of a military map of
+the siege of Paris, which was printed in the Express from his original
+plate, with accompanying explanations and comments. His half-day of
+whittling and laughter that went with it are something that I find
+pleasant to remember. Indeed, my whole experience of association with
+him is a happy memory, which I am fortunate in having.... What one saw
+of him was always the actual Mark Twain, acting out of his own nature
+simply, frankly, without pretense, and almost without reserve. It was
+that simplicity and naturalness in the man which carried his greatest
+charm."
+
+Lamed, like many others, likens Mark Twain to Lincoln in various of his
+characteristics. The two worked harmoniously together: Lamed attending
+to the political direction of the journal, Clemens to the literary, and
+what might be termed the sentimental side. There was no friction in the
+division of labor, never anything but good feeling between them. Clemens
+had a poor opinion of his own comprehension of politics, and perhaps as
+little regard for Lamed's conception of humor. Once when the latter
+attempted something in the way of pleasantry his associate said:
+
+"Better leave the humor on this paper to me, Lamed"; and once when Lamed
+was away attending the Republican State Convention at Saratoga, and some
+editorial comment seemed necessary, Clemens thought it best to sign the
+utterance, and to make humor of his shortcomings.
+
+    I do not know much about politics, and am not sitting up nights to
+    learn . . . .
+
+    I am satisfied that these nominations are all right and sound, and
+    that they are the only ones that can bring peace to our distracted
+    country (the only political phrase I am perfectly familiar with and
+    competent to hurl at the public with fearless confidence--the other
+    editor is full of them), but being merely satisfied is not enough.
+    I always like to know before I shout. But I go for Mr. Curtis with
+    all my strength! Being certain of him, I hereby shout all I know
+    how. But the others may be a split ticket, or a scratched ticket,
+    or whatever you call it.
+
+    I will let it alone for the present. It will keep. The other young
+    man will be back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no
+    split, rest assured of that. He will prance into this political
+    ring with his tomahawk and his war-whoop, and then you will hear a
+    crash and see the scalps fly. He has none of my diffidence. He
+    knows all about these nominees, and if he don't he will let on to in
+    such a natural way as to deceive the most critical. He knows
+    everything--he knows more than Webster's Unabridged and the American
+    Encyclopedia--but whether he knows anything about a subject or not
+    he is perfectly willing to discuss it. When he gets back he will
+    tell you all about these candidates as serenely as if he had been
+    acquainted with them a hundred years, though, speaking
+    confidentially, I doubt if he ever heard of any of them till to-day.
+    I am right well satisfied it is a good, sound, sensible ticket, and
+    a ticket to win; but wait till he comes.
+
+    In the mean time I go for George William Curtis and take the
+    chances.
+                                MARK TWAIN.
+
+He had become what Mr. Howells calls entirely "desouthernized" by this
+time. From having been of slaveholding stock, and a Confederate soldier,
+he had become a most positive Republican, a rampant abolitionist--had
+there been anything left to abolish. His sympathy had been always with
+the oppressed, and he had now become their defender. His work on the
+paper revealed this more and more. He wrote fewer sketches and more
+editorials, and the editorials were likely to be either savage assaults
+upon some human abuse, or fierce espousals of the weak. They were
+fearless, scathing, terrific. Of some farmers of Cohocton, who had taken
+the law into their own hands to punish a couple whom they believed to be
+a detriment to the community, he wrote:
+
+"The men who did that deed are capable of doing any low, sneaking,
+cowardly villainy that could be invented in perdition. They are the very
+bastards of the devil."
+
+He appended a full list of their names, and added:
+
+"If the farmers of Cohocton are of this complexion, what on earth must a
+Cohocton rough be like?"
+
+But all this happened a long time ago, and we need not detail those
+various old interests and labors here. It is enough to say that Mark
+Twain on the Express was what he had been from the beginning, and would
+be to the end--the zealous champion of justice and liberty; violent and
+sometimes wrong in his viewpoint, but never less than fearless and
+sincere. Invariably he was for the oppressed. He had a natural instinct
+for the right, but, right or wrong, he was for the under dog.
+
+Among the best of his editorial contributions is a tribute to Anson
+Burlingame, who died February 23, 1870, at St. Petersburg, on his trip
+around the world as special ambassador for the Chinese Empire. In this
+editorial Clemens endeavored to pay something of his debt to the noble
+statesman. He reviewed Burlingame's astonishing career--the career which
+had closed at forty-seven, and read like a fairy-tale-and he dwelt
+lovingly on his hero's nobility of character. At the close he said:
+
+"He was a good man, and a very, very great man. America, lost a son, and
+all the world a servant, when he died."
+
+Among those early contributions to the Express is a series called "Around
+the World," an attempt at collaboration with Prof. D. R. Ford, who did
+the actual traveling, while Mark Twain, writing in the first person, gave
+the letters his literary stamp. At least some of the contributions were
+written in this way, such as "Adventures in Hayti," "The Pacific," and
+"Japan." These letters exist to-day only in the old files of the
+Express, and indeed this is the case with most of Clemens's work for that
+paper. It was mainly ephemeral or timely work, and its larger value has
+disappeared. Here and there is a sentence worth remembering. Of two
+practical jokers who sent in a marriage notice of persons not even
+contemplating matrimony, he said: "This deceit has been practised
+maliciously by a couple of men whose small souls will escape through
+their pores some day if they do not varnish their hides."
+
+Some of the sketches have been preserved. "Journalism in Tennessee," one
+of the best of his wilder burlesques, is as enjoyable to-day as when
+written. "A Curious Dream" made a lasting impression on his Buffalo
+readers, and you are pretty certain to hear of it when you mention Mark
+Twain in that city to-day. It vividly called attention to the neglect of
+the old North Street graveyard. The gruesome vision of the ancestors
+deserting with their coffins on their backs was even more humiliating
+than amusing, and inspired a movement for reform. It has been effective
+elsewhere since then, and may still be read with profit--or satisfaction
+--for in a note at the end the reader is assured that if the cemeteries
+of his town are kept in good order the dream is not leveled at his town
+at all, but "particularly and venomously at the next town."
+
+
+
+
+LXXVII
+
+THE "GALAXY"
+
+Mark Twain's work on the Express represented only a portion of his
+literary activities during his Buffalo residence. The Galaxy, an
+ambitious New York magazine of that day--[published by Sheldon & Co. at
+498 and 500 Broadway]--proposed to him that he conduct for them a
+humorous department. They would pay $2,400 a year for the work, and
+allow him a free hand. There was some discussion as to book rights, but
+the arrangement was concluded, and his first instalment, under the
+general title of "Memoranda," appeared in the May number, 1870. In his
+Introductory he outlined what the reader might expect, such as
+"exhaustive statistical tables," "Patent Office reports," and "complete
+instructions about farming, even from the grafting of the seed to the
+harrowing of the matured crops." He declared that he would throw a
+pathos into the subject of agriculture that would surprise and delight
+the world. He added that the "Memoranda" was not necessarily a humorous
+department.
+
+    I would not conduct an exclusively and professedly humorous
+    department for any one. I would always prefer to have the privilege
+    of printing a serious and sensible remark, in case one occurred to
+    me, without the reader's feeling obliged to consider himself
+    outraged.... Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department....
+    No circumstance, however dismal, will ever be considered a
+    sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest
+    evidence of intellectual poverty, the pun.
+
+The Galaxy was really a fine magazine, with the best contributors
+obtainable; among them Justin McCarthy, S. M. B. Piatt, Richard Grant
+White, and many others well known in that day, with names that still
+flicker here and there in its literary twilight. The new department
+appealed to Clemens, and very soon he was writing most of his sketches
+for it. They were better literature, as a rule, than those published in
+his own paper.
+
+The first number of the "Memoranda" was fairly representative of those
+that followed it. "The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract," a
+manuscript which he had undertaken three years before and mislaid, was
+its initial contribution. Besides the "Beef Contract," there was a
+tribute to George Wakeman, a well-known journalist of those days; a
+stricture on the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, who had delivered from the
+pulpit an argument against workingmen occupying pews in fashionable
+churches; a presentment of the Chinese situation in San Francisco,
+depicting the cruel treatment of the Celestial immigrant; a burlesque of
+the Sunday-school "good little boy" story,--["The Story of the Good
+Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper" and the "Beef Contract" are included in
+Sketches New and Old; also the Chinese sketch, under the title,
+"Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy."]--and several shorter skits--and
+anecdotes, ten pages in all; a rather generous contract.
+
+Mark Twain's comment on Talmage was prompted by an article in which
+Talmage had assumed the premise that if workingmen attended the churches
+it would drive the better class of worshipers away. Among other things
+he said:
+
+    I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in
+    church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end,
+    would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the
+    sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer
+    for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is,
+    if you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the
+    common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of
+    Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the
+    church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do with this work
+    of evangelization.
+
+Commenting on this Mark Twain said--well, he said a good deal more than
+we have room for here, but a portion of his closing paragraphs is worth
+preserving. He compares the Reverend Mr. Talmage with the early
+disciples of Christ--Paul and Peter and the others; or, rather, he
+contrasts him with them.
+
+    They healed the very beggars, and held intercourse with people of a
+    villainous odor every day. If the subject of these remarks had been
+    chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would not have
+    associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy
+    smell of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of
+    Galilee. He would have resigned his commission with some such
+    remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master, if thou art
+    going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to
+    do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and makes
+    that remark to the Master; the only difference is that he makes it
+    in the nineteenth instead of the first century.
+
+Talmage was immensely popular at this time, and Mark Twain's open attack
+on him must have shocked a good many Galaxy readers, as perhaps his
+article on the Chinese cruelties offended the citizens of San Francisco.
+It did not matter. He was not likely to worry over the friends he would
+lose because of any stand taken for human justice. Lamed said of him:
+"He was very far from being one who tried in any way to make himself
+popular." Certainly he never made any such attempt at the expense of his
+convictions.
+
+The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform of principles for the
+campaign that was to follow. Not that each month's contribution
+contained personal criticism, or a defense of the Chinese (of whom he was
+always the champion as long as he lived), but a good many of them did. In
+the October number he began a series of letters under the general title
+of "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again," supposed to have been written by a
+Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, detailing his experience there. In a
+note the author says: "No experience is set down in the following letters
+which had to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the
+history of the Chinaman's sojourn in America. Plain fact is amply
+sufficient." The letters show how the supposed Chinese writer of them
+had set out for America, believing it to be a land whose government was
+based on the principle that all men are created equal, and treated
+accordingly; how, upon arriving in San Francisco, he was kicked and
+bruised and beaten, and set upon by dogs, flung into jail, tried and
+condemned without witnesses, his own race not being allowed to testify
+against Americans--Irish-Americans--in the San Francisco court. They are
+scathing, powerful letters, and one cannot read them, even in this day of
+improved conditions, without feeling the hot waves of resentment and
+indignation which Mark Twain must have felt when he penned them.
+
+Reverend Mr. Talmage was not the only divine to receive attention in the
+"Memoranda." The Reverend Mr. Sabine, of New York, who had declined to
+hold a church burial service for the old actor, George Holland, came in
+for the most caustic as well as the most artistic stricture of the entire
+series. It deserves preservation to-day, not only for its literary
+value, but because no finer defense of the drama, no more searching
+sermon on self-righteousness, has ever been put into concrete form.
+--["The Indignity Put Upon the Remains of Gorge Holland by the Rev. Mr.
+Sabine"; Galaxy for February, 1871. The reader will find it complete
+under Appendix J, at the end of last volume.]
+
+The "Little Church Around the Corner" on Twenty-ninth Street received
+that happy title from this incident.
+
+"There is a little church around the corner that will, perhaps, permit
+the service," Mr. Sabine had said to Holland's friends.
+
+The little church did permit the service, and there was conferred upon it
+the new name, which it still bears. It has sheltered a long line of
+actor folk and their friends since then, earning thereby reverence,
+gratitude, and immortal memory.--[Church of the Transfiguration. Memorial
+services were held there for Joseph Jefferson; and a memorial window, by
+John La Farge, has been placed there in memory of Edwin Booth.]
+
+Of the Galaxy contributions a number are preserved in Sketches New and
+Old. "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper" is one of the best of these
+--an excellent example of Mark Twain's more extravagant style of humor.
+It is perennially delightful; in France it has been dramatized, and is
+still played.
+
+A successful Galaxy feature, also preserved in the Sketches, was the
+"Burlesque Map of Paris," reprinted from the Express. The
+Franco-Prussian War was in progress, and this travesty was particularly
+timely. It creates only a smile of amusement to-day, but it was all fresh
+and delightful then. Schuyler Colfax, by this time Vice-President, wrote
+to him: "I have had the heartiest possible laugh over it, and so have all
+my family. You are a wicked, conscienceless wag, who ought to be
+punished severely."
+
+The "Official Commendations," which accompany the map, are its chief
+charm. They are from Grant, Bismarck, Brigham Young, and others, the
+best one coming from one J. Smith, who says:
+
+    My wife was for years afflicted with freckles, and though everything
+    was done for her relief that could be done, all was in vain. But,
+    sir, since her first glance at your map they have entirely left her.
+    She has nothing but convulsions now.
+
+It is said that the "Map of Paris" found its way to Berlin, where the
+American students in the beer-halls used to pretend to quarrel over it
+until they attracted the attention of the German soldiers that might be
+present. Then they would wander away and leave it on the table and watch
+results. The soldiers would pounce upon it and lose their tempers over
+it; then finally abuse it and revile its author, to the satisfaction of
+everybody.
+
+The larger number of "Memoranda" sketches have properly found oblivion
+to-day. They were all, or nearly all, collected by a Canadian pirate, C.
+A. Backas, in a volume bearing the title of Memoranda,--[Also by a harpy
+named John Camden Hotten (of London), of whom we shall hear again. Hotten
+had already pirated The Innocents, and had it on the market before
+Routledge could bring out the authorized edition. Routledge later
+published the "Memoranda" under the title of Sketches, including the
+contents of the Jumping Frog book.]--a book long ago suppressed. Only
+about twenty of the Galaxy contributions found place in Sketches New and
+Old, five years later, and some of these might have been spared as
+literature. "To Raise Poultry," "John Chinaman in New York," and
+"History Repeats Itself" are valuable only as examples of his work at
+that period. The reader may consult them for himself.
+
+
+
+
+LXXVIII
+
+THE PRIMROSE PATH
+
+But we are losing sight of more important things. From the very
+beginning Mark Twain's home meant always more to him than his work. The
+life at 472 Delaware Avenue had begun with as fair a promise as any
+matrimonial journey ever undertaken: There seemed nothing lacking: a
+beautiful home, sufficient income, bright prospects--these things, with
+health and love; constitute married happiness. Mrs. Clemens wrote to her
+sister, Mrs. Crane, at the end of February: "Sue, we are two as happy
+people as you ever saw. Our days seem to be made up of only bright
+sunlight, with no shadow in them." In the same letter the husband added:
+"Livy pines and pines every day for you, and I pine and pine every day
+for you, and when we both of us are pining at once you would think it was
+a whole pine forest let loose."
+
+To Redpath, who was urging lecture engagements for the coming season, he
+wrote:
+
+    DEAR RED,--I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got
+    things ciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what it
+    will cost to live, and I can make the money without lecturing.
+    Therefore, old man, count me out.
+
+And still later, in May:
+
+    I guess I am out of the field permanently. Have got a lovely wife,
+    a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished, a lovely carriage, and a
+    coachman whose style and dignity are simply awe-in-spiring, nothing
+    less; and I am making more money than necessary, by considerable,
+    and therefore why crucify myself nightly on the platform? The
+    subscriber will have to be excused for the present season at least.
+
+So they were very happy during those early months, acquiring pleasantly
+the education which any matrimonial experience is sure to furnish,
+accustoming themselves to the uses of housekeeping, to life in
+partnership, with all the discoveries and mental and spiritual
+adaptations that belong to the close association of marriage. They were
+far, very far, apart on many subjects. He was unpolished, untrained,
+impulsive, sometimes violent. Twichell remembers that in the earlier
+days of their acquaintance he wore a slouch hat pulled down in front, and
+smoked a cigar that sometimes tilted up and touched the brim of it. The
+atmosphere and customs of frontier life, the Westernisms of that day,
+still clung to him. Mrs. Clemens, on the other hand, was conservative,
+dainty, cultured, spiritual. He adored her as little less than a saint,
+and she became, indeed, his saving grace. She had all the personal
+refinement which he lacked, and she undertook the work of polishing and
+purifying her life companion. She had no wish to destroy his
+personality, to make him over, but only to preserve his best, and she set
+about it in the right way--gently, and with a tender gratitude in each
+achievement.
+
+She did not entirely approve of certain lines of his reading; or, rather,
+she did not understand them in those days. That he should be fond of
+history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T.
+Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it,
+and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great
+showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary
+passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it. She did not realize then
+his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book
+contained what Mr. Howells calls "the root of the human matter," the
+inner revelation of the human being at first hand.
+
+Concerning his religious observances her task in the beginning was easy
+enough. Clemens had not at that time formulated any particular doctrines
+of his own. His natural kindness of heart, and especially his love for
+his wife, inclined him toward the teachings and customs of her Christian
+faith--unorthodox but sincere, as Christianity in the Langdon family was
+likely to be. It took very little persuasion on his wife's part to
+establish family prayers in their home, grace before meals, and the
+morning reading of a Bible chapter. Joe Goodman, who made a trip East,
+and visited them during the early days of their married life, was
+dumfounded to see Mark Twain ask a blessing and join in family worship.
+Just how long these forms continued cannot be known to-day; the time of
+their abandonment has perished from the recollection of any one now
+living.
+
+It would seem to have been the Bible-reading that wrought the change. The
+prayer and the blessing were to him sincere and gracious; but as the
+readings continued he realized that he had never before considered the
+Bible from a doctrinal point of view, as a guide to spiritual salvation.
+To his logical reasoning mind, a large portion of it seemed absurd: a
+mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology. From such material
+humanity had built its mightiest edifice of hope, the doctrines of its
+faith. After a little while he could stand it no longer.
+
+"Livy," he said one day, "you may keep this up if you want to, but I must
+ask you to excuse me from it. It is making me a hypocrite. I don't
+believe in this Bible. It contradicts my reason. I can't sit here and
+listen to it, letting you believe that I regard it, as you do, in the
+light of gospel, the word of God."
+
+He was moved to write an article on the human idea of God, ancient and
+modern. It contained these paragraphs:
+
+    The difference in importance, between the God of the Bible and the
+    God of the present day, cannot be described, it can only be vaguely
+    and inadequately figured to the mind . . . . If you make figures
+    to represent the earth and moon, and allow a space of one inch
+    between them, to represent the four hundred thousand miles of
+    distance which lies between the two bodies, the map will have to be
+    eleven miles long in order to bring in the nearest fixed star.
+    --[His figures were far too small. A map drawn on the scale of
+    400,000 miles to the inch would need to be 1,100 miles long to take
+    in both the earth and the nearest fixed star. On such a map the
+    earth would be one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter--the size of a
+    small grain of sand.]--So one cannot put the modern heavens on a
+    map, nor the modern God; but the Bible God and the Bible heavens can
+    be set down on a slate and yet not be discommoded . . . .
+
+    The difference between that universe and the modern one revealed by
+    science is as the difference between a dust-flecked ray in a barn
+    and the sublime arch of the Milky Way in the skies. Its God was
+    strictly proportioned to its dimensions. His sole solicitude was
+    about a handful of truculent nomads. He worried and fretted over
+    them in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One day he coaxed
+    and petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashed
+    them beyond their deserts. He sulked, he cursed, he raged, he
+    grieved, according to his mood and the circumstances, but all to no
+    purpose; his efforts were all vain, he could not govern them. When
+    the fury was on him he was blind to all reason--he not only
+    slaughtered the offender, but even his harmless little children and
+    dumb cattle....
+
+    To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive,
+    fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God
+    is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose
+    beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his
+    colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to his
+    purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being
+    equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things,
+    taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live
+    hereafter, he will still be steadfast, just, and fair toward us. We
+    shall not need to require anything more.
+
+It seems mild enough, obvious, even orthodox, now--so far have we
+traveled in forty years. But such a declaration then would have shocked
+a great number of sincerely devout persons. His wife prevailed upon him
+not to print it. She respected his honesty--even his reasoning, but his
+doubts were a long grief to her, nevertheless. In time she saw more
+clearly with his vision, but this was long after, when she had lived more
+with the world, had become more familiar with its larger needs, and the
+proportions of created things.
+
+They did not mingle much or long with the social life of Buffalo. They
+received and returned calls, attended an occasional reception; but
+neither of them found such things especially attractive in those days, so
+they remained more and more in their own environment. There is an
+anecdote which seems to belong here.
+
+One Sunday morning Clemens noticed smoke pouring from the upper window of
+the house across the street. The owner and his wife, comparatively
+newcomers, were seated upon the veranda, evidently not aware of impending
+danger. The Clemens household thus far had delayed calling on them, but
+Clemens himself now stepped briskly across the street. Bowing with
+leisurely politeness, he said:
+
+"My name is Clemens; we ought to have called on you before, and I beg
+your pardon for intruding now in this informal way, but your house is on
+fire."
+
+Almost the only intimate friends they had in Buffalo were in the family
+of David Gray, the poet-editor of the Courier. Gray was a gentle,
+lovable man. "The gentlest spirit and the loveliest that ever went
+clothed in clay, since Sir Galahad laid him to rest," Mark Twain once
+said of him. Both Gray and Clemens were friends of John Hay, and their
+families soon became intimate. Perhaps, in time, the Clemens household
+would have found other as good friends in the Buffalo circles; but heavy
+clouds that had lain unseen just beyond the horizon during those earlier
+months of marriage rose suddenly into view, and the social life, whatever
+it might have become, was no longer a consideration.
+
+
+
+
+LXXIX
+
+THE OLD HUMAN STORY
+
+Jervis Langdon was never able to accept his son-in-law's invitation to
+the new home. His health began to fail that spring, and at the end of
+March, with his physician and Mrs. Langdon, he made a trip to the South.
+In a letter written at Richmond he said, "I have thrown off all care,"
+and named a list of the four great interests in which he was involved.
+Under "number 5," he included "everything," adding, "so you see how good
+I am to follow the counsel of my children." He closed: "Samuel, I love
+your wife and she loves me. I think it is only fair that you should know
+it, but you need not flare up. I loved her before you did, and she loved
+me before she did you, and has not ceased since. I see no way but for
+you to make the most of it." He was already a very ill man, and this
+cheerful letter was among the last he ever wrote.
+
+He was absent six weeks and seemed to improve, but suffered an attack
+early in May; in June his condition became critical. Clemens and his
+wife were summoned to Elmira, and joined in the nursing, day and night.
+Clemens surprised every one by his ability as a nurse. His delicacy and
+thoughtfulness were unfailing; his original ways of doing things always
+amused and interested the patient. In later years Mark Twain once said:
+
+    "How much of the nursing did I do? My main watch was from midnight
+    to four in the morning, nearly four hours. My other watch was a
+    midday watch, and I think it was nearly three hours. The two
+    sisters divided the remaining seventeen hours of the twenty-four
+    hours between them, and each of them tried generously and
+    persistently to swindle the other out of a part of her watch. I
+    went to bed early every night, and tried to get sleep enough by
+    midnight to fit me for my work, but it was always a failure. I went
+    on watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy, and wretched,
+    straight along through the four hours. I can still see myself
+    sitting by that bed in the melancholy stillness of the sweltering
+    night, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over the drawn, white
+    face of the patient. I can still recall my noddings, my fleeting
+    unconsciousness, when the fan would come to a standstill in my hand,
+    and I woke up with a start and a hideous shock. During all that
+    dreary time I began to watch for the dawn long before it came. When
+    the first faint gray showed through the window-blinds I felt as no
+    doubt a castaway feels when the dim threads of the looked-for ship
+    appear against the sky. I was well and strong, but I was a man,
+    afflicted with a man's infirmity--lack of endurance."
+
+He always dealt with himself in this unsparing way; but those who were
+about him then have left a different story.
+
+It was all without avail. Mr. Langdon rallied, and early in July there
+was hope for his recovery. He failed again, and on the afternoon of the
+6th of August he died. To Mrs. Clemens, delicate and greatly worn with
+the anxiety and strain of watching, the blow was a crushing one. It was
+the beginning of a series of disasters which would mark the entire
+remaining period of their Buffalo residence.
+
+There had been a partial plan for spending the summer in England, and a
+more definite one for joining the Twichells in the Adirondacks. Both of
+these projects were now abandoned. Mrs. Clemens concluded that she would
+be better at home than anywhere else, and invited an old school friend, a
+Miss Emma Nye, to visit her.
+
+But the shadow of death had not been lifted from the Clemens household.
+Miss Nye presently fell ill with typhoid fever. There followed another
+long period of anxiety and nursing, ending with the death of the visitor
+in the new home, September 29th. The young wife was now in very delicate
+health; genuinely ill, in fact. The happy home had become a place of
+sorrow-of troubled nights and days. Another friend came to cheer them,
+and on this friend's departure Mrs. Clemens drove to the railway station.
+It was a hurried trip over rough streets to catch the train. She was
+prostrated on her return, and a little later, November 7, 1870, her first
+child, Langdon, was prematurely born. A dangerous illness followed, and
+complete recovery was long delayed. But on the 12th the crisis seemed
+passed, and the new father wrote a playful letter to the Twichells, as
+coming from the late arrival:
+
+    DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT,--I came into the world on the 7th inst., and
+    consequently am about five days old now. I have had wretched health
+    ever since I made my appearance . . . I am not corpulent, nor am
+    I robust in any way. At birth I only weighed four and one-half
+    pounds with my clothes on--and the clothes were the chief feature of
+    the weight, too, I am obliged to confess, but I am doing finely, all
+    things considered . . . . My little mother is very bright and
+    cheery, and I guess she is pretty happy, but I don't know what
+    about. She laughs a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed.
+
+    P. S.--Father says I had better write because you will be more
+    interested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family.
+
+A week later Clemens, as himself, wrote:
+
+    Livy is up and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter
+    days and nights, but I am a bachelor up-stairs and don't have to
+    jump up and get the soothing sirup, though I would as soon do it as
+    not, I assure you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)
+
+    Tell Harmony that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily too,
+    though with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will fall
+    off. I don't have to quiet him; he hardly ever utters a cry. He is
+    always thinking about something. He is a patient, good little baby.
+
+Further along he refers to one of his reforms:
+
+    Smoke? I always smoke from three till five on Sunday afternoons,
+    and in New York, the other day, I smoked a week, day and night. But
+    when Livy is well I smoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm boss
+    of the habit now, and shall never let it boss me any more.
+    Originally I quit solely on Livy's account (not that I believed
+    there was the faintest reason in the matter, but just as I would
+    deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she wished it, or quit
+    wearing socks if she thought them immoral), and I stick to it yet on
+    Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so without a pang.
+    But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn't mind
+    it, if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upon a
+    kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to
+    make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable
+    as well as useful. To go quit smoking, when there ain't any
+    sufficient excuse for it!--why, my old boy, when they used to tell
+    me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew
+    the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they little
+    knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no
+    smoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell--I won't until I
+    see you again--but then we'll smoke for a week together, and then
+    shut off again.
+
+
+
+
+LXXX
+
+LITERARY PROJECTS
+
+The success of the Innocents naturally made a thrifty publisher like
+Bliss anxious for a second experiment. He had begun early in the year to
+talk about another book, but nothing had come of it beyond a project or
+two, more or less hazy and unpursued. Clemens at one time developed a
+plan for a Noah's Ark book, which was to detail the cruise of the Ark in
+diaries kept by various members of it-Shem, Ham, and the others. He
+really wrote some of it at the time, and it was an idea he never entirely
+lost track of. All along among his manuscripts appear fragments from
+those ancient voyagers. One of the earlier entries will show the style
+and purpose of the undertaking. It is from Shem's record:
+
+    Friday: Papa's birthday. He is 600 years old. We celebrated it in
+    a big, black tent. Principal men of the tribe present. Afterward
+    they were shown over the ark, which was looking desolate and empty
+    and dreary on account of a misunderstanding with the workmen about
+    wages. Methuselah was as free with his criticisms as usual, and as
+    voluble and familiar, which I and my brothers do not like; for we
+    are past our one hundredth year and married. He still calls me
+    Shemmy, just as he did when I was a child of sixty. I am still but
+    a youth, it is true, but youth has its feelings, and I do not like
+    this . . . .
+
+    Saturday: Keeping the Sabbath.
+
+    Sunday: Papa has yielded the advance and everybody is hard at work.
+    The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each other; everybody
+    hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and shouting and
+    wrangling are astonishing to our family, who have always been used
+    to a quiet, country life.
+
+It was from this germ that in a later day grew the diaries of Adam and
+Eve, though nothing very satisfactory ever came of this preliminary
+attempt. The author had faith in it, however. To Bliss he wrote:
+
+    I mean to take plenty of time and pains with the Noah's Ark book;
+    maybe it will be several years before it is all written, but it will
+    be a perfect lightning striker when it is done.
+
+    You can have the first say (that is plain enough) on that or any
+    other book I may prepare for the press, as long as you deal in a
+    fair, open, and honorable way with me. I do not think you will ever
+    find me doing otherwise with you. I can get a book ready for you
+    any time you want it; but you can't want one before this time next
+    year, so I have plenty of time.
+
+Bliss was only temporarily appeased. He realized that to get a book
+ready by the time he wanted it-a book of sufficient size and importance
+to maintain the pace set by the Innocents meant rather more immediate
+action than his author seemed to contemplate. Futhermore, he knew that
+other publishers were besieging the author of the Innocents; a
+disquieting thought. In early July, when Mr. Langdon's condition had
+temporarily improved, Bliss had come to Elmira and proposed a book which
+should relate the author's travels and experiences in the Far West. It
+was an inviting subject, and Clemens, by this time more attracted by the
+idea of authorship and its rewards, readily enough agreed to undertake
+the volume. He had been offered half profits, and suggested that the new
+contract be arranged upon these terms. Bliss, figuring on a sale of
+100,000 copies, proposed seven and one-half per cent. royalty as an
+equivalent, and the contract was so arranged. In after-years, when the
+cost of manufacture and paper had become greatly reduced, Clemens, with
+but a confused notion of business details, believed he had been misled by
+Bliss in this contract, and was bitter and resentful accordingly. The
+figures remain, however, to show that Bliss dealt fairly. Seven and
+one-half per cent. of a subscription book did represent half profits up
+to 100,000 copies when the contract was drawn; but it required ten years
+to sell that quantity, and in that time conditions had changed. Bliss
+could hardly foresee that these things would be so, and as he was dead
+when the book touched the 100,000 mark he could not explain or readjust
+matters, whatever might have been his inclination.
+
+Clemens was pleased enough with the contract when it was made. To Orion
+he wrote July 15 (1870):
+
+    Per contract I must have another six-hundred-page book ready for my
+    publisher January 1st, and I only began it to-day. The subject of
+    it is a secret, because I may possibly change it. But as it stands
+    I propose to do up Nevada and California, beginning with the trip
+    across the country in the stage. Have you a memorandum of the route
+    we took, or the names of any of the stations we stopped at? Do you
+    remember any of the scenes, names, incidents, or adventures of the
+    coach trip?--for I remember next to nothing about the matter. Jot
+    down a foolscap page of items for me. I wish I could have two days'
+    talk with you.
+
+    I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright this time ever paid on a
+    subscription book in this country.
+
+The work so promptly begun made little progress. Hard days of illness
+and sorrow followed, and it was not until September that it was really
+under way. His natural enthusiasm over any new undertaking possessed
+him. On the 4th he wrote Bliss:
+
+During the past week I have written the first four chapters of the book,
+and I tell you 'The Innocents Abroad' will have to get up early to beat
+it. It will be a book that will jump straight into continental celebrity
+the first month it is issued.
+
+He prophesied a sale of 90,000 copies during the first twelve months and
+declared, "I see the capabilities of the subject."
+
+But further disasters, even then impending, made continued effort
+impossible; the prospect of the new book for a time became gloomy, the
+idea of it less inspiring. Other plans presented themselves, and at one
+time he thought of letting the Galaxy publishers get out a volume of his
+sketches. In October he wrote Bliss that he was "driveling along
+tolerably fair on the book, getting off from twelve to twenty pages of
+manuscript a day." Bliss naturally discouraged the Galaxy idea, and
+realizing that the new book might be long delayed, agreed to get out a
+volume of miscellany sufficiently large and important for subscription
+sales. He was doubtful of the wisdom of this plan, and when Clemens
+suddenly proposed a brand-new scheme his publisher very readily agreed to
+hold back the publication of Sketches indefinitely.
+
+The new book was to be adventures in the diamond mines of South Africa,
+then newly opened and of wide public interest. Clemens did not propose
+to visit the mines himself, but to let another man do the traveling, make
+the notes, and write or tell him the story, after which Clemens would
+enlarge and elaborate it in his own fashion. His adaptation of the
+letters of Professor Ford, a year earlier, had convinced him that his
+plan would work out successfully on a larger scale; he fixed upon his old
+friend, J. H. Riley, of Washington--["Riley-Newspaper Correspondent." See
+Sketches.]--(earlier of San Francisco), as the proper person to do the
+traveling. At the end of November he wrote Bliss:
+
+    I have put my greedy hands upon the best man in America for my
+    purpose, and shall start him to the diamond field in South Africa
+    within a fortnight at my expense . . . that the book will have a
+    perfectly beautiful sale.
+
+He suggested that Bliss advance Riley's expense money, the amount to be
+deducted from the first royalty returns; also he proposed an increased
+royalty, probably in view of the startling splendor of the new idea.
+Bliss was duly impressed, and the agreement was finally made on a basis
+of eight and one-half per cent., with an advance of royalty sufficient to
+see Riley to South Africa and return.
+
+Clemens had not yet heard from Riley definitely when he wrote his glowing
+letter to Bliss. He took it for granted that Riley, always an
+adventurous sort, would go. When Riley wrote him that he felt morally
+bound to the Alta, of which he was then Washington correspondent, also in
+certain other directions till the end of the session, Clemens wrote him
+at great length, detailing his scheme in full and urging him to write
+instantly to the Alta and others, asking a release on the ground of being
+offered a rare opportunity to improve his fortunes.
+
+You know right well that I would not have you depart a hair from any
+obligation for any money. The boundless confidence that I have in you
+is born of a conviction of your integrity in small as well as in great
+things. I know plenty of men whose integrity I would trust to here, but
+not off yonder in Africa.
+
+His proposal, in brief, to Riley was that the latter should make the trip
+to Africa without expense to himself, collect memoranda, and such diamond
+mines as might be found lying about handy. Upon his return he was to
+take up temporary residence in the Clemens household until the book was
+finished, after which large benefits were to accrue to everybody
+concerned. In the end Riley obtained a release from his obligations and
+was off for the diamond mines and fortune.
+
+Poor fellow! He was faithful in his mission, and it is said that he
+really located a mining claim that would have made him and his
+independent for all time to come; but returning home with his precious
+memoranda and the news of good fortune, he accidentally wounded himself
+with a fork while eating; blood-poisoning set in (they called it cancer
+then), and he was only able to get home to die. His memoranda were never
+used, his mining claim was never identified. Certainly, death was
+closely associated with Mark Twain's fortunes during those earlier days
+of his married life.
+
+On the whole the Buffalo residence was mainly a gloomy one; its ventures
+were attended by ill-fortune. For some reason Mark Twain's connection
+with the Express, while it had given the paper a wide reputation, had not
+largely increased its subscription. Perhaps his work on it was too
+varied and erratic. Nasby, who had popularized the Toledo Blade, kept
+steadily to one line. His farmer public knew always just what to expect
+when their weekly edition arrived.
+
+Clemens and his wife dreamed of a new habitation, and new faces and
+surroundings. They agreed to offer their home and his interests in the
+Express for sale. They began to talk of Hartford, where Twichell lived,
+and where Orion Clemens and his wife had recently located.
+
+Mark Twain's new fortunes had wrought changes in the affairs of his
+relatives. Already, before his marriage, he had prospected towns here
+and there with a view to finding an Eastern residence for his mother and
+sister, and he had kept Orion's welfare always in mind. When Pamela and
+her daughter came to his wedding he told them of a little city by the
+name of Fredonia (New York), not far from Buffalo, where he thought they
+might find a pleasant home.
+
+"I went in there by night and out by night," he said, "so I saw none of
+it, but I had an intelligent, attractive audience. Prospect Fredonia and
+let me know what it is like. Try to select a place where a good many
+funerals pass. Ma likes funerals. If you can pick a good funeral corner
+she will be happy."
+
+It was in her later life that Jane Clemens had developed this particular
+passion. She would consult the morning paper for any notice of obsequies
+and attend those that were easy of access. Watching the processions go
+by gave her a peculiar joy. Mrs. Moffett and her daughter did go to
+Fredonia immediately following the wedding. They found it residentially
+attractive, and rented a house before returning to St. Louis, a
+promptness that somewhat alarmed the old lady, who did not altogether
+fancy the idea of being suddenly set down in a strange house, in a
+strange land, even though it would be within hailing distance of Sam and
+his new wife. Perhaps the Fredonia funerals were sufficiently numerous
+and attractive, for she soon became attached to the place, and entered
+into the spirit of the life there, joining its temperance crusades, and
+the like, with zest and enjoyment.
+
+Onion remained in St. Louis, but when Bliss established a paper called
+The Publisher, and wanted an editor, he was chosen for the place,
+originally offered to his brother; the latter, writing to Onion, said:
+
+If you take the place with an air of perfect confidence in yourself,
+never once letting anything show in your bearing but a quiet, modest,
+entire, and perfect confidence in your ability to do pretty much anything
+in the world, Bliss will think you are the very man he needs; but don't
+show any shadow of timidity or unsoldierly diffidence, for that sort of
+thing is fatal to advancement.
+
+I warn you thus because you are naturally given to knocking your pot over
+in this way, when a little judicious conduct would make it boil.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXI
+
+SOME FURTHER LITERARY MATTERS
+
+Meantime The Innocents Abroad had continued to prosper. Its author
+ranked mainly as a humorist, but of such colossal proportions that his
+contemporaries had seemed to dwindle; the mighty note of the "Frog of
+Calaveras" had dwarfed a score of smaller peepers. At the end of a year
+from its date of publication the book had sold up to 67,000 and was
+continuing at the rate of several thousand monthly.
+
+"You are running it in staving, tiptop, first-class style," Clemens wrote
+to Bliss. "On the average ten people a day come and hunt me up to tell
+me I am a benefactor! I guess that is a part of the program we didn't
+expect, in the first place."
+
+Apparently the book appealed to readers of every grade. One hundred and
+fifteen copies were in constant circulation at the Mercantile Library, in
+New York, while in the most remote cabins of America it was read and
+quoted. Jack Van Nostrand, making a long horseback tour of Colorado,
+wrote:
+
+I stopped a week ago in a ranch but a hundred miles from nowhere. The
+occupant had just two books: the Bible and The Innocents Abroad--the
+former in good repair.
+
+Across the ocean the book had found no less favor, and was being
+translated into many and strange tongues. By what seems now some
+veritable magic its author's fame had become literally universal. The
+consul at Hongkong, discussing English literature with a Chinese
+acquaintance, a mandarin, mentioned The Pilgrim's Progress.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I have read it!" the mandarin said, eagerly. "We are
+enjoying it in China, and shall have it soon in our own language. It is
+by Mark Twain."
+
+In England the book had an amazing vogue from the beginning, and English
+readers were endeavoring to outdo the Americans in appreciation. Indeed,
+as a rule, English readers of culture, critical readers, rose to an
+understanding of Mark Twain's literary value with greater promptness than
+did the same class of readers at home. There were exceptions, of course.
+There were English critics who did not take Mark Twain seriously, there
+were American critics who did. Among the latter was a certain William
+Ward, an editor of a paper down in Macon, Georgia--The Beacon. Ward did
+not hold a place with the great magazine arbiters of literary rank. He
+was only an obscure country editor, but he wrote like a prophet. His
+article--too long to quote in full--concerned American humorists in
+general, from Washington Irving, through John Phoenix, Philander
+Doesticks, Sut Lovingwood, Artemus Ward, Josh Billings and Petroleum V.
+Nasby, down to Mark Twain. With the exception of the first and last
+named he says of them:
+
+    They have all had, or will have, their day. Some of them are
+    resting beneath the sod, and others still live whose work will
+    scarcely survive them. Since Irving no humorist in prose has held
+    the foundation of a permanent fame except it be Mark Twain, and
+    this, as in the case of Irving, is because he is a pure writer.
+    Aside from any subtle mirth that lurks through his composition, the
+    grace and finish of his more didactic and descriptive sentences
+    indicate more than mediocrity.
+
+The writer then refers to Mark Twain's description of the Sphinx,
+comparing it with Bulwer's, which he thinks may have influenced it. He
+was mistaken in this, for Clemens had not read Bulwer--never could read
+him at any length.
+
+Of the English opinions, that of The Saturday Review was perhaps most
+doubtful. It came along late in 1870, and would hardly be worth
+recalling if it were not for a resulting, or collateral, interest.
+Clemens saw notice of this review before he saw the review itself. A
+paragraph in the Boston Advertiser spoke of The Saturday Review as
+treating the absurdities of the Innocents from a serious standpoint. The
+paragraph closed:
+
+    We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tribute
+    to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can
+    hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next
+    monthly "Memoranda."
+
+The old temptation to hoax his readers prompted Mark Twain to "reproduce"
+in the Galaxy, not the Review article, which he had not yet seen, but an
+imaginary Review article, an article in which the imaginary reviewer
+would be utterly devoid of any sense of humor and treat the most absurd
+incidents of The New Pilgrim's Progress as if set down by the author in
+solemn and serious earnest. The pretended review began:
+
+    Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when
+    we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.
+    Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could mete out complete and
+    comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impudence, the
+    presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance
+    of this author.
+
+The review goes on to cite cases of the author's gross deception. It
+says:
+
+    Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture to
+    himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the following
+    described things; and not only doing them, but, with incredible
+    innocence, printing them tranquilly and calmly in a book. For
+    instance:
+
+    He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get a shave,
+    and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it loosened
+    his "hide," and lifted him out of the chair.
+
+    This is unquestionably extravagant. In Florence he was so annoyed
+    by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a
+    frantic spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this.
+    He gives at full length the theatrical program, seventeen or
+    eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the
+    ruins of the Colosseum, among the dirt-and mold and rubbish. It is
+    a sufficient comment upon this subject to remark that even a cast-
+    iron program would not have lasted so long under the circumstances.
+
+There were two and one-half pages of this really delightful burlesque
+which the author had written with huge-enjoyment, partly as a joke on the
+Review, partly to trick American editors, who he believed would accept it
+as a fresh and startling proof of the traditional English lack of humor.
+
+But, as in the early sage-brush hoaxes, he rather overdid the thing.
+Readers and editors readily enough accepted it as genuine, so far as
+having come from The Saturday Review; but most of them, regarded it as a
+delicious bit of humor which Mark Twain himself had taken seriously, and
+was therefore the one sold. This was certainly startling, and by no
+means gratifying. In the next issue he undertook that saddest of all
+performances with tongue or pen: he explained his joke, and insisted on
+the truth of the explanation. Then he said:
+
+    If any man doubts my word now I will kill him. No, I will not kill
+    him; I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and let
+    any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have
+    above made as to the authorship of the article in question are
+    entirely true.
+
+But the Cincinnati Enquirer persisted in continuing the joke--in "rubbing
+it in," as we say now. The Enquirer declared that Mark Twain had been
+intensely mortified at having been so badly taken in; that his
+explanation in the Galaxy was "ingenious, but unfortunately not true."
+The Enquirer maintained that The Saturday Review of October 8, 1870, did
+contain the article exactly as printed in the "Memoranda," and advised
+Mark Twain to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it.
+
+This was enraging. Mark Twain had his own ideas as to how far a joke
+might be carried without violence, and this was a good way beyond the
+limits. He denounced the Enquirer's statement as a "pitiful, deliberate
+falsehood," in his anger falling into the old-time phrasing of newspaper
+editorial abuse. He offered to bet them a thousand dollars in cash that
+they could not prove their assertions, and asked pointedly, in
+conclusion: "Will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they
+send an agent to the Galaxy office? I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must
+be edited by children." He promised that if they did not accept his
+financial proposition he would expose them in the next issue.
+
+The incident closed there. He was prevented, by illness in his
+household, from contributing to the next issue, and the second issue
+following was his final "Memoranda" installment. So the matter perished
+and was forgotten. It was his last editorial hoax. Perhaps he concluded
+that hoaxes in any form were dangerous playthings; they were too likely
+to go off at the wrong end.
+
+It was with the April number (1871) that he concluded his relations with
+the Galaxy. In a brief valedictory he gave his reasons:
+
+    I have now written for the Galaxy a year. For the last eight
+    months, with hardly an interval, I have had for my fellows and
+    comrades, night and day, doctors and watchers of the sick! During
+    these eight months death has taken two members of my home circle and
+    malignantly threatened two others. All this I have experienced, yet
+    all the time have been under contract to furnish "humorous" matter,
+    once a month, for this magazine. I am speaking the exact truth in
+    the above details. Please to put yourself in my place and
+    contemplate the grisly grotesqueness of the situation. I think that
+    some of the "humor" I have written during this period could have
+    been injected into a funeral sermon without disturbing the solemnity
+    of the occasion.
+
+    The "Memoranda" will cease permanently with this issue of the
+    magazine. To be a pirate on a low salary, and with no share in the
+    profits of the business, used to be my idea of an uncomfortable
+    occupation, but I have other views now. To be a monthly humorist in
+    a cheerless time is drearier.
+
+Without doubt he felt a glad relief in being rid of this recurrent,
+imperative demand. He wrote to Orion that he had told the Galaxy people
+he would not write another article, long or short, for less than $500,
+and preferred not to do it at all.
+
+The Galaxy department and the work on the Express were Mark Twain's
+farewell to journalism; for the "Memoranda" was essentially journalistic,
+almost as much so, and as liberally, as his old-time Enterprise position.
+Apparently he wrote with absolute freedom, unhampered by editorial policy
+or restriction. The result was not always pleasant, and it was not
+always refined. We may be certain that it was because of Mrs. Clemens's
+heavy burdens that year, and her consequent inability to exert a
+beneficent censorship, that more than one--more than a dozen--of the
+"Memoranda" contributions were permitted to see the light of print.
+
+As a whole, the literary result of Mark Twain's Buffalo period does not
+reach the high standard of The Innocents Abroad. It was a retrogression
+--in some measure a return to his earlier form. It had been done under
+pressure, under heavy stress of mind, as he said. Also there was another
+reason; neither the subject treated nor the environment of labor had
+afforded that lofty inspiration which glorified every step of the Quaker
+City journey. Buffalo was a progressive city--a beautiful city, as
+American cities go--but it was hardly an inspiring city for literature,
+and a dull, dingy newspaper office was far, very far, from the pleasant
+decks of the Quaker City, the camp-fires of Syria, the blue sky and sea
+of the Medit&ranean.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXII
+
+THE WRITING OF "ROUGHING IT"
+
+The third book published by Mark Twain was not the Western book he was
+preparing for Bliss. It was a small volume, issued by Sheldon & Co.,
+entitled Mark Twain's Autobiography (Burlesque) and First Romance. The
+Romance was the "Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance" which had appeared in
+the Express at the beginning of 1870. The burlesque autobiography had
+not previously appeared. The two made a thin little book, which, in
+addition to its literary features, had running through it a series of
+full-page, irrelevant pictures---cartoons of the Erie Railroad Ring,
+presented as illustrations of a slightly modified version of "The House
+That Jack Built." The "House" was the Erie headquarters, the purpose
+being to illustrate the swindling methods of the Ring. The faces of Jay
+Gould, James Fisk, Jr., John T. Hoffman, and others of the combination,
+are chiefly conspicuous. The publication was not important, from any
+standpoint. Literary burlesque is rarely important, and it was far from
+Mark Twain's best form of expression. A year or two later he realized
+the mistake of this book, bought in the plates and destroyed them.
+
+Meantime the new Western book was at a standstill. To Orion, in March,
+he wrote:
+
+    I am still nursing Livy night and day. I am nearly worn out. We
+    shall go to Elmira ten days hence (if Livy can travel on a mattress
+    then), and stay there until I finish the California book, say three
+    months. But I can't begin work right away when I get there; must
+    have a week's rest, for I have been through thirty days' terrific
+    siege.
+
+He promised to forward some of the manuscript soon.
+
+    Hold on four or five days and I will see if I can get a few chapters
+    fixed to send to Bliss . . . .
+
+    I have offered this house and the Express for sale, and when we go
+    to Elmira we leave here for good. I shall not select a new home
+    till the book is finished, but we have little doubt that Hartford
+    will be the place.
+
+He disposed of his interest in the Express in April, at a sacrifice of
+$10,000 on the purchase price. Mrs. Clemens and the baby were able to
+travel, and without further delay he took them to Elmira, to Quarry Farm.
+
+Quarry Farm, the home of Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Theodore Crane, is a
+beautiful hilltop, with a wide green slope, overlooking the hazy city and
+the Chemung River, beyond which are the distant hills. It was bought
+quite incidentally by Mr. and Mrs. Langdon, who, driving by one evening,
+stopped to water the horses and decided that it would make a happy summer
+retreat, where the families could combine their housekeeping arrangements
+during vacation days. When the place had first been purchased, they had
+debated on a name for it. They had tried several, among them
+"Go-as-you-please Hall," "Crane's Nest," and had finally agreed upon
+"Rest and Be Thankful." But this was only its official name. There was
+an abandoned quarry up the hill, a little way from the house, and the
+title suggested by Thomas K. Beecher came more naturally to the tongue.
+The place became Quarry Farm, and so remains.
+
+Clemens and his wife had fully made up their minds to live in Hartford.
+They had both conceived an affection for the place, Clemens mainly
+because of Twichell, while both of them yearned for the congenial
+literary and social atmosphere, and the welcome which they felt awaited
+them. Hartford was precisely what Buffalo in that day was not--a home
+for the literary man. It held a distinguished group of writers, most of
+whom the Clemenses already knew. Furthermore, with Bliss as publisher of
+the Mark Twain books, it held their chief business interests.
+
+Their plans for going were not very definite as to time. Clemens found
+that his work went better at the farm, and that Mrs. Clemens and the
+delicate baby daily improved. They decided to remain at Quarry Farm for
+the summer, their first summer in that beautiful place which would mean
+so much to them in the years to come.
+
+It was really Joe Goodman, as much as anything, that stirred a fresh
+enthusiasm in the new book. Goodman arrived just when the author's
+spirits were at low ebb.
+
+"Joe," he said, "I guess I'm done for. I don't appear to be able to get
+along at all with my work, and what I do write does not seem valuable.
+I'm afraid I'll never be able to reach the standard of 'The Innocents
+Abroad' again. Here is what I have written, Joe. Read it, and see if
+that is your opinion."
+
+Goodman took the manuscript and seated himself in a chair, while Clemens
+went over to a table and pretended to work. Goodman read page after
+page, critically, and was presently absorbed in it. Clemens watched him
+furtively, till he could stand it no longer. Then he threw down his pen,
+exclaiming:
+
+"I knew it! I knew it! I am writing nothing but rot. You have sat
+there all this time reading without a smile, and pitying the ass I am
+making of myself. But I am not wholly to blame. I am not strong enough
+to fight against fate. I have been trying to write a funny book, with
+dead people and sickness everywhere. Mr. Langdon died first, then a
+young lady in our house, and now Mrs. Clemens and the baby have been at
+the point of death all winter! Oh, Joe, I wish to God I could die
+myself!"
+
+"Mark," said Joe, "I was reading critically, not for amusement, and so
+far as I have read, and can judge, this is one of the best things you
+have ever written. I have found it perfectly absorbing. You are doing a
+great book!"
+
+Clemens knew that Goodman never spoke except from conviction, and the
+verdict was to him like a message of life handed down by an archangel. He
+was a changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm, full of his subject,
+eager to go on. He proposed to pay Goodman a salary to stay there and
+keep him company and furnish him with inspiration--the Pacific coast
+atmosphere and vernacular, which he feared had slipped away from him.
+Goodman declined the salary, but extended his visit as long as his plans
+would permit, and the two had a happy time together, recalling old
+Comstock days. Every morning, for a month or more, they used to tramp
+over the farm. They fell into the habit of visiting the old quarry and
+pawing over the fragments in search of fossil specimens. Both of them
+had a poetic interest in geology, its infinite remotenesses and its
+testimonies. Without scientific knowledge, they took a deep pleasure in
+accumulating a collection, which they arranged on boards torn from an old
+fence, until they had enough specimens to fill a small museum. They
+imagined they could distinguish certain geological relations and
+families, and would talk about trilobites, the Old Red Sandstone period,
+and the azoic age, or follow random speculation to far-lying conclusions,
+developing vague humors of phrase and fancy, having altogether a joyful
+good time.
+
+Another interest that developed during Goodman's stay was in one Ruloff,
+who was under death sentence for a particularly atrocious murder. The
+papers were full of Ruloff's prodigious learning. It was said that he
+had in preparation a work showing the unity of all languages. Goodman
+and Clemens agreed that Ruloff's death would be a great loss to mankind,
+even though he was clearly a villain and deserved his sentence. They
+decided that justice would be served just as well if some stupid person
+were hung in his place, and following out this fancy Clemens one morning
+put aside his regular work and wrote an article to the Tribune, offering
+to supply a substitute for Ruloff. He signed it simply "Samuel
+Langhorne," and it was published as a serious communication, without
+comment, so far as the Tribune was concerned. Other papers, however,
+took it up and it was widely copied and commented upon. Apparently no
+one ever identified, Mark Twain with the authorship of the letter, which,
+by the way, does not appear to have prolonged Ruloff's earthly
+usefulness.--[The reader will find the Ruloff letter in full under
+Appendix K, at the end of last volume.]
+
+Life at the farm may have furnished agricultural inspiration, for Clemens
+wrote something about Horace Greeley's farming, also a skit concerning
+Henry Ward Beecher's efforts in that direction. Of Mr. Beecher's farming
+he said:
+
+"His strawberries would be a comfortable success if robins would eat
+turnips."
+
+The article amused Beecher, and perhaps Greeley was amused too, for he
+wrote:
+
+    MARK,--You are mistaken as to my criticisms on your farming. I
+    never publicly made any, while you have undertaken to tell the exact
+    cost per pint of my potatoes and cabbages, truly enough the
+    inspiration of genius. If you will really betake yourself to
+    farming, or even to telling what you know about it, rather than what
+    you don't know about mine, I will not only refrain from disparaging
+    criticism, but will give you my blessing.
+
+                     Yours,  HORACE GREELEY.
+
+The letter is in Mr. Greeley's characteristic scrawl, and no doubt
+furnished inspiration for the turnip story in 'Roughing It', also the
+model for the pretended facsimile of Greeley's writing.
+
+Altogether that was a busy, enterprising summer at Quarry Farm. By the
+middle of May, Clemens wrote to Bliss that he had twelve hundred
+manuscript pages of the new book already written, and that he was turning
+out the remainder at the rate of from thirty to sixty-five per day. He
+was in high spirits by this time. The family health had improved, and
+prospects were bright.
+
+I have enough manuscript on hand now to make (allowing for engravings)
+about four hundred pages of the book, consequently am two-thirds done. I
+intended to run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and take it
+along, but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work now (a thing
+I have not experienced for months) that I can't bear to lose a single
+moment of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg away as long as
+it lasts. My present idea is to write as much more as I have already
+written, and then collect from the mass the very best chapters and
+discard the rest. When I get it done I want to see the man who will
+begin to read it and not finish it. Nothing grieves me now; nothing
+troubles me, nothing bothers me or gets my attention. I don't think of
+anything but the book, and don't have an hour's unhappiness about
+anything, and don't care two cents whether school keeps or not. The book
+will be done soon now. It will be a starchy book; the dedication will be
+worth the price of the volume. Thus:
+
+                   TO THE LATE CAIN
+                  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+
+    not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little
+    respect; not on account of sympathy for him, for his bloody deed
+    places him without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking, but
+    out of a mere humane commiseration for him, in that it was his
+    misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not the beneficent
+    insanity plea.
+
+Probably Mrs. Clemens diverted this picturesque dedication in favor of
+the Higbie inscription, or perhaps the author never really intended the
+literary tribute to Cain. The impulse that inspired it, however, was
+characteristic.
+
+In a postscript to this letter he adds:
+
+    My stock is looking up. I am getting the bulliest offers for books
+    and almanacs; am flooded with lecture invitations, and one
+    periodical offers me $6,000 cash for twelve articles of any length,
+    and on any subject, treated humorously or otherwise.
+
+He set in to make hay while the sun was shining. In addition to the
+California book, which was now fast nearing completion, he discussed a
+scheme with Goodman for a six-hundred-page work which they were to do
+jointly; he planned and wrote one or two scenes from a Western play, to
+be built from episodes in the new book (one of them was the "Arkansas"
+incident, related in Chapter XXXI); he perfected one of his several
+inventions--an automatically adjusting vest-strap; he wrote a number of
+sketches, made an occasional business trip to New York and Hartford;
+prospected the latter place for a new home. The shadow which had hung
+over the sojourn in Buffalo seemed to have lifted.
+
+He had promised Bliss some contributions for his new paper, and in June
+he sent three sketches. In an accompanying letter he says:
+
+    Here are three articles which you may have if you will pay $125 for
+    the lot. If you don't want them I'll sell them to the Galaxy, but
+    not for a cent less than three times the money.... If you take them
+    pay one-tenth of the $125 in weekly instalments to Orion till he has
+    received it all.
+
+He reconsidered his resolution not to lecture again, and closed with
+Redpath for the coming season. He found himself in a lecture-writing
+fever. He wrote three of them in succession: one on Artemus Ward,
+another on "Reminiscences of Some Pleasant Characters I Have Met," and a
+third one based on chapters from the new book. Of the "Reminiscence"
+lecture he wrote Redpath:
+
+"It covers my whole acquaintance; kings, lunatics, idiots, and all."
+Immediately afterward he wrote that he had prepared still another
+lecture, "title to be announced later."
+
+"During July I'll decide which one I like best," he said. He instructed
+Redpath not to make engagements for him to lecture in churches. "I never
+made a success of a lecture in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh
+in a church."
+
+Redpath was having difficulties in arranging a circuit to suit him.
+Clemens had prejudices against certain towns and localities, prejudices
+that were likely to change overnight. In August he wrote:
+
+    DEAR RED,--I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener.
+    People who have no mind can easily be stead fast and firm, but when
+    a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea
+    of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.
+    See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give
+    rigid instructions to confine me to New England; the next week send
+    me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give
+    you full, untrammeled swing; and the week following modify it. You
+    must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath that is your business,
+    being the agent, and it always was too many for me.... Now about
+    the West this week, I am willing that you shall retain all the
+    Western engagements. But what I shall want next week is still with
+    God.
+                         Yours,  MARK.
+
+He was in Hartford when this letter was written, arranging for residence
+there and the removal of his belongings. He finally leased the fine
+Hooker house on Ford Street, in that pleasant seclusion known as Nook
+Farm--the literary part of Hartford, which included the residence of
+Charles Dudley Warner and Harriet Beecher Stowe. He arranged for
+possession of the premises October 1st. So the new home was settled
+upon; then learning that Nasby was to be in Boston, he ran over to that
+city for a few days of recreation after his season's labors.
+
+Preparations for removal to Hartford were not delayed. The Buffalo
+property was disposed of, the furnishings were packed and shipped away.
+The house which as bride and groom they had entered so happily was left
+empty and deserted, never to be entered by them again. In the year and a
+half of their occupancy it had seen well-nigh all the human round, all
+that goes to make up the happiness and the sorrow of life.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIII
+
+LECTURING DAYS
+
+Life in Hartford, in the autumn of 1871, began in the letter, rather than
+in the spirit. The newcomers were received with a wide, neighborly
+welcome, but the disorder of establishment and the almost immediate
+departure of the head of the household on a protracted lecturing tour
+were disquieting things; the atmosphere of the Clemens home during those
+early Hartford days gave only a faint promise of its future loveliness.
+
+As in a far later period, Mark Twain had resorted to lecturing to pay off
+debt. He still owed a portion of his share in the Express; also he had
+been obliged to obtain an advance from the lecture bureau. He dreaded,
+as always, the tedium of travel, the clatter of hotel life, the monotony
+of entertainment, while, more than most men, he loved the tender luxury
+of home. It was only that he could not afford to lose the profit offered
+on the platform.
+
+His season opened at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, October 16th, and his
+schedule carried him hither and thither, to and fro, over distances that
+lie between Boston and Chicago. There were opportunities to run into
+Hartford now and then, when he was not too far away, and in November he
+lectured there on Artemus Ward.
+
+He changed his entertainment at least twice that season. He began with
+the "Reminiscences," the lecture which he said would treat of all those
+whom he had met, "idiots, lunatics, and kings," but he did not like it,
+or it did not go well. He wrote Redpath of the Artemus Ward address:
+
+"It suits me, and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous 'Reminiscences'
+any more."
+
+But the Ward lecture was good for little more than a month, for on
+December 8th he wrote again:
+
+    Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but
+    selections from my forthcoming book, 'Roughing It'. Tried it twice
+    last night; suits me tiptop.
+
+And somewhat later:
+
+    Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last
+    night; a perfectly jammed house, just as I have all the time out
+    here.... I don't care now to have any appointments canceled. I'll
+    even "fetch" those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.
+
+    Have paid up $4,000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list.
+    Shall begin to pay you in a few days, and then I shall be a free man
+    again.
+
+Undoubtedly he reveled in the triumphs of a platform tour, though at no
+time did he regard it as a pleasure excursion. During those early weeks
+the proofs of his new book, chasing him from place to place, did not add
+to his comfort. Still, with large, substantial rewards in hand and in
+prospect, one could endure much.
+
+In the neighborhood of Boston there were other compensations. He could
+spend a good part of his days at the Lyceum headquarters, in School
+Street, where there was always congenial fellowship--Nasby, Josh
+Billings, and the rest of the peripatetic group that about the end of the
+year collected there. Their lectures were never tried immediately in
+Boston, but in the outlying towns; tried and perfected--or discarded.
+When the provincial audiences were finally satisfied, then the final.
+test in the Boston Music Hall was made, and if this proved successful the
+rest of the season was safe. Redpath's lecturers put up at Young's
+Hotel, and spent their days at the bureau, smoking and spinning yarns, or
+talking shop. Early in the evening they scattered to the outlying towns,
+Lowell, Lexington, Concord, New Bedford. There is no such a condition
+to-day: lecturers are few, lecture bureaus obscure; there are no great
+reputations made on the platform.
+
+Neither is there any such distinct group of humorists as the one just
+mentioned. Humor has become universal since then. Few writers of this
+age would confess to taking their work so seriously as to be at all times
+unsmiling in it; only about as many, in fact, as in that day would
+confess to taking their work so lightly that they could regard life's
+sterner phases and philosophies with a smile.
+
+Josh Billings was one of the gentlest and loveliest of our pioneers of
+laughter. The present generation is not overfamiliar even with his name,
+but both the name and sayings of that quaint soul were on everybody's
+lips at the time of which we are writing. His true name was Henry W.
+Shaw, and he was a genuine, smiling philosopher, who might have built up
+a more permanent and serious reputation had he not been induced to
+disfigure his maxims with ridiculous spelling in order to popularize them
+and make them bring a living price. It did not matter much with Nasby's
+work. An assumed illiteracy belonged with the side of life which he
+presented; but it is pathetic now to consider some of the really masterly
+sayings of Josh Billings presented in that uncouth form which was
+regarded as a part of humor a generation ago. Even the aphorisms that
+were essentially humorous lose value in that degraded spelling.
+
+"When a man starts down hill everything is greased for the occasion,"
+could hardly be improved upon by distorted orthography, and here are a
+few more gems which have survived that deadly blight.
+
+"Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference between
+vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between the lightning-bug
+and the lightning."
+
+"Don't take the bull by the horns-take him by the tail; then you can let
+go when you want to."
+
+"The difficulty is not that we know so much, but that we know so much
+that isn't so."
+
+Josh Billings, Nasby, and Mark Twain were close friends. They had
+themselves photographed in a group, and there was always some pleasantry
+going on among them. Josh Billings once wrote on "Lekturing," and under
+the head of "Rule Seven," which treated of unwisdom of inviting a
+lecturer to a private house, he said:
+
+    Think of asking Mark Twain home with yu, for instance. Yure good
+    wife has put her house in apple-pie order for the ockashun;
+    everything is just in the right place. Yu don't smoke in yure
+    house, never. Yu don't put yure feet on the center-table, yu don't
+    skatter the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion: order
+    and ekonemy governs yure premises. But if yu expeckt Mark Twain to
+    be happy, or even kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of cigars
+    worth at least seventeen dollars and yu hav got to move all the
+    tender things out ov yure parlor. Yu hav got to skatter all the
+    latest papers around the room careless, you hav got to hav a pitcher
+    ov icewater handy, for Mark is a dry humorist. Yu hav got to ketch
+    and tie all yure yung ones, hed and foot, for Mark luvs babys only
+    in theory; yu hav got to send yure favorite kat over to the nabors
+    and hide yure poodle. These are things that hav to be done, or Mark
+    will pak hiz valise with hiz extry shirt collar and hiz lektur on
+    the Sandwich Islands, and travel around yure streets, smoking and
+    reading the sighns over the store doorways untill lektur time
+    begins.
+
+As we-are not likely to touch upon Mark Twain's lecturing, save only
+lightly, hereafter, it may be as well to say something of his method at
+this period. At all places visited by lecturers there was a committee,
+and it was the place of the chairman to introduce the lecturer, a
+privilege which he valued, because it gave him a momentary association
+with distinction and fame. Clemens was a great disappointment to these
+officials. He had learned long ago that he could introduce himself more
+effectively than any one else. His usual formula was to present himself
+as the chairman of the committee, introducing the lecturer of the
+evening; then, with what was in effect a complete change of personality,
+to begin his lecture. It was always startling and amusing, always a
+success; but the papers finally printed this formula, which took the
+freshness out of it, so that he had to invent others. Sometimes he got
+up with the frank statement that he was introducing himself because he
+had never met any one who could pay a proper tribute to his talents; but
+the newspapers printed that too, and he often rose and began with no
+introduction at all.
+
+Whatever his method of beginning, Mark Twain's procedure probably was the
+purest exemplification of the platform entertainer's art which this
+country has ever seen. It was the art that makes you forget the
+artisanship, the art that made each hearer forget that he was not being
+personally entertained by a new and marvelous friend, who had traveled a
+long way for his particular benefit. One listener has written that he
+sat "simmering with laughter" through what he supposed was the
+continuation of the introduction, waiting for the traditional lecture to
+begin, when presently the lecturer, with a bow, disappeared, and it was
+over. The listener looked at his watch; he had been there more than an
+hour. He thought it could be no more than ten minutes, at most. Many
+have tried to set down something of the effect his art produced on them,
+but one may not clearly convey the story of a vanished presence and a
+silent voice.
+
+There were other pleasant associations in Boston. Howells was there, and
+Aldrich; also Bret Harte, who had finished his triumphal progress across
+the continent to join the Atlantic group. Clemens appears not to have
+met Aldrich before, though their acquaintance had begun a year earlier,
+when Aldrich, as editor of Every Saturday, had commented on a poem
+entitled, "The Three Aces," which had appeared in the Buffalo Express.
+Aldrich had assumed the poem to be the work of Mark Twain, and had
+characterized it as "a feeble imitation of Bret Harte's 'Heathen
+Chinee.'" Clemens, in a letter, had mildly protested as to the charge of
+authorship, and Aldrich had promptly printed the letter with apologetic
+explanation. A playful exchange of personal letters followed, and the
+beginning of a lifelong friendship.
+
+One of the letters has a special interest here. Clemens had followed his
+protest with an apology for it, asking that no further notice be taken of
+the matter. Aldrich replied that it was too late to prevent "doing him
+justice," as his explanation was already on the press, but that if
+Clemens insisted he would withdraw it in the next issue. Clemens then
+wrote that he did not want it withdrawn, and explained that he hated to
+be accused of plagiarizing Bret Harte, to whom he was deeply indebted for
+literary schooling in the California days. Continuing he said:
+
+    Do you know the prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot
+    through Harte's brain? It was this. When they were trying to
+    decide upon a vignette cover for the Overland a grizzly bear (of the
+    arms of the State of California) was chosen. Nahl Bros. carved him
+    and the page was printed with him in it.
+
+    As a bear he was a success. He was a good bear, but then, it was
+    objected, he was an objectless bear--a bear that meant nothing,
+    signified nothing, simply stood there, snarling over his shoulder at
+    nothing, and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and ill-natured
+    intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that none were
+    satisfied; they hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as
+    much to have him there when there was no point to him. But
+    presently Harte took a pencil and drew two simple lines under his
+    feet, and behold he was a magnificent success!--the ancient symbol
+    of California savagery, snarling at the approaching type of high and
+    progressive civilization, the first Overland locomotive! I just
+    think that was nothing less than an inspiration.--[The "bear" was
+    that which has always appeared on the Overland cover; the "two
+    lines" formed a railway track under his feet. Clemens's original
+    letter contained crude sketches illustrating these things.]
+
+Among the Boston group was another Californian, Ralph Keeler, an
+eccentric, gifted, and altogether charming fellow, whom Clemens had known
+on the Pacific slope. Keeler had been adopted by the Boston writers, and
+was grateful and happy accordingly. He was poor of purse, but
+inexhaustibly rich in the happier gifts of fortune. He was unfailingly
+buoyant, light-hearted, and hopeful. On an infinitesimal capital he had
+made a tour of many lands, and had written of it for the Atlantic. In
+that charmed circle he was as overflowingly happy as if he had been
+admitted to the company of the gods. Keeler was affectionately regarded
+by all who knew him, and he offered a sort of worship in return. He
+often accompanied Mark Twain on his lecture engagements to the various
+outlying towns, and Clemens brought him back to his hotel for breakfast,
+where they had good, enjoyable talks together. Once Keeler came eagerly
+to the hotel and made his way up to Clemens's room.
+
+"Come with me," he said. "Quick!"
+
+"What is it? What's happened?"
+
+"Don't wait to talk. Come with me."
+
+They tramped briskly through the streets till they reached the public
+library, entered, Keeler leading the way, not stopping till he faced a
+row of shelves filled with books. He pointed at one of them, his face
+radiant with joy.
+
+"Look," he said. "Do you see it?"
+
+Clemens looked carefully now and identified one of the books as a
+still-born novel which Keeler had published.
+
+"This is a library," said Keeler, eagerly, "and they've got it!"
+
+His whole being was aglow with the wonder of it. He had been
+investigating; the library records showed that in the two years the book
+had been there it had been taken out and read three times! It never
+occurred to Clemens even to smile. Knowing Mark Twain, one would guess
+that his eyes were likely to be filled with tears.
+
+In his book about Mark Twain, Howells tells of a luncheon which Keeler
+gave to his more famous associates--Aldrich, Fields, Harte, Clemens, and
+Howells himself--a merry informal occasion. Says Howells:
+
+    Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and
+    aimless and joyful talk--play, beginning and ending nowhere, of
+    eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-
+    lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional
+    concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it
+    gladly; and amid the discourse, so little improving, but so full of
+    good-fellowship, Bret Harte's leering dramatization of Clemens's
+    mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates. "Why,
+    fellows," he spluttered, "this is the dream of Mark's life," and I
+    remember the glance from under Clemens's feathery eyebrows which
+    betrayed his enjoyment of the fun.
+
+Very likely Keeler gave that luncheon in celebration of his book's
+triumph; it would be like him.
+
+Keeler's end was a mystery. The New York Tribune commissioned him to go
+to Cuba to report the facts of some Spanish outrages. He sailed from New
+York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the night before the vessel
+reached Havana. He had made no secret of his mission, but had discussed
+it in his frank, innocent way. There were some Spanish military men on
+the ship.
+
+Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said:
+
+"It may be that he was not flung into the sea, still the belief was
+general that that was what had happened."
+
+In his book Howells refers to the doubt with which Mark Twain was then
+received by the polite culture of Boston; which, on the other hand,
+accepted Bret Harte as one of its own, forgiving even social
+shortcomings.
+
+The reason is not difficult to understand. Harte had made his appeal
+with legitimate fiction of the kind which, however fresh in flavor and
+environment, was of a sort to be measured and classified. Harte spoke a
+language they could understand; his humor, his pathos, his point of view
+were all recognizable. It was an art already standardized by a master.
+It is no reflection on the genius of Bret Harte to liken his splendid
+achievements to those of Charles Dickens. Much of Harte's work is in no
+way inferior to that of his great English prototype. Dickens never wrote
+a better short story than "The Outcasts of Poker Flats." He never wrote
+as good a short story as "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Boston critics
+promptly realized these things and gave Harte his correct rating. That
+they failed to do this with Mark Twain, lay chiefly in the fact that he
+spoke to them in new and startling tongues. His gospels were likely to
+be heresies; his literary eccentricities were all unclassified. Of the
+ultrafastidious set Howells tells us that Charles Eliot Norton and Prof.
+Francis J. Child were about the only ones who accorded him unqualified
+approval. The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that condescension
+which the courtier is likely to accord to motley and the cap and bells.
+Only the great, simple-hearted, unbiased multitude, the public, which had
+no standards but the direct appeal from one human heart to another, could
+recognize immediately his mightier heritage, could exalt and place him on
+the throne.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIV
+
+"ROUGHING IT".
+
+Telegram to Redpath:
+
+    How in the name of God does a man find his way from here to Amherst,
+    and when must he start? Give me full particulars, and send a man
+    with me. If I had another engagement I would rot before I would
+    fill it.                S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+This was at the end of February, and he believed that he was standing on
+the platform for the last time. He loathed the drudgery of the work, and
+he considered there was no further need. He was no longer in debt, and
+his income he accounted ample. His new book, 'Roughing It',--[It was
+Bliss who had given the new book the title of Roughing It. Innocents at
+Home had been its provision title, certainly a misleading one, though it
+has been retained in England for the second volume; for what reason it
+would be difficult to explain.]--had had a large advance sale, and its
+earnings promised to rival those of the 'Innocents'. He resolved in the
+future to confine himself to the trade and profits of authorship.
+
+The new book had advantages in its favor. Issued early in the year, it
+was offered at the best canvassing season; particularly so, as the
+author's lectures had prepared the public for its reception. Furthermore,
+it dealt with the most picturesque phases of American life, scenes and
+episodes vastly interesting at that time, and peculiarly adapted to Mark
+Twain's literary expression. In a different way 'Roughing It' is quite
+as remarkable as 'The Innocents Abroad.' If it has less charm, it has
+greater interest, and it is by no means without charm. There is
+something delicious, for instance, in this bit of pure enjoyment of the
+first day's overland travel:
+
+    It was now just dawn, and as we stretched our cramped legs full
+    length on the mail-sacks, and gazed out through the windows across
+    the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist to where
+    there was an expectant look in the Eastern horizon, our perfect
+    enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The
+    stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the
+    curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle
+    swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs,
+    the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were
+    music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give
+    us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us
+    with interest and envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the
+    pipe of peace, and compared all this luxury with the years of
+    tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was
+    only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had
+    found it.
+
+Also, there is that lofty presentation of South Pass, and a picture of
+the alkali desert, so parching, so withering in its choking realism, that
+it makes the throat ache and the tongue dry to read it. Just a bit of
+the desert in passing:
+
+    The sun beats down with a dead, blistering, relentless malignity;
+    the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but
+    scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed
+    before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air
+    stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the
+    brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any
+    direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its
+    monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound, not a sigh,
+    not a whisper, not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of
+    bird; not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that
+    dead air.
+
+As for the humor of the book, it has been chiefly famous for that. "Buck
+Fanshaw's Funeral" has become a classic, and the purchase of the "Mexican
+Plug." But it is to no purpose to review the book here in detail. We
+have already reviewed the life and environment out of which it grew.
+
+Without doubt the story would have contained more of the poetic and
+contemplative, in which he was always at his best, if the subject itself,
+as in the Innocents, had lent itself oftener to this form of writing. It
+was the lack of that halo perhaps which caused the new book never quite
+to rank with its great forerunner in public favor. There could hardly be
+any other reason. It presented a fresher theme; it abounded in humor;
+technically, it was better written; seemingly it had all the elements of
+popularity and of permanence. It did, in fact, possess these qualities,
+but its sales, except during the earlier months of its canvass, never
+quite equaled those of The Innocents Abroad.
+
+'Roughing It' was accepted by the public for just what it was and is, a
+great picture of the Overland Pioneer days--a marvelous picture of
+frontier aspects at a time when the frontier itself, even with its
+hardships and its tragedies, was little more than a vast primal joke;
+when all frontiersmen were obliged to be laughing philosophers in order
+to survive the stress of its warfares.
+
+A word here about this Western humor: It is a distinct product. It grew
+out of a distinct condition--the battle with the frontier. The fight was
+so desperate, to take it seriously was to surrender. Women laughed that
+they might not weep; men, when they could no longer swear. "Western
+humor" was the result. It is the freshest, wildest humor in the world,
+but there is tragedy behind it.
+
+'Roughing It' presented the picture of those early conditions with the
+startling vividness and truth of a great novel, which, in effect, it was.
+It was not accurate history, even of the author's own adventures. It was
+true in its aspects, rather than in its details. The greater artist
+disregards the truth of detail to render more strikingly a phase or a
+condition, to produce an atmosphere, to reconstruct a vanished time. This
+was what Mark Twain did in 'Roughing It'. He told the story of overland
+travel and the frontier, for his own and future generations, in what is
+essentially a picaresque novel, a work of unperishing fiction, founded on
+fact.
+
+The sales of 'Roughing It' during the first three months aggregated
+nearly forty thousand copies, and the author was lavishly elate
+accordingly. To Orion (who had already closed his career with Bliss, by
+exercise of those hereditary eccentricities through which he so often
+came to grief) he gave $1,000 out of the first royalty check, in
+acknowledgment of the memorandum book and other data which Orion had
+supplied. Clemens believed the new book would sell one hundred thousand
+copies within the year; but the sale diminished presently, and at the end
+of the first year it was considerably behind the Innocents for the same
+period. As already stated, it required ten years for Roughing It to
+reach the one-hundred-thousand mark, which the Innocents reached in
+three.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXV
+
+A BIRTH, A DEATH, AND A VOYAGE
+
+The year 1872 was an eventful one in Mark Twain's life. At Elmira, on
+March 19th, his second child, a little girl, whom they named Susan
+Olivia, was born. On June 2d, in the new home in Hartford, to which they
+had recently moved, his first child, a little boy, Langdon, died. He had
+never been strong, his wavering life had often been uncertain, always
+more of the spirit than the body, and in Elmira he contracted a heavy
+cold, or perhaps it was diphtheria from the beginning. In later years,
+whenever Clemens spoke of the little fellow, he never failed to accuse
+himself of having been the cause of the child's death. It was Mrs.
+Clemens's custom to drive out each morning with Langdon, and once when
+she was unable to go Clemens himself went instead.
+
+"I should not have been permitted to do it," he said, remembering. "I was
+not qualified for any such responsibility as that. Some one should have
+gone who had at least the rudiments of a mind. Necessarily I would lose
+myself dreaming. After a while the coachman looked around and noticed
+that the carriage-robes had dropped away from the little fellow, and that
+he was exposed to the chilly air. He called my attention to it, but it
+was too late. Tonsilitis or something of the sort set in, and he did not
+get any better, so we took him to Hartford. There it was pronounced
+diphtheria, and of course he died."
+
+So, with or without reason, he added the blame of another tragedy to the
+heavy burden of remorse which he would go on piling up while he lived.
+
+The blow was a terrible one to Mrs. Clemens; even the comfort of the
+little new baby on her arm could not ease the ache in her breast. It
+seemed to her that death was pursuing her. In one of her letters she
+says:
+
+"I feel so often as if my path is to be lined with graves," and she
+expresses the wish that she may drop out of life herself before her
+sister and her husband--a wish which the years would grant.
+
+They did not return to Elmira, for it was thought that the air of the
+shore would be better for the little girl; so they spent the summer at
+Saybrook, Connecticut, at Fenwick Hall, leaving Orion and his wife in
+charge of the house at Hartford.
+
+Beyond a few sketches, Clemens did very little literary work that summer,
+but he planned a trip to Europe, and he invented what is still known and
+sold as the "Mark Twain Scrap-Book."
+
+He wrote to Orion of his proposed trip to England, and dilated upon his
+scrap-book with considerable enthusiasm. The idea had grown out of the
+inconvenience of finding a paste-jar, and the general mussiness of
+scrap-book keeping. His new plan was a self-pasting scrap-book with the
+gum laid on in narrow strips, requiring only to be dampened with a sponge
+or other moist substance to be ready for the clipping. He states that he
+intends to put the invention into the hands of Slote, Woodman & Co., of
+whom Dan Slote, his old Quaker City room-mate, was the senior partner,
+and have it manufactured for the trade.
+
+About this time began Mark Twain's long and active interest in copyright.
+Previously he had not much considered the subject; he had taken it for
+granted there was no step that he could take, while international piracy
+was a recognized institution. On both sides of the water books were
+appropriated, often without profit, sometimes even without credit, to the
+author. To tell the truth, Clemens had at first regarded it rather in
+the nature of a compliment that his books should be thought worth
+pirating in England, but as time passed he realized that he was paying
+heavily for this recognition. Furthermore, he decided that he was
+forfeiting a right; rather that he was being deprived of it: something
+which it was in his nature to resent.
+
+When 'Roughing It' had been ready for issue he agreed with Bliss that
+they should try the experiment of copyrighting it in England, and see how
+far the law would protect them against the voracious little publisher,
+who thus far had not only snapped up everything bearing Mark Twain's
+signature, but had included in a volume of Mark Twain sketches certain
+examples of very weak humor with which Mark Twain had been previously
+unfamiliar.
+
+Whatever the English pirate's opinion of the copyright protection of
+'Roughing It' may have been, he did not attempt to violate it. This was
+gratifying. Clemens came to regard England as a friendly power. He
+decided to visit it and spy out the land. He would make the acquaintance
+of its people and institutions and write a book, which would do these
+things justice.
+
+He gave out no word of his real purpose. He merely said that he was
+going over to see his English publishers, and perhaps to arrange for a
+few lectures. He provided himself with some stylographic note-books, by
+which he could produce two copies of his daily memoranda--one for himself
+and one to mail to Mrs. Clemens--and sailed on the Scotia August 21,
+1872.
+
+Arriving in Liverpool he took train for London, and presently the
+wonderful charm of that old, finished country broke upon him. His "first
+hour in England was an hour of delight," he records; "of rapture and
+ecstasy. These are the best words I can find, but they are not adequate;
+they are not strong enough to convey the feeling which this first vision
+of rural England brought me." Then he noticed that the gentleman
+opposite in his compartment paid no attention to the scenery, but was
+absorbed in a green-covered volume. He was so absorbed in it that, by
+and by, Clemens's curiosity was aroused. He shifted his position a
+little and his eye caught the title. It was the first volume of the
+English edition of The Innocents Abroad. This was gratifying for a
+moment; then he remembered that the man had never laughed, never even
+smiled during the hour of his steady reading. Clemens recalled what he
+had heard of the English lack of humor. He wondered if this was a fair
+example of it, and if the man could be really taking seriously every word
+he was reading. Clemens could not look at the scenery any more for
+watching his fellow-passenger, waiting with a fascinated interest for the
+paragraph that would break up that iron-clad solemnity. It did not come.
+During all the rest of the trip to London the atmosphere of the
+compartment remained heavy with gloom.
+
+He drove to the Langham Hotel, always popular with Americans, established
+himself, and went to look up his publishers. He found the Routledges
+about to sit down to luncheon in a private room, up-stairs, in their
+publishing house. He joined them, and not a soul stirred from that table
+again until evening. The Routledges had never heard Mark Twain talk
+before, never heard any one talk who in the least resembled him. Various
+refreshments were served during the afternoon, came and went, while this
+marvelous creature talked on and they listened, reveling, and wondering
+if America had any more of that sort at home. By and by dinner was
+served; then after a long time, when there was no further excuse for
+keeping him there, they took him to the Savage Club, where there were yet
+other refreshments and a gathering of the clans to welcome this new
+arrival as a being from some remote and unfamiliar star.
+
+Tom Hood, the younger, was there, and Harry Lee, and Stanley the
+explorer, who had but just returned from finding Livingstone, and Henry
+Irving, and many another whose name remains, though the owners of those
+names are all dead now, and their laughter and their good-fellowship are
+only a part of that intangible fabric which we call the past.'--[Clemens
+had first known Stanley as a newspaper man. "I first met him when he
+reported a lecture of mine in St. Louis," he said once in a conversation
+where the name of Stanley was mentioned.]
+
+
+
+
+LXXXVI
+
+ENGLAND
+
+From that night Mark Twain's stay in England could not properly be called
+a gloomy one.
+
+Routledge, Hood, Lee, and, in fact, all literary London, set themselves
+the task of giving him a good time. Whatever place of interest they
+could think of he was taken there; whatever there was to see he saw it.
+Dinners, receptions, and assemblies were not complete without him. The
+White Friars' Club and others gave banquets in his honor. He was the
+sensation of the day. When he rose to speak on these occasions he was
+greeted with wild cheers. Whatever he said they eagerly applauded--too
+eagerly sometimes, in the fear that they might be regarded as insensible
+to American humor. Other speakers delighted in chaffing him in order to
+provoke his retorts. When a speaker humorously referred to his American
+habit of carrying a cotton umbrella, his reply that he followed this
+custom because a cotton umbrella was the only kind of an umbrella that an
+Englishman wouldn't steal, was all over England next day, and regarded as
+one of the finest examples of wit since the days of Swift.
+
+The suddenness and completeness of his acceptance by the great ones of
+London rather overwhelmed and frightened him made him timid. Joaquin
+Miller writes:
+
+    He was shy as a girl, although time was already coyly flirting white
+    flowers at his temples, and could hardly be coaxed to meet the
+    learned and great who wanted to take him by the hand.
+
+Many came to call on him at his hotel, among them Charles Reade and Canon
+Kingsley. Kingsley came twice without finding him; then wrote, asking
+for an appointment. Reade invited his assistance on a novel. Indeed, it
+was in England that Mark Twain was first made to feel that he had come
+into his rightful heritage. Whatever may have been the doubts concerning
+him in America, there was no question in England. Howells says:
+
+    In England rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. Lord mayors,
+    lord chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts; he
+    was desired in country houses, and his bold genius captivated the
+    favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of our nation.
+
+After that first visit of Mark Twain's, when Americans in England,
+referring to their great statesmen, authors, and the like, naturally
+mentioned the names of Seward, Webster, Lowell, or Holmes, the English
+comment was likely to be: "Never mind those. We can turn out academic
+Sewards by the dozen, and cultured humorists like Lowell and Holmes by
+the score. Tell us of Lincoln, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain. We cannot
+match these; they interest us." And it was true. History could not
+match them, for they were unique.
+
+Clemens would have been more than human if in time he had not realized
+the fuller meaning of this triumph, and exulted in it a little to the
+folks at home. There never lived a more modest, less pretentious, less
+aggressive man than Mark Twain, but there never lived a man who took a
+more childlike delight in genuine appreciation; and, being childlike, it
+was only human that he should wish those nearest to him to share his
+happiness. After one memorable affair he wrote:
+
+    I have been received in a sort of tremendous way to-night by the
+    brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the sheriffs of
+    London; mine being (between you and me) a name which was received
+    with a thundering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long
+    list of guests was called.
+
+I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support and
+assistance of my excellent friend, Sir John Bennett.
+
+This letter does not tell all of the incident or the real reason why he
+might have perished on the spot. During the long roll-call of guests he
+had lost interest a little, and was conversing in whispers with his
+"excellent friend," Sir John Bennett, stopping to applaud now and then
+when the applause of the others indicated that some distinguished name
+had been pronounced. All at once the applause broke out with great
+vehemence. This must be some very distinguished person indeed. He
+joined in it with great enthusiasm. When it was over he whispered to Sir
+John:
+
+"Whose name was that we were just applauding?"
+
+"Mark Twain's."
+
+Whereupon the support was needed.
+
+Poor little pirate Hotten did not have a happy time during this visit. He
+had reveled in the prospect at first, for he anticipated a large increase
+to be derived from his purloined property; but suddenly, one morning, he
+was aghast to find in the Spectator a signed letter from Mark Twain, in
+which he was repudiated, referred to as "John Camden Hottentot," an
+unsavory person generally. Hotten also sent a letter to the Spectator,
+in which he attempted to justify himself, but it was a feeble
+performance. Clemens prepared two other communications, each worse than
+the other and both more destructive than the first one. But these were
+only to relieve his mind. He did not print them. In one of them he
+pursued the fancy of John Camden Hottentot, whom he offers as a specimen
+to the Zoological Gardens.
+
+It is not a bird. It is not a man. It is not a fish. It does not seem
+to be in all respects a reptile. It has the body and features of a man,
+but scarcely any of the instincts that belong to such a structure.... I
+am sure that this singular little creature is the missing link between
+the man and the hyena.
+
+Hotten had preyed upon explorer Stanley and libeled him in a so-called.
+biography to a degree that had really aroused some feeling against
+Stanley in England. Only for the moment--the Queen invited Stanley to
+luncheon, and newspaper criticism ceased. Hotten was in general
+disrepute, therefore, so it was not worth while throwing a second brick
+at him.
+
+In fact, now that Clemens had expended his venom, on paper, Hotten seemed
+to him rather an amusing figure than otherwise. An incident grew out of
+it all, however, that was not amusing. E. P. Hingston, whom the reader
+may remember as having been with Artemus Ward in Virginia City, and one
+of that happy group that wined and dined the year away, had been engaged
+by Hotten to write the introductory to his edition of The Innocents
+Abroad. It was a well-written, highly complimentary appreciation.
+Hingston did not dream that he was committing an offense, nor did Clemens
+himself regard it as such in the beginning.
+
+But Mark Twain's views had undergone a radical change, and with
+characteristic dismissal of previous conditions he had forgotten that he
+had ever had any other views than those he now held. Hingston was in
+London, and one evening, at a gathering, approached Clemens with
+outstretched hand. But Clemens failed to see Hingston's hand or to
+recognize him. In after-years his conscience hurt him terribly for this.
+He remembered it only with remorse and shame. Once, in his old age, he
+spoke of it with deep sorrow.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXVII
+
+THE BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN
+
+The book on England, which he had prepared for so carefully, was never
+written. Hundreds of the stylographic pages were filled, and the
+duplicates sent home for the entertainment of Olivia Clemens, but the
+notes were not completed, and the actual writing was never begun. There
+was too much sociability in London for one thing, and then he found that
+he could not write entertainingly of England without introducing too many
+personalities, and running the risk of offending those who had taken him
+into their hearts and homes. In a word, he would have to write too
+seriously or not at all.
+
+He began his memoranda industriously enough, and the volume might have
+been as charming and as valuable as any he has left behind. The reader
+will hardly fail to find a few of the entries interesting. They are
+offered here as examples of his daily observation during those early
+weeks of his stay, and to show somewhat of his purpose:
+
+                    AN EXPATRIATE
+
+    There was once an American thief who fled his country and took
+    refuge in England. He dressed himself after the fashion of the
+    Londoners, and taught his tongue the peculiarities of the London
+    pronunciation and did his best in all ways to pass himself for a
+    native. But he did two fatal things: he stopped at the Langham
+    Hotel, and the first trip he took was to visit Stratford-on-Avon and
+    the grave of Shakespeare. These things betrayed his nationality.
+
+                  STANLEY AND THE QUEEN
+
+    See the power a monarch wields! When I arrived here, two weeks ago,
+    the papers and geographers were in a fair way to eat poor Stanley up
+    without salt or sauce. The Queen says, "Come four hundred miles up
+    into Scotland and sit at my luncheon-table fifteen minutes"; which,
+    being translated, means, "Gentlemen, I believe in this man and take
+    him under my protection"; and not another yelp is heard.
+
+                  AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
+
+    What a place it is!
+
+    Mention some very rare curiosity of a peculiar nature--a something
+    which you have read about somewhere but never seen--they show you a
+    dozen! They show you all the possible varieties of that thing!
+    They show you curiously wrought jeweled necklaces of beaten gold,
+    worn by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Greeks,
+    Britons--every people of the forgotten ages, indeed. They show you
+    the ornaments of all the tribes and peoples that live or ever did
+    live. Then they show you a cast taken from Cromwell's face in
+    death; then the venerable vase that once contained the ashes of
+    Xerxes.
+
+    I am wonderfully thankful for the British Museum. Nobody comes
+    bothering around me--nobody elbows me--all the room and all the
+    light I want, under this huge dome--no disturbing noises--and people
+    standing ready to bring me a copy of pretty much any book that ever
+    was printed under the sun--and if I choose to go wandering about the
+    long corridors and galleries of the great building the secrets of
+    all the earth and all the ages axe laid open to me. I am not
+    capable of expressing my gratitude for the British Museum--it seems
+    as if I do not know any but little words and weak ones.
+
+                WESTMINSTER ABBEY BY NIGHT
+
+    It was past eleven o'clock and I was just going to bed. But this
+    friend of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there was
+    not a doubt in my mind that his "expedition" had merit in it. I put
+    on my coat and boots again, and we drove away.
+
+    "Where is it? Where are we going?"
+
+    "Don't worry. You'll see."
+
+    He was not inclined to talk. So I thought this must be a weighty
+    matter. My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully
+    under the surface. I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers as
+    we thundered down the long street. I am always lost in London, day
+    or night. It was very chilly, almost bleak. People leaned against
+    the gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter. The crowds grew
+    thinner and thinner, and the noises waxed faint and seemed far away.
+    The sky was overcast and threatening. We drove on, and still on,
+    till I wondered if we were ever going to stop. At last we passed by
+    a spacious bridge and a vast building, and presently entered a
+    gateway, passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in a court
+    surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then we
+    alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little while
+    footsteps were heard, a man emerged from the darkness, and we
+    dropped into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an
+    archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a
+    tall iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down
+    this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than
+    by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we came
+    to another iron gate, and our conductor stopped there and lit a
+    bull's-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the gate; and I wished he had
+    oiled it first, it grated so dismally. The gate swung open and we
+    stood on the threshold of what seemed a limitless domed and pillared
+    cavern, carved out of the solid darkness. The conductor and my
+    friend took off their hats reverently, and I did likewise. For the
+    moment that we stood thus there was not a sound, and the stillness
+    seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom. I looked my inquiry!
+
+    "It is the tomb of the great dead of England-Westminster Abbey."...
+
+    We were among the tombs; on every hand dull shapes of men, sitting,
+    standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of the darkness
+    --reached out their hands toward us--some appealing, some beckoning,
+    some warning us away. Effigies they were--statues over the graves;
+    but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a
+    little half-grown black and white cat squeezed herself through the
+    bars of the iron gate and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by
+    the time or the place, unimpressed by the marble pomp that
+    sepulchers a line of mighty dead that ends with a great author of
+    yesterday and began with a sceptered monarch away back in the dawn
+    of history, more than twelve hundred years ago . . . .
+
+    Mr. Wright flashed his lantern first upon this object and then upon
+    that, and kept up a running commentary that showed there was nothing
+    about the venerable Abbey that was trivial in his eyes or void of
+    interest. He is a man in authority, being superintendent, and his
+    daily business keeps him familiar with every nook and corner of the
+    great pile. Casting a luminous ray now here, now yonder, he would
+    say:
+
+    "Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three feet to the
+    base of the roof; I measured it myself the other day. Notice the
+    base of this column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years
+    --and how well they knew how to build in those old days! Notice it
+    --every stone is laid horizontally; that is to say, just as nature
+    laid it originally in the quarry not set up edgewise; in our day
+    some people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split and
+    flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything. Let me remove this
+    matting--it is put here to preserve the pavement; now there is a bit
+    of pavement that is seven hundred years old; you can see by these
+    scattering clusters of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before
+    time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there, in the border,
+    was an inscription, once see, follow the circle-you can trace it by
+    the ornaments that have been pulled out--here is an A and there is
+    an O, and yonder another A--all beautiful Old English capitals;
+    there is no telling what the inscription was--no record left now.
+    Now move along in this direction, if you please. Yonder is where
+    old King Sebert the Saxon lies his monument is the oldest one in the
+    Abbey; Sebert died in 616,--[Clemens probably misunderstood the
+    name. It was Ethelbert who died in 616. The name Sebert does not
+    appear in any Saxon annals accessible to the author.]--and that's
+    as much, as twelve hundred and fifty years ago think of it! Twelve
+    hundred and fifty years! Now yonder is the last one--Charles
+    Dickens--there on the floor, with the brass letters on the slab--and
+    to this day the people come and put flowers on it.... There is
+    Garrick's monument; and Addison's, and Thackeray's bust--and
+    Macaulay lies there. And close to Dickens and Garrick lie Sheridan
+    and Dr. Johnson--and here is old Parr....
+
+    "That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know
+    pretty well--Milton, and Gray who wrote the Elegy, and Butler who
+    wrote Hudibras; and Edmund Spenser, and Ben Jonson--there are three
+    tablets to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got 'O, Rare Ben
+    Jonson' cut on them. You were standing on one of them just now he
+    is buried standing up. There used to be a tradition here that
+    explains it. The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried
+    in the Abbey, so he asked King James if he would make him a present
+    of eighteen inches of English ground, and the King said 'yes,' and
+    asked him where he would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey.
+    Well, the King wouldn't go back on his word, and so there he is,
+    sure enough-stood up on end."
+
+The reader may regret that there are not more of these entries, and that
+the book itself was never written. Just when he gave up the project is
+not recorded. He was urged to lecture in London, but declined. To Mrs.
+Clemens, in September, he wrote:
+
+Everybody says lecture, lecture, lecture, but I have not the least idea
+of doing it; certainly not at present. Mr. Dolby, who took Dickens to
+America, is coming to talk business tomorrow, though I have sent him word
+once before that I can't be hired to talk here; because I have no time to
+spare. There is too much sociability; I do not get along fast enough
+with work.
+
+In October he declared that he was very homesick, and proposed that Mrs.
+Clemens and Susie join him at once in London, unless she would prefer to
+have him come home for the winter and all of them return to London in the
+spring. So it is likely that the book was not then abandoned. He felt
+that his visit was by no means ended; that it was, in fact, only just
+begun, but he wanted the ones he loved most to share it with him. To his
+mother and sister, in November, he wrote:
+
+I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven't done much but attend
+dinners and make speeches. I have had a jolly good time, and I do hate
+to go away from these English folks; they make a stranger feel entirely
+at home, and they laugh so easily that it is a comfort to make
+after-dinner speeches here. I have made hundreds of friends; and last
+night, in the crush at the opening of the new Guild Hall Library and
+Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face every other step.
+
+All his impressions of England had been happy ones. He could deliver a
+gentle satire now and then at certain British institutions--certain
+London localities and features--as in his speech at the Savage Club,
+--[September 28, 1872. This is probably the most characteristic speech
+made by Mark Twain during his first London visit; the reader will find it
+in full in Appendix L, at the end of last volume.]--but taking the snug
+island as a whole, its people, its institutions, its fair, rural aspects,
+he had found in it only delight. To Mrs. Crane he wrote:
+
+    If you and Theodore will come over in the spring with Livy and me,
+    and spend the summer, you shall see a country that is so beautiful
+    that you will be obliged to believe in fairy-land. There is nothing
+    like it elsewhere on the globe. You should have a season ticket and
+    travel up and down every day between London and Oxford and worship
+    nature.
+
+    And Theodore can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now
+    as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the
+    British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the
+    customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every
+    official act, and the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the
+    speech and manners of all the centuries that have dragged their
+    lagging decades over England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I
+    would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you
+    over.
+
+He sailed November 12th, on the Batavia, loaded with Christmas presents
+for everybody; jewelry, furs, laces; also a practical steam-engine for
+his namesake, Sam Moffett. Half-way across the Atlantic the Batavia ran
+into a hurricane and was badly damaged by heavy seas, and driven far out
+of her course. It was a lucky event on the whole, for she fell in with a
+water-logged lumber bark, a complete wreck, with nine surviving sailors
+clinging to her rigging. In the midst of the wild gale a lifeboat was
+launched and the perishing men were rescued. Clemens prepared a graphic
+report of the matter for the Royal Humane Society, asking that medals be
+conferred upon the brave rescuers, a document that was signed by his
+fellow-passengers and obtained for the men complete recognition and wide
+celebrity. Closing, the writer said:
+
+    As might have been anticipated, if I have been of any service toward
+    rescuing these nine shipwrecked human beings by standing around the
+    deck in a furious storm, without an umbrella, keeping an eye on
+    things and seeing that they were done right, and yelling whenever a
+    cheer seemed to be the important thing, I am glad and I am
+    satisfied. I ask no reward. I would do it again under the same
+    circumstances. But what I do plead for, earnestly and sincerely, is
+    that the Royal Humane Society will remember our captain and our
+    life-boat crew, and in so remembering them increase the high honor
+    and esteem in which the society is held all over the civilized
+    world.
+
+The Batavia reached New York November 26, 1872. Mark Twain had been
+absent three months, during which he had been brought to at least a
+partial realization of what his work meant to him and to mankind.
+
+An election had taken place during his absence--an election which
+gratified him deeply, for it had resulted in the second presidency of
+General Grant and in the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom he admired
+perhaps, but not as presidential material. To Thomas Nast, who had aided
+very effectually in Mr. Greeley's overwhelming defeat, Clemens wrote:
+
+Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for
+Grant--I mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those pictures
+were simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to hold his
+head up and be honestly proud of his share in this year's vast events
+that man is unquestionably yourself. We all do sincerely honor you, and
+are proud of you.
+
+Horace Greeley's peculiar abilities and eccentricities won celebrity for
+him, rather than voters. Mark Twain once said of him:
+
+"He was a great man, an honest man, and served his, country well and was
+an honor to it. Also, he was a good-natured man, but abrupt with
+strangers if they annoyed him when he was busy. He was profane, but that
+is nothing; the best of us is that. I did not know him well, but only
+just casually, and by accident. I never met him but once. I called on
+him in the Tribune office, but I was not intending to. I was looking for
+Whitelaw Reid, and got into the wrong den. He was alone at his desk,
+writing, and we conversed--not long, but just a little. I asked him if
+he was well, and he said, 'What the hell do you want?' Well, I couldn't
+remember what I wanted, so I said I would call again. But I didn't."
+
+Clemens did not always tell the incident just in this way. Sometimes it
+was John Hay he was looking for instead of Reid, and the conversation
+with Greeley varied; but perhaps there was a germ of history under it
+somewhere, and at any rate it could have happened well enough, and not
+have been out of character with either of the men.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXVIII
+
+"THE GILDED AGE"
+
+Mark Twain did not go on the lecture circuit that winter. Redpath had
+besought him as usual, and even in midsummer had written:
+
+"Will you? Won't you? We have seven thousand to eight thousand dollars
+in engagements recorded for you," and he named a list of towns ranging
+geographically from Boston to St. Paul.
+
+But Clemens had no intention then of ever lecturing any more, and again
+in November, from London, he announced (to Redpath):
+
+"When I yell again for less than $500 I'll be pretty hungry, but I
+haven't any intention of yelling at any price."
+
+Redpath pursued him, and in January proposed $400 for a single night in
+Philadelphia, but without result. He did lecture two nights in Steinway
+Hall for the Mercantile Library Association, on the basis of half
+profits, netting $1,300 for the two nights as his share; and he lectured
+one night in Hartford, at a profit Of $1,500, for charity. Father
+Hawley, of Hartford, had announced that his missionary work was suffering
+for lack of funds. Some of his people were actually without food, he
+said, their children crying with hunger. No one ever responded to an
+appeal like that quicker than Samuel Clemens. He offered to deliver a
+lecture free, and to bear an equal proportion of whatever expenses were
+incurred by the committee of eight who agreed to join in forwarding the
+project. He gave the Sandwich Island lecture, and at the close of it a
+large card was handed him with the figures of the receipts printed upon
+it. It was held up to view, and the house broke into a storm of cheers.
+
+He did very little writing during the early weeks following his return.
+Early in the year (January 3 and 6, 1873) he contributed two Sandwich
+Island letters to the Tribune, in which, in his own peculiar fashion, he
+urged annexation.
+
+"We must annex those people," he declared, and proceeded to specify the
+blessings we could give them, such as "leather-headed juries, the
+insanity law, and the Tweed Ring."
+
+    We can confer Woodhull and Clafin on them, and George Francis Train.
+    We can give them lecturers! I will go myself.
+
+    We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner
+    on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy
+    civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need!
+
+    "Shall we, to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?"
+
+His success in England became an incentive to certain American
+institutions to recognize his gifts at home. Early in the year he was
+dined as the guest of the Lotos Club of New York, and a week or two later
+elected to its membership. This was but a beginning. Some new
+membership or honor was offered every little while, and so many banquets
+that he finally invented a set form for declining them. He was not yet
+recognized as the foremost American man of letters, but undoubtedly he
+had become the most popular; and Edwin Whipple, writing at this time, or
+but little later, said:
+
+"Mark Twain is regarded chiefly as a humorist, but the exercise of his
+real talents would rank him with the ablest of our authors in the past
+fifty years." So he was beginning to be "discovered" in high places.
+
+It was during this winter that the Clemens household enjoyed its first
+real home life in Hartford, its first real home life anywhere since those
+earliest days of marriage. The Hooker mansion was a comfortable place.
+The little family had comparatively good health. Their old friends were
+stanch and lavishly warm-hearted, and they had added many new ones. Their
+fireside was a delightful nucleus around which gathered those they cared
+for most, the Twichells, the Warner families, the Trumbulls--all certain
+of a welcome there. George Warner, only a little while ago, remembering,
+said:
+
+"The Clemens house was the only one I have ever known where there was
+never any preoccupation in the evenings, and where visitors were always
+welcome. Clemens was the best kind of a host; his evenings after dinner
+were an unending flow of stories."
+
+Friends living near by usually came and went at will, often without the
+ceremony of knocking or formal leave-taking. They were more like one
+great family in that neighborhood, with a community of interests, a unity
+of ideals. The Warner families and the Clemenses were particularly
+intimate, and out of their association grew Mark Twain's next important
+literary undertaking, his collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner in
+'The Gilded Age'.
+
+A number of more or less absurd stories have been printed about the
+origin of this book. It was a very simple matter, a perfectly natural
+development.
+
+At the dinner-table one night, with the Warners present, criticisms of
+recent novels were offered, with the usual freedom and severity of
+dinner-table talk. The husbands were inclined to treat rather lightly
+the novels in which their wives were finding entertainment. The wives
+naturally retorted that the proper thing for the husbands to do was to
+furnish the American people with better ones. This was regarded in the
+nature of a challenge, and as such was accepted--mutually accepted: that
+is to say, in partnership. On the spur of the moment Clemens and Warner
+agreed that they would do a novel together, that they would begin it
+immediately. This is the whole story of the book's origin; so far, at
+least, as the collaboration is concerned. Clemens, in fact, had the
+beginning of a story in his mind, but had been unwilling to undertake an
+extended work of fiction alone. He welcomed only too eagerly, therefore,
+the proposition of joint authorship. His purpose was to write a tale
+around that lovable character of his youth, his mother's cousin, James
+Lampton--to let that gentle visionary stand as the central figure against
+a proper background. The idea appealed to Warner, and there was no delay
+in the beginning. Clemens immediately set to work and completed 399
+pages of the manuscript, the first eleven chapters of the book, before
+the early flush of enthusiasm waned.
+
+Warner came over then, and Clemens read it aloud to him. Warner had some
+plans for the story, and took it up at this point, and continued it
+through the next twelve chapters; and so they worked alternately, "in the
+superstition," as Mark Twain long afterward declared, "that we were
+writing one coherent yarn, when I suppose, as a matter of fact, we were
+writing two incoherent ones."--[The reader may be interested in the
+division of labor. Clemens wrote chapters I to XI; also chapters XXIV,
+XXV, XXVII, XXVIII, XXX, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XLII,
+XLIII, XLV, LI, LII, LIII, LVII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, and portions of
+chapters XXXV, XLIX, LVI. Warner wrote chapters XII to XXIII; also
+chapters XXVI, XXIX, XXXI, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLI, XLIV, XLVI, XLVII,
+XLVIII, L, LIV, LV, LVIII, LXIII, and portions of chapters XXXV, XLIX,
+and LVI. The work was therefore very evenly divided.
+
+There was another co-worker on The Gilded Age before the book was finally
+completed. This was J. Hammond Trumbull, who prepared the variegated,
+marvelous cryptographic chapter headings: Trumbull was the most learned
+man that ever lived in Hartford. He was familiar with all literary and
+scientific data, and according to Clemens could swear in twenty-seven
+languages. It was thought to be a choice idea to get Trumbull to supply
+a lingual medley of quotations to precede the chapters in the new book,
+the purpose being to excite interest and possibly to amuse the reader--a
+purpose which to some extent appears to have miscarried.]
+
+The book was begun in February and finished in April, so the work did not
+lag. The result, if not highly artistic, made astonishingly good
+reading. Warner had the touch of romance, Clemens, the gift of creating,
+or at least of portraying, human realities. Most of his characters
+reflected intimate personalities of his early life. Besides the
+apotheosis of James Lampton into the immortal Sellers, Orion became
+Washington Hawkins, Squire Clemens the judge, while Mark Twain's own
+personality, in a greater or lesser degree, is reflected in most of his
+creations. As for the Tennessee land, so long a will-o'the-wisp and a
+bugbear, it became tangible property at last. Only a year or two before
+Clemens had written to Orion:
+
+    Oh, here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tennessee. I
+    don't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is
+    for you to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to
+    ask my advice, opinion, or consent about that hated property.
+
+But it came in good play now. It is the important theme of the story.
+
+Mark Twain was well qualified to construct his share of the tale. He
+knew his characters, their lives, and their atmospheres perfectly.
+Senator Dilworthy (otherwise Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, then notorious
+for attempted vote-buying) was familiar enough. That winter in
+Washington had acquainted Clemens with the life there, its political
+intrigues, and the disrepute of Congress. Warner was equally well
+qualified for his share of the undertaking, and the chief criticism that
+one may offer is the one stated by Clemens himself--that the divisions of
+the tale remain divisions rather than unity.
+
+As for the story itself--the romance and tragedy of it--the character of
+Laura in the hands of either author is one not easy to forget. Whether
+this means that the work is well done, or only strikingly done, the
+reader himself must judge. Morally, the character is not justified.
+Laura was a victim of circumstance from the beginning. There could be no
+poetic justice in her doom. To drag her out of a steamer wreck, only to
+make her the victim of a scoundrel, later an adventuress, and finally a
+murderess, all may be good art, but of a very bad kind. Laura is a sort
+of American Becky Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky's
+fate, whereas Laura's doom is warranted only by the author's whim. As
+for her end, whatever the virtuous public of that day might have done, a
+present-day audience would not have pelted her from the stage, destroyed
+her future, taken away her life.
+
+The authors regarded their work highly when it was finished, but that is
+nothing. Any author regards his work highly at the moment of its
+completion. In later years neither of them thought very well of their
+production; but that also is nothing. The author seldom cares very
+deeply for his offspring once it is turned over to the public charge. The
+fact that the story is still popular, still delights thousands of
+readers, when a myriad of novels that have been written since it was
+completed have lived their little day and died so utterly that even their
+names have passed out of memory, is the best verdict as to its worth.
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIX
+
+PLANNING A NEW HOME
+
+Clemens and his wife bought a lot for the new home that winter, a fine,
+sightly piece of land on Farmington Avenue--table-land, sloping down to a
+pretty stream that wound through the willows and among the trees. They
+were as delighted as children with their new purchase and the prospect of
+building. To her sister Mrs. Clemens wrote:
+
+    Mr. Clemens seems to glory in his sense of possession; he goes daily
+    into the lot, has had several falls trying to lay off the land by
+    sliding around on his feet....
+
+    For three days the ice has covered the trees, and they have been
+    glorious. We could do nothing but watch the beauty outside; if you
+    looked at the trees as the sun struck them, with your back toward
+    the sun, they were covered with jewels. If you looked toward the
+    sun it was all crystal whiteness, a perfect fairy-land. Then the
+    nights were moonlight, and that was a great beauty, the moon giving
+    us the same prismatic effect.
+
+This was the storm of which Mark Twain wrote his matchless description,
+given first in his speech on New England weather, and later preserved in
+'Following the Equator', in more extended form. In that book he likens
+an ice-storm to his impressions derived from reading descriptions of the
+Taj Mahal, that wonderful tomb of a fair East Indian queen. It is a
+marvelous bit of word-painting--his description of that majestic vision:
+"When every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and
+the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond
+plume." It will pay any one to look up that description and read it all,
+though it has been said, by the fortunate one or two who heard him first
+give it utterance as an impromptu outburst, that in the subsequent
+process of writing the bloom of its original magnificence was lost.
+
+The plans for the new house were drawn forthwith by that gentle architect
+Edward Potter, whose art to-day may be considered open to criticism, but
+not because of any lack of originality. Hartford houses of that period
+were mainly of the goods-box form of architecture, perfectly square,
+typifying the commercial pursuits of many of their owners. Potter agreed
+to get away from this idea, and a radical and even frenzied departure was
+the result. Certainly his plans presented beautiful pictures, and all
+who saw them were filled with wonder and delight. Architecture has
+lavished itself in many florescent forms since then, but we may imagine
+that Potter's "English violet" order of design, as he himself designated
+it, startled, dazzled, and captivated in a day, when most houses were
+mere habitations, built with a view to economy and the largest possible
+amount of room.
+
+Workmen were put on the ground without delay, to prepare for the
+builders, and work was rapidly pushed along. Then in May the whole
+matter was left in the hands of the architect and the carpenters (with
+Lawyer Charles E. Perkins to stand between Potter and the violent
+builder, who roared at Potter and frightened him when he wanted changes),
+while the Clemens household, with Clara Spaulding, a girlhood friend of
+Mrs. Clemens, sailed away to England for a half-year holiday.
+
+
+
+
+XC
+
+A LONG ENGLISH HOLIDAY
+
+They sailed on the Batavia, and with them went a young man named
+Thompson, a theological student whom Clemens had consented to take as an
+amanuensis. There is a pathetic incident connected with this young man,
+and it may as well be set down here. Clemens found, a few weeks after
+his arrival in England, that so great was the tax upon his time that he
+could make no use of Thompson's services. He gave Thompson fifty
+dollars, and upon the possibility of the young man's desiring to return
+to America, advanced him another fifty dollars, saying that he could
+return it some day, and never thought of it again. But the young man
+remembered it, and one day, thirty-six years later, after a life of
+hardship and struggle, such as the life of a country minister is apt to
+be, he wrote and inclosed a money-order, a payment on his debt. That
+letter and its inclosure brought only sorrow to Mark Twain. He felt that
+it laid upon him the accumulated burden of the weary thirty-six years'
+struggle with ill-fortune. He returned the money, of course, and in a
+biographical note commented:
+
+    How pale painted heroisms of romance look beside it! Thompson's
+    heroism, which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime, and
+    which is costly beyond all estimate, is achieved in profound
+    obscurity, and its hero walks in rags to the end of his days. I had
+    forgotten Thompson completely, but he flashes before me as vividly
+    as lightning. I can see him now. It was on the deck of the
+    Batavia, in the dock. The ship was casting off, with that hubbub
+    and confusion and rushing of sailors, and shouting of orders and
+    shrieking of boatswain whistles, which marked the departure
+    preparations in those days--an impressive contrast with the solemn
+    silence which marks the departure preparations of the giant ships of
+    the present day. Mrs. Clemens, Clara Spaulding, little Susy, and
+    the nurse-maid were all properly garbed for the occasion. We all
+    had on our storm-rig, heavy clothes of somber hue, but new and
+    designed and constructed for the purpose, strictly in accordance
+    with sea-going etiquette; anything wearable on land being distinctly
+    and odiously out of the question.
+
+    Very well. On that deck, and gliding placidly among those honorable
+    and properly upholstered groups, appeared Thompson, young, grave,
+    long, slim, with an aged fuzzy plug hat towering high on the upper
+    end of him and followed by a gray duster, which flowed down, without
+    break or wrinkle, to his ankles. He came straight to us, and shook
+    hands and compromised us. Everybody could see that we knew him. A
+    nigger in heaven could not have created a profounder astonishment.
+
+    However, Thompson didn't know that anything was happening. He had
+    no prejudices about clothes. I can still see him as he looked when
+    we passed Sandy Hook and the winds of the big ocean smote us.
+    Erect, lofty, and grand he stood facing the blast, holding his plug
+    on with both hands and his generous duster blowing out behind, level
+    with his neck. There were scoffers observing, but he didn't know
+    it; he wasn't disturbed.
+
+    In my mind, I see him once afterward, clothed as before, taking me
+    down in shorthand. The Shah of Persia had come to England and Dr.
+    Hosmer, of the Herald, had sent me to Ostend, to view his Majesty's
+    progress across the Channel and write an account of it. I can't
+    recall Thompson after that, and I wish his memory had been as poor
+    as mine.
+
+They had been a month in London, when the final incident referred to took
+place--the arrival of the Shah of Persia--and were comfortably quartered
+at the Langham Hotel. To Twichell Clemens wrote:
+
+    We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments on the third floor,
+    our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place, our parlor having a
+    noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland
+    Place and the crook that joins it onto Regent Street).
+
+    Nine p.m. full twilight, rich sunset tints lingering in the west.
+
+    I am not going to write anything; rather tell it when I get back.
+    I love you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got
+    anyway. And I mean to keep that fresh all the time.
+
+Mrs. Clemens, in a letter to her sister, declared: "It is perfectly
+discouraging to try to write you. There is so much to write about that
+it makes me feel as if it was no use to begin."
+
+It was a period of continuous honor and entertainment. If Mark Twain had
+been a lion on his first visit, he was little less than royalty now. His
+rooms at the Langham were like a court. Miss Spaulding (now Mrs. John B.
+Stanchfield) remembers that Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John
+Millais, Lord Houghton, and Sir Charles Dilke (then at the height of his
+fame) were among those that called to pay their respects. In a recent
+letter she says:
+
+    I remember a delightful luncheon that Charles Kingsley gave for Mr.
+    Clemens; also an evening when Lord Dunraven brought Mr. Home, the
+    medium, Lord Dunraven telling many of the remarkable things he had
+    seen Mr. Home do. I remember I wanted so much to see him float out
+    of a seven or eight story window, and enter another, which Lord
+    Dunraven said he had seen him do many times. But Mr. Home had been
+    very ill, and said his power had left him. My great regret was that
+    we did not see Carlyle, who was too sad and ill for visits.
+
+Among others they met Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland,
+and found him so shy that it was almost impossible to get him to say a
+word on any subject.
+
+"The shyest full-grown man, except Uncle Remus, I ever met," Clemens once
+wrote. "Dr. MacDonald and several other lively talkers were present, and
+the talk went briskly on for a couple of hours, but Carroll sat still all
+the while, except now and then when he answered a question."
+
+At a dinner given by George Smalley they met Herbert Spencer, and at a
+luncheon-party at Lord Houghton's, Sir Arthur Helps, then a world-wide
+celebrity.
+
+    Lord Elcho, a large, vigorous man, sat at some distance down the
+    table. He was talking earnestly about the town of Godalming. It
+    was a deep, flowing, and inarticulate rumble, but I caught the
+    Godalming pretty nearly every time it broke free of the rumbling,
+    and as all the strength was on the first end of the word, it
+    startled me every time, because it sounded so like swearing. In the
+    middle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose, remarked to the guests on
+    her right and on her left, in a matter-of-fact way, "Excuse me, I
+    have an engagement," and without further ceremony, she went off to
+    meet it. This would have been doubtful etiquette in America. Lord
+    Houghton told a number of delightful stories. He told them in
+    French, and I lost nothing of them but the nubs.
+
+Little Susy and her father thrived on London life, but after a time it
+wore on Mrs. Clemens. She delighted in the English cordiality and
+culture, but the demands were heavy, the social forms sometimes trying.
+Life in London was interesting, and in its way charming, but she did not
+enter into it with quite her husband's enthusiasm and heartiness. In the
+end they canceled all London engagements and quietly set out for
+Scotland. On the way they rested a few days in York, a venerable place
+such as Mark Twain always loved to describe. In a letter to Mrs. Langdon
+he wrote:
+
+    For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with
+    its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew
+    no wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper
+    stories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date,
+    say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated
+    gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque
+    ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred
+    years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English
+    chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn
+    carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoter
+    days; the outlandish names of streets and courts and byways that
+    stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danish
+    dominion here in still earlier times; the hint here and there of
+    King Arthur and his knights and their bloody fights with Saxon
+    oppressors round about this old city more than thirteen hundred
+    years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy old stone coffins
+    and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoary tower of
+    stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressed by
+    the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissed
+    and, caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor's
+    soldiers placed them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary
+    walked the streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame
+    than the Yorkshire boy who is loitering down this street this
+    moment.
+
+They reached Edinburgh at the end of July and secluded themselves in
+Veitch's family hotel in George Street, intending to see no one. But
+this plan was not a success; the social stress of London had been too
+much for Mrs. Clemens, and she collapsed immediately after their arrival.
+Clemens was unacquainted in Edinburgh, but remembered that Dr. John
+Brown, who had written Rab and His Friend, lived there. He learned his
+address, and that he was still a practising physician. He walked around
+to 23 Rutland Street, and made himself known. Dr. Brown came forthwith,
+and Mrs. Clemens speedily recovered under his able and inspiring
+treatment.
+
+The association did not end there. For nearly a month Dr. Brown was
+their daily companion, either at the hotel, or in his own home, or on
+protracted drives when he made his round of visits, taking these new
+friends along. Dr. John was beloved by everybody in Edinburgh, everybody
+in Scotland, for that matter, and his story of Rab had won him a
+following throughout Christendom. He was an unpretentious sovereign.
+Clemens once wrote of him:
+
+    His was a sweet and winning face, as beautiful a face as I have ever
+    known. Reposeful, gentle, benignant; the face of a saint at peace
+    with all the world and placidly beaming upon it the sunshine of love
+    that filled his heart.
+
+He was the friend of all dogs, and of all people. It has been told of
+him that once, when driving, he thrust his head suddenly out of the
+carriage window, then resumed his place with a disappointed look.
+
+"Who was it?" asked his companion. "Some one you know?"
+
+"No," he said. "A dog I don't know."
+
+He became the boon companion and playmate of little Susy, then not quite
+a year and a half old. He called her Megalopis, a Greek term, suggested
+by her eyes; those deep, burning eyes that seemed always so full of
+life's sadder philosophies, and impending tragedy. In a collection of
+Dr. Brown's letters he refers to this period. In one place he says:
+
+    Had the author of The Innocents Abroad not come to Edinburgh at that
+    time we in all human probability might never have met, and what a
+    deprivation that would have been to me during the last quarter of a
+    century!
+
+And in another place:
+
+    I am attending the wife of Mark Twain. His real name is Clemens.
+    She is a quite lovely little woman, modest and clever, and she has a
+    girlie eighteen months old, her ludicrous miniature--and such eyes!
+
+Those playmates, the good doctor and Megalopis, romped together through
+the hotel rooms with that complete abandon which few grown persons can
+assume in their play with children, and not all children can assume in
+their play with grown-ups. They played "bear," and the "bear" (which was
+a very little one, so little that when it stood up behind the sofa you
+could just get a glimpse of yellow hair) would lie in wait for her
+victim, and spring out and surprise him and throw him into frenzies of
+fear.
+
+Almost every day they made his professional rounds with him. He always
+carried a basket of grapes for his patients. His guests brought along
+books to read while they waited. When he stopped for a call he would
+say:
+
+"Entertain yourselves while I go in and reduce the population."
+
+There was much sight-seeing to do in Edinburgh, and they could not quite
+escape social affairs. There were teas and luncheons and dinners with
+the Dunfermlines and the Abercrombies, and the MacDonalds, and with
+others of those brave clans that no longer slew one another among the
+grim northern crags and glens, but were as sociable and entertaining
+lords and ladies as ever the southland could produce. They were very
+gentle folk indeed, and Mrs. Clemens, in future years, found her heart
+going back oftener to Edinburgh than to any other haven of those first
+wanderings. August 24th she wrote to her sister:
+
+    We leave Edinburgh to-morrow with sincere regret; we have had such a
+    delightful stay here--we do so regret leaving Dr. Brown and his
+    sister, thinking that we shall probably never see them again [as
+    indeed they never did].
+
+They spent a day or two at Glasgow and sailed for Ireland, where they put
+in a fortnight, and early in September were back in England again, at
+Chester, that queer old city where; from a tower on the wall, Charles I.
+read the story of his doom. Reginald Cholmondeley had invited them to
+visit his country seat, beautiful Condover Hall, near Shrewsbury, and in
+that lovely retreat they spent some happy, restful days. Then they were
+in the whirl of London once more, but escaped for a fortnight to Paris,
+sight-seeing and making purchases for the new home.
+
+Mrs. Clemens was quite ready to return to America, by this time.
+
+    I am blue and cross and homesick [she wrote]. I suppose what makes
+    me feel the latter is because we are contemplating to stay in London
+    another month. There has not one sheet of Mr. Clemens's proof come
+    yet, and if he goes home before the book is published here he will
+    lose his copyright. And then his friends feel that it will be
+    better for him to lecture in London before his book is published,
+    not only that it will give him a larger but a more enviable
+    reputation. I would not hesitate one moment if it were simply for
+    the money that his copyright will bring him, but if his reputation
+    will be better for his staying and lecturing, of course he ought to
+    stay.... The truth is, I can't bear the thought of postponing going
+    home.
+
+It is rather gratifying to find Olivia Clemens human, like that, now and
+then. Otherwise, on general testimony, one might well be tempted to
+regard her as altogether of another race and kind.
+
+
+
+
+XCI
+
+A LONDON LECTURE
+
+Clemens concluded to hasten the homeward journey, but to lecture a few
+nights in London before starting. He would then accompany his little
+family home, and return at once to continue the lecture series and
+protect his copyright. This plan was carried out. In a communication to
+the Standard, October 7th, he said:
+
+    SIR,--In view of the prevailing frenzy concerning the Sandwich
+    Islands, and the inflamed desire of the public to acquire
+    information concerning them, I have thought it well to tarry yet
+    another week in England and deliver a lecture upon this absorbing
+    subject. And lest it should be thought unbecoming in me, a
+    stranger, to come to the public rescue at such a time, instead of
+    leaving to abler hands a matter of so much moment, I desire to
+    explain that I do it with the best motives and the most honorable
+    intentions. I do it because I am convinced that no one can allay
+    this unwholesome excitement as effectually as I can, and to allay
+    it, and allay it as quickly as possible, is surely one thing that is
+    absolutely necessary at this juncture. I feel and know that I am
+    equal to this task, for I can allay any kind of an excitement by
+    lecturing upon it. I have saved many communities in this way. I
+    have always been able to paralyze the public interest in any topic
+    that I chose to take hold of and elucidate with all my strength.
+
+    Hoping that this explanation will show that if I am seeming to
+    intrude I am at least doing it from a high impulse, I am, sir, your
+    obedient servant,
+                         MARK TWAIN.
+
+A day later the following announcement appeared:
+
+                  QUEEN'S CONCERT ROOMS,
+                   HANOVER SQUARE.
+
+            MR. GEORGE DOLBY begs to announce that
+
+                    MR. MARK TWAIN
+
+                    WILL DELIVER A
+                      LECTURE
+                       OF A
+                  HUMOROUS CHARACTER,
+
+                     AS ABOVE, ON
+           MONDAY EVENING NEXT, OCTOBER 13th, 1873,
+            AND REPEAT IT IN THE SAME PLACE, ON
+               TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 14th,
+               WEDNESDAY "      "  15th,
+               THURSDAY "      "  16th,
+               FRIDAY  "      "  17th,
+
+                   At Eight o'Clock,
+                       AND
+             SATURDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 18th,
+                   At Three o'Clock.
+
+                      SUBJECT:
+         "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands."
+
+    As Mr. TWAIN has spent several months in these Islands, and is well
+    acquainted with his subject, the Lecture may be expected to furnish
+    matter of interest.
+
+           STALLS, 5s.     UNRESERVED SEATS, 3s.
+
+The prospect of a lecture from Mark Twain interested the London public.
+Those who had not seen him were willing to pay even for that privilege.
+The papers were encouraging; Punch sounded a characteristic note:
+
+              WELCOME TO A LECTURER
+
+  "'Tis time we Twain did show ourselves." 'Twas said
+    By Caesar, when one Mark had lost his head:
+    By Mark, whose head's quite bright, 'tis said again:
+    Therefore, "go with me, friends, to bless this Twain."
+
+                                --Punch.
+
+Dolby had managed the Dickens lectures, and he proved his sound business
+judgment and experience by taking the largest available hall in London
+for Mark Twain.
+
+On the evening of October 13th, in the spacious Queen's Concert Rooms,
+Hanover Square, Mark Twain delivered his first public address in England.
+The subject was "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands," the old
+lecture with which he had made his first great successes. He was not
+introduced. He appeared on the platform in evening dress, assuming the
+character of a manager announcing a disappointment.
+
+Mr. Clemens, he said, had fully expected to be present. He paused and
+loud murmurs arose from the audience. He lifted his hand and they
+subsided. Then he added, "I am happy to say that Mark Twain is present,
+and will now give his lecture." Whereupon the audience roared its
+approval.
+
+It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that his triumph that week was
+a regal one. For five successive nights and a Saturday matinee the
+culture and fashion of London thronged to hear him discourse of their
+"fellow savages." It was a lecture event wholly without precedent. The
+lectures of Artemus Ward,--["Artemus the delicious," as Charles Reade
+called him, came to London in June, 1866, and gave his "piece" in
+Egyptian Hall. The refined, delicate, intellectual countenance, the
+sweet, gave, mouth, from which one might have expected philosophical
+lectures retained their seriousness while listeners were convulsed with
+laughter. There was something magical about it. Every sentence was a
+surprise. He played on his audience as Liszt did on a piano most easily
+when most effectively. Who can ever forget his attempt to stop his
+Italian pianist--"a count in his own country, but not much account in
+this"--who went on playing loudly while he was trying to tell us an
+"affecting incident" that occurred near a small clump of trees shown on
+his panorama of the Far West. The music stormed on-we could see only
+lips and arms pathetically moving till the piano suddenly ceased, and we
+heard-it was all we heard "and, she fainted in Reginald's arms." His
+tricks have been at tempted in many theaters, but Artemus Ward was
+inimitable. And all the time the man was dying. (Moneure D. Conway,
+Autobiography.)]--who had quickly become a favorite in London, had
+prepared the public for American platform humor, while the daily doings
+of this new American product, as reported by the press, had aroused
+interest, or curiosity, to a high pitch. On no occasion in his own
+country had he won such a complete triumph. The papers for a week
+devoted columns of space to appreciation and editorial comment. The
+Daily News of October 17th published a column-and-a-half editorial on
+American humor, with Mark Twain's public appearance as the general text.
+The Times referred to the continued popularity of the lectures:
+
+    They can't be said to have more than whetted the public appetite, if
+    we are to take the fact which has been imparted to us, that the
+    holding capacity of the Hanover Square Rooms has been inadequate to
+    the demand made upon it every night by Twain's lecturing, as a
+    criterion. The last lecture of this too brief course was delivered
+    yesterday before an audience which crammed to discomfort every part
+    of the principal apartment of the Hanover Square Rooms....
+
+At the close of yesterday's lecture Mark Twain was so loudly applauded
+that he returned to the stage, and, as soon as the audience gave him a
+chance of being heard, he said, with much apparent emotion:
+
+    "Ladies and Gentlemen,--I won't keep you one single moment in this
+    suffocating atmosphere. I simply wish to say that this is the last
+    lecture I shall have the honor to deliver in London until I return
+    from America, four weeks from now. I only wish to say (here Mr.
+    Clemens faltered as if too much affected to proceed) I am very
+    grateful. I do not wish to appear pathetic, but it is something
+    magnificent for a stranger to come to the metropolis of the world
+    and be received so handsomely as I have been. I simply thank you."
+
+The Saturday Review devoted a page, and Once a Week, under the head of
+"Cracking jokes," gave three pages, to praise of the literary and lecture
+methods of the new American humorist. With the promise of speedy return,
+he left London, gave the lecture once in Liverpool, and with his party
+(October 21st) set sail for home.
+
+In mid-Atlantic he remembered Dr. Brown, and wrote him:
+
+    We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there's twenty-two
+    hundred miles of restless water between us now, besides the railway
+    stretch. And yet you are so present with us, so close to us, that a
+    span and a whisper would bridge the distance.
+
+So it would seem that of all the many memories of that eventful
+half-year, that of Dr. Brown was the most present, the most tender.
+
+
+
+
+XCII
+
+FURTHER LONDON LECTURE TRIUMPHS
+
+Orion Clemens records that he met "Sam and Livy" on their arrival from
+England, November 2d, and that the president of the Mercantile Library
+Association sent up his card "four times," in the hope of getting a
+chance to propose a lecture engagement--an incident which impressed Orion
+deeply in its evidence of his brother's towering importance. Orion
+himself was by this time engaged in various projects. He was inventing a
+flying-machine, for one thing, writing a Jules Verne story, reading proof
+on a New York daily, and contemplating the lecture field. This great
+blaze of international appreciation which had come to the little boy who
+used to set type for him in Hannibal, and wash up the forms and cry over
+the dirty proof, made him gasp.
+
+They went to see Booth in Hamlet [he says], and Booth sent for Sam to
+come behind the scenes, and when Sam proposed to add a part to Hamlet,
+the part of a bystander who makes humorous modern comment on the
+situations in the play, Booth laughed immoderately.
+
+Proposing a sacrilege like that to Booth! To what heights had this
+printer-pilot, miner-brother not attained!--[This idea of introducing a
+new character in Hamlet was really attempted later by Mark Twain, with
+the connivance of Joe Goodman [of all men], sad to relate. So far as is
+known it is the one stain on Goodman's literary record.]
+
+Clemens returned immediately to England--the following Saturday, in fact
+--and was back in London lecturing again after barely a month's absence.
+He gave the "Roughing It" address, this time under the title of "Roughing
+It on the Silver Frontier," and if his audiences were any less
+enthusiastic, or his houses less crowded than before, the newspapers of
+that day have left no record of it. It was the height of the season now,
+and being free to do so, he threw himself into the whirl of it, and for
+two months, beyond doubt, was the most talked-of figure in London. The
+Athenaeum Club made him a visiting member (an honor considered next to
+knighthood); Punch quoted him; societies banqueted him; his apartments,
+as before; were besieged by callers. Afternoons one was likely to find
+him in "Poets' Corner" of the Langham smoking-room, with a group of
+London and American authors--Reade, Collins, Miller, and the others
+--frankly rioting in his bold fancies. Charles Warren Stoddard was in
+London at the time, and acted as his secretary. Stoddard was a gentle
+poet, a delightful fellow, and Clemens was very fond of him. His only
+complaint of Stoddard was that he did not laugh enough at his humorous
+yarns. Clemens once said:
+
+"Dolby and I used to come in after the lecture, or perhaps after being
+out to some dinner, and we liked to sit down and talk it over and tell
+yarns, and we expected Stoddard to laugh at them, but Stoddard would lie
+there on the couch and snore. Otherwise, as a secretary, he was
+perfect."
+
+The great Tichborne trial was in progress then, and the spectacle of an
+illiterate impostor trying to establish his claim as the rightful heir to
+a great estate was highly diverting to Mark Twain.--[In a letter of this
+period he speaks of having attended one of the Claimant's "Evenings."]
+--He wanted to preserve the evidence as future literary material, and
+Stoddard day after day patiently collected the news reports and neatly
+pasted them into scrap-books, where they still rest, a complete record of
+that now forgotten farce. The Tichborne trial recalled to Mark Twain the
+claimant in the Lampton family, who from time to time wrote him long
+letters, urging him to join in the effort to establish his rights to the
+earldom of Durham. This American claimant was a distant cousin, who had
+"somehow gotten hold of, or had fabricated a full set of documents."
+
+Colonel Henry Watterson, just quoted (also a Lampton connection), adds:
+
+    During the Tichborne trial Mark and I were in London, and one day he
+    said to me: "I have investigated this Durham business down at the
+    Herald's office. There is nothing to it. The Lamptons passed out
+    of the earldom of Durham a hundred years ago. There were never any
+    estates; the title lapsed; the present earldom is a new creation,
+    not in the same family at all. But I'll tell you what: if you'll
+    put up $500, I'll put up $500 more; we'll bring our chap over here
+    and set him in as claimant, and, my word for it, Kenealy's fat boy
+    won't be a marker to him."
+
+It was a characteristic Mark Twain project, one of the sort he never
+earned out in reality, but loved to follow in fancy, and with the pen
+sometimes. The "Rightful Earl of Durham" continued to send letters for a
+long time after that (some of them still exist), but he did not establish
+his claim. No one but Mark Twain ever really got anything out of it.
+Like the Tennessee land, it furnished material by and by for a book.
+Colonel Watterson goes on to say that Clemens was only joking about
+having looked up the matter in the peerage; that he hadn't really looked
+it up at all, and that the earldom lies still in the Lampton family.
+
+Another of Clemens's friends in London at this time was Prentice Mulford,
+of California. In later years Mulford acquired a wide reputation for his
+optimistic and practical psychologies. Through them he lifted himself
+out of the slough of despond, and he sought to extend a helping hand to
+others. His "White Cross Library" had a wide reading and a wide
+influence; perhaps has to this day. But in 1873 Mulford had not found
+the tangibility of thought, the secret of strength; he was only finding
+it, maybe, in his frank acknowledgment of shortcoming:
+
+    Now, Mark, I am down-very much down at present; you are up-where you
+    deserve to be. I can't ask this on the score of any past favors,
+    for there have been none. I have not always spoken of you in terms
+    of extravagant praise; have sometimes criticized you, which was due,
+    I suppose, in part to an envious spirit. I am simply human. Some
+    people in the same profession say they entertain no jealousy of
+    those more successful. I can't. They are divine; I am not.
+
+It was only that he wished Clemens to speak a word for him to Routledge,
+to get him a hearing for his work. He adds:
+
+    I shall be up myself some day, although my line is far apart from
+    yours. Whether you can do anything that I ask of you or not, I
+    shall be happy then, as I would be now, to do you any just and right
+    service.... Perhaps I have mistaken my vocation. Certainly, if I
+    was back with my rocker on the Tuolumne, I'd make it rattle livelier
+    than ever I did before. I have occasionally thought of London
+    Bridge, but the Thames is now so d---d cold and dirty, and besides I
+    can swim, and any attempt at drowning would, through the mere
+    instinct of self-preservation, only result in my swimming ashore and
+    ruining my best clothes; wherefore I should be worse off than ever.
+
+Of course Mark Twain granted the favor Mulford asked, and a great deal
+more, no doubt, for that was his way. Mulford came up, as he had
+prophesied, but the sea in due time claimed him, though not in the way he
+had contemplated. Years after he was one day found drifting off the
+shores of Long Island in an open boat, dead.
+
+Clemens made a number of notable dinner speeches during this second
+London lecture period. His response to the toast of the "Ladies,"
+delivered at the annual dinner of the Scottish Corporation of London, was
+the sensational event of the evening.
+
+He was obliged to decline an invitation to the Lord Mayor's dinner,
+whereupon his Lordship wrote to urge him to be present at least at the
+finale, when the welcome would be "none the less hearty," and bespoke his
+attendance for any future dinners.
+
+Clemens lectured steadily at the Hanover Square Rooms during the two
+months of his stay in London, and it was only toward the end of this
+astonishing engagement that the audience began to show any sign of
+diminishing. Early in January he wrote to Twichell:
+
+I am not going to the provinces because I cannot get halls that are large
+enough. I always felt cramped in the Hanover Square Rooms, but I find
+that everybody here speaks with awe and respect of that prodigious hall
+and wonders that I could fill it so long.
+
+I am hoping to be back in twenty days, but I have so much to go home to
+and enjoy with a jubilant joy that it hardly seems possible that it can
+come to pass in so uncertain a world as this.
+
+In the same letter he speaks of attending an exhibition of Landseer's
+paintings at the Royal Academy:
+
+    Ah, they are wonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights
+    and dusks in the "Challenge" and the "Combat," and in that long
+    flight of birds across a lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or
+    sunrise, for no man can ever tell t'other from which in a picture,
+    except it has the filmy morning mist breathing itself up from the
+    water), and there is such a grave analytical profundity in the face
+    of the connoisseurs; and such pathos in the picture of a fawn
+    suckling its dead mother on a snowy waste, with only the blood in
+    the footprints to hint that she is not asleep. And the way that he
+    makes animals' flesh and blood, insomuch that if the room were
+    darkened ever so little, and a motionless living animal placed
+    beside the painted one, no man could tell which was which.
+
+I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggest a
+cartoon for Punch. It was this: in one of the Academy saloons (in a
+suite where these pictures are) a fine bust of Landseer stands on a
+pedestal in the center of the room. I suggested that some of Landseer's
+best known animals be represented as having come down out of their frames
+in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust in mourning
+attitudes.
+
+He sailed January 13 (1874.), on the Paythia, and two weeks later was at
+home, where all was going well. The Gilded Age had been issued a day or
+two before Christmas, and was already in its third edition. By the end
+of January 26,000 copies had been sold, a sale that had increased to
+40,000 a month later. The new house was progressing, though it was by no
+means finished. Mrs. Clemens was in good health. Little Susy was full
+of such American activities as to earn the name of "The Modoc." The
+promise of the year was bright.
+
+
+
+
+XCIII
+
+THE REAL COLONEL SELLERS-GOLDEN DAYS
+
+There are bound to be vexations, flies in the ointment, as we say. It
+was Warner who conferred the name of Eschol Sellers on the chief figure
+of the collaborated novel. Warner had known it as the name of an obscure
+person, or perhaps he had only heard of it. At all events, it seemed a
+good one for the character and had been adopted. But behold, the book
+had been issued but a little while when there rose "out of the vasty
+deeps" a genuine Eschol Sellers, who was a very respectable person. He
+was a stout, prosperous-looking man, gray and about fifty-five years old.
+He came into the American Publishing Company offices and asked permission
+to look at the book. Mr. Bliss was out at the moment, but presently
+arrived. The visitor rose and introduced himself.
+
+"My name is Eschol Sellers," he said. "You have used it in one of your
+publications. It has brought upon me a lot of ridicule. My people wish
+me to sue you for $10,000 damages."
+
+He had documents to prove his identity, and there was only one thing to
+be done; he must be satisfied. Bliss agreed to recall as many of the
+offending volumes as possible and change the name on the plates. He
+contacted the authors, and the name Beriah was substituted for the
+offending Eschol. It turned out that the real Sellers family was a large
+one, and that the given name Eschol was not uncommon in its several
+branches. This particular Eschol Sellers, curiously enough, was an
+inventor and a promoter, though of a much more substantial sort than his
+fiction namesake. He was also a painter of considerable merit, a writer
+and an antiquarian. He was said to have been a grandson of the famous
+painter, Rembrandt Peale.
+
+Clemens vowed that he would not lecture in America that winter. The
+irrepressible Redpath besieged him as usual, and at the end of January
+Clemens telegraphed him, as he thought, finally. Following it with a
+letter of explanation, he added:
+
+"I said to her, 'There isn't money enough in America to hire me to leave
+you for one day.'"
+
+But Redpath was a persistent devil. He used arguments and held out
+inducements which even Mrs. Clemens thought should not be resisted, and
+Clemens yielded from time to time, and gave a lecture here and there
+during February. Finally, on the 3d of March (1879.) he telegraphed his
+tormentor:
+
+"Why don't you congratulate me? I never expect to stand on a lecture
+platform again after Thursday night."
+
+Howells tells delightfully of a visit which he and Aldrich paid to
+Hartford just at this period. Aldrich went to visit Clemens and Howells
+to visit Charles Dudley Warner, Clemens coming as far as Springfield to
+welcome them.
+
+    In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such
+    days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There was
+    constant running in and out of friendly houses where the lively
+    hosts and guests called one another by their Christian names or
+    nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at
+    doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he
+    satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another
+    sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which
+    enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.
+
+Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of subscription sale
+over the usual methods of publication, and urged the two Boston authors
+to prepare something which canvassers could handle.
+
+"Why, any other means of bringing out a book is privately printing it,"
+he declared, and added that his subscription books in Bliss's hands sold
+right along, "just like the Bible."
+
+On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a subscription book
+which would sell straight along, like the Bible. It was to be called
+"Twelve Memorable Murders." They had dreamed two or three fortunes by
+the time they had reached Boston, but the project ended there.
+
+"We never killed a single soul," Howells said once to the writer of this
+memoir.
+
+Clemens was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He offered
+all sorts of inducements.
+
+    You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had
+    thought of precipitating upon you, George Warner and his wife one
+    day, Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Charles
+    Perkins and wife another. Only those--simply members of our family
+    they are. But I'll close the door against them all, which will
+    "fix" all of the lot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to
+    climb in the back window than nothing.
+
+    And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please,
+    talk when you please, read when you please.
+
+A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of them; to come
+to Hartford to live.
+
+    Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where we
+    drive in to go to our new house), will sell for $16,000 or $17,000.
+    You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't you?
+    Come! Will one of you boys buy that house? Now, say yes.
+
+Certainly those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as Howells says,
+the sun does not shine on their like any more--not in Hartford, at least,
+for the old group that made them no longer assembles there. Hartford
+about this time became a sort of shrine for all literary visitors, and
+for other notables as well, whether of America or from overseas. It was
+the half-way place between Boston and New York, and pilgrims going in
+either direction rested there. It is said that travelers arriving in
+America, were apt to remember two things they wished to see: Niagara
+Falls and Mark Twain. But the Falls had no such recent advertising
+advantage as that spectacular success in London. Visitors were apt to
+begin in Hartford.
+
+Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or rather with
+regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his coming was always hailed
+with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around at one place and
+another among that pleasant circle of friends. But they were happiest
+afterward together, Clemens smoking continually, "soothing his tense
+nerves with a mild hot Scotch," says Howells, "while we both talked, and
+talked, and tasked of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and the
+waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would come away
+hollow, realizing myself best in the image of one of those locust-shells
+which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end of summer."
+Sometimes Clemens told the story of his early life, "the inexhaustible,
+the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I could never tire of even
+when it began to be told over again."
+
+
+
+
+XCIV
+
+BEGINNING "TOM SAWYER"
+
+The Clemens household went to Quarry Farm in April, leaving the new house
+once more in the hands of the architect and builders. It was costing a
+vast sum of money, and there was a financial stress upon land. Mrs.
+Clemens, always prudent, became a little uneasy at times, though without
+warrant in those days, for her business statement showed that her
+holdings were only a little less than a quarter of a million in her own
+right, while her husband's books and lectures had been highly
+remunerative, and would be more so. They were justified in living in
+ample, even luxurious comfort, and how free from financial worries they
+could have lived for the rest of their days!
+
+Clemens, realizing his happiness, wrote Dr. Brown:
+
+Indeed I am thankful for the wifey and the child, and if there is one
+individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and
+uniformly and, unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to produce
+him and prove him. In my opinion he don't exist. I was a mighty rough,
+coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me, four years ago,
+and I may still be to the rest of the world, but not to her. She has
+made a very creditable job of me.
+
+Truly fortune not only smiled, but laughed. Every mail brought great
+bundles of letters that sang his praises. Robert Watt, who had
+translated his books into Danish, wrote of their wide popularity among
+his people. Madame Blanc (Th. Bentzon), who as early as 1872 had
+translated The Jumping Frog into French, and published it, with extended
+comment on the author and his work, in the 'Revue des deux mondes', was
+said to be preparing a review of 'The Gilded Age'. All the world seemed
+ready to do him honor.
+
+Of course, one must always pay the price, usually a vexatious one. Bores
+stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories. Invented
+anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the press.
+Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed to be near
+relatives, and obtained favors, sometimes money, in his name. Trivial
+letters, seeking benefactions of every kind, took the savor from his
+daily mail. Letters from literary aspirants were so numerous that he
+prepared a "form" letter of reply:
+
+DEAR SIR OR MADAM,--Experience has not taught me very much, still it has
+taught me that it is not wise to criticize a piece of literature, except
+to an enemy of the person who wrote it; then if you praise it that enemy
+admires--you for your honest manliness, and if you dispraise it he
+admires you for your sound judgment.
+
+                     Yours truly,  S. L. C.
+
+Even Orion, now in Keokuk on a chicken farm, pursued him with manuscripts
+and proposals of schemes. Clemens had bought this farm for Orion, who
+had counted on large and quick returns, but was planning new enterprises
+before the first eggs were hatched. Orion Clemens was as delightful a
+character as was ever created in fiction, but he must have been a trial
+now and then to Mark Twain. We may gather something of this from a
+letter written by the latter to his mother and sister at this period:
+
+    I can't "encourage" Orion. Nobody can do that conscientiously, for
+    the reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off
+    on some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a
+    man who the older he grows the worse he writes?
+
+    I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he would change
+    his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agent
+    under wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him.
+
+    I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter
+    around his little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and
+    impossible projects at the rate of 365 a year which is his customary
+    average. He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who
+    ought to be entirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments, and
+    activities of a hen farm.
+
+    If you ask me to pity Orion I can do that. I can do it every day
+    and all day long. But one can't "encourage" quicksilver; because
+    the instant you put your finger on it, it isn't there. No, I am
+    saying too much. He does stick to his literary and legal
+    aspirations, and he naturally would elect the very two things which
+    he is wholly and preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become
+    able, I mean to put Orion on a regular pension without revealing the
+    fact that it is a pension.
+
+    He did presently allow the pension, a liberal one, which continued
+    until neither Orion Clemens nor his wife had further earthly need of
+    it.
+
+Mark Twain for some time had contemplated one of the books that will
+longest preserve his memory, 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. The success
+of 'Roughing It' naturally made him cast about for other autobiographical
+material, and he remembered those days along the river-front in Hannibal
+--his skylarking with Tom Blankenship, the Bowen boys, John Briggs, and
+the rest. He had recognized these things as material--inviting material
+it was--and now in the cool luxury of Quarry Farm he set himself to spin
+the fabric of youth.
+
+He found summer-time always his best period for literary effort, and on a
+hillside just by the old quarry, Mrs. Crane had built for him that spring
+a study--a little room of windows, somewhat suggestive of a pilot-house
+--overlooking the long sweep of grass and the dreamlike city below.
+Vines were planted that in the course of time would cover and embower it;
+there was a tiny fireplace for chilly days. To Twichell, of his new
+retreat, Clemens wrote:
+
+It is the loveliest study you ever saw. It is octagonal, with a peaked
+roof, each face filled with a spacious window, and it sits perched in
+complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of
+valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a
+cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four
+chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the
+lightning flashes behind the hills beyond, and the rain beats upon the
+roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it.
+
+He worked steadily there that summer. He would go up mornings, after
+breakfast, remaining until nearly dinner-time, say until five o'clock or
+after, for it was not his habit to eat luncheon. Other members of the
+family did not venture near the place, and if he was urgently wanted they
+blew a horn. Each evening he brought down his day's performance to read
+to the assembled family. He felt the need of audience and approval.
+Usually he earned the latter, but not always. Once, when for a day he
+put aside other matters to record a young undertaker's love-affair, and
+brought down the result in the evening, fairly bubbling with the joy of
+it, he met with a surprise. The tale was a ghastly burlesque, its humor
+of the most disheartening, unsavory sort. No one spoke during the
+reading, nobody laughed: The air was thick with disapproval. His voice
+lagged and faltered toward the end. When he finished there was heavy
+silence. Mrs. Clemens was the only one who could speak:
+
+"Youth, let's walk a little," she said.
+
+The "Undertaker's Love Story" is still among the manuscripts of that
+period, but it is unlikely that it will ever see the light of print.
+--[This tale bears no relation to "The Undertaker's Story" in Sketches
+New and Old.]
+
+The Tom Sawyer tale progressed steadily and satisfactorily. Clemens
+wrote Dr. Brown:
+
+    I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an average,
+    for some time now, on a book (a story), and consequently have been
+    so wrapped up in it, and dead to everything else, that I have fallen
+    mighty short in letter-writing....
+
+    On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down with
+    brickbats, and write in the midst of the hurricane, clothed in the
+    same thin linen we make shirts of.
+
+He incloses some photographs in this letter.
+
+    The group [he says] represents the vine-clad carriageway in front of
+    the farm-house. On the left is Megalopis sitting in the lap of her
+    German nurse-maid. I am sitting behind them. Mrs. Crane is in the
+    center. Mr. Crane next to her. Then Mrs. Clemens and the new baby.
+    Her Irish nurse stands at her back. Then comes the table waitress,
+    a young negro girl, born free. Next to her is Auntie Cord (a
+    fragment of whose history I have just sent to a magazine). She is
+    the cook; was in slavery more than forty years; and the self-
+    satisfied wench, the last of the group, is the little baby's
+    American nurse-maid. In the middle distance my mother-in-law's
+    coachman (up on errand) has taken a position unsolicited to help out
+    the picture. No, that is not true. He was waiting there a minute
+    or two before the photographer came. In the extreme background,
+    under the archway, you glimpse my study.
+
+The "new baby," "Bay," as they came to call her, was another little
+daughter, born in June, a happy, healthy addition to the household. In a
+letter written to Twichell we get a sweet summer picture of this period,
+particularly of little sunny-haired, two-year-old Susy.
+
+    There is nothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with
+    the new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around outdoors most of the
+    time, and consequently is as hard as a pineknot and as brown as an
+    Indian. She is bosom friend to all the chickens, ducks, turkeys,
+    and guinea-hens on the place. Yesterday, as she marched along the
+    winding path that leads up the hill through the red-clover beds to
+    the summer-house, there was a long procession of these fowls
+    stringing contentedly after her, led by a stately rooster, who can
+    look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of these vassals has been
+    purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc,
+    attended by her body-guard, moves in state wherever she goes.
+
+There were days, mainly Sundays, when he did not work at all; peaceful
+days of lying fallow, dreaming in shady places, drowsily watching little
+Susy, or reading with Mrs. Clemens. Howells's "Foregone Conclusion" was
+running in the Atlantic that year, and they delighted in it. Clemens
+wrote the author:
+
+    I should think that this must be the daintiest, truest, most
+    admirable workmanship that was ever put on a story. The creatures
+    of God do not act out their natures more unerringly than yours do.
+    If your genuine stories can die I wonder by what right old Walter
+    Scott's artificialities shall continue to live.
+
+At other times he found comfort in the society of Theodore Crane. These
+two were always fond of each other, and often read together the books in
+which they were mutually interested. They had portable-hammock
+arrangements, which they placed side by side on the lawn, and read and
+discussed through summer afternoons. The 'Mutineers of the Bounty' was
+one of the books they liked best, and there was a story of an Iceland
+farmer, a human document, that had an unfading interest. Also there were
+certain articles in old numbers of the Atlantic that they read and
+reread. 'Pepys' Diary', 'Two Years Before the Mast', and a book on the
+Andes were reliable favorites. Mark Twain read not so many books, but
+read a few books often. Those named were among the literature he asked
+for each year of his return to Quarry Farm. Without them, the farm and
+the summer would not be the same.
+
+Then there was 'Lecky's History of European Morals'; there were periods
+when they read Lecky avidly and discussed it in original and unorthodox
+ways. Mark Twain found an echo of his own philosophies in Lecky. He
+made frequent marginal notes along the pages of the world's moral
+history--notes not always quotable in the family circle. Mainly,
+however, they were short, crisp interjections of assent or disapproval.
+In one place Lecky refers to those who have undertaken to prove that all
+our morality is a product of experience, holding that a desire to obtain
+happiness and to avoid pain is the only possible motive to action; the
+reason, and the only reason, why we should perform virtuous actions being
+"that on the whole such a course will bring us the greatest amount of
+happiness." Clemens has indorsed these philosophies by writing on the
+margin, "Sound and true." It was the philosophy which he himself would
+always hold (though, apparently, never live by), and in the end would
+embody a volume of his own.--[What Is Man? Privately printed in 1906.]
+--In another place Lecky, himself speaking, says:
+
+    Fortunately we are all dependent for many of our pleasures on
+    others. Co-operation and organization are essential to our
+    happiness, and these are impossible without some restraint being
+    placed upon our appetites. Laws are made to secure this restraint,
+    and being sustained by rewards, and punishments they make it the
+    interest of the individual to regard that of the community.
+
+"Correct!" comments Clemens. "He has proceeded from unreasoned
+selfishness to reasoned selfishness. All our acts, reasoned and
+unreasoned, are selfish." It was a conclusion he logically never
+departed from; not the happiest one, it would seem, at first glance, but
+one easier to deny than to disprove.
+
+On the back of an old envelope Mark Twain set down his literary
+declaration of this period.
+
+"I like history, biography, travels, curious facts and strange
+happenings, and science. And I detest novels, poetry, and theology."
+
+But of course the novels of Howells would be excepted; Lecky was not
+theology, but the history of it; his taste for poetry would develop
+later, though it would never become a fixed quantity, as was his devotion
+to history and science. His interest in these amounted to a passion.
+
+
+
+
+XCV
+
+AN "ATLANTIC" STORY AND A PLAY
+
+The reference to "Auntie Cord" in the letter to Dr. Brown brings us to
+Mark Twain's first contribution to the Atlantic Monthly. Howells in his
+Recollections of his Atlantic editorship, after referring to certain
+Western contributors, says:
+
+    Later came Mark Twain, originally of Missouri, but then
+    provisionally of Hartford, and now ultimately of the solar system,
+    not to say the universe. He came first with "A True Story," one of
+    those noble pieces of humanity with which the South has atoned
+    chiefly, if not solely, through him for all its despite to the
+    negro.
+
+Clemens had long aspired to appear in the Atlantic, but such was his own
+rating of his literature that he hardly hoped to qualify for its pages.
+Twichell remembers his "mingled astonishment and triumph" when he was
+invited to send something to the magazine.
+
+He was obliged to "send something" once or twice before the acceptance of
+"A True Story," the narrative of Auntie Cord, and even this acceptance
+brought with it the return of a fable which had accompanied it, with the
+explanation that a fable like that would disqualify the magazine for
+every denominational reader, though Howells hastened to express his own
+joy in it, having been particularly touched by the author's reference to
+Sisyphus and Atlas as ancestors of the tumble-bug. The "True Story," he
+said, with its "realest king of black talk," won him, and a few days
+later he wrote again: "This little story delights me more and more. I
+wish you had about forty of 'em."
+
+And so, modestly enough, as became him, for the story was of the
+simplest, most unpretentious sort, Mark Twain entered into the school of
+the elect.
+
+In his letter to Howells, accompanying the MS., the author said:
+
+    I inclose also "A True Story," which has no humor in it. You can
+    pay as lightly as you choose for that if you want it, for it is
+    rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored woman's
+    story, except to begin it at the beginning, instead of the middle,
+    as she did--and traveled both ways.
+
+Howells in his Recollections tells of the business anxiety in the
+Atlantic office in the effort to estimate the story's pecuniary value.
+Clemens and Harte had raised literary rates enormously; the latter was
+reputed to have received as much as five cents a word from affluent
+newspapers! But the Atlantic was poor, and when sixty dollars was
+finally decided upon for the three pages (about two and a half cents a
+word) the rate was regarded as handsome--without precedent in Atlantic
+history. Howells adds that as much as forty times this amount was
+sometimes offered to Mark Twain in later years. Even in '74 he had
+received a much higher rate than that offered by the Atlantic,--but no
+acceptance, then, or later, ever made him happier, or seemed more richly
+rewarded.
+
+"A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It" was precisely what
+it claimed to be.--[Atlantic Monthly for November, 1874; also included in
+Sketches New and Old.]--Auntie Cord, the Auntie Rachel of that tale, cook
+at Quarry Farm, was a Virginia negress who had been twice sold as a
+slave, and was proud of the fact; particularly proud that she had brought
+$1,000 on the block. All her children had been sold away from her, but
+it was a long time ago, and now at sixty she was fat and seemingly
+without care. She had told her story to Mrs. Crane, who had more than
+once tried to persuade her to tell it to Clemens; but Auntie Cord was
+reluctant. One evening, however, when the family sat on the front
+veranda in the moonlight, looking down on the picture city, as was their
+habit, Auntie Cord came around to say good night, and Clemens engaged her
+in conversation. He led up to her story, and almost before she knew it
+she was seated at his feet telling the strange tale in almost the exact
+words in which it was set down by him next morning. It gave Mark Twain a
+chance to exercise two of his chief gifts--transcription and portrayal.
+He was always greater at these things than at invention. Auntie Cord's
+story is a little masterpiece.
+
+He wished to do more with Auntie Cord and her associates of the farm, for
+they were extraordinarily interesting. Two other negroes on the place,
+John Lewis and his wife (we shall hear notably of Lewis later), were not
+always on terms of amity with Auntie Cord. They disagreed on religion,
+and there were frequent battles in the kitchen. These depressed the
+mistress of the house, but they gave only joy to Mark Twain. His
+Southern raising had given him an understanding of their humors, their
+native emotions which made these riots a spiritual gratification. He
+would slip around among the shrubbery and listen to the noise and strife
+of battle, and hug himself with delight. Sometimes they resorted to
+missiles--stones, tinware--even dressed poultry which Auntie Cord was
+preparing for the oven. Lewis was very black, Auntie Cord was a bright
+mulatto, Lewis's' wife several shades lighter. Wherever the discussion
+began it promptly shaded off toward the color-line and insult. Auntie
+Cord was a Methodist; Lewis was a Dunkard. Auntie Cord was ignorant and
+dogmatic; Lewis could read and was intelligent. Theology invariably led
+to personality, and eventually to epithets, crockery, geology, and
+victuals. How the greatest joker of the age did enjoy that summer
+warfare!
+
+The fun was not all one-sided. An incident of that summer probably
+furnished more enjoyment for the colored members of the household than it
+did for Mark Twain. Lewis had some fowls, and among them was a
+particularly pestiferous guinea-hen that used to get up at three in the
+morning and go around making the kind of a noise that a guinea-hen must
+like and is willing to get up early to hear. Mark Twain did not care for
+it. He stood it as long as he could one morning, then crept softly from
+the house to stop it.
+
+It was a clear, bright night; locating the guinea-hen, he slipped up
+stealthily with a stout stick. The bird was pouring out its heart,
+tearing the moonlight to tatters. Stealing up close, Clemens made a
+vicious swing with his bludgeon, but just then the guinea stepped forward
+a little, and he missed. The stroke and his explosion frightened the
+fowl, and it started to run. Clemens, with his mind now on the single
+purpose of revenge, started after it. Around the trees, along the paths,
+up and down the lawn, through gates and across the garden, out over the
+fields, they raced, "pursuer and pursued." The guinea nor longer sang,
+and Clemens was presently too exhausted to swear. Hour after hour the
+silent, deadly hunt continued, both stopping to rest at intervals; then
+up again and away. It was like something in a dream. It was nearly
+breakfast-time when he dragged himself into the house at last, and the
+guinea was resting and panting under a currant-bush. Later in the day
+Clemens gave orders to Lewis to "kill and eat that guinea-hen," which
+Lewis did. Clemens himself had then never eaten a guinea, but some years
+later, in Paris, when the delicious breast of one of those fowls was
+served him, he remembered and said:
+
+"And to think, after chasing that creature all night, John Lewis got to
+eat him instead of me."
+
+The interest in Tom and Huck, or the inspiration for their adventures,
+gave out at last, or was superseded by a more immediate demand. As early
+as May, Goodman, in San Francisco, had seen a play announced there,
+presenting the character of Colonel Sellers, dramatized by Gilbert S.
+Densmore and played by John T. Raymond. Goodman immediately wrote
+Clemens; also a letter came from Warner, in Hartford, who had noticed in
+San Francisco papers announcements of the play. Of course Clemens would
+take action immediately; he telegraphed, enjoining the performance. Then
+began a correspondence with the dramatist and actor. This in time
+resulted in an amicable arrangement, by which the dramatist agreed to
+dispose of his version to Clemens. Clemens did not wait for it to
+arrive, but began immediately a version of his own. Just how much or how
+little of Densmore's work found its way into the completed play, as
+presented by Raymond later, cannot be known now. Howells conveys the
+impression that Clemens had no hand in its authorship beyond the
+character of Sellers as taken from the book. But in a letter still
+extant, which Clemens wrote to Howells at the time, he says:
+
+    I worked a month on my play, and launched it in New York last
+    Wednesday. I believe it will go. The newspapers have been
+    complimentary. It is simply a setting for one character, Colonel
+    Sellers. As a play I guess it will not bear critical assault in
+    force.
+
+The Warners are as charming as ever. They go shortly to the devil for a
+year--that is, to Egypt.
+
+Raymond, in a letter which he wrote to the Sun, November 3, 1874,
+declared that "not one line" of Densmore's dramatization was used,
+"except that which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age." During the
+newspaper discussion of the matter, Clemens himself prepared a letter for
+the Hartford Post. This letter was suppressed, but it still exists. In
+it he says:
+
+    I entirely rewrote the play three separate and distinct times. I
+    had expected to use little of his [Densmore's] language and but
+    little of his plot. I do not think there are now twenty sentences
+    of Mr. Densmore's in the play, but I used so much of his plot that I
+    wrote and told him that I should pay him about as much more as I had
+    already paid him in case the play proved a success. I shall keep my
+    word.
+
+This letter, written while the matter was fresh in his mind, is
+undoubtedly in accordance with the facts. That Densmore was fully
+satisfied may be gathered from an acknowledgment, in which he says: "Your
+letter reached me on the ad, with check. In this place permit me to
+thank you for the very handsome manner in which you have acted in this
+matter."
+
+Warner, meantime, realizing that the play was constructed almost entirely
+of the Mark Twain chapters of the book, agreed that his collaborator
+should undertake the work and financial responsibilities of the dramatic
+venture and reap such rewards as might result. Various stories have been
+told of this matter, most of them untrue. There was no bitterness
+between the friends, no semblance of an estrangement of any sort. Warner
+very generously and promptly admitted that he was not concerned with the
+play, its authorship, or its profits, whatever the latter might amount
+to. Moreover, Warner was going to Egypt very soon, and his labors and
+responsibilities were doubly sufficient as they stood.
+
+Clemens's estimate of the play as a dramatic composition was correct
+enough, but the public liked it, and it was a financial success from the
+start. He employed a representative to travel with Raymond, to assist in
+the management and in the division of spoil. The agent had instructions
+to mail a card every day, stating the amount of his share in the profits.
+Howells once arrived in Hartford just when this postal tide of fortune
+was at its flood:
+
+One hundred and fifty dollars--two hundred dollars--three hundred dollars
+were the gay figures which they bore, and which he flaunted in the air,
+before he sat down at the table, or rose from it to brandish, and then,
+flinging his napkin in the chair, walked up and down to exult in.
+
+Once, in later years, referring to the matter, Howells said "He was never
+a man who cared anything about money except as a dream, and he wanted
+more and more of it to fill out the spaces of this dream." Which was a
+true word. Mark Twain with money was like a child with a heap of bright
+pebbles, ready to pile up more and still more, then presently to throw
+them all away and begin gathering anew.
+
+
+
+
+XCVI
+
+THE NEW HOME
+
+The Clemenses returned to Hartford to find their new house "ready,"
+though still full of workmen, decorators, plumbers, and such other
+minions of labor as make life miserable to those with ambitions for new
+or improved habitations. The carpenters were still on the lower floor,
+but the family moved in and camped about in rooms up-stairs that were
+more or less free from the invader. They had stopped in New York ten
+days to buy carpets and furnishings, and these began to arrive, with no
+particular place to put them; but the owners were excited and happy with
+it all, for it was the pleasant season of the year, and all the new
+features of the house were fascinating, while the daily progress of the
+decorators furnished a fresh surprise when they roamed through the rooms
+at evening. Mrs. Clemens wrote home:
+
+    We are perfectly delighted with everything here and do so want you
+    all to see it.
+
+Her husband, as he was likely to do, picked up the letter and finished
+it:
+
+    Livy appoints me to finish this; but how can a headless man perform
+    an intelligent function? I have been bully-ragged all day by the
+    builder, by his foreman, by the architect, by the tapestry devil who
+    is to upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down the
+    carpets, by the scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table (and
+    has left the balls in New York), by the wildcat who is sodding the
+    ground and finishing the driveway (after the sun went down), by a
+    book agent, whose body is in the back yard and the coroner notified.
+    Just think of this thing going on the whole day long, and I a man
+    who loathes details with all his heart! But I haven't lost my
+    temper, and I've made Livy lie down most of the time; could anybody
+    make her lie down all the time?
+
+Warner wrote from Egypt expressing sympathy for their unfurnished state
+of affairs, but added, "I would rather fit out three houses and fill them
+with furniture than to fit out one 'dahabiyeh'." Warner was at that
+moment undertaking his charmingly remembered trip up the Nile.
+
+The new home was not entirely done for a long time. One never knows when
+a big house like that--or a little house, for that matters done. But
+they were settled at last, with all their beautiful things in place; and
+perhaps there have been richer homes, possibly more artistic ones, but
+there has never been a more charming home, within or without, than that
+one.
+
+So many frequenters have tried to express the charm of that household.
+None of them has quite succeeded, for it lay not so much in its
+arrangement of rooms or their decorations or their outlook, though these
+were all beautiful enough, but rather in the personality, the atmosphere;
+and these are elusive things to convey in words. We can only see and
+feel and recognize; we cannot translate them. Even Howells, with his
+subtle touch, can present only an aspect here and there; an essence, as
+it were, from a happy garden, rather than the fullness of its bloom.
+
+As Mark Twain was unlike any other man that ever lived, so his house was
+unlike any other house ever built. People asked him why he built the
+kitchen toward the street, and he said:
+
+"So the servants can see the circus go by without running out into the
+front yard."
+
+But this was probably an after-thought. The kitchen end of the house
+extended toward Farmington Avenue, but it was by no means unbeautiful. It
+was a pleasing detail of the general scheme. The main entrance faced at
+right angles with the street and opened to a spacious hall. In turn, the
+hall opened to a parlor, where there was a grand piano, and to the
+dining-room and library, and the library opened to a little conservatory,
+semicircular in form, of a design invented by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Says
+Howells:
+
+    The plants were set in the ground, and the flowering vines climbed
+    up the sides and overhung the roof above the silent spray of the
+    fountain companied by Callas and other waterloving lilies. There,
+    while we breakfasted, Patrick came in from the barn and sprinkled
+    the pretty bower, which poured out its responsive perfume in the
+    delicate accents of its varied blossoms.
+
+In the library was an old carved mantel which Clemens and his wife had
+bought in Scotland, salvage from a dismantled castle, and across the top
+of the fireplace a plate of brass with the motto, "The ornament of a
+house is the friends that frequent it," surely never more appropriately
+inscribed.
+
+There was the mahogany room, a large bedroom on the ground floor, and
+upstairs were other spacious bedrooms and many baths, while everywhere
+were Oriental rugs and draperies, and statuary and paintings. There was
+a fireplace under a window, after the English pattern, so that in
+winter-time one could at the same moment watch the blaze and the falling
+snow. The library windows looked out over the valley with the little
+stream in it, and through and across the tree-tops. At the top of the
+house was what became Clemens's favorite retreat, the billiard-room, and
+here and there were unexpected little balconies, which one could step out
+upon for the view.
+
+Below was a wide, covered veranda, the "ombra," as they called it,
+secluded from the public eye--a favorite family gathering-place on
+pleasant days.
+
+But a house might easily have all these things without being more than
+usually attractive, and a house with a great deal less might have been as
+full of charm; only it seemed just the proper setting for that particular
+household, and undoubtedly it acquired the personality of its occupants.
+
+Howells assures us that there never was another home like it, and we may
+accept his statement. It was unique. It was the home of one of the most
+unusual and unaccountable personalities in the world, yet was perfectly
+and serenely ordered. Mark Twain was not responsible for this blissful
+condition. He was its beacon-light; it was around Mrs. Clemens that its
+affairs steadily revolved.
+
+If in the four years and more of marriage Clemens had made advancement in
+culture and capabilities, Olivia Clemens also had become something more
+than the half-timid, inexperienced girl he had first known. In a way her
+education had been no less notable than his. She had worked and studied,
+and her half-year of travel and entertainment abroad had given her
+opportunity for acquiring knowledge and confidence. Her vision of life
+had vastly enlarged; her intellect had flowered; her grasp of
+practicalities had become firm and sure.
+
+In spite of her delicate physical structure, her continued uncertainty of
+health, she capably undertook the management of their large new house,
+and supervised its economies. Any one of her undertakings was sufficient
+for one woman, but she compassed them all. No children had more careful
+direction than hers. No husband had more devoted attendance and
+companionship. No household was ever directed with a sweeter and gentler
+grace, or with greater perfection of detail. When the great ones of the
+world came to visit America's most picturesque literary figure she gave
+welcome to them all, and filled her place at his side with such sweet and
+capable dignity that those who came to pay their duties to him often
+returned to pay even greater devotion to his companion. Says Howells:
+
+    She was, in a way, the loveliest person I have ever seen--the
+    gentlest, the kindest, without a touch of weakness; she united
+    wonderful tact with wonderful truth; and Clemens not only accepted
+    her rule implicitly, but he rejoiced, he gloried in it.
+
+And once, in an interview with the writer of these chapters, Howells
+declared: "She was not only a beautiful soul, but a woman of singular
+intellectual power. I never knew any one quite like her." Then he
+added: "Words cannot express Mrs. Clemens--her fineness, her delicate,
+her wonderful tact with a man who was in some respects, and wished to be,
+the most outrageous creature that ever breathed."
+
+Howells meant a good many things by that, no doubt: Clemens's violent
+methods, for one thing, his sudden, savage impulses, which sometimes
+worked injustice and hardship for others, though he was first to discover
+the wrong and to repair it only too fully. Then, too, Howells may have
+meant his boyish teasing tendency to disturb Mrs. Clemens's exquisite
+sense of decorum.
+
+Once I remember seeing him come into his drawing-room at Hartford in a
+pair of white cowskin slippers with the hair out, and do a crippled
+colored uncle, to the joy of all beholders. I must not say all, for I
+remember also the dismay of Mrs. Clemens, and her low, despairing cry of
+"Oh, Youth!"
+
+He was continually doing such things as the "crippled colored uncle,";
+partly for the very joy of the performance, but partly, too, to disturb
+her serenity, to incur her reproof, to shiver her a little--"shock" would
+be too strong a word. And he liked to fancy her in a spirit and attitude
+of belligerence, to present that fancy to those who knew the measure of
+her gentle nature. Writing to Mrs. Howells of a picture of herself in a
+group, he said:
+
+    You look exactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said: "Indeed, I
+    do not wonder that you can frame no reply; for you know only too
+    well that your conduct admits of no excuse, palliation, or argument
+    --none!"
+
+Clemens would pretend to a visitor that she had been violently indignant
+over some offense of his; perhaps he would say:
+
+"Well I contradicted her just now, and the crockery will begin to fly
+pretty soon."
+
+She could never quite get used to this pleasantry, and a faint glow would
+steal over her face. He liked to produce that glow. Yet always his
+manner toward her was tenderness itself. He regarded her as some dainty
+bit of porcelain, and it was said that he was always following her about
+with a chair. Their union has been regarded as ideal. That is
+Twichell's opinion and Howells's. The latter sums up:
+
+    Marriages are what the parties to them alone really know them to be,
+    but from the outside I should say that this marriage was one of the
+    most perfect.
+
+
+
+
+XCVII
+
+THE WALK TO BOSTON
+
+The new home became more beautiful to them as things found their places,
+as the year deepened; and the wonder of autumn foliage lit up their
+landscape. Sitting on one of the little upper balconies Mrs. Clemens
+wrote:
+
+    The atmosphere is very hazy, and it makes the autumn tints even more
+    soft and beautiful than usual. Mr. Twichell came for Mr. Clemens to
+    go walking with him; they returned at dinner-time, heavily laden
+    with autumn leaves.
+
+And as usual Clemens, finding the letter unfinished, took up the story.
+
+    Twichell came up here with me to luncheon after services, and I went
+    back home with him and took Susy along in her little carriage. We
+    have just got home again, middle of afternoon, and Livy has gone to
+    rest and left the west balcony to me. There is a shining and most
+    marvelous miracle of cloud-effects mirrored in the brook; a picture
+    which began with perfection, and has momently surpassed it ever
+    since, until at last it is almost unendurably beautiful....
+
+    There is a cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as
+    manifold as those in an opal and as delicate as the tintings of a
+    sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it and
+    obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he casts abroad from
+    his shoulders.
+
+    The customary Sunday assemblage of strangers is gathered together in
+    the grounds discussing the house.
+
+Twichell and Clemens took a good many walks these days; long walks, for
+Twichell was an athlete and Clemens had not then outgrown the Nevada
+habit of pedestrian wandering. Talcott's Tower, a wooden structure about
+five miles from Hartford, was one of their favorite objective points; and
+often they walked out and back, talking so continuously, and so absorbed
+in the themes of their discussions, that time and distance slipped away
+almost unnoticed. How many things they talked of in those long walks!
+They discussed philosophies and religions and creeds, and all the range
+of human possibility and shortcoming, and all the phases of literature
+and history and politics. Unorthodox discussions they were,
+illuminating, marvelously enchanting, and vanished now forever. Sometimes
+they took the train as far as Bloomfield, a little station on the way,
+and walked the rest of the distance, or they took the train from
+Bloomfield home. It seems a strange association, perhaps, the fellowship
+of that violent dissenter with that fervent soul dedicated to church and
+creed, but the root of their friendship lay in the frankness with which
+each man delivered his dogmas and respected those of his companion.
+
+It was during one of their walks to the tower that they planned a far
+more extraordinary undertaking--nothing less, in fact, than a walk from
+Hartford to Boston. This was early in November. They did not delay the
+matter, for the weather was getting too uncertain.
+
+Clemens wrote Redpath:
+
+DEAR REDPATH,--Rev. J. H. Twichell and I expect to start at 8 o'clock
+Thursday morning to walk to Boston in twenty four hours--or more. We
+shall telegraph Young's Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow
+for a low average of pedestrianism.
+
+It was half past eight on Thursday morning, November 12, 1874, that they
+left Twichell's house in a carriage, drove to the East Hartford bridge,
+and there took to the road, Twichell carrying a little bag and Clemens a
+basket of lunch.
+
+The papers had got hold of it by this time, and were watching the result.
+They did well enough that first day, following the old Boston stage road,
+arriving at Westford about seven o'clock in the evening, twenty-eight
+miles from the starting-point. There was no real hotel at Westford, only
+a sort of tavern, but it afforded the luxury of rest. "Also," says
+Twichell, in a memoranda of the trip, "a sublimely profane hostler whom
+you couldn't jostle with any sort of mild remark without bringing down
+upon yourself a perfect avalanche of oaths."
+
+This was a joy to Clemens, who sat behind the stove, rubbing his lame
+knees and fairly reveling in Twichell's discomfiture in his efforts to
+divert the hostler's blasphemy. There was also a mellow inebriate there
+who recommended kerosene for Clemens's lameness, and offered as testimony
+the fact that he himself had frequently used it for stiffness in his
+joints after lying out all night in cold weather, drunk: altogether it
+was a notable evening.
+
+Westford was about as far as they continued the journey afoot. Clemens
+was exceedingly lame next morning, and had had a rather bad night; but he
+swore and limped along six miles farther, to North Ashford, then gave it
+up. They drove from North Ashford to the railway, where Clemens
+telegraphed Redpath and Howells of their approach. To Redpath:
+
+    We have made thirty-five miles in less than five days. This
+    demonstrates that the thing can be done. Shall now finish by rail.
+    Did you have any bets on us?
+
+To Howells:
+
+    Arrive by rail at seven o'clock, the first of a series of grand
+    annual pedestrian tours from Hartford to Boston to be performed by
+    us. The next will take place next year.
+
+Redpath read his despatch to a lecture audience, with effect. Howells
+made immediate preparation for receiving two way-worn, hungry men. He
+telegraphed to Young's Hotel: "You and Twichell come right up to 37
+Concord Avenue, Cambridge, near observatory. Party waiting for you."
+
+They got to Howells's about nine o'clock, and the refreshments were
+waiting. Miss Longfellow was there, Rose Hawthorne, John Fiske, Larkin
+G. Mead, the sculptor, and others of their kind. Howells tells in his
+book how Clemens, with Twichell, "suddenly stormed in," and immediately
+began to eat and drink:
+
+    I can see him now as he stood up in the midst of our friends, with
+    his head thrown back, and in his hand a dish of those escalloped
+    oysters without which no party in Cambridge was really a party,
+    exulting in the tale of his adventure, which had abounded in the
+    most original characters and amusing incidents at every mile of
+    their progress.
+
+Clemens gave a dinner, next night, to Howells, Aldrich, Osgood, and the
+rest. The papers were full of jokes concerning the Boston expedition;
+some even had illustrations, and it was all amusing enough at the time.
+
+Next morning, sitting in the writing-room of Young's Hotel, he wrote a
+curious letter to Mrs. Clemens, though intended as much for Howells and
+Aldrich as for her. It was dated sixty-one years ahead, and was a sort
+of Looking Backwards, though that notable book had not yet been written.
+It presupposed a monarchy in which the name of Boston has been changed to
+"Limerick," and Hartford to "Dublin." In it, Twichell has become the
+"Archbishop of Dublin," Howells "Duke of Cambridge," Aldrich "Marquis of
+Ponkapog," Clemens the "Earl of Hartford." It was too whimsical and
+delightful a fancy to be forgotten.--[This remarkable and amusing
+document will be found under Appendix M, at the end of last volume.]
+
+A long time afterward, thirty-four year, he came across this letter. He
+said:
+
+"It seems curious now that I should have been dreaming dreams of a future
+monarchy and never suspect that the monarchy was already present and the
+Republic a thing of the past."
+
+What he meant, was the political succession that had fostered those
+commercial trusts which, in turn, had established party dominion.
+
+To Howells, on his return, Clemens wrote his acknowledgments, and added:
+
+    Mrs. Clemens gets upon the verge of swearing, and goes tearing
+    around in an unseemly fury when I enlarge upon the delightful time
+    we had in Boston, and she not there to have her share. I have tried
+    hard to reproduce Mrs. Howells to her, and have probably not made a
+    shining success of it.
+
+
+
+
+XCVIII
+
+"OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI"
+
+Howells had been urging Clemens to do something more for the Atlantic,
+specifically something for the January number. Clemens cudgeled his
+brains, but finally declared he must give it up:
+
+    Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day by day with urgings to
+    go to work and do that something, but it's no use. I find I can't.
+    We are in such a state of worry and endless confusion that my head
+    won't go.
+
+Two hours later he sent another hasty line:
+
+    I take back the remark that I can't write for the January number,
+    for Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods, and I got to
+    telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and
+    grandeur as I saw them (during four years) from the pilot-house. He
+    said, "What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!" I hadn't
+    thought of that before. Would you like a series of papers to run
+    through three months or six or nine--or about four months, say?
+
+Howells welcomed this offer as an echo of his own thought. He had come
+from a piloting family himself, and knew the interest that Mark Twain
+could put into such a series.
+
+Acting promptly under the new inspiration, Clemens forthwith sent the
+first chapter of that monumental, that absolutely unique, series of
+papers on Mississippi River life, which to-day constitutes one of his
+chief claims to immortality.
+
+His first number was in the nature of an experiment. Perhaps, after all,
+the idea would not suit the Atlantic readers.
+
+"Cut it, scarify it, reject it, handle it with entire freedom," he wrote,
+and awaited the result.
+
+The "result" was that Howells expressed his delight:
+
+    The piece about the Mississippi is capital. It almost made the
+    water in our ice-pitcher muddy as I read it. I don't think I shall
+    meddle much with it, even in the way of suggestion. The sketch of
+    the low-lived little town was so good that I could have wished there
+    was more of it. I want the sketches, if you can make them, every
+    month.
+
+Mark Twain was now really interested in this new literary venture. He
+was fairly saturated with memories. He was writing on the theme that lay
+nearest to his heart. Within ten days he reported that he had finished
+three of the papers, and had begun the fourth.
+
+And yet I have spoken of nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I
+doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care
+to. Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five
+hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble
+about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble
+about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the
+only new subject I know of.
+
+He became so enthusiastic presently that he wanted to take Howells with
+him on a trip down the Mississippi, with their wives for company, to go
+over the old ground again and obtain added material enough for a book.
+Howells was willing enough--agreed to go, in fact--but found it hard to
+get away. He began to temporize and finally backed out. Clemens tried
+to inveigle Osgood into the trip, but without success; also John Hay, but
+Hay had a new baby at his house just then--"three days old, and with a
+voice beyond price," he said, offering it as an excuse for
+non-acceptance. So the plan for revisiting the river and the conclusion
+of the book were held in abeyance for nearly seven years.
+
+Those early piloting chapters, as they appeared in the Atlantic,
+constituted Mark Twain's best literary exhibit up to that time. In some
+respects they are his best literature of any time. As pictures of an
+intensely interesting phase of life, they are so convincing, so real, and
+at the same time of such extraordinary charm and interest, that if the
+English language should survive a thousand years, or ten times as long,
+they would be as fresh and vivid at the end of that period as the day
+they were penned. In them the atmosphere of, the river and its
+environment--its pictures, its thousand aspects of life--are reproduced
+with what is no less than literary necromancy. Not only does he make you
+smell the river you can fairly hear it breathe. On the appearance of the
+first number John Hay wrote:
+
+"It is perfect; no more nor less. I don't see how you do it," and added,
+"you know what my opinion is of time not spent with you."
+
+Howells wrote:
+
+    You are doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every word
+    interesting, and don't you drop the series till you've got every bit
+    of anecdote and reminiscence into it.
+
+He let Clemens write the articles to suit himself. Once he said:
+
+    If I might put in my jaw at this point I should say, stick to actual
+    fact and character in the thing and give things in detail. All that
+    belongs to the old river life is novel, and is now mostly
+    historical. Don't write at any supposed Atlantic audience, but yarn
+    it off as if into my sympathetic ear.
+
+Clemens replied that he had no dread of the Atlantic audience; he
+declared it was the only audience that did not require a humorist to
+"paint himself striped and stand on his head to amuse it."
+
+The "Old Times" papers ran through seven numbers of the Atlantic. They
+were reprinted everywhere by the newspapers, who in that day had little
+respect for magazine copyrights, and were promptly pirated in book form
+in Canada. They added vastly to Mark Twain's literary capital, though
+Howells informs us that the Atlantic circulation did not thrive
+proportionately, for the reason that the newspapers gave the articles to
+their readers from advanced sheets of the magazine, even before the
+latter could be placed on sale. It so happened that in the January
+Atlantic, which contained the first of the Mississippi papers, there
+appeared Robert Dale Owen's article on "Spiritualism," which brought such
+humility both to author and publisher because of the exposure of the
+medium Katie King, which came along while the magazine was in press.
+Clemens has written this marginal note on the opening page of the copy at
+Quarry Farm:
+
+While this number of the Atlantic was being printed the Katie King
+manifestations were discovered to be the cheapest, wretchedest shams and
+frauds, and were exposed in the newspapers. The awful humiliation of it
+unseated Robert Dale Owen's reason, and he died in the madhouse.
+
+
+
+
+XCIX
+
+A TYPEWRITER, AND A JOKE ON ALDRICH
+
+It was during the trip to Boston with Twichell that Mark Twain saw for
+the first time what was then--a brand-new invention, a typewriter; or it
+may have been during a subsequent visit, a week or two later. At all
+events, he had the machine and was practising on it December 9, 1874, for
+he wrote two letters on it that day, one to Howells and the other to
+Orion Clemens. In the latter he says:
+
+    I am trying to get the hang of this new-fangled writing-machine, but
+    am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the first
+    attempt I ever have made, and yet I perceive that I shall soon
+    easily acquire a fine facility in its use. I saw the thing in
+    Boston the other day and was greatly taken with it.
+
+He goes on to explain the new wonder, and on the whole his first attempt
+is a very creditable performance. With his usual enthusiasm over an
+innovation, he believes it is going to be a great help to him, and
+proclaims its advantages.
+
+This is the letter to Howells, with the errors preserved:
+
+    You needn't answer this; I am only practicing to get three; anothe
+    slip-up there; only practici?ng ti get the hang of the thing. I
+    notice I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters &
+    punctuation marks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at.
+    Blame my cats, but this thing requires genius in order to work it
+    just right.
+
+In an article written long after he tells how he was with Nasby when he
+first saw the machine in Boston through a window, and how they went in to
+see it perform. In the same article he states that he was the first
+person in the world to apply the type-machine to literature, and that he
+thinks the story of Tom Sawyer was the first type-copied manuscript.
+--[Tom Sawyer was not then complete, and had been laid aside. The first
+type-copied manuscript was probably early chapters of the Mississippi
+story, two discarded typewritten pages of which still exist.]
+
+The new enthusiasm ran its course and died. Three months later, when the
+Remington makers wrote him for a recommendation of the machine, he
+replied that he had entirely stopped using it. The typewriter was not
+perfect in those days, and the keys did not always respond readily. He
+declared it was ruining his morals--that it made him "want to swear." He
+offered it to Howells because, he said, Howells had no morals anyway.
+Howells hesitated, so Clemens traded the machine to Bliss for a
+side-saddle. But perhaps Bliss also became afraid of its influence, for
+in due time he brought it back. Howells, again tempted, hesitated, and
+this time was lost. What eventually became of the machine is not
+history.
+
+One of those, happy Atlantic dinners which Howells tells of came about
+the end of that year. It was at the Parker House, and Emerson was there;
+and Aldrich, and the rest of that group.
+
+"Don't you dare to refuse the invitation," said Howells, and naturally
+Clemens didn't, and wrote back:
+
+    I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay all night at the
+    Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, and take
+    breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you
+    and a fire. Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go home
+    late at night or something like that? That sort of thing arouses
+    Mrs. Clemens's sympathies easily.
+
+Two memories of that old dinner remain to-day. Aldrich and Howells were
+not satisfied with the kind of neckties that Mark Twain wore (the
+old-fashioned black "string" tie, a Western survival), so they made him a
+present of two cravats when he set out on his return for Hartford. Next
+day he wrote:
+
+    You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful
+    --Mrs. Clemens. For months--I may even say years--she has shown an
+    unaccountable animosity toward my necktie, even getting up in the
+    night to take it with the tongs and blackguard it, sometimes also
+    getting so far as to threaten it.
+
+    When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neckties, and that
+    they were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of
+    happiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the
+    venom in her nature gathered itself together; insomuch that I, being
+    near to a door, went without, perceiving danger.
+
+It is recorded that eventually he wore the neckties, and returned no more
+to the earlier mode.
+
+Another memory of that dinner is linked to a demand that Aldrich made of
+Clemens that night, for his photograph. Clemens, returning to Hartford,
+put up fifty-two different specimens in as many envelopes, with the idea
+of sending one a week for a year. Then he concluded that this was too
+slow a process, and for a week sent one every morning to "His Grace of
+Ponkapog."
+
+Aldrich stood it for a few days, then protested. "The police," he said,
+"are in the habit of swooping down upon a publication of that sort."
+
+On New-Year's no less than twenty pictures came at once--photographs and
+prints of Mark Twain, his house, his family, his various belongings.
+Aldrich sent a warning then that the perpetrator of this outrage was
+known to the police as Mark Twain, alias "The Jumping Frog," a well-known
+California desperado, who would be speedily arrested and brought to
+Ponkapog to face his victim. This letter was signed "T. Bayleigh, Chief
+of Police," and on the outside of the envelope there was a statement that
+it would be useless for that person to send any more mail-matter, as the
+post-office had been blown up. The jolly farce closed there. It was the
+sort of thing that both men enjoyed.
+
+Aldrich was writing a story at this time which contained some Western
+mining incident and environment. He sent the manuscript to Clemens for
+"expert" consideration and advice. Clemens wrote him at great length and
+in careful detail. He was fond of Aldrich, regarding him as one of the
+most brilliant of men. Once, to Robert Louis Stevenson, he said:
+
+    "Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and
+    humorous sayings. None has equaled him, certainly none has
+    surpassed him, in the felicity of phrasing with which he clothed
+    these children of his fancy. Aldrich is always brilliant; he can't
+    help it; he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds; when he is
+    not speaking you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and
+    glimmering around in him; when he speaks the diamonds flash. Yes,
+    he is always brilliant, he will always be brilliant; he will be
+    brilliant in hell-you will see."
+
+Stevenson, smiling a chuckly smile, said, "I hope not."
+
+"Well, you will, and he will dim even those ruddy fires and look like a
+transfigured Adonis backed against a pink sunset."--[North American
+Review, September, 1906.]
+
+
+
+
+C
+
+RAYMOND, MENTAL TELEGRAPHY, ETC.
+
+The Sellers play was given in Hartford, in January (1875), to as many
+people as could crowd into the Opera House. Raymond had reached the
+perfection of his art by that time, and the townsmen of Mark Twain saw
+the play and the actor at their best. Kate Field played the part of
+Laura Hawkins, and there was a Hartford girl in the company; also a
+Hartford young man, who would one day be about as well known to playgoers
+as any playwright or actor that America has produced. His name was
+William Gillette, and it was largely due to Mark Twain that the author of
+Secret Service and of the dramatic "Sherlock Holmes" got a fair public
+start. Clemens and his wife loaned Gillette the three thousand dollars
+which tided him through his period of dramatic education. Their faith in
+his ability was justified.
+
+Hartford would naturally be enthusiastic on a first "Sellers-Raymond"
+night. At the end of the fourth act there was an urgent demand for the
+author of the play, who was supposed to be present. He was not there in
+person, but had sent a letter, which Raymond read:
+
+MY DEAR RAYMOND,--I am aware that you are going to be welcomed to our
+town by great audiences on both nights of your stay there, and I beg to
+add my hearty welcome also, through this note. I cannot come to the
+theater on either evening, Raymond, because there is something so
+touching about your acting that I can't stand it.
+
+(I do not mention a couple of colds in my head, because I hardly mind
+them as much as I would the erysipelas, but between you and me I would
+prefer it if they were rights and lefts.)
+
+And then there is another thing. I have always taken a pride in earning
+my living in outside places and spending it in Hartford; I have said that
+no good citizen would live on his own people, but go forth and make it
+sultry for other communities and fetch home the result; and now at this
+late day I find myself in the crushed and bleeding position of fattening
+myself upon the spoils of my brethren! Can I support such grief as this?
+(This is literary emotion, you understand. Take the money at the door
+just the same.)
+
+Once more I welcome you to Hartford, Raymond, but as for me let me stay
+at home and blush.
+
+                         Yours truly,  MARK.
+
+The play was equally successful wherever it went. It made what in that
+day was regarded as a fortune. One hundred thousand dollars is hardly
+too large an estimate of the amount divided between author and actor.
+Raymond was a great actor in that part, as he interpreted it, though he
+did not interpret it fully, or always in its best way. The finer side,
+the subtle, tender side of Colonel Sellers, he was likely to overlook.
+Yet, with a natural human self-estimate, Raymond believed he had created
+a much greater part than Mark Twain had written. Doubtless from the
+point of view of a number of people this was so, though the idea, was
+naturally obnoxious to Clemens. In course of time their personal
+relations ceased.
+
+Clemens that winter gave another benefit for Father Hawley. In reply to
+an invitation to appear in behalf of the poor, he wrote that he had quit
+the lecture field, and would not return to the platform unless driven
+there by lack of bread. But he added:
+
+By the spirit of that remark I am debarred from delivering this proposed
+lecture, and so I fall back upon the letter of it, and emerge upon the
+platform for this last and final time because I am confronted by a lack
+of bread-among Father Hawley's flock.
+
+He made an introductory speech at an old-fashioned spelling-bee, given at
+the Asylum Hill Church; a breezy, charming talk of which the following is
+a sample:
+
+    I don't see any use in spelling a word right--and never did. I mean
+    I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of
+    spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook
+    all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I
+    have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me;
+    there is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his
+    orthography. He always spells "kow" with a large "K." Now that is
+    just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It
+    gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests
+    to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow.
+
+    He took part in the contest, and in spite of his early reputation,
+    was spelled down on the word "chaldron," which he spelled
+    "cauldron," as he had been taught, while the dictionary used as
+    authority gave that form as second choice.
+
+Another time that winter, Clemens read before the Monday Evening Club a
+paper on "Universal Suffrage," which is still remembered by the surviving
+members of that time. A paragraph or two will convey its purport:
+
+    Our marvelous latter-day statesmanship has invented universal
+    suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we
+    require of a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons
+    instead of petticoats, and bear a more or less humorous resemblance
+    to the reported image of God. He need not know anything whatever;
+    he may be wholly useless and a cumberer of the earth; he may even be
+    known to be a consummate scoundrel. No matter. While he can steer
+    clear of the penitentiary his vote is as weighty as the vote of a
+    president, a bishop, a college professor, a merchant prince. We
+    brag of our universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams after
+    all, for we restrict when we come to the women.
+
+The Monday Evening Club was an organization which included the best minds
+of Hartford. Dr. Horace Bushnell, Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, and J. Hammond
+Trumbull founded it back in the sixties, and it included such men as Rev.
+Dr. Parker, Rev. Dr. Burton, Charles H. Clark, of the Courant, Warner,
+and Twichell, with others of their kind. Clemens had been elected after
+his first sojourn in England (February, 1873), and had then read a paper
+on the "License of the Press." The club met alternate Mondays, from
+October to May. There was one paper for each evening, and, after the
+usual fashion of such clubs, the reading was followed by discussion.
+Members of that time agree that Mark Twain's association with the club
+had a tendency to give it a life, or at least an exhilaration, which it
+had not previously known. His papers were serious in their purpose he
+always preferred to be serious--but they evidenced the magic gift which
+made whatever he touched turn to literary jewelry.
+
+Psychic theories and phenomena always attracted Mark Twain. In
+thought-transference, especially, he had a frank interest--an interest
+awakened and kept alive by certain phenomena--psychic manifestations we
+call them now. In his association with Mrs. Clemens it not infrequently
+happened that one spoke the other's thought, or perhaps a
+long-procrastinated letter to a friend would bring an answer as quickly
+as mailed; but these are things familiar to us all. A more startling
+example of thought-communication developed at the time of which we are
+writing, an example which raised to a fever-point whatever interest he
+may have had in the subject before. (He was always having these vehement
+interests--rages we may call them, for it would be inadequate to speak of
+them as fads, inasmuch as they tended in the direction of human
+enlightenment, or progress, or reform.)
+
+Clemens one morning was lying in bed when, as he says, "suddenly a red-hot
+new idea came whistling down into my camp." The idea was that the time
+was ripe for a book that would tell the story of the Comstock-of the
+Nevada silver mines. It seemed to him that the person best qualified for
+the work was his old friend William Wright--Dan de Quille. He had not
+heard from Dan, or of him, for a long time, but decided to write and urge
+him to take up the idea. He prepared the letter, going fully into the
+details of his plan, as was natural for him to do, then laid it aside
+until he could see Bliss and secure his approval of the scheme from a
+publishing standpoint. Just a week later, it was the 9th of March, a
+letter came--a thick letter bearing a Nevada postmark, and addressed in a
+handwriting which he presently recognized as De Quille's. To a visitor
+who was present he said:
+
+"Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this letter
+contains--date, signature, and all without breaking the seal."
+
+He stated what he believed was in the letter. Then he opened it and
+showed that he had correctly given its contents, which were the same in
+all essential details as those of his own letter, not yet mailed.
+
+In an article on "Mental Telegraphy" (he invented the name) he relates
+this instance, with others, and in 'Following the Equator' and elsewhere
+he records other such happenings. It was one of the "mysteries" in which
+he never lost interest, though his concern in it in time became a passive
+one.
+
+The result of the De Quille manifestation, however, he has not recorded.
+Clemens immediately wrote, urging Dan to come to Hartford for an extended
+visit. De Quille came, and put in a happy spring in his old comrade's
+luxurious home, writing 'The Big Bonanza', which Bliss successfully
+published a year later.
+
+Mark Twain was continually inviting old friends to share his success with
+him. Any comrade of former days found welcome in his home as often as he
+would come, and for as long as he would stay. Clemens dropped his own
+affairs to advise in their undertakings; and if their undertakings were
+literary he found them a publisher. He did this for Joaquin Miller and
+for Bret Harte, and he was always urging Goodman to make his house a
+home.
+
+The Beecher-Tilton trial was the sensation of the spring of 1875, and
+Clemens, in common with many others, was greatly worked up over it. The
+printed testimony had left him decidedly in doubt as to Beecher's
+innocence, though his blame would seem to have been less for the possible
+offense than because of the great leader's attitude in the matter. To
+Twichell he said:
+
+"His quibbling was fatal. Innocent or guilty, he should have made an
+unqualified statement in the beginning."
+
+Together they attended one of the sessions, on a day when Beecher himself
+was on the witness-stand. The tension was very great; the excitement was
+painful. Twichell thought that Beecher appeared well under the stress of
+examination and was deeply sorry for him; Clemens was far from convinced.
+
+The feeling was especially strong in Hartford, where Henry Ward Beecher's
+relatives were prominent, and animosities grew out of it. They are all
+forgotten now; most of those who cherished bitterness are dead. Any
+feeling that Clemens had in the matter lasted but a little while. Howells
+tells us that when he met him some months after the trial ended, and was
+tempted to mention it, Clemens discouraged any discussion of the event.
+Says Howells:
+
+    He would only say the man had suffered enough; as if the man had
+    expiated his wrong, and he was not going to do anything to renew his
+    penalty. I found that very curious, very delicate. His continued
+    blame could not come to the sufferer's knowledge, but he felt it his
+    duty to forbear it.
+
+It was one hundred years, that 19th of April, since the battles of
+Lexington and Concord, and there was to be a great celebration. The
+Howellses had visited Hartford in March, and the Clemenses were invited
+to Cambridge for the celebration. Only Clemens could go, which in the
+event proved a good thing perhaps; for when Clemens and Howells set out
+for Concord they did not go over to Boston to take the train, but decided
+to wait for it at Cambridge. Apparently it did not occur to them that
+the train would be jammed the moment the doors were opened at the Boston
+station; but when it came along they saw how hopeless was their chance.
+They had special invitations and passage from Boston, but these were only
+mockeries now. It yeas cold and chilly, and they forlornly set out in
+search of some sort of a conveyance. They tramped around in the mud and
+raw wind, but vehicles were either filled or engaged, and drivers and
+occupants were inclined to jeer at them. Clemens was taken with an acute
+attack of indigestion, which made him rather dismal and savage. Their
+effort finally ended with his trying to run down a tally-ho which was
+empty inside and had a party of Harvard students riding atop. The
+students, who did not recognize their would-be fare, enjoyed the race.
+They encouraged their pursuer, and perhaps their driver, with merriment
+and cheers. Clemens was handicapped by having to run in the slippery
+mud, and soon "dropped by the wayside."
+
+"I am glad," says Howells, "I cannot recall what he said when he came
+back to me."
+
+They hung about a little longer, then dragged themselves home, slipped
+into the house, and built up a fine, cheerful fire on the hearth. They
+proposed to practise a deception on Mrs. Howells by pretending they had
+been to Concord and returned. But it was no use. Their statements were
+flimsy, and guilt was plainly written on their faces. Howells recalls
+this incident delightfully, and expresses the belief that the humor of
+the situation was finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than the actual
+visit to Concord would have been.
+
+Twichell did not have any such trouble in attending the celebration. He
+had adventures (he was always having adventures), but they were of a more
+successful kind. Clemens heard the tale of them when he returned to
+Hartford. He wrote it to Howells:
+
+    Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; took
+    midnight train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by
+    rail at 7.30 A.M. for Concord; swelled around there until 1 P.M.,
+    seeing everything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw
+    everything there; traveled on top of a train to Boston (with
+    hundreds in company), deluged with dust, smoke, and cinders; yelled
+    and hurrahed all the way like a school-boy; lay flat down, to dodge
+    numerous bridges, and sailed into the depot howling with excitement
+    and as black as a chimneysweep; got to Young's Hotel at 7 P.M.; sat
+    down in the reading-room and immediately fell asleep; was promptly
+    awakened by a porter, who supposed he was drunk; wandered around an
+    hour and a half; then took 9 P.M. train, sat down in a smoking-car,
+    and remembered nothing more until awakened by conductor as the train
+    came into Hartford at 1.30 A.M. Thinks he had simply a glorious
+    time, and wouldn't have missed the Centennial for the world. He
+    would have run out to see us a moment at Cambridge but he was too
+    dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there; his appalling energy would
+    have been an insufferable reproach to mild adventurers like you and
+    me.
+
+
+
+
+CI
+
+CONCLUDING "TOM SAWYER"--MARK TWAIN's "EDITORS"
+
+Meantime the "inspiration tank," as Clemens sometimes called it, had
+filled up again. He had received from somewhere new afflatus for the
+story of Tom and Huck, and was working on it steadily. The family
+remained in Hartford, and early in July, under full head of steam, he
+brought the story to a close. On the 5th he wrote Howells:
+
+    I have finished the story and didn't take the chap beyond boyhood.
+    I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape but
+    autobiographically, like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in not
+    writing it in the first person. If I went on now, and took him into
+    manhood, he would just lie, like all the one-horse men in
+    literature, and the reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him.
+    It is not a boy's book at all. It will only be read by adults. It
+    is only written for adults.
+
+He would like to see the story in the Atlantic, he said, but doubted the
+wisdom of serialization.
+
+"By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him through life (in the
+first person), but not Tam Sawyer, he would not make a good character for
+it." From which we get the first glimpse of Huck's later adventures.
+
+Of course he wanted Howells to look at the story. It was a tremendous
+favor to ask, he said, and added, "But I know of no other person whose
+judgment I could venture to take, fully and entirely. Don't hesitate to
+say no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I would have honest need
+to blush if you said yes."
+
+"Send on your MS.," wrote Howells. "You've no idea what I may ask you to
+do for me some day."
+
+But Clemens, conscience-stricken, "blushed and weakened," as he said.
+When Howells insisted, he wrote:
+
+    But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows:
+    dramatize it, if you perceive that you can, and take, for your
+    remuneration, half of the first $6,000 which I receive for its
+    representation on the stage. You could alter the plot entirely if
+    you chose. I could help in the work most cheerfully after you had
+    arranged the plot. I have my eye upon two young girls who can play
+    Tom and Huck.
+
+Howells in his reply urged. Clemens to do the playwriting himself. He
+could never find time, he said, and he doubted whether he could enter
+into the spirit of another man's story. Clemens did begin a
+dramatization then or a little later, but it was not completed. Mrs.
+Clemens, to whom he had read the story as it proceeded, was as anxious as
+her husband for Howells's opinion, for it was the first extended piece of
+fiction Mark Twain had undertaken alone. He carried the manuscript over
+to Boston himself, and whatever their doubts may have been, Howells's
+subsequent letter set them at rest. He wrote that he had sat up till one
+in the morning to get to the end of it, simply because it was impossible
+to leave off.
+
+It is altogether the best boy story I ever read. It will be an immense
+success, but I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's story;
+grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do, and if you should put it
+forth as a story of boys' character from the grown-up point of view you
+give the wrong key to it.
+
+Viewed in the light of later events, there has never been any better
+literary opinion than that--none that has been more fully justified.
+
+Clemens was delighted. He wrote concerning a point here and there, one
+inquiry referring to the use of a certain strong word. Howells's reply
+left no doubt:
+
+    I'd have that swearing out in an instant. I suppose I didn't notice
+    it because the location was so familiar to my Western sense, and so
+    exactly the thing Huck would say, but it won't do for children.
+
+It was in the last chapter, where Huck relates to Tom the sorrows of
+reform and tells how they comb him "all to thunder." In the original,
+"They comb me all to hell," says Huck; which statement, one must agree,
+is more effective, more the thing Huck would be likely to say.
+
+Clemens's acknowledgment of the correction was characteristic:
+
+    Mrs. Clemens received the mail this morning, and the next minute she
+    lit into the study with danger in her eye and this demand on her
+    tongue, "Where is the profanity Mr. Howells speaks of?" Then I had
+    to miserably confess that I had left it out when reading the MS. to
+    her. Nothing but almost inspired lying got me out of this scrape
+    with my scalp. Does your wife give you rats, like that, when you go
+    a little one-sided?
+
+The Clemens family did not, go to Elmira that year. The children's
+health seemed to require the sea-shore, and in August they went to
+Bateman's Point, Rhode Island, where Clemens most of the time played
+tenpins in an alley that had gone to ruin. The balls would not stay on
+the track; the pins stood at inebriate angles. It reminded him of the
+old billiard-tables of Western mining-camps, and furnished the same
+uncertainty of play. It was his delight, after he had become accustomed
+to the eccentricities of the alley, to invite in a stranger and watch his
+suffering and his frantic effort to score.
+
+
+
+
+CII
+
+"SKETCHES NEW AND OLD"
+
+The long-delayed book of Sketches, contracted for five years before, was
+issued that autumn. "The Jumping Frog," which he had bought from Webb,
+was included in the volume, also the French translation which Madame
+Blanc (Th. Bentzon) had made for the Revue des deux mondes, with Mark
+Twain's retranslation back into English, a most astonishing performance
+in its literal rendition of the French idiom. One example will suffice
+here. It is where the stranger says to Smiley, "I don't see no p'ints
+about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
+
+Says the French, retranslated:
+
+"Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
+frog" (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait mieux qu'aucune
+grenouille). (If that isn't grammar gone to seed then I count myself no
+judge.--M. T.)
+
+"Possible that you not it saw not," said Smiley; "possible that you you
+comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
+possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
+an amateur. Of all manner (de toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that
+she batter in jumping, no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras."
+
+He included a number of sketches originally published with the Frog, also
+a selection from the "Memoranda" and Buffalo Express contributions, and
+he put in the story of Auntie Cord, with some matter which had never
+hitherto appeared. True Williams illustrated the book, but either it
+furnished him no inspiration or he was allowed too much of another sort,
+for the pictures do not compare with his earlier work.
+
+Among the new matter in the book were-"Some Fables for Good Old Boys and
+Girls," in which certain wood creatures are supposed to make a scientific
+excursion into a place at some time occupied by men. It is the most
+pretentious feature of the book, and in its way about as good as any.
+Like Gulliver's Travels, its object was satire, but its result is also
+interest.
+
+Clemens was very anxious that Howells should be first to review this
+volume. He had a superstition that Howells's verdicts were echoed by the
+lesser reviewers, and that a book was made or damned accordingly; a
+belief hardly warranted, for the review has seldom been written that
+meant to any book the difference between success and failure. Howells's
+review of Sketches may be offered as a case in point. It was highly
+commendatory, much more so than the notice of the 'Innocents' had been,
+or even that of 'Roughing It', also more extensive than the latter. Yet
+after the initial sale of some twenty thousand copies, mainly on the
+strength of the author's reputation, the book made a comparatively poor
+showing, and soon lagged far behind its predecessors.
+
+We cannot judge, of course, the taste of that day, but it appears now an
+unattractive, incoherent volume. The pictures were absurdly bad, the
+sketches were of unequal merit. Many of them are amusing, some of them
+delightful, but most of them seem ephemeral. If we except "The Jumping
+Frog," and possibly "A True Story" (and the latter was altogether out of
+place in the collection), there is no reason to suppose that any of its
+contents will escape oblivion. The greater number of the sketches, as
+Mark Twain himself presently realized and declared, would better have
+been allowed to die.
+
+Howells did, however, take occasion to point out in his review, or at
+least to suggest, the more serious side of Mark Twain. He particularly
+called attention to "A True Story," which the reviewers, at the time of
+its publication in the Atlantic, had treated lightly, fearing a lurking
+joke in it; or it may be they had not read it, for reviewers are busy
+people. Howells spoke of it as the choicest piece of work in the volume,
+and of its "perfect fidelity to the tragic fact." He urged the reader to
+turn to it again, and to read it as a "simple dramatic report of
+reality," such as had been equaled by no other American writer.
+
+It was in this volume of sketches that Mark Twain first spoke in print
+concerning copyright, showing the absurd injustice of discriminating
+against literary ownership by statute of limitation. He did this in the
+form of an open petition to Congress, asking that all property, real and
+personal, should be put on the copyright basis, its period of ownership
+limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years." Generally this was
+regarded as a joke, as in a sense it was; but like most of Mark Twain's
+jokes it was founded on reason and justice.
+
+The approval with which it was received by his literary associates led
+him to still further flights. He began a determined crusade for
+international copyright laws. It was a transcendental beginning, but it
+contained the germ of what, in the course of time, he would be largely
+instrumental in bringing to a ripe and magnificent conclusion. In this
+first effort he framed a petition to enact laws by which the United
+States would declare itself to be for right and justice, regardless of
+other nations, and become a good example to the world by refusing to
+pirate the books of any foreign author. He wrote to Howells, urging him
+to get Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and others to sign this
+petition.
+
+I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages, and send him personally
+to every author of distinction in the country and corral the rest of the
+signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed (about one
+thousand copies), and move upon the President and Congress in person, but
+in the subordinate capacity of the party who is merely the agent of
+better and wiser men, or men whom the country cannot venture to laugh at.
+I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if he
+should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should blush,
+but still I would frame it). And then if Europe chooses to go on
+stealing from us we would say, with noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers
+do steal, but not from foreign authors--not from foreign authors,".... If
+we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a
+sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
+
+The petition never reached Congress. Holmes agreed to sign it with a
+smile, and the comment that governments were not in the habit of setting
+themselves up as high moral examples, except for revenue. Longfellow
+also pledged himself, as did a few others; but if there was any general
+concurrence in the effort there is no memory of it now. Clemens
+abandoned the original idea, but remained one of the most persistent and
+influential advocates of copyright betterment, and lived to see most of
+his dream fulfilled.--[For the petition concerning copyright term in the
+United States, see Sketches New and Old. For the petition concerning
+international copyright and related matters, see Appendix N, at the end
+of last volume.]
+
+
+
+
+CIII
+
+"ATLANTIC" DAYS
+
+It was about this period that Mark Twain began to exhibit openly his more
+serious side; that is to say his advocacy of public reforms. His paper
+on "Universal Suffrage" had sounded a first note, and his copyright
+petitions were of the same spirit. In later years he used to say that he
+had always felt it was his mission to teach, to carry the banner of moral
+reconstruction, and here at forty we find him furnishing evidences of
+this inclination. In the Atlantic for October, 1875, there was published
+an unsigned three-page article entitled, "The Curious Republic of
+Gondour." In this article was developed the idea that the voting
+privilege should be estimated not by the individuals, but by their
+intellectual qualifications. The republic of Gondour was a Utopia, where
+this plan had been established:
+
+    It was an odd idea and ingenious. You must understand the
+    constitution gave every man a vote; therefore that vote was a vested
+    right, and could not be taken away. But the constitution did not
+    say that certain individuals might not be given two votes or ten.
+    So an amendatory clause was inserted in a quiet way, a clause which
+    authorized the enlargement of the suffrage in certain cases to be
+    specified by statute....
+
+    The victory was complete. The new law was framed and passed. Under
+    it every citizen, howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote, so
+    universal suffrage still reigned; but if a man possessed a good
+    common-school education and no money he had two votes, a high-school
+    education gave him four; if he had property, likewise, to the value
+    of three thousand sacos he wielded one more vote; for every fifty
+    thousand sacos a man added to his property, he was entitled to
+    another vote; a University education entitled a man to nine votes,
+    even though he owned no property.
+
+The author goes on to show the beneficent results of this enaction; how
+the country was benefited and glorified by this stimulus toward
+enlightenment and industry. No one ever suspected that Mark Twain was
+the author of this fable. It contained almost no trace of his usual
+literary manner. Nevertheless he wrote it, and only withheld his name,
+as he did in a few other instances, in the fear that the world might
+refuse to take him seriously over his own signature or nom de plume.
+
+Howells urged him to follow up the "Gondour" paper; to send some more
+reports from that model land. But Clemens was engaged in other things by
+that time, and was not pledged altogether to national reforms.
+
+He was writing a skit about a bit of doggerel which was then making
+nights and days unhappy for many undeserving persons who in an evil
+moment had fallen upon it in some stray newspaper corner. A certain car
+line had recently adopted the "punch system," and posted in its cars, for
+the information of passengers and conductor, this placard:
+
+A Blue Trip Slip for an 8 Cents Fare, A Buff Trip Slip for a 6 Cents
+Fare, A Pink Trip Slip for a 3 Cents Fare, For Coupon And Transfer, Punch
+The Tickets.
+
+Noah Brooks and Isaac Bromley were riding down-town one evening on the
+Fourth Avenue line, when Bromley said:
+
+"Brooks, it's poetry. By George, it's poetry!"
+
+Brooks followed the direction of Bromley's finger and read the card of
+instructions. They began perfecting the poetic character of the notice,
+giving it still more of a rhythmic twist and jingle; arrived at the
+Tribune office, W. C. Wyckoff, scientific editor, and Moses P. Handy lent
+intellectual and poetic assistance, with this result:
+
+       Conductor, when you receive a fare,
+
+       Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
+       A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
+       A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
+       A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare.
+       Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
+
+    CHORUS
+       Punch, brothers! Punch with care!
+       Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
+
+It was printed, and street-car poetry became popular. Different papers
+had a turn at it, and each usually preceded its own effort with all other
+examples, as far as perpetrated. Clemens discovered the lines, and on
+one of their walks recited them to Twichell. "A Literary Nightmare" was
+written a few days later. In it the author tells how the jingle took
+instant and entire possession of him and went waltzing through his brain;
+how, when he had finished his breakfast, he couldn't tell whether he had
+eaten anything or not; and how, when he went to finish the novel he was
+writing, and took up his pen, he could only get it to say:
+
+Punch in the presence of the passenjare.
+
+He found relief at last in telling it to his reverend friend, that is,
+Twichell, upon whom he unloaded it with sad results.
+
+It was an amusing and timely skit, and is worth reading to-day. Its
+publication in the Atlantic had the effect of waking up horse-car poetry
+all over the world. Howells, going to dine at Ernest Longfellow's the
+day following its appearance, heard his host and Tom Appleton urging each
+other to "Punch with care." The Longfellow ladies had it by heart.
+Boston was devastated by it. At home, Howells's children recited it to
+him in chorus. The streets were full of it; in Harvard it became an
+epidemic.
+
+It was transformed into other tongues. Even Swinburne, the musical, is
+said to have done a French version for the 'Revue des deux mondes'*. A
+St. Louis magazine, The Western, found relief in a Latin anthem with this
+chorus:
+
+Pungite, fratres, pungite, Pungite cum amore, Pungite pro vectore,
+Diligentissime pungite.
+
+              * LE CHANT DU CONDUCTEUR
+
+           Ayant ete paye, le conducteur
+           Percera en pleine vue du voyageur,
+           Quand il regoit trois sous un coupon vert,
+           Un coupon jaune pour six sous c'est l'affaire,
+           Et pour huit sous c'est un coupon couleur
+           De rose, en pleine vue du voyageur.
+
+       CHOEUR
+           Donc, percez soigneusement, mes freres
+           Tout en pleine vue des voyageurs, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CIV
+
+MARK TWAIN AND HIS WIFE
+
+Clemens and his wife traveled to Boston for one of those happy
+fore-gatherings with the Howellses, which continued, at one end of the
+journey or another, for so many years. There was a luncheon with
+Longfellow at Craigie House, and, on the return to Hartford, Clemens
+reported to Howells how Mrs. Clemens had thrived on the happiness of the
+visit. Also he confesses his punishment for the usual crimes:
+
+    I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about her
+    coffee, when it was a "good deal better than we get at home." I
+    "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing
+    her the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS.
+    when the printers are done with it. I "caught it" once more for
+    personating that drunken Colonel James. I "caught it" for
+    mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's picture was slightly damaged; and
+    when, after a lull in the storm, I confessed, shamefacedly, that I
+    had privately suggested to you that we hadn't any frames, and that
+    if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, etc., etc., etc., the
+    madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute. Then she
+    said:
+
+    "How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his
+    sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--"
+
+    "Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a
+    man who--"
+
+    She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in
+    the hall, so she took it out of George. I am glad of that, because
+    it saved the babies.
+
+Clemens used to admit, at a later day, that his education did not advance
+by leaps and bounds, but gradually, very gradually; and it used to give
+him a pathetic relief in those after-years, when that sweet presence had
+gone out of his life, to tell the way of it, to confess over-fully,
+perhaps, what a responsibility he had been to her.
+
+He used to tell how, for a long time, he concealed his profanity from
+her; how one morning, when he thought the door was shut between their
+bedroom and the bathroom, he was in there dressing and shaving,
+accompanying these trying things with language intended only for the
+strictest privacy; how presently, when he discovered a button off the
+shirt he intended to put on, he hurled it through the window into the
+yard with appropriate remarks, followed it with another shirt that was in
+the same condition, and added certain collars and neckties and bath-room
+requisites, decorating the shrubbery outside, where the people were going
+by to church; how in this extreme moment he heard a slight cough and
+turned to find that the door was open! There was only one door to the
+bath-room, and he knew he had to pass her. He felt pale and sick, and
+sat down for a few moments to consider. He decided to assume that she
+was asleep, and to walk out and through the room, head up, as if he had
+nothing on his conscience. He attempted it, but without success.
+Half-way across the room he heard a voice suddenly repeat his last
+terrific remark. He turned to see her sitting up in bed, regarding him
+with a look as withering as she could find in her gentle soul. The humor
+of it struck him.
+
+"Livy," he said, "did it sound like that?"
+
+"Of course it did," she said, "only worse. I wanted you to hear just how
+it sounded."
+
+"Livy," he said, "it would pain me to think that when I swear it sounds
+like that. You got the words right, Livy, but you don't know the tune."
+
+Yet he never willingly gave her pain, and he adored her and gloried in
+her dominion, his life long. Howells speaks of his beautiful and tender
+loyalty to her as the "most moving quality of his most faithful soul."
+
+It was a greater part of him than the love of most men for their wives,
+and she merited all the worship he could give her, all the devotion, all
+the implicit obedience, by her surpassing force and beauty of character.
+
+She guarded his work sacredly; and reviewing the manuscripts which he was
+induced to discard, and certain edited manuscripts, one gets a partial
+idea of what the reading world owes to Olivia Clemens. Of the discarded.
+manuscripts (he seems seldom to have destroyed them) there are a
+multitude, and among them all scarcely one that is not a proof of her
+sanity and high regard for his literary honor. They are amusing--some of
+them; they are interesting--some of them; they are strong and virile
+--some of them; but they are unworthy--most of them, though a number
+remain unfinished because theme or interest failed.
+
+Mark Twain was likely to write not wisely but too much, piling up
+hundreds of manuscript pages only because his brain was thronging as with
+a myriad of fireflies, a swarm of darting, flashing ideas demanding
+release. As often as not he began writing with only a nebulous idea of
+what he proposed to do. He would start with a few characters and
+situations, trusting in Providence to supply material as needed. So he
+was likely to run ashore any time. As for those other attempts--stories
+"unavailable" for one reason or another--he was just as apt to begin
+those as the better sort, for somehow he could never tell the difference.
+That is one of the hall-marks of genius--the thing which sharply
+differentiates genius from talent. Genius is likely to rate a literary
+disaster as its best work. Talent rarely makes that mistake.
+
+Among the abandoned literary undertakings of these early years of
+authorship there is the beginning of what was doubtless intended to
+become a book, "The Second Advent," a story which opens with a very
+doubtful miraculous conception in Arkansas, and leads only to grotesquery
+and literary disorder. There is another, "The Autobiography of a Damn
+Fool," a burlesque on family history, hopelessly impossible; yet he began
+it with vast enthusiasm and, until he allowed her to see the manuscript,
+thought it especially good. "Livy wouldn't have it," he said, "so I gave
+it up." There is another, "The Mysterious Chamber," strong and fine in
+conception, vividly and intensely interesting; the story of a young lover
+who is accidentally locked behind a secret door in an old castle and
+cannot announce himself. He wanders at last down into subterranean
+passages beneath the castle, and he lives in this isolation for twenty
+years. The question of sustenance was the weak point in the story.
+Clemens could invent no way of providing it, except by means of a waste
+or conduit from the kitchen into which scraps of meat, bread, and other
+items of garbage were thrown. This he thought sufficient, but Mrs.
+Clemens did not highly regard such a literary device. Clemens could
+think of no good way to improve upon it, so this effort too was consigned
+to the penal colony, a set of pigeonholes kept in his study. To Howells
+and others, when they came along, he would read the discarded yarns, and
+they were delightful enough for such a purpose, as delightful as the
+sketches which every artist has, turned face to the wall.
+
+"Captain Stormfield" lay under the ban for many a year, though never
+entirely abandoned. This manuscript was even recommended for publication
+by Howells, who has since admitted that it would not have done then; and
+indeed, in its original, primitive nakedness it would hardly have done
+even in this day of wider toleration.
+
+It should be said here that there is not the least evidence (and the
+manuscripts are full of evidence) that Mrs. Clemens was ever
+super-sensitive, or narrow, or unliterary in her restraints. She became
+his public, as it were, and no man ever had a more open-minded,
+clear-headed public than that. For Mark Twain's reputation it would have
+been better had she exercised her editorial prerogative even more
+actively--if, in her love for him and her jealousy of his reputation, she
+had been even more severe. She did all that lay in her strength, from
+the beginning to the end, and if we dwell upon this phase of their life
+together it is because it is so large a part of Mark Twain's literary
+story. On her birthday in the year we are now closing (1875) he wrote
+her a letter which conveys an acknowledgment of his debt.
+
+LIVY DARLING,--Six years have gone by since I made my first great success
+in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made
+preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every
+day we live together adds to the security of my confidence that we can
+never any more wish to be separated than we can imagine a regret that we
+were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were
+upon the last anniversary of this birthday; you were dearer then than you
+were a year before; you have grown more and more dear from the first of
+those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this precious progression
+will continue on to the end.
+
+Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their
+gray hairs, without fear and without depression, trusting and believing
+that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.
+
+So, with abounding affection for you and our babies I hail this day that
+brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 1, Part
+2, 1866-1875, by Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, ***
+
+***** This file should be named 2983.txt or 2983.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/8/2983/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+