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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mark Twain, A Biography, 1875-1886
+by Albert Bigelow Paine #3 in our series by Albert Bigelow Paine
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+Title: Mark Twain, A Biography, 1875-1886
+
+Author: Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+Release Date: December, 2001  [Etext #2984]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Mark Twain, A Biography, 1875-1886
+by Albert Bigelow Paine
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+
+MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
+By Albert Bigelow Paine
+COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
+
+
+
+VOLUME II, Part 1: 1875-1886
+
+
+
+
+CV
+
+MARK TWAIN AT FORTY
+
+In conversation with John Hay, Hay said to Clemens:
+
+"A man reaches the zenith at forty, the top of the hill.  From that time
+forward he begins to descend.  If you have any great undertaking ahead,
+begin it now.  You will never be so capable again."
+
+Of course this was only a theory of Hay's, a rule where rules do not
+apply, where in the end the problem resolves itself into a question of
+individualities.  John Hay did as great work after forty as ever before,
+so did Mark Twain, and both of them gained in intellectual strength and
+public honor to the very end.
+
+Yet it must have seemed to many who knew him, and to himself, like
+enough, that Mark Twain at forty had reached the pinnacle of his fame and
+achievement.  His name was on every lip; in whatever environment
+observation and argument were likely to be pointed with some saying or
+anecdote attributed, rightly or otherwise, to Mark Twain.  "As Mark Twain
+says," or, "You know that story of Mark Twain's," were universal and
+daily commonplaces.  It was dazzling, towering fame, not of the best or
+most enduring kind as yet, but holding somewhere within it the structure
+of immortality.
+
+He was in a constant state of siege, besought by all varieties and
+conditions of humanity for favors such as only human need and abnormal
+ingenuity can invent.  His ever-increasing mail presented a marvelous
+exhibition of the human species on undress parade.  True, there were
+hundreds of appreciative tributes from readers who spoke only out of a
+heart's gratitude; but there were nearly as great a number who came with
+a compliment, and added a petition, or a demand, or a suggestion, usually
+unwarranted, often impertinent.  Politicians, public speakers, aspiring
+writers, actors, elocutionists, singers, inventors (most of them he had
+never seen or heard of) cheerfully asked him for a recommendation as to
+their abilities and projects.
+
+Young men wrote requesting verses or sentiments to be inscribed in young
+ladies' autograph albums; young girls wrote asking him to write the story
+of his life, to be used as a school composition; men starting obscure
+papers coolly invited him to lend them his name as editor, assuring him
+that he would be put to no trouble, and that it would help advertise his
+books; a fruitful humorist wrote that he had invented some five thousand
+puns, and invited Mark Twain to father this terrific progeny in book form
+for a share of the returns.  But the list is endless.  He said once:
+
+"The symbol of the race ought to be a human being carrying an ax, for
+every human being has one concealed about him somewhere, and is always
+seeking the opportunity to grind it."
+
+Even P. T. Barnum had an ax, the large ax of advertising, and he was
+perpetually trying to grind it on Mark Twain's reputation; in other
+words, trying to get him to write something that would help to popularize
+"The Greatest Show on Earth."
+
+There were a good many curious letters-letters from humorists, would-be
+and genuine.  A bright man in Duluth sent him an old Allen "pepper-box"
+revolver with the statement that it had been found among a pile of bones
+under a tree, from the limb of which was suspended a lasso and a buffalo
+skull; this as evidence that the weapon was the genuine Allen which Bemis
+had lost on that memorable Overland buffalo-hunt.  Mark Twain enjoyed
+that, and kept the old pepper-box as long as he lived.  There were
+letters from people with fads; letters from cranks of every description;
+curious letters even from friends.  Reginald Cholmondeley, that lovely
+eccentric of Condover Hall, where Mr. and Mrs. Clemens had spent some
+halcyon days in 1873, wrote him invitations to be at his castle on a
+certain day, naming the hour, and adding that he had asked friends to
+meet him.  Cholmondeley had a fancy for birds, and spared nothing to
+improve his collection.  Once he wrote Clemens asking him to collect for
+him two hundred and five American specimens, naming the varieties and the
+amount which he was to pay for each.  Clemens was to catch these birds
+and bring them over to England, arriving at Condover on a certain day,
+when there would be friends to meet him, of course.
+
+Then there was a report which came now and then from another English
+castle--the minutes of a certain "Mark Twain Club," all neatly and
+elaborately written out, with the speech of each member and the
+discussions which had followed--the work, he found out later, of another
+eccentric; for there was no Mark Twain Club, the reports being just the
+mental diversion of a rich young man, with nothing else to do. --[In
+Following the Equator Clemens combined these two pleasant characters in
+one story, with elaborations.]
+
+Letters came queerly addressed.  There is one envelope still in existence
+which bears Clemens's name in elaborate design and a very good silhouette
+likeness, the work of some talented artist.  "Mark Twain, United States,"
+was a common address; "Mark Twain, The World," was also used; "Mark
+Twain, Somewhere," mailed in a foreign country, reached him promptly, and
+"Mark Twain, Anywhere," found its way to Hartford in due season.  Then
+there was a letter (though this was later; he was abroad at the time),
+mailed by Brander Matthews and Francis Wilson, addressed, "Mark Twain,
+God Knows Where."  It found him after traveling half around the world on
+its errand, and in his answer he said, "He did."  Then some one sent a
+letter addressed, "The Devil Knows Where."  Which also reached him, and
+he answered, "He did, too."
+
+Surely this was the farthest horizon of fame.
+
+Countless Mark Twain anecdotes are told of this period, of every period,
+and will be told and personally vouched for so long as the last soul of
+his generation remains alive.  For seventy years longer, perhaps, there
+will be those who will relate "personal recollections" of Mark Twain. 
+Many of them will be interesting; some of them will be true; most of them
+will become history at last.  It is too soon to make history of much of
+this drift now.  It is only safe to admit a few authenticated examples.
+
+It happens that one of the oftenest-told anecdotes has been the least
+elaborated.  It is the one about his call on Mrs. Stowe.  Twichell's
+journal entry, set down at the time, verifies it:
+
+Mrs. Stowe was leaving for Florida one morning, and Clemens ran over
+early to say good-by.  On his return Mrs. Clemens regarded him
+disapprovingly:
+
+"Why, Youth," she said, "you haven't on any collar and tie."
+
+He said nothing, but went up to his room, did up these items in a neat
+package, and sent it over by a servant, with a line:
+
+"Herewith receive a call from the rest of me."
+
+Mrs. Stowe returned a witty note, in which she said that he had
+discovered a new principle, the principle of making calls by instalments,
+and asked whether, in extreme cases, a man might not send his hat, coat,
+and boots and be otherwise excused.
+
+Col. Henry Watterson tells the story of an after-theater supper at the
+Brevoort House, where Murat Halstead, Mark Twain, and himself were
+present.  A reporter sent in a card for Colonel Watterson, who was about
+to deny himself when Clemens said:
+
+"Give it to me; I'll fix it."  And left the table.  He came back in a
+moment and beckoned to Watterson.
+
+"He is young and as innocent as a lamb," he said.  "I represented myself 
+as your secretary.  I said that you were not here, but if Mr. Halstead
+would do as well I would fetch him out.  I'll introduce you as Halstead,
+and we'll have some fun."
+
+Now, while Watterson and Halstead were always good friends, they were
+political enemies.  It was a political season and the reporter wanted
+that kind of an interview.  Watterson gave it to him, repudiating every
+principle that Halstead stood for, reversing him in every expressed
+opinion.  Halstead was for hard money and given to flying the "bloody
+shirt" of sectional prejudice; Watterson lowered the bloody shirt and
+declared for greenbacks in Halstead's name.  Then he and Clemens returned
+to the table and told frankly what they had done.  Of course, nobody
+believed it.  The report passed the World night-editor, and appeared,
+next morning.  Halstead woke up, then, and wrote a note to the World,
+denying the interview throughout.  The World printed his note with the
+added line:
+
+"When Mr. Halstead saw our reporter he had dined."
+
+It required John Hay (then on the Tribune) to place the joke where it
+belonged.
+
+There is a Lotos Club anecdote of Mark Twain that carries the internal
+evidence of truth.  Saturday evening at the Lotos always brought a
+gathering of the "wits," and on certain evenings--"Hens and chickens"
+nights--each man had to tell a story, make a speech, or sing a song.  On
+one evening a young man, an invited guest, was called upon and recited a
+very long poem.
+
+One by one those who sat within easy reach of the various exits melted
+away, until no one remained but Mark Twain.  Perhaps he saw the
+earnestness of the young man, and sympathized with it.  He may have
+remembered a time when he would have been grateful for one such attentive
+auditor.  At all events, he sat perfectly still, never taking his eyes
+from the reader, never showing the least inclination toward discomfort or
+impatience, but listening, as with rapt attention, to the very last line. 
+Douglas Taylor, one of the faithful Saturday-night members, said to him
+later:
+
+"Mark, how did you manage to sit through that dreary, interminable poem?"
+
+"Well," he said, "that young man thought he had a divine message to
+deliver, and I thought he was entitled to at least one auditor, so I
+stayed with him."
+
+We may believe that for that one auditor the young author was willing to
+sacrifice all the others.
+
+One might continue these anecdotes for as long as the young man's poem
+lasted, and perhaps hold as large an audience.  But anecdotes are not all
+of history.  These are set down because they reflect a phase of the man
+and an aspect of his life at this period.  For at the most we can only
+present an angle here and there, and tell a little of the story, letting
+each reader from his fancy construct the rest.
+
+
+
+
+CVI
+
+HIS FIRST STAGE APPEARANCE
+
+Once that winter the Monday Evening Club met at Mark Twain's home, and
+instead of the usual essay he read them a story: "The Facts Concerning
+the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut."  It was the story of a
+man's warfare with a personified conscience--a, sort of "William Wilson"
+idea, though less weird, less somber, and with more actuality, more
+verisimilitude.  It was, in fact, autobiographical, a setting-down of the
+author's daily self-chidings.  The climax, where conscience is slain, is
+a startling picture which appeals to most of humanity.  So vivid is it
+all, that it is difficult in places not to believe in the reality of the
+tale, though the allegory is always present.
+
+The club was deeply impressed by the little fictional sermon.  One of its
+ministerial members offered his pulpit for the next Sunday if Mark Twain
+would deliver it to his congregation.  Howells welcomed it for the
+Atlantic, and published it in June.  It was immensely successful at the
+time, though for some reason it seems to be little known or remembered
+to-day.  Now and then a reader mentions it, always with enthusiasm. 
+Howells referred to it repeatedly in his letters, and finally persuaded
+Clemens to let Osgood bring it out, with "A True Story," in dainty,
+booklet form.  If the reader does not already know the tale, it will pay
+him to look it up and read it, and then to read it again.
+
+Meantime Tom Sawyer remained unpublished.
+
+"Get Bliss to hurry it up!" wrote Howells.  "That boy is going to make a
+prodigious hit."
+
+But Clemens delayed the book, to find some means to outwit the Canadian
+pirates, who thus far had laid hands on everything, and now were
+clamoring at the Atlantic because there was no more to steal.
+
+Moncure D. Conway was in America, and agreed to take the manuscript of
+Sawyer to London and arrange for its publication and copyright.  In
+Conway's Memoirs he speaks of Mark Twain's beautiful home, comparing it
+and its surroundings with the homes of Surrey, England.  He tells of an
+entertainment given to Harriet Beecher Stowe, a sort of animated jarley
+wax-works.  Clemens and Conway went over as if to pay a call, when
+presently the old lady was rather startled by an invasion of costumed. 
+figures.  Clemens rose and began introducing them in his gay, fanciful
+fashion.  He began with a knight in full armor, saying, as if in an
+aside, "Bring along that tinshop," and went on to tell the romance of the
+knight's achievements.
+
+Conway read Tom Sawyer on the ship and was greatly excited over it. 
+Later, in London, he lectured on it, arranging meantime for its
+publication with Chatto & Windus, thus establishing a friendly business
+relation with that firm which Mark Twain continued during his lifetime.
+
+Clemens lent himself to a number of institutional amusements that year,
+and on the 26th of April, 1876, made his first public appearance on the
+dramatic stage.
+
+It was an amateur performance, but not of the usual kind.  There was
+genuine dramatic talent in Hartford, and the old play of the "Loan of the
+Lover, " with Mark Twain as Peter Spuyk and Miss Helen Smith--[Now Mrs.
+William W.  Ellsworth.]--as Gertrude, with a support sufficient for their
+needs, gave a performance that probably furnished as much entertainment
+as that pleasant old play is capable of providing.  Mark Twain had in him
+the making of a great actor.  Henry Irving once said to him:
+
+
+"You made a mistake by not adopting the stage as a profession.  You would
+have made even a greater actor than a writer."
+
+Yet it is unlikely that he would ever have been satisfied with the stage. 
+He had too many original literary ideas.  He would never have been
+satisfied to repeat the same part over and over again, night after night
+from week to month, and from month to year.  He could not stick to the
+author's lines even for one night.  In his performance of the easy-going,
+thick-headed Peter Spuyk his impromptu additions to the lines made it
+hard on the company, who found their cues all at sixes and sevens, but it
+delighted the audience beyond measure.  No such impersonation of that. 
+character was ever given before, or ever will be given again.  It was
+repeated with new and astonishing variations on the part of Peter, and it
+could have been put on for a long run.  Augustin Daly wrote immediately,
+offering the Fifth Avenue Theater for a "benefit" performance, and again,
+a few days later, urging acceptance.  "Not for one night, but for many."
+
+Clemens was tempted, no doubt.  Perhaps, if he had yielded, he would
+today have had one more claim on immortality.
+
+
+
+
+CVII
+
+HOWELLS, CLEMENS, AND "GEORGE"
+
+Howells and Clemens were visiting back and forth rather oftener just
+then.  Clemens was particularly fond of the Boston crowd--Aldrich,
+Fields, Osgood, and the rest--delighting in those luncheons or dinners
+which Osgood, that hospitable publisher, was always giving on one pretext
+or another.  No man ever loved company more than Osgood, or to play the
+part of host and pay for the enjoyment of others.  His dinners were
+elaborate affairs, where the sages and poets and wits of that day (and
+sometimes their wives) gathered.  They were happy reunions, those fore-
+gatherings, though perhaps a more intimate enjoyment was found at the
+luncheons, where only two or three were invited, usually Aldrich,
+Howells, and Clemens, and the talk continued through the afternoon and
+into the deepening twilight, such company and such twilight as somehow
+one seems never to find any more.
+
+On one of the visits which Howells made to Hartford that year he took his
+son John, then a small boy, with him.  John was about six years old at
+the time, with his head full of stories of Aladdin, and of other Arabian
+fancies.  On the way over his father said to him:
+
+"Now, John, you will see a perfect palace."
+
+They arrived, and John was awed into silence by the magnificence and
+splendors of his surroundings until they went to the bath-room to wash
+off the dust of travel.  There he happened to notice a cake of pink soap.
+
+"Why," he said, "they've even got their soap painted!" Next morning he
+woke early--they were occupying the mahogany room on the ground floor--
+and slipping out through the library, and to the door of the dining-room,
+he saw the colored butler, George--the immortal George--setting the
+breakfast-table.  He hurriedly tiptoed back and whispered to his father:
+
+"Come quick!  The slave is setting the table!"
+
+This being the second mention of George, it seems proper here that he
+should be formally presented.  Clemens used to say that George came one
+day to wash windows and remained eighteen years.  He was precisely the
+sort of character that Mark Twain loved.  He had formerly been the body-
+servant of an army general and was typically racially Southern, with
+those delightful attributes of wit and policy and gentleness which go
+with the best type of negro character.  The children loved him no less
+than did their father.  Mrs. Clemens likewise had a weakness for George,
+though she did not approve of him.  George's morals were defective.  He
+was an inveterate gambler.  He would bet on anything, though prudently
+and with knowledge.  He would investigate before he invested.  If he
+placed his money on a horse, he knew the horse's pedigree and the
+pedigree of the horses against it, also of their riders.  If he invested
+in an election, he knew all about the candidates.  He had agents among
+his own race, and among the whites as well, to supply him with
+information.  He kept them faithful to him by lending them money--at
+ruinous interest.  He buttonholed Mark Twain's callers while he was
+removing their coats concerning the political situation, much to the
+chagrin of Mrs. Clemens, who protested, though vainly, for the men liked
+George and his ways, and upheld him in his iniquities.
+
+Mrs. Clemens's disapproval of George reached the point, now and then,
+where she declared he could not remain.
+
+She even discharged him once, but next morning George was at the
+breakfast-table, in attendance, as usual.  Mrs. Clemens looked at him
+gravely:
+
+"George," she said, "didn't I discharge you yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, Mis' Clemens, but I knew you couldn't get along without me, so I
+thought I'd better stay a while."
+
+In one of the letters to Howells, Clemens wrote:
+
+When George first came he was one of the most religious of men.  He had
+but one fault--young George Washington's.  But I have trained him; and
+now it fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens's heart to hear him stand at that front
+door and lie to an unwelcome visitor.
+
+George was a fine diplomat.  He would come up to the billiard-room with a
+card or message from some one waiting below, and Clemens would fling his
+soul into a sultry denial which became a soothing and balmy subterfuge
+before it reached the front door.
+
+The "slave" must have been setting the table in good season, for the
+Clemens breakfasts were likely to be late.  They usually came along about
+nine o'clock, by which time Howells and John were fairly clawing with
+hunger.
+
+Clemens did not have an early appetite, but when it came it was a good
+one.  Breakfast and dinner were his important meals.  He seldom ate at
+all during the middle of the day, though if guests were present he would 
+join them at luncheon-time and walk up and down while they were eating,
+talking and gesticulating in his fervent, fascinating way.  Sometimes
+Mrs. Clemens would say:
+
+"Oh, Youth, do come and sit down with us.  We can listen so much better."
+
+But he seldom did.  At dinner, too, it was his habit, between the
+courses, to rise from the table and walk up and down the room, waving his
+napkin and talking!--talking in a strain and with a charm that he could
+never quite equal with his pen.  It's the opinion of most people who knew
+Mark Twain personally that his impromptu utterances, delivered with that
+ineffable quality of speech, manifested the culmination of his genius.
+
+When Clemens came to Boston the Howells household was regulated, or
+rather unregulated, without regard to former routine.  Mark Twain's
+personality was of a sort that unconsciously compelled the general
+attendance of any household.  The reader may recall Josh Billings's
+remark on the subject.  Howells tells how they kept their guest to
+themselves when he visited their home in Cambridge, permitting him to
+indulge in as many unconventions as he chose; how Clemens would take a
+room at the Parker House, leaving the gas burning day and night, and
+perhaps arrive at Cambridge, after a dinner or a reading, in evening
+dress and slippers, and joyously remain with them for a day or more in
+that guise, slipping on an overcoat and a pair of rubbers when they went
+for a walk.  Also, how he smoked continuously in every room of the house,
+smoked during every waking moment, and how Howells, mindful of his
+insurance, sometimes slipped in and removed the still-burning cigar after
+he was asleep.
+
+Clemens had difficulty in getting to sleep in that earlier day, and for a
+time found it soothing to drink a little champagne on retiring.  Once,
+when he arrived in Boston, Howells said:
+
+"Clemens, we've laid in a bottle of champagne for you."
+
+But he answered:
+
+"Oh, that's no good any more.  Beer's the thing."
+
+So Howells provided the beer, and always afterward had a vision of his
+guest going up-stairs that night with a pint bottle under each arm.
+
+He invented other methods of inducing slumber as the years went by, and
+at one time found that this precious boon came more easily when he
+stretched himself on the bath-room floor.
+
+He was a perpetual joy to the Howells family when he was there, even
+though the household required a general reorganization when he was gone.
+
+Mildred Howells remembers how, as a very little girl, her mother
+cautioned her not to ask for anything she wanted at the table when
+company was present, but to speak privately of it to her.  Miss Howells
+declares that while Mark Twain was their guest she nearly starved because
+it was impossible to get her mother's attention; and Mrs. Howells, after
+one of those visits of hilarity and disorder, said:
+
+"Well, it 'most kills me, but it pays," a remark which Clemens vastly
+enjoyed.  Howells himself once wrote:
+
+Your visit was a perfect ovation for us; we never enjoy anything so much
+as those visits of yours.  The smoke and the Scotch and the late hours
+almost kill us; but we look each other in the eyes when you are gone, and
+say what a glorious time it was, and air the library, and begin sleeping
+and longing to have you back again....
+
+
+
+
+CVIII
+
+SUMMER LABORS AT QUARRY FARM
+
+They went to Elmira, that summer of '76, to be "hermits and eschew caves
+and live in the sun," as Clemens wrote in a letter to Dr. Brown.  They
+returned to the place as to Paradise: Clemens to his study and the books
+which he always called for, Mrs. Clemens to a blessed relief from social
+obligations, the children to the shady play-places, the green, sloping
+hill, where they could race and tumble, and to all their animal friends.
+
+Susy was really growing up.  She had had several birthdays, quite grand
+affairs, when she had been brought down in the morning, decked, and with
+proper ceremonies, with subsequent celebration.  She was a strange,
+thoughtful child, much given to reflecting on the power and presence of
+infinity, for she was religiously taught.  Down in the city, one night,
+there was a grand display of fireworks, and the hilltop was a good place
+from which to enjoy it; but it grew late after a little, and Susy was
+ordered to bed.  She said, thoughtfully:
+
+"I wish I could sit up all night, as God does."
+
+The baby, whom they still called "Bay," was a tiny, brown creature who
+liked to romp in the sun and be rocked to sleep at night with a song. 
+Clemens often took them for extended' walks, pushing Bay in her carriage. 
+Once, in a preoccupied moment, he let go of the little vehicle and it
+started downhill, gaining speed rapidly.
+
+He awoke then, and set off in wild pursuit.  Before he could overtake the
+runaway carriage it had turned to the roadside and upset.  Bay was lying
+among the stones and her head was bleeding.  Hastily binding the wound
+with a handkerchief he started full speed with her up the hill toward the
+house, calling for restoratives as he came.  It was no serious matter. 
+The little girl was strong and did not readily give way to affliction.
+
+The children were unlike: Susy was all contemplation and nerves; Bay
+serene and practical.  It was said, when a pet cat died--this was some
+years later--that Susy deeply reflected as to its life here and
+hereafter, while Bay was concerned only as to the style of its funeral. 
+Susy showed early her father's quaintness of remark.  Once they bought
+her a heavier pair of shoes than she approved of.  She was not in the
+best of humors during the day, and that night, when at prayer-time her
+mother said, "Now, Susy, put your thoughts on God," she answered, " Mama,
+I can't with those shoes."
+
+Clemens worked steadily that summer and did a variety of things.  He had
+given up a novel, begun with much enthusiasm, but he had undertaken
+another long manuscript.  By the middle of August he had written several
+hundred pages of a story which was to be a continuation of Tam Sawyer--
+The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Now, here is a curious phase of 
+genius.  The novel which for a time had filled him with enthusiasm and
+faith had no important literary value, whereas, concerning this new tale,
+he says:
+
+"I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have gone, and may possibly
+pigeonhole or burn the manuscript when it is done"--this of the story
+which, of his books of pure fiction, will perhaps longest survive.  He
+did, in fact, give the story up, and without much regret, when it was
+about half completed, and let it lie unfinished for years.
+
+He wrote one short tale, "The Canvasser's Story," a burlesque of no
+special distinction, and he projected for the Atlantic a scheme of
+"blindfold novelettes," a series of stories to be written by well-known
+authors and others, each to be constructed on the same plot.  One can
+easily imagine Clemens's enthusiasm over a banal project like that; his
+impulses were always rainbow-hued, whether valuable or not; but it is
+curious that Howells should welcome and even encourage an enterprise so
+far removed from all the traditions of art.  It fell to pieces, at last,
+of inherent misconstruction.  The title was to be, "A Murder and a
+Marriage."  Clemens could not arrive at a logical climax that did not
+bring the marriage and the hanging on the same day.
+
+The Atlantic started its "Contributors' Club," and Howells wrote to
+Clemens for a paragraph or more of personal opinion on any subject,
+assuring him that he could "spit his spite" out at somebody or something
+as if it were a passage from a letter.  That was a fairly large
+permission to give Mark Twain.  The paragraph he sent was the sort of
+thing he would write with glee, and hug himself over in the thought of
+Howells's necessity of rejecting it.  In the accompanying note he said:
+
+Say, Boss, do you want this to lighten up your old freight-train with?
+I suppose you won't, but then it won't take long to say, so.
+
+He was always sending impossible offerings to the magazines; innocently
+enough sometimes, but often out of pure mischievousness.  Yet they were
+constantly after him, for they knew they were likely to get a first-water
+gem.  Mary Mopes Dodge, of St. Nicholas, wrote time and again, and
+finally said:
+
+"I know a man who was persecuted by an editor till he went distracted."
+
+In his reading that year at the farm he gave more than customary
+attention to one of his favorite books, Pepys' Diary, that captivating
+old record which no one can follow continuously without catching the
+infection of its manner and the desire of imitation.  He had been reading
+diligently one day, when he determined to try his hand on an imaginary
+record of conversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the
+phrase of the period.  The result was Fireside Conversation in the Time
+of Queen Elizabeth, or, as he later called it, 1601.  The "conversation,"
+recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the
+outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside
+sociabilities were limited only by the range of loosened fancy,
+vocabulary, and physical performance, and not by any bounds of
+convention.  Howells has spoken of Mark Twain's "Elizabethan breadth of
+parlance," and how he, Howells, was always hiding away in discreet holes
+and corners the letters in which Clemens had "loosed his bold fancy to
+stoop on rank suggestion."  " I could not bear to burn them," he
+declares, "and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to look
+at them."
+
+In the 1601 Mark Twain outdid himself in the Elizabethan field.  It was
+written as a letter to that robust divine, Rev. Joseph Twichell, who had
+no special scruples concerning Shakespearian parlance and customs. 
+Before it was mailed it was shown to David Gray, who was spending a
+Sunday at Elmira.  Gray said:
+
+"Print it and put your name to it, Mark.  You have never done a greater
+piece of work than that."
+
+John Hay, whom it also reached in due time, pronounce it a classic--a
+"most exquisite bit of old English morality."  Hay surreptitiously
+permitted some proofs to be made of it, and it has been circulated
+privately, though sparingly, ever since.  At one time a special font of
+antique type was made for it and one hundred copies were taken on hand-
+made paper.  They would easily bring a hundred dollars each to-day.
+
+1601 is a genuine classic, as classics of that sort go.  It is better
+than the gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps, in some day to come,
+the taste that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this
+literary refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writings 
+of Mark Twain.  Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a
+matter of environment and point of view. --[In a note-book of a later
+period Clemens himself wrote:  "It depends on who writes a thing whether
+it is coarse or not.  I once wrote a conversation between Elizabeth,
+Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir W. Raleigh, Lord Bacon, Sir
+Nicholas Throckmorton, and a stupid old nobleman--this latter being cup-
+bearer to the queen and ostensible reporter of the talk.
+
+"There were four maids of honor present and a sweet young girl two years
+younger than the boy Beaumont.  I built a conversation which could have
+happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601.  I sent it
+anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and the sender! 
+But that man was a praiser of Rabelais, and had been saying, 'O that we
+had a Rabelais!'  I judged that I could furnish him one."]
+
+
+Eighteen hundred and seventy-six was a Presidential year--the year of the
+Hayes-Tilden campaign.  Clemens and Howells were both warm Republicans
+and actively interested in the outcome, Clemens, as he confessed, for the
+first time in his life.  Before his return to Hartford he announced
+himself publicly as a Hayes man, made so by Governor Hayes's letter of
+acceptance, which, he said, "expresses my own political convictions." 
+His politics had not been generally known up to that time, and a Tilden
+and Hendricks club in Jersey City had invited him to be present and give
+them some political counsel, at a flag-raising.  He wrote, declining
+pleasantly enough, then added:
+
+"You have asked me for some political counsel or advice: In view of Mr.
+Tilden's Civil War record my advice is not to raise the flag."
+
+He wrote Howells: "If Tilden is elected I think the entire country will
+go pretty straight to--Mrs. Howells's bad place."
+
+Howells was writing a campaign biography of Hayes, which he hoped would
+have a large sale, and Clemens urged him to get it out quickly and save
+the country.  Howells, working like a beaver, in turn urged Clemens to
+take the field in the cause.  Returning to Hartford, Clemens presided at
+a political rally and made a speech, the most widely quoted of the 
+campaign.  All papers, without distinction as to party, quoted it, and
+all readers, regardless of politics, read it with joy.
+
+Yet conditions did not improve.  When Howells's book had been out a
+reasonable length of time he wrote that it had sold only two thousand
+copies.
+
+"There's success for you," he said.  "It makes me despair of the
+Republic, I can tell you."
+
+Clemens, however, did not lose faith, and went on shouting for Hayes and
+damning Tilden till the final vote was cast.  In later life he changed
+his mind about Tilden (as did many others) through sympathy.  Sympathy
+could make--Mark Twain change his mind any time.  He stood for the right,
+but, above all, for justice.  He stood for the wronged, regardless of all
+other things.
+
+
+
+
+CIX
+
+THE PUBLIC APPEARANCE OF "TOM SAWYER"
+
+Clemens gave a few readings in Boston and Philadelphia, but when urged to
+go elsewhere made the excuse that he was having his portrait painted and
+could not leave home.
+
+As a matter of fact, he was enjoying himself with Frank Millet, who had
+been invited to the house to do the portrait and had captured the fervent
+admiration of the whole family.  Millet was young, handsome, and lively;
+Clemens couldn't see enough of him, the children adored him and added his
+name to the prayer which included each member of the household--the "Holy
+Family," Clemens called it.
+
+Millet had brought with him but one piece of canvas for the portrait, and
+when the first sketch was finished Mrs. Clemens was so delighted with it
+that she did not wish him to touch it again.  She was afraid of losing
+some particular feeling in it which she valued.  Millet went to the city. 
+for another canvas and Clemens accompanied him.  While Millet was doing
+his shopping it happened to occur to Clemens that it would be well to
+fill in the time by having his hair cut.  He left word with a clerk to
+tell Millet that he had gone across the street.  By and by the artist
+came over, and nearly wept with despair when he saw his subject sheared
+of the auburn, gray-sprinkled aureola that had made his first sketch a
+success.  He tried it again, and the result was an excellent likeness,
+but it never satisfied Millet.
+
+The 'Adventures of Tom Sawyer' appeared late in December (1876), and
+immediately took its place as foremost of American stories of boy life,
+a place which it unquestionably holds to this day.  We have already
+considered the personal details of this story, for they were essentially
+nothing more than the various aspects of Mark Twain's own boyhood.  It is
+only necessary to add a word concerning the elaboration of this period in
+literary form.
+
+>From every point it is a masterpiece, this picture of boy life in a
+little lazy, drowsy town, with all the irresponsibility and general
+disreputability of boy character coupled with that indefinable, formless,
+elusive something we call boy conscience, which is more likely to be boy
+terror and a latent instinct of manliness.  These things are so truly
+portrayed that every boy and man reader finds the tale fitting into his
+own remembered years, as if it had grown there.  Every boy has played off
+sick to escape school; every boy has reflected in his heart Tom's picture
+of himself being brought home dead, and gloated over the stricken
+consciences of those who had blighted his young life; every boy--of that
+day, at least--every normal, respectable boy, grew up to "fear God and
+dread the Sunday-school," as Howells puts it in his review.
+
+As for the story itself, the narrative of it, it is pure delight.  The
+pirate camp on the island is simply boy heaven.  What boy, for instance,
+would not change any other glory or boon that the world holds for this:
+
+     They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty
+     steps within the somber depths of the forest, and then cooked some
+     bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn
+     "pone" stock they had brought.  It seemed glorious sport to be
+     feasting in that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an
+     unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and
+     they said they never would return to civilization.  The climbing
+     fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared
+     tree-trunks of their forest-temple, and upon the varnished foliage
+     and the festooning vines.
+
+There is a magic in it.  Mark Twain, when he wrote it, felt renewed in
+him all the old fascination of those days and nights with Tom
+Blankenship, John Briggs, and the Bowen boys on Glasscock's Island. 
+Everywhere in Tom Sawyer there is a quality, entirely apart from the
+humor and the narrative, which the younger reader is likely to overlook. 
+No one forgets the whitewashing scene, but not many of us, from our early
+reading, recall this delicious bit of description which introduces it:
+
+     The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms
+     filled the air.  Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was
+     green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a
+     delectable land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
+
+Tom's night visit home; the graveyard scene, with the murder of Dr.
+Robinson; the adventures of Tom and Becky in the cave--these are all
+marvelously invented.  Literary thrill touches the ultimate in one
+incident of the cave episode.  Brander Matthews has written:
+
+     Nor is there any situation quite as thrilling as that awful moment
+     in the cave when the boy and girl are lost in the darkness, and when
+     Tom suddenly sees a human hand bearing a light, and then finds that
+     the hand is the hand of Indian Joe, his one mortal enemy.  I have
+     always thought that the vision of the hand in the cave in Tom Sawyer
+     was one of the very finest things in the literature of adventure
+     since Robinson Crusoe first saw a single footprint in the sand of
+     the sea-shore.
+
+Mark Twain's invention was not always a reliable quantity, but with that
+eccentricity which goes with any attribute of genius, it was likely at
+any moment to rise supreme.  If to the critical, hardened reader the tale
+seems a shade overdone here and there, a trifle extravagant in its
+delineations, let him go back to his first long-ago reading of it and see
+if he recalls anything but his pure delight in it then.  As a boy's story
+it has not been equaled.
+
+Tom Sawyer has ranked in popularity with Roughing It.
+
+Its sales go steadily on from year to year, and are likely to continue so
+long as boys and girls do not change, and men and women remember.
+
+--[Col.  Henry Watterson, when he finished Tom Sawyer, wrote:  "I have
+just laid down Tom Sawyer, and cannot resist the pressure.  It is
+immense!  I read every word of it, didn't skip a line, and nearly
+disgraced myself several times in the presence of a sleeping-car full of
+honorable and pious people.  Once I had to get to one side and have a
+cry, and as for an internal compound of laughter and tears there was no
+end to it....  The 'funeral' of the boys, the cave business, and the hunt
+for the hidden treasure are as dramatic as anything I know of in fiction,
+while the pathos--particularly everything relating to Huck and Aunt
+Polly--makes a cross between Dickens's skill and Thackeray's nature,
+which, resembling neither, is thoroughly impressive and original."]
+
+
+
+
+CX
+
+MARK TWAIN AND BRET HARTE WRITE A PLAY
+
+It was the fall and winter of '76 that Bret Harte came to Hartford and
+collaborated with Mark Twain on the play "Ah Sin," a comedy-drama, or
+melodrama, written for Charles T. Parsloe, the great impersonator of
+Chinese character.  Harte had written a successful play which
+unfortunately he had sold outright for no great sum, and was eager for
+another venture.  Harte had the dramatic sense and constructive
+invention.  He also had humor, but he felt the need of the sort of humor
+that Mark Twain could furnish.  Furthermore, he believed that a play
+backed by both their reputations must start with great advantages. 
+Clemens also realized these things, and the arrangement was made. 
+Speaking of their method of working, Clemens once said:
+
+"Well, Bret came down to Hartford and we talked it over, and then Bret
+wrote it while I played billiards, but of course I had to go over it to
+get the dialect right.  Bret never did know anything about dialect." 
+Which is hardly a fair statement of the case.  They both worked on the
+play, and worked hard.
+
+During the, period of its construction Harte had an order for a story
+which he said he must finish at once, as he needed the money.  It must be
+delivered by the following night, and he insisted that he must be getting
+at it without a moment's delay.  Still he seemed in no haste to begin. 
+The evening passed; bedtime came.  Then he asked that an open fire might
+be made in his room and a bottle of whisky sent up, in case he needed. 
+something to keep him awake.  George attended to these matters, and
+nothing more was heard of Harte until very early next morning, when he
+rang for George and asked for a fresh fire and an additional supply of
+whisky.  At breakfast-time he appeared, fresh, rosy, and elate, with the
+announcement that his story was complete.
+
+That forenoon the Saturday Morning Club met at the Clemens home.  It was
+a young women's club, of which Mark Twain was a sort of honorary member--
+a club for the purpose of intellectual advancement, somewhat on the order
+of the Monday Evening Club of men, except that the papers read before it
+were not prepared by members, but by men and women prominent in some
+field of intellectual progress.  Bret Harte had agreed to read to them on
+this particular occasion, and he gaily appeared and gave them the story
+just finished, "Thankful Blossom," a tale which Mark Twain always
+regarded as one of Harte's very best.
+
+The new play, "Ah Sin," by Mark Twain and Bret Harte, was put on at
+Washington, at the National Theater, on the evening of May 7, 1877.  It
+had been widely exploited in the newspapers, and the fame of the authors
+insured a crowded opening.  Clemens was unable to go over on account of a
+sudden attack of bronchitis.  Parsloe was nervous accordingly, and the
+presence of Harte does not seem to have added to his happiness.
+
+"I am not very well myself," he wrote to Clemens.  "The excitement of the
+first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with Harte that I
+have is too much for a new beginner."
+
+Nevertheless, the play seems to have gone well, with Parsloe as Ah Sin--
+a Chinese laundryman who was also a great number of other diverting
+things--with a fair support and a happy-go-lucky presentation of frontier
+life, which included a supposed murder, a false accusation, and a general
+clearing-up of mystery by the pleasant and wily and useful and
+entertaining Ah Sin.  It was not a great play.  It was neither very
+coherent nor convincing, but it had a lot of good fun in it, with
+character parts which, if not faithful to life, were faithful enough to
+the public conception of it to be amusing and exciting.  At the end of
+each act not only Parsloe, but also the principal members of the company,
+were called before the curtain for special acknowledgments.  When it was
+over there was a general call for Ah Sin, who came before the curtain and
+read a telegram.
+
+CHARLES T. PARSLOE,--I am on the sick-list, and therefore cannot come to
+Washington; but I have prepared two speeches--one to deliver in event of
+failure of the play, and the other if successful.  Please tell me which I
+shall send.  May be better to put it to vote.
+
+                                        MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+The house cheered the letter, and when it was put to vote decided
+unanimously that the play had been a success--a verdict more kindly than
+true.
+
+J. I. Ford, of the theater management, wrote to Clemens, next morning
+after the first performance, urging him to come to Washington in person
+and "wet nurse" the play until "it could do for itself."
+
+Ford expressed satisfaction with the play and its prospects, and
+concludes:
+
+I inclose notices.  Come if you can.  "Your presence will be worth ten
+thousand men.  The king's name is a tower of strength."  I have urged the
+President to come to-night.
+
+The play made no money in Washington, but Augustin Daly decided to put it
+on in New York at the Fifth Avenue Theater, with a company which
+included, besides Parsloe, Edmund Collier, P. A. Anderson, Dora
+Goldthwaite, Henry Crisp, and Mrs. Wells, a very worthy group of players
+indeed.  Clemens was present at the opening, dressed in white, which he
+affected only for warm-weather use in those days, and made a speech at
+the end of the third act.
+
+"Ah Sin" did not excite much enthusiasm among New York dramatic critics. 
+The houses were promising for a time, but for some reason the performance
+as a whole did not contain the elements of prosperity.  It set out on its
+provincial travels with no particular prestige beyond the reputation of
+its authors; and it would seem that this was not enough, for it failed to
+pay, and all parties concerned presently abandoned it to its fate and it
+was heard of no more.  Just why "Ah Sin" did not prosper it would not
+become us to decide at this far remove of time and taste.  Poorer plays
+have succeeded and better plays have failed since then, and no one has
+ever been able to demonstrate the mystery.  A touch somewhere, a pulling-
+about and a readjustment, might have saved "Ali Sin," but the pullings
+and haulings which they gave it did not.  Perhaps it still lies in some
+managerial vault, and some day may be dragged to light and reconstructed
+and recast, and come into its reward.  Who knows?  Or it may have drifted
+to that harbor of forgotten plays, whence there is no returning.
+
+As between Harte and Clemens, the whole matter was unfortunate.  In the
+course of their association there arose a friction and the long-time
+friendship disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CXI
+
+A BERMUDA HOLIDAY
+
+On the 16th of May, 1877, Mark Twain set out on what, in his note-book,
+he declared to be "the first actual pleasure-trip" he had ever taken,
+meaning that on every previous trip he had started with a purpose other
+than that of mere enjoyment.  He took with him his, friend and pastor,
+the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, and they sailed for Bermuda, an island
+resort not so well known or so fashionable as to-day.
+
+They did not go to a hotel.  Under assumed names they took up quarters in
+a boarding-house, with a Mrs. Kirkham, and were unmolested and altogether
+happy in their wanderings through four golden days.  Mark Twain could not
+resist keeping a note-book, setting down bits of scenery and character
+and incident, just as he had always done.  He was impressed with the
+cheapness of property and living in the Bermuda of that period.  He makes
+special mention of some cottages constructed of coral blocks: "All as
+beautiful and as neat as a pin, at the cost of four hundred and eighty
+dollars each."  To Twichell he remarked:
+
+"Joe, this place is like Heaven, and I'm going to make the most of it."
+
+"Mark," said Twichell, "that's right; make the most of a place that is
+like Heaven while you have a chance."
+
+In one of the entries--the final one--Clemens says:
+
+"Bermuda is free (at present) from the triple curse of railways,
+telegraphs, and newspapers, but this will not last the year.  I propose
+to spend next year here and no more."
+
+When they were ready to leave, and started for the steamer, Twichell made
+an excuse to go back, his purpose being to tell their landlady and her
+daughter that, without knowing it, they had been entertaining Mark Twain.
+
+"Did you ever hear of Mark Twain,?" asked Twichell.
+
+The daughter answered.
+
+"Yes," she said, "until I'm tired of the name.  I know a young man who
+never talks of anything else."
+
+"Well," said Twichell, "that gentleman with me is Mark Twain."
+
+The Kirkhams declined to believe it at first, and then were in deep
+sorrow that they had not known it earlier.  Twichell promised that he and
+Clemens would come back the next year; and they meant to go back--we
+always mean to go back to places--but it was thirty years before they
+returned at last, and then their pleasant landlady was dead.
+
+On the home trip they sighted a wandering vessel, manned by blacks,
+trying to get to New York.  She had no cargo and was pretty helpless. 
+Later, when she was reported again, Clemens wrote about it in a Hartford
+paper, telling the story as he knew it.  The vessel had shipped the crew,
+on a basis of passage to New York, in exchange for labor.  So it was a
+"pleasure-excursion!" Clemens dwelt on this fancy:
+
+     I have heard of a good many pleasure-excursions, but this heads the
+     list.  It is monumental, and if ever the tired old tramp is found I
+     should like to be there and see him in his sorrowful rags and his
+     venerable head of grass and seaweed, and hear the ancient mariners
+     tell the story of their mysterious wanderings through the solemn
+     solitudes of the ocean.
+
+Long afterward this vagrant craft was reported again, still drifting with
+the relentless Gulf Stream.  Perhaps she reached New York in time; one
+would like to know, but there seems no good way to find out.
+
+That first Bermuda voyage was always a happy memory to Mark Twain.  To
+Twichell he wrote that it was the "joyousest trip" he had ever made:
+
+     Not a heartache anywhere, not a twinge of conscience.  I often come
+     to myself out of a reverie and detect an undertone of thought that
+     had been thinking itself without volition of mind--viz., that if we
+     had only had ten days of those walks and talks instead of four.
+
+There was but one regret: Howells had not been with them.  Clemens
+denounced him for his absence:
+
+     If you had gone with us and let me pay the fifty dollars, which the
+     trip and the board and the various knick-knacks and mementos would
+     cost, I would have picked up enough droppings from your conversation
+     to pay me five hundred per cent. profit in the way of the several
+     magazine articles which I could have written; whereas I can now
+     write only one or two, and am therefore largely out of pocket by
+     your proud ways.
+
+Clemens would not fail to write about his trip.  He could not help doing
+that, and he began "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" as soon as
+he landed in Hartford.  They were quite what the name would signify--
+leisurely, pleasant commentaries on a loafing, peaceful vacation.  They
+are not startling in their humor or description, but are gently amusing
+and summery, reflecting, bubble-like, evanescent fancies of Bermuda. 
+Howells, shut up in a Boston editorial office, found them delightful
+enough, and very likely his Atlantic readers agreed with him.  The story
+of "Isaac and the Prophets of Baal" was one that Capt. Ned Wakeman had
+told to Twichell during a voyage which the latter had made to Aspinwall
+with that vigorous old seafarer; so in the "Rambling Notes" Wakeman
+appears as Captain Hurricane Jones, probably a step in the evolution of
+the later name of Stormfield.  The best feature of the series (there were
+four papers in all) is a story of a rescue in mid-ocean; but surely the
+brightest ripple of humor is the reference to Bermuda's mahogany-tree:
+
+     There was exactly one mahogany-tree on the island.  I know this to
+     be reliable because I saw a man who said he had counted it many a
+     time and could not be mistaken.  He was a man with a haze lip and a
+     pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel.  Such men
+     are all too few.
+
+Clemens cared less for these papers than did Howells.  He had serious
+doubts about the first two and suggested their destruction, but with
+Howells's appreciation his own confidence in them returned and he let
+them all go in.  They did not especially advance his reputation, but
+perhaps they did it no harm.
+
+
+
+
+CXII
+
+A NEW PLAY AND A NEW TALE
+
+He wrote a short story that year which is notable mainly for the fact
+that in it the telephone becomes a literary property, probably for the
+first time.  "The Loves of Alonzo Fitz-Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton"
+employed in the consummation what was then a prospect, rather than a
+reality--long-distance communication.
+
+His work that summer consisted mainly of two extensive undertakings, one
+of which he completed without delay.  He still had the dramatic ambition,
+and he believed that he was capable now of constructing a play entirely
+from his own resources.
+
+To Howells, in June, he wrote:
+
+To-day I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning--principal
+character an old detective.  I skeletoned the first act and wrote the
+second to-day, and am dog-tired now.  Fifty-four pages of MS. in seven
+hours.
+
+Seven days later, the Fourth of July, he said:
+
+I have piled up one hundred and fifty-one pages on my comedy.  The first,
+second and fourth acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too.  To-
+morrow and next day will finish the third act, and the play.  Never had
+so much fun over anything in my life never such consuming interest and
+delight.  And just think!  I had Sol Smith Russell in my mind's eye for
+the old detective's part, and bang it! he has gone off pottering with
+Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.
+
+He was working with enthusiasm, you see, believing in it with a faith
+which, alas, was no warrant for its quality.  Even Howells caught his
+enthusiasm and became eager to see the play, and to have the story it
+contained told for the Atlantic.
+
+But in the end it proved a mistake.  Dion Boucicault, when he read the
+manuscript, pronounced it better than "Ah Sin," but that was only
+qualified praise.  Actors who considered the play, anxious enough to have
+Mark Twain's name on their posters and small bills, were obliged to admit
+that, while it contained marvelous lines, it wouldn't "go."  John
+Brougham wrote:
+
+     There is an absolute "embarrassment of riches" in your "Detective "
+     most assuredly, but the difficulty is to put it into profitable
+     form.  The quartz is there in abundance, only requiring the
+     necessary manipulation to extract the gold.
+
+     In narrative structure the story would be full of life, character,
+     and the most exuberant fun, but it is altogether too diffuse in its
+     present condition for dramatic representation, and I confess I do
+     not feel sufficient confidence in my own experience (even if I had
+     the time, which on reflection I find I have not) to undertake what,
+     under different circumstances, would be a "labor of love."  
+
+                              Yours sincerely,    JOHN BROUGHAM.
+
+
+That was frank, manly, and to the point; it covered the ground exactly. 
+"Simon Wheeler, the Amateur Detective," had plenty of good material in
+it--plenty of dialogue and situations; but the dialogue wouldn't play,
+and the situations wouldn't act.  Clemens realized that perhaps the drama
+was not, after all, his forte; he dropped "Simon Wheeler," lost his
+interest in "Ah Sin," even leased "Colonel Sellers" for the coming
+season, and so, in a sort of fury, put theatrical matters out of his
+mind.
+
+He had entered upon what, for him, was a truer domain.  One day he picked
+up from among the books at the farm a little juvenile volume, an English
+story of the thirteenth century by Charlotte M. Yonge, entitled, The
+Prince and the Page.  It was a story of Edward I. and his cousins,
+Richard and Henry de Montfort; in part it told of the submerged
+personality of the latter, picturing him as having dwelt in disguise as
+a blind beggar for a period of years.  It was a story of a sort and with
+a setting that Mark Twain loved, and as he read there came a correlative
+idea.  Not only would he disguise a prince as a beggar, but a beggar as
+a prince.  He would have them change places in the world, and each learn
+the burdens of the other's life. --[There is no point of resemblance
+between the Prince and the Pauper and the tale that inspired it.  No one
+would ever guess that the one had grown out of the readings of the other,
+and no comparison of any sort is possible between them.]
+
+The plot presented physical difficulties.  He still had some lurking
+thought of stage performance, and saw in his mind a spectacular
+presentation, with all the costumery of an early period as background for
+a young and beautiful creature who would play the part of prince.  The
+old device of changelings in the cradle (later used in Pudd'nhead Wilson)
+presented itself to him, but it could not provide the situations he had
+in mind.  Finally came the thought of a playful interchange of raiment
+and state (with startling and unlooked-for consequence)--the guise and
+personality of Tom Canty, of Offal Court, for those of the son of Henry
+VIII., little Edward Tudor, more lately sixth English king of that name. 
+This little prince was not his first selection for the part.  His
+original idea had been to use the late King Edward VII. (then Prince of
+Wales) at about fifteen, but he found that it would never answer to lose
+a prince among the slums of modern London, and have his proud estate
+denied and jeered at by a modern mob.  He felt that he could not make it
+seem real; so he followed back through history, looking along for the
+proper time and prince, till he came to little Edward, who was too young
+--but no matter, he would do.
+
+He decided to begin his new venture in story form.  He could dramatize it
+later.  The situation appealed to him immensely.  The idea seemed a
+brand-new one; it was delightful, it was fascinating, and he was
+saturated with the atmosphere and literature and history--the data and
+detail of that delightful old time.  He put away all thought of cheap,
+modern play-acting and writing, to begin one of the loveliest and most
+entertaining and instructive tales of old English life.  He decided to be
+quite accurate in his picture of the period, and he posted himself on old
+London very carefully.  He bought a pocket-map which he studied in the
+minutest detail.
+
+He wrote about four hundred manuscript pages of the tale that summer;
+then, as the inspiration seemed to lag a little, put it aside, as was his
+habit, to wait until the ambition for it should be renewed.  It was a
+long wait, as usual.  He did not touch it again for more than three
+years.
+
+
+
+
+CXIII
+
+TWO DOMESTIC DRAMAS
+
+Some unusual happenings took place that summer of 1877.  John T. Lewis
+(colored), already referred to as the religious antagonist of Auntie
+Cord, by great presence of mind and bravery saved the lives of Mrs.
+Clemens's sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles ("Charley") Langdon, her little
+daughter Julia, and her nurse-maid.  They were in a buggy, and their
+runaway horse was flying down East Hill toward Elmira to certain
+destruction, when Lewis, laboring slowly homeward with a loaded wagon,
+saw them coming and turned his team across the road, after which he
+leaped out and with extraordinary strength and quickness grabbed the
+horse's bridle and brought him to a standstill.  The Clemens and Crane
+families, who had seen the runaway start at the farm gate, arrived half
+wild with fear, only to find the supposed victims entirely safe.
+
+Everybody contributed in rewarding Lewis.  He received money ($1,500) and
+various other presents, including inscribed books and trinkets, also,
+what he perhaps valued more than anything, a marvelous stem-winding gold
+watch.  Clemens, writing a full account to Dr. Brown of the watch, says:
+
+     And if any scoffer shall say, "behold this thing is out of
+     character," there is an inscription within which will silence him;
+     for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, not
+     the watch the wearer.
+
+In another paragraph he says:
+
+     When Lewis arrived the other evening, after having saved those lives
+     by a feat which I think is the most marvelous I can call to mind,
+     when he arrived hunched up on his manure-wagon and as grotesquely
+     picturesque as usual, everybody wanted to go and see how he looked. 
+     They came back and said he was beautiful.  It was so, too, and yet
+     he would have photographed exactly as he would have done any day
+     these past seven years that he has occupied this farm.
+
+Lewis acknowledged his gifts in a letter which closed with a paragraph of
+rare native loftiness:
+
+     But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine Providence saw fit
+     to use me as an instrument for the saving of those preshious lives,
+     the honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed.
+
+Lewis lived to enjoy his prosperity, and the honor of the Clemens and
+Langdon households, for twenty-nine years.  When he was too old to work
+there was a pension, to which Clemens contributed; also Henry H. Rogers. 
+So the simple-hearted, noble old negro closed his days in peace.
+
+Mrs. Crane, in a letter, late in July, 1906, told of his death:
+
+     He was always cheerful, and seemed not to suffer much pain, told
+     stories, and was able to eat almost everything.
+
+     Three days ago a new difficulty appeared, on account of which his
+     doctor said he must go to the hospital for care such as it was quite
+     impossible to give in his home.
+
+     He died on his way there.
+
+     Thus it happened that he died on the road where he had performed his
+     great deed.
+
+A second unusual incident of that summer occurred in Hartford.  There had
+been a report of a strange man seen about the Clemens place, thought to
+be a prospecting burglar, and Clemens went over to investigate.  A little
+searching inquiry revealed that the man was not a burglar, but a mechanic
+out of employment, a lover of one of the house-maids, who had given him
+food and shelter on the premises, intending no real harm.  When the girl
+found that her secret was discovered, she protested that he was her
+fiance, though she said he appeared lately to have changed his mind and
+no longer wished to marry her.
+
+The girl seemed heartbroken, and sympathy for her was naturally the first
+and about the only feeling which Clemens developed, for the time being. 
+He reasoned with the young man, but without making much headway.  Finally
+his dramatic instinct prompted him to a plan of a sort which would have
+satisfied even Tom Sawyer.  He asked Twichell to procure a license for
+the couple, and to conceal himself in a ground floor bath-room.  He
+arranged with the chief of police to be on hand in another room; with the
+rest of the servants quietly to prepare a wedding-feast, and finally with
+Lizzie herself to be dressed for the ceremony.  He had already made an
+appointment with the young man to come to, see him at a certain hour on a
+"matter of business," and the young man arrived in the belief, no doubt,
+that it was something which would lead to profitable employment.  When he
+came in Clemens gently and quietly reviewed the situation, told him of
+the young girl's love for him; how he had been sheltered and fed by her;
+how through her kindness to him she had compromised her reputation for
+honesty and brought upon her all the suspicion of having sheltered a
+burglar; how she was ready and willing to marry him, and how he (Clemens)
+was ready to assist them to obtain work and a start in life.
+
+But the young man was not enthusiastic.  He was a Swede and slow of
+action.  He resolutely declared that he was not ready to marry yet, and
+in the end refused to do so.  Then came the dramatic moment.  Clemens
+quietly but firmly informed him that the wedding ceremony must take
+place; that by infesting his premises he had broken the law, not only
+against trespass, but most likely against house-breaking.  There was a
+brief discussion of this point.  Finally Clemens gave him five minutes to
+make up his mind, with the statement that he had an officer in waiting,
+and unless he would consent to the wedding he would be taken in charge. 
+The young man began to temporize, saying that it would be necessary for
+him to get a license and a preacher.  But Clemens stepped to the door of
+the bath-room, opened it, and let out Twichell, who had been sweltering
+there in that fearful place for more than an hour, it being August.  The
+delinquent lover found himself confronted with all the requisites of
+matrimony except the bride, and just then this detail appeared on the
+scene, dressed for the occasion.  Behind her ranged the rest of the
+servants and a few invited guests.  Before the young man knew it he had a
+wife, and on the whole did not seem displeased.  It ended with a gay
+supper and festivities.  Then Clemens started them handsomely by giving
+each of them a check for one hundred dollars; and in truth (which in this
+case, at least, is stranger than fiction) they lived happily and
+prosperously ever after.
+
+Some years later Mark Twain based a story on this episode, but it was
+never entirely satisfactory and remains unpublished.
+
+
+
+
+CXIV
+
+THE WHITTIER BIRTHDAY SPEECH
+
+It was the night of December 17, 1877, that Mark Twain made his
+unfortunate speech at the dinner given by the Atlantic staff to John G. 
+Whittier on his seventieth birthday.  Clemens had attended a number of
+the dinners which the Atlantic gave on one occasion or another, and had
+provided a part of the entertainment.  It is only fair to say that his
+after-dinner speeches at such times had been regarded as very special
+events, genuine triumphs of humor and delivery.  But on this particular
+occasion he determined to outdo himself, to prepare something unusual,
+startling, something altogether unheard of.
+
+When Mark Twain had an impulse like that it was possible for it to result
+in something dangerous, especially in those earlier days.  This time it
+produced a bombshell; not just an ordinary bombshell, or even a twelve-
+inch projectile, but a shell of planetary size.  It was a sort of hoax-
+always a doubtful plaything--and in this case it brought even quicker and
+more terrible retribution than usual.  It was an imaginary presentation
+of three disreputable frontier tramps who at some time had imposed
+themselves on a lonely miner as Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes, quoting
+apposite selections from their verses to the accompaniment of cards and
+drink, and altogether conducting themselves in a most unsavory fashion. 
+At the end came the enlightenment that these were not what they pretended
+to be, but only impostors--disgusting frauds.  A feature like that would
+be a doubtful thing to try in any cultured atmosphere.  The thought of
+associating, ever so remotely, those three old bummers which he had
+conjured up with the venerable and venerated Emerson, Longfellow, and
+Holmes, the Olympian trinity, seems ghastly enough to-day, and must have
+seemed even more so then.  But Clemens, dazzled by the rainbow splendor
+of his conception, saw in it only a rare colossal humor, which would
+fairly lift and bear his hearers along on a tide of mirth.  He did not
+show his effort to any one beforehand.  He wanted its full beauty to
+burst upon the entire company as a surprise.
+
+It did that.  Howells was toastmaster, and when he came to present
+Clemens he took particular pains to introduce him as one of his foremost
+contributors and dearest friends.  Here, he said, was "a humorist who
+never left you hanging you head for having enjoyed his joke."
+
+Thirty years later Clemens himself wrote of his impressions as he rose to
+deliver his speech.
+
+     I vaguely remember some of the details of that gathering: dimly I
+     can see a hundred people--no, perhaps fifty--shadowy figures,
+     sitting at tables feeding, ghosts now to me, and nameless
+     forevermore.  I don't know who they were, but I can very distinctly
+     see, seated at the grand table and facing the rest of us, Mr.
+     Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave,
+     lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face; Mr.
+     Longfellow, with his silken-white hair and his benignant face; Dr.
+     Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-
+     fellowship everywhere, like a rose-diamond whose facets are being
+     turned toward the light, first one way and then another--a charming
+     man, and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he
+     was sitting still (what he would call still, but what would be more
+     or less motion to other people).  I can see those figures with
+     entire distinctiness across this abyss of time.
+
+William Winter, the poet, had just preceded him, and it seemed a moment
+aptly chosen for his so-different theme.  "And then," to quote Howells,
+"the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catastrophe was
+upon us."
+
+After the first two or three hundred words, when the general plan and
+purpose of the burlesque had developed, when the names of Longfellow,
+Emerson, and Holmes began to be flung about by those bleary outcasts, and
+their verses given that sorry association, those Atlantic diners became
+petrified with amazement and horror.  Too late, then, the speaker
+realized his mistake.  He could not stop, he must go on to the ghastly
+end.  And somehow he did it, while "there fell a silence weighing many
+tons to the square inch, which deepened from moment to moment, and was
+broken only by the hysterical and blood-curdling laughter of a single
+guest, whose name shall not be handed down to infamy."
+
+Howells can remember little more than that, but Clemens recalls that one
+speaker made an effort to follow him--Bishop, the novelist, and that
+Bishop didn't last long.
+
+     It was not many sentences after his first before he began to
+     hesitate and break, and lose his grip, and totter and wobble, and at
+     last he slumped down in a limp and mushy pile.
+
+The next man had not strength to rise, and somehow the company broke up.
+
+Howells's next recollection is of being in a room of the hotel, and of
+hearing Charles Dudley Warner saying in the gloom:
+
+"Well, Mark, you're a funny fellow."
+
+He remembers how, after a sleepless night, Clemens went out to buy some
+bric-a-brac, with a soul far from bric-a-brac, and returned to Hartford
+in a writhing agony of spirit.  He believed that he was ruined forever,
+so far as his Boston associations were concerned; and when he confessed
+all the tragedy to Mrs. Clemens it seemed to her also that the mistake
+could never be wholly repaired.  The fact that certain papers quoted the
+speech and spoke well of it, and certain readers who had not listened to
+it thought it enormously funny, gave very little comfort.  But perhaps
+his chief concern was the ruin which he believed he had brought upon
+Howells.  He put his heart into a brief letter:
+
+     MY DEAR HOWELLS,--My sense of disgrace does not abate.  It grows.
+     I see that it is going to add itself to my list of permanencies, a
+     list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years
+     old, and which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentances.
+
+     I feel that my misfortune has injured me all over the country;
+     therefore it will be best that I retire from before the public at
+     present.  It will hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages
+     now.  So it is my opinion, and my wife's, that the telephone story
+     had better be suppressed.  Will you return those proofs or revises
+     to me, so that I can use the same on some future occasion?
+
+     It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech and
+     saw no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced
+     so much.  And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in
+     introducing me!  It burns me like fire to think of it.
+
+     The whole matter is a dreadful subject.  Let me drop it here--at
+     least on paper.
+
+                                   Penitently yours,    MARK
+
+
+So, all in a moment, his world had come to an end--as it seemed.  But
+Howells's letter, which came rushing back by first mail, brought hope.
+
+"It was a fatality," Howells said.  "One of those sorrows into which a
+man walks with his eyes wide open, no one knows why."
+
+Howells assured him that Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes would so
+consider it, beyond doubt; that Charles Eliot Norton had already
+expressed himself exactly in the right spirit concerning it.  Howells
+declared that there was no intention of dropping Mark Twain's work from
+the Atlantic.
+
+     You are not going to be floored by it; there is more justice than
+     that even in this world.  Especially as regards me, just call the
+     sore spot well.  I can say more, and with better heart, in praise of
+     your good feeling (which was what I always liked in you), since this
+     thing happened than I could before.
+
+It was agreed that he should at once write a letter to Longfellow,
+Emerson, and Holmes, and he did write, laying his heart bare to them. 
+Longfellow and Holmes answered in a fine spirit of kindliness, and Miss
+Emerson wrote for her father in the same tone.  Emerson had not been
+offended, for he had not heard the speech, having arrived even then at
+that stage of semi-oblivion as to immediate things which eventually so
+completely shut him away.  Longfellow's letter made light of the whole
+matter.  The newspapers, he said, had caused all the mischief.
+
+     A bit of humor at a dinner-table talk is one thing; a report of it
+     in the morning papers is another.  One needs the lamplight and the
+     scenery.  These failing, what was meant in jest assumes a serious
+     aspect.
+
+     I do not believe that anybody was much hurt.  Certainly I was not,
+     and Holmes tells me that he was not.  So I think you may dismiss the
+     matter from your mind, without further remorse.
+
+     It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very
+     much.
+
+Holmes likewise referred to it as a trifle.
+
+     It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or to feel
+     wounded by your playful use of my name.  I have heard some mild
+     questioning as to whether, even in fun, it was good taste to
+     associate the names of the authors with the absurdly unlike
+     personalities attributed to them, but it seems to be an open
+     question.  Two of my friends, gentlemen of education and the highest
+     social standing, were infinitely amused by your speech, and stoutly
+     defended it against the charge of impropriety.  More than this, one
+     of the cleverest and best-known ladies we have among us was highly
+     delighted with it.
+
+Miss Emerson's letter was to Mrs. Clemens and its homelike New England
+fashion did much to lift the gloom.
+
+     DEAR MRS. CLEMENS,-- At New Year's our family always meets, to spend
+     two days together.  To-day my father came last, and brought with him
+     Mr. Clemens's letter, so that I read it to the assembled family, and
+     I have come right up-stairs to write to you about it.  My sister
+     said, "Oh, let father write!" but my mother said, "No, don't wait
+     for him.  Go now; don't stop to pick that up.  Go this minute and
+     write.  I think that is a noble letter.  Tell them so."  First let
+     me say that no shadow of indignation has ever been in any of our
+     minds.  The night of the dinner, my father says, he did not hear Mr.
+     Clemens's speech.  He was too far off, and my mother says that when
+     she read it to him the next day it amused him.  But what you will
+     want is to know, without any softening, how we did feel.  We were
+     disappointed.  We have liked almost everything we have ever seen
+     over Mark Twain's signature.  It has made us like the man, and we
+     have delighted in the fun.  Father has often asked us to repeat
+     certain passages of The Innocents Abroad, and of a speech at a
+     London dinner in 1872, and we all expect both to approve and to
+     enjoy when we see his name.  Therefore, when we read this speech it
+     was a real disappointment.  I said to my brother that it didn't seem
+     good or funny, and he said, "No, it was unfortunate.  Still some of
+     those quotations were very good"; and he gave them with relish and
+     my father laughed, though never having seen a card in his life, he
+     couldn't understand them like his children.  My mother read it
+     lightly and had hardly any second thoughts about it.  To my father
+     it is as if it had not been; he never quite heard, never quite
+     understood it, and he forgets easily and entirely.  I think it
+     doubtful whether he writes to Mr. Clemens, for he is old and long
+     ago gave up answering letters, I think you can see just how bad, and
+     how little bad, it was as far as we are concerned, and this lovely
+     heartbreaking letter makes up for our disappointment in our much-
+     liked author, and restores our former feeling about him.
+
+                                   ELLEN T.  EMERSON.
+
+
+The sorrow dulled a little as the days passed.  Just after Christmas
+Clemens wrote to Howells:
+
+     I haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner.  But I'm
+     going to try to-morrow.  How could I ever----
+
+     Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool.  But then I am God's fool,
+     and all his work must be contemplated with respect.
+
+So long as that unfortunate speech is remembered there will be
+differences of opinion as to its merits and propriety.  Clemens himself,
+reading it for the first time in nearly thirty years, said:
+
+"I find it gross, coarse--well, I needn't go on with particulars.  I
+don't like any part of it, from the beginning to the end.  I find it
+always offensive and detestable.  How do I account for this change of
+view?  I don't know."
+
+But almost immediately afterward he gave it another consideration and
+reversed his opinion completely.  All the spirit and delight of his old
+first conception returned, and preparing it for publication, he wrote:
+
+--[North American Review, December, 1907, now with comment included in
+the volume of "Speeches."  Also see Appendix O, at the end of last
+volume.]-- I have read it twice, and unless I am an idiot it hasn't a
+single defect in it, from the first word to the last.  It is just as good
+as good can be.  It is smart; it is saturated with humor.  There isn't a
+suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere.]
+
+It was altogether like Mark Twain to have those two absolutely opposing
+opinions in that brief time; for, after all, it was only a question of
+the human point of view, and Mark Twain's points of view were likely to
+be as extremely human as they were varied.
+
+Of course the first of these impressions, the verdict of the fresh mind
+uninfluenced by the old conception, was the more correct one.  The speech
+was decidedly out of place in that company.  The skit was harmless
+enough, but it was of the Comstock grain.  It lacked refinement, and,
+what was still worse, it lacked humor, at least the humor of a kind
+suited to that long-ago company of listeners.  It was another of those
+grievous mistakes which genius (and not talent) can make, for genius is a
+sort of possession.  The individual is pervaded, dominated for a time by
+an angel or an imp, and he seldom, of himself, is able to discriminate
+between his controls.  A literary imp was always lying in wait for Mark
+Twain; the imp of the burlesque, tempting him to do the 'outre', the
+outlandish, the shocking thing.  It was this that Olivia Clemens had to
+labor hardest against: the cheapening of his own high purpose with an
+extravagant false note, at which sincerity, conviction, and artistic
+harmony took wings and fled away.  Notably he did a good burlesque now
+and then, but his fame would not have suffered if he had been delivered
+altogether from his besetting temptation.
+
+
+
+
+CXV
+
+HARTFORD AND BILLIARDS
+
+Clemens was never much inclined to work, away from his Elmira study. 
+"Magnanimous Incident Literature" (for the Atlantic) was about his only
+completed work of the winter of 1877-78.  He was always tinkering with
+the "Visit to Heaven," and after one reconstruction Howells suggested
+that he bring it out as a book, in England, with Dean Stanley's
+indorsement, though this may have been only semi-serious counsel.  The
+story continued to lie in seclusion.
+
+Clemens had one new book in the field--a small book, but profitable.  Dan
+Slote's firm issued for him the Mark Twain Scrap-book, and at the end of
+the first royalty period rendered a statement of twenty-five thousand
+copies sold, which was well enough for a book that did not contain a
+single word that critics could praise or condemn.  Slote issued another
+little book for him soon after Punch, Brothers, Punch!--which, besides
+that lively sketch, contained the "Random Notes" and seven other
+selections.
+
+Mark Twain was tempted to go into the lecture field that winter, not by
+any of the offers, though these were numerous enough, but by the idea of
+a combination which he thought night be not only profitable but pleasant. 
+Thomas Nast had made a great success of his caricature lectures, and
+Clemens, recalling Nast's long-ago proposal, found it newly attractive. 
+He wrote characteristically:
+
+     MY DEAR NAST,-- I did not think I should ever stand on a platform 
+     again until the time was come for me to say, "I die innocent."  But
+     the same old offers keep arriving.  I have declined them all, just
+     as usual, though sorely tempted, as usual.
+
+     Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but
+     because (1) traveling alone is so heartbreakingly dreary, and (2)
+     shouldering the whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility.
+
+     Therefore, I now propose to you what you proposed to me in 1867, ten
+     years ago (when I was unknown)--viz., that you stand on the platform
+     and make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience. 
+     I should enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns--don't
+     want to go to the little ones), with you for company.
+
+     My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the
+     spoils, but to put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles,
+     and say to the artist and lecturer, "absorb these."
+
+     For instance, [here follows a plan and a possible list of the cities
+     to be visited].  The letter continues:
+
+     Call the gross receipts $100,00 for four months and a half, and the
+     profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large
+     enough, and leave it to the public to reduce them).
+
+     I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, and last
+     winter, when I made a little reading-trip, he only paid me $300, and
+     pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a
+     concert) cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn't afford any more.
+     I could get up a better concert with a barrel of cats.
+
+     I have imagined two or three pictures and concocted the accompanying
+     remarks, to see how the thing would go.  I was charmed.
+
+     Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line.  We should have
+     some fun.
+
+
+Undoubtedly this would have been a profitable combination, but Nast had a
+distaste for platforming--had given it up, as he thought, for life.  So
+Clemens settled down to the fireside days, that afforded him always the
+larger comfort.  The children were at an age "to be entertaining, and to
+be entertained.  In either case they furnished him plenty of diversion
+when he did not care to write.  They had learned his gift as a romancer,
+and with this audience he might be as extravagant as he liked.  They
+sometimes assisted by furnishing subjects.  They would bring him a
+picture, requiring him to invent a story for it without a moment's delay. 
+Sometimes they suggested the names of certain animals or objects, and
+demanded that these be made into a fairy tale.  If they heard the name of
+any new creature or occupation they were likely to offer them as
+impromptu inspiration.  Once he was suddenly required to make a story out
+of a plumber and a "bawgunstrictor," but he was equal to it.  On one side
+of the library, along the book-shelves that joined the mantelpiece, were 
+numerous ornaments and pictures.  At one end was the head of a girl, that
+they called "Emeline," and at the other was an oil-painting of a cat. 
+When other subjects failed, the romancer was obliged to build a story
+impromptu, and without preparation, beginning with the cat, working along
+through the bric-a-brac, and ending with"Emeline."  This was the
+unvarying program.  He was not allowed to begin with "Emeline" and end
+with the cat, and he was not permitted to introduce an ornament from any
+other portion of the room.  He could vary the story as much as he liked. 
+In fact, he was required to do that.  The trend of its chapters, from the
+cat to "Emeline," was a well-trodden and ever-entertaining way.
+
+He gave up his luxurious study to the children as a sort of nursery and
+playroom, and took up his writing-quarters, first in a room over the
+stables, then in the billiard-room, which, on the whole, he preferred to
+any other place, for it was a third-story remoteness, and he could knock
+the balls about for inspiration.
+
+The billiard-room became his headquarters.  He received his callers there
+and impressed them into the game.  If they could play, well and good; if
+they could not play, so much the better--he could beat them
+extravagantly, and he took a huge delight in such conquests.  Every
+Friday evening, or oftener, a small party of billiard-lovers gathered,
+and played until a late hour, told stories, and smoked till the room was
+blue, comforting themselves with hot Scotch and general good-fellowship. 
+Mark Twain always had a genuine passion for billiards.  He was never
+tired of the game.  He could play all night.  He would stay till the last
+man gave out from sheer weariness; then he would go on knocking the balls
+about alone.  He liked to invent new games and new rules for old games,
+often inventing a rule on the spur of the moment to fit some particular
+shot or position on the table.  It amused him highly to do this, to make
+the rule advantage his own play, and to pretend a deep indignation when
+his opponents disqualified his rulings and rode him down.  S. C. Dunham
+was among those who belonged to the "Friday Evening Club," as they called
+it, and Henry C. Robinson, long dead, and rare Ned Bunce, and F. G. 
+Whitmore; and the old room there at the top of the house, with its little
+outside balcony, rang with their voices and their laughter in that day
+when life and the world for them was young.  Clemens quoted to them
+sometimes:
+
+     Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring 
+     Your winter garment of repentance fling; 
+     The bird of time has but a little way 
+     To flutter, and the bird is on the wing.
+
+Omar was new then on this side of the Atlantic, and to his serene "eat,
+drink, and be merry" philosophy, in Fitzgerald's rhyme, these were early
+converts.  Mark Twain had an impressive, musical delivery of verse; the
+players were willing at any moment to listen as he recited:
+
+     For some we loved, the loveliest and best
+     That from his vintage rolling time has prest,
+     Have drunk their cup a round or two before, 
+     And one by one crept silently to rest.
+     Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, 
+     Before we too into the dust descend;
+     Dust unto dust, and under dust to lie, 
+     Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and--sans End.'
+
+--[The 'Rubaiyat' had made its first appearance, in Hartford, a little
+before in a column of extracts published in the Courant.]  Twichell
+immediately wrote Clemens a card:
+
+"Read (if you haven't) the extracts from Oman Khayyam, on the first page
+of this morning's Courant.  I think we'll have to get the book.  I never
+yet came across anything that uttered certain thoughts of mine so . 
+adequately.  And it's only a translation.  Read it, and we'll talk it
+over.  There is something in it very like the passage of Emerson you read
+me last night, in fact identical with it in thought.
+
+"Surely this Omar was a great poet.  Anyhow, he has given me an immense
+revelation this morning.
+
+"Hoping that you are better,
+
+                              J. H. T."
+
+Twichell's "only a translation" has acquired a certain humor with time.
+
+
+
+
+CXVI
+                         
+OFF FOR GERMANY
+
+The German language became one of the interests of the Clemens home
+during the early months of 1878.  The Clemenses had long looked forward
+to a sojourn in Europe, and the demand for another Mark Twain book of
+travel furnished an added reason for their going.  They planned for the
+spring sailing, and to spend a year or more on the Continent, making
+their headquarters in Germany.  So they entered into the study of the
+language with an enthusiasm and perseverance that insured progress. 
+There was a German nurse for the children, and the whole atmosphere of
+the household presently became lingually Teutonic.  It amused Mark Twain,
+as everything amused him, but he was a good student; he acquired a
+working knowledge of the language in an extraordinarily brief time, just
+as in an earlier day he had picked up piloting.  He would never become a
+German scholar, but his vocabulary and use of picturesque phrases,
+particularly those that combined English and German words, were often
+really startling, not only for their humor, but for their expressiveness.
+
+Necessarily the new study would infect his literature.  He conceived a
+plan for making Captain Wakeman (Stormfield) come across a copy of
+Ollendorf in Heaven, and proceed to learn the language of a near-lying
+district.
+
+They arranged to sail early in April, and, as on their former trip,
+persuaded Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, to accompany them.  They wrote
+to the Howellses, breaking the news of the journey, urging them to come
+to Hartford for a good-by visit.  Howells and his wife came.  The
+Twichells, Warners, and other Hartford friends paid repeated farewell
+calls.  The furniture was packed, the rooms desolated, the beautiful home
+made ready for closing.
+
+They were to have pleasant company on the ship.  Bayard Taylor, then
+recently appointed Minister to Germany, wrote that he had planned to sail
+on the same vessel; Murat Halstead's wife and daughter were listed among
+the passengers.  Clemens made a brief speech at Taylor's "farewell
+dinner."
+
+The "Mark Twain" party, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Miss
+Spaulding, little Susy and Clara ("Bay"), and a nurse-maid, Rosa, sailed
+on the Holsatia, April 11, 1878.  Bayard Taylor and the Halstead ladies
+also sailed, as per program; likewise Murat Halstead himself, for whom no
+program had been made.  There was a storm outside, and the Holsatia
+anchored down the bay to wait until the worst was over.  As the weather
+began to moderate Halstead and others came down in a tug for a final word
+of good-by.  When the tug left, Halstead somehow managed to get
+overlooked, and was presently on his way across the ocean with only such
+wardrobe as he had on, and what Bayard Taylor, a large man like himself,
+was willing to lend him.  Halstead was accused of having intentionally
+allowed himself to be left behind, and his case did have a suspicious
+look; but in any event they were glad to have him along.
+
+In a written word of good-by to Howells, Clemens remembered a debt of
+gratitude, and paid it in the full measure that was his habit.
+
+     And that reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much to
+     your training as the rude country job-printer owes to the city boss
+     who takes him in hand and teaches him the right way to handle his
+     art.  I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day, and
+     grieving because I never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to
+     ignore it or to be unaware of it.  Nothing that has passed under
+     your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my
+     other stuff does need so much.
+
+In that ancient day, before the wireless telegraph, the voyager, when the
+land fell away behind him, felt a mighty sense of relief and rest, which
+to some extent has gone now forever.  He cannot entirely escape the world
+in this new day; but then he had a complete sense of dismissal from all
+encumbering cares of life.  Among the first note-book entries Mark Twain
+wrote:
+
+To go abroad has something of the same sense that death brings--"I am no
+longer of ye; what ye say of me is now of no consequence--but of how much
+consequence when I am with ye and of ye.  I know you will refrain from
+saying harsh things because they cannot hurt me, since I am out of reach
+and cannot hear them.  This is why we say no harsh things of the dead."
+
+It was a rough voyage outside, but the company made it pleasant within. 
+Halstead and Taylor were good smoking-room companions.  Taylor had a
+large capacity for languages and a memory that was always a marvel.  He
+would repeat for them Arabian, Hungarian, and Russian poetry, and show
+them the music and construction of it.  He sang German folk-lore songs
+for them, and the "Lorelei," then comparatively unknown in America.  Such
+was his knowledge of the language that even educated Germans on board
+submitted questions of construction to him and accepted his decisions. 
+He was wisely chosen for the mission he had to fill, but unfortunately he
+did not fill it long.  Both Halstead and Taylor were said to have heart
+trouble.  Halstead, however, survived many years.  Taylor died
+December 19, 1878.
+
+
+
+
+CXVII
+
+GERMANY AND GERMAN
+
+>From the note-book:
+
+     It is a marvel that never loses its surprise by repetition, this
+     aiming a ship at a mark three thousand miles away and hitting the
+     bull's-eye in a fog--as we did.  When the fog fell on us the captain
+     said we ought to be at such and such a spot (it had been eighteen
+     hours since an observation was had), with the Scilly islands bearing
+     so and so, and about so many miles away.  Hove the lead and got
+     forty-eight fathoms; looked on the chart, and sure enough this depth
+     of water showed that we were right where the captain said we were.
+
+     Another idea.  For ages man probably did not know why God carpeted
+     the ocean bottom with sand in one place, shells in another, and so
+     on.  But we see now; the kind of bottom the lead brings up shows
+     where a ship is when the soundings don't, and also it confirms the
+     soundings.
+
+They reached Hamburg after two weeks' stormy sailing.  They rested a few
+days there, then went to Hanover and Frankfort, arriving at Heidelberg
+early in May.
+
+They had no lodgings selected in Heidelberg, and leaving the others at an
+inn, Clemens set out immediately to find apartments.  Chance or
+direction, or both, led him to the beautiful Schloss Hotel, on a hill
+overlooking the city, and as fair a view as one may find in all Germany. 
+He did not go back after his party.  He sent a message telling them to
+take carriage and drive at once to the Schloss, then he sat down to enjoy
+the view.
+
+Coming up the hill they saw him standing on the veranda, waving his hat
+in welcome.  He led them to their rooms--spacious apartments--and pointed
+to the view.  They were looking down on beautiful Heidelberg Castle,
+densely wooded hills, the far-flowing Neckar, and the haze-empurpled
+valley of the Rhine.  By and by, pointing to a small cottage on the
+hilltop, he said:
+
+"I have been picking out my little house to work in; there it is over
+there; the one with the gable in the roof.  Mine is the middle room on
+the third floor."
+
+Mrs. Clemens thought the occupants of the house might be surprised if he
+should suddenly knock and tell them he had come to take possession of his
+room.  Nevertheless, they often looked over in that direction and
+referred to it as his office.  They amused themselves by watching his
+"people" and trying to make out what they were like.  One day he went
+over there, and sure enough there was a sign out, "Moblirte Wohnung zu
+Vermiethen."  A day or two later he was established in the very room he
+had selected, it being the only room but one vacant.
+
+In A Tramp Abroad Mark Twain tells of the beauty of their Heidelberg
+environment.  To Howells he wrote:
+
+     Our bedroom has two great glass bird-cages (inclosed balconies), one
+     looking toward the Rhine Valley and sunset, the other looking up the
+     Neckar cul-de-sac, and naturally we spend pearly all our time in
+     these.  We have tables and chairs in them; we do our reading,
+     writing, studying, smoking, and suppering in them .  .  .  .  It
+     must have been a noble genius who devised this hotel.  Lord, how
+     blessed is the repose, the tranquillity of this place!  Only two
+     sounds: the happy clamor of the birds in the groves and the muffled
+     music of the Neckar tumbling over the opposing dikes.  It is no
+     hardship to lie awake awhile nights, for this subdued roar has
+     exactly the sound of a steady rain beating upon a roof.  It is so
+     healing to the spirit; and it bears up the thread of one's
+     imaginings as the accompaniment bears up a song....
+
+     I have waited for a "call" to go to work--I knew it would come. 
+     Well, it began to come a week ago; my note-book comes out more and
+     more frequently every day since; three days ago I concluded to move
+     my manuscripts over to my den.  Now the call is loud and decided at
+     last.  So to-morrow I shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to
+     it till the middle of July or August 1st, when I look for Twichell;
+     we will then walk about Germany two or three weeks, and then I'll go
+     to work again (perhaps in Munich).
+
+The walking tour with Twichell had been contemplated in the scheme for
+gathering book material, but the plan for it had not been completed when
+he left Hartford.  Now he was anxious that they should start as soon as
+possible.  Twichell, receiving the news in Hartford, wrote that it was a
+great day for him: that his third son had been happily born early that
+morning, and now the arrival of this glorious gift of a tramp through
+Germany and Switzerland completed his blessings.
+
+     I am almost too joyful for pleasure [he wrote].  I labor with my
+     felicities.  How I shall get to sleep to-night I don't know, though
+     I have had a good start, in not having slept much last night.  Oh,
+     my! do you realize, Mark, what a symposium it is to be?  I do.  To
+     begin with, I am thoroughly tired and the rest will be worth
+     everything.  To walk with you and talk with you for weeks together--
+     why, it's my dream of luxury.  Harmony, who at sunrise this morning
+     deemed herself the happiest woman on the Continent when I read your
+     letter to her, widened her smile perceptibly, and revived another
+     degree of strength in a minute.  She refused to consider her being
+     left alone; but: only the great chance opened to me.
+
+     SHOES--Mark, remember that ever so much of our pleasure depends upon
+     your shoes.  Don't fail to have adequate preparation made in that
+     department.
+
+Meantime, the struggle with the "awful German language" went on.  It was
+a general hand-to-hand contest.  From the head of the household down to
+little Clara not one was exempt.  To Clemens it became a sort of
+nightmare.  Once in his note-book he says:
+
+"Dreamed all bad foreigners went to German heaven; couldn't talk, and
+wished they had gone to the other place"; and a little farther along,
+"I wish I could hear myself talk German."
+
+To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, he reported their troubles:
+
+     Clara Spaulding is working herself to death with her German; never
+     loses an instant while she is awake--or asleep, either, for that
+     matter; dreams of enormous serpents, who poke their heads up under
+     her arms and glare upon her with red-hot eyes, and inquire about the
+     genitive case and the declensions of the definite article.  Livy is
+     bully-ragging herself about as hard; pesters over her grammar and
+     her reader and her dictionary all day; then in the evening these two
+     students stretch themselves out on sofas and sigh and say, "Oh,
+     there's no use!  We never can learn it in the world!"  Then Livy
+     takes a sentence to go to bed on: goes gaping and stretching to her
+     pillow murmuring, "Ich bin Ihnen sehr verbunden--Ich bin Ihnen sehr
+     verbunden--Ich bin Ihnen sehr verbunden--I wonder if I can get that
+     packed away so it will stay till morning"--and about an hour after
+     midnight she wakes me up and says, "I do so hate to disturb you, but
+     is it 'Ich Ben Jonson sehr befinden'?"
+
+And Mrs. Clemens wrote:
+
+     Oh, Sue dear, strive to enter in at the straight gate, for many
+     shall seek to enter it and shall not be able.  I am not striving
+     these days.  I am just interested in German.
+
+Rosa, the maid, was required to speak to the children only in German,
+though Bay at first would have none of it.  The nurse and governess tried
+to blandish her, in vain.  She maintained a calm and persistent attitude
+of scorn.  Little Susy tried, and really made progress; but one, day she
+said, pathetically:
+
+"Mama, I wish Rosa was made in English."
+
+Yet a little later Susy herself wrote her Aunt Sue:
+
+     I know a lot of German; everybody says I know a lot.  I give you a
+     million dollars to see you, and you would give two hundred dollars
+     to see the lovely woods that we see.
+
+Even Howells, in far-off America, caught the infection and began a letter
+in German, though he hastened to add, "Or do you prefer English by this
+time?  Really I could imagine the German going hard with you, for you
+always seemed to me a man who liked to be understood with the least
+possible personal inconvenience."
+
+Clemens declared more than once that he scorned the "outrageous and
+impossible German grammar," and abandoned it altogether.  In his note-
+book he records how two Germans, strangers in Heidelberg, asked him a
+direction, and that when he gave it, in the most elaborate and correct
+German he could muster, one of them only lifted his eyes and murmured:
+
+"Gott im Himmel!"
+
+He was daily impressed with the lingual attainments of foreigners and his
+own lack of them.  In the notes he comments:
+
+     Am addressed in German, and when I can't speak it immediately the
+     person tackles me in French, and plainly shows astonishment when I
+     stop him.  They naturally despise such an ignoramus.  Our doctor
+     here speaks as pure English, as I.
+
+On the Fourth of July he addressed the American students in Heidelberg in
+one of those mixtures of tongues for which he had a peculiar gift.
+
+The room he had rented for a study was let by a typical German family,
+and he was a great delight to them.  He practised his German on them, and
+interested himself in their daily affairs.
+
+Howells wrote insistently for some assurance of contributions to the
+Atlantic.
+
+I must begin printing your private letters to satisfy the popular
+demand," he said.  "People are constantly asking when you are going to
+begin."
+
+Clemens replied that he would be only too glad to write for the Atlantic
+if his contributions could be copyrighted in Canada, where pirates were
+persistently enterprising.
+
+I do not know that I have any printable stuff just now--separatable
+stuff, that is--but I shall have by and by.  It is very gratifying to
+hear that it is wanted by anybody.  I stand always prepared to hear the
+reverse, and am constantly surprised that it is delayed so long. 
+Consequently it is not going to astonish me when it comes.
+
+The Clemens party enjoyed Heidelberg, though in different ways.  The
+children romped and picnicked in the castle grounds, which adjoined the
+hotel; Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding were devoted to bric-a-brac
+hunting, picture-galleries, and music.  Clemens took long walks, or made
+excursions by rail and diligence to farther points.  Art and opera did
+not appeal to him.  The note-book says:
+
+     I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen
+     years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening
+     to an unfamiliar opera.  I am enchanted with the airs of "Trovatore"
+     and other old operas which the hand-organ and the music-box have
+     made entirely familiar to my ear.  I am carried away with delighted
+     enthusiasm when they are sung at the opera.  But oh, how far between
+     they are!  And what long, arid, heartbreaking and headaching
+     "between-times" of that sort of intense but incoherent noise which
+     always so reminds me of the time the orphan asylum burned down.
+
+     Sunday night, 11th.  Huge crowd out to-night to hear the band play
+     the "Fremersberg."  I suppose it is very low-grade music--I know it
+     must be low-grade music--because it so delighted me, it so warmed
+     me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, that at times
+     I could have cried, and at others split my throat with shouting. 
+     The great crowd was another evidence that it was low-grade music,
+     for only the few are educated up to a point where high-class music
+     gives pleasure.  I have never heard enough classic music to be able
+     to enjoy it, and the simple truth is I detest it.  Not mildly, but
+     with all my heart.
+
+     What a poor lot we human beings are anyway!  If base music gives me
+     wings, why should I want any other?  But I do.  I want to like the
+     higher music because the higher and better like it.  But you see I
+     want to like it without taking the necessary trouble, and giving the
+     thing the necessary amount of time and attention.  The natural
+     suggestion is, to get into that upper tier, that dress-circle, by a
+     lie--we will pretend we like it.  This lie, this pretense, gives to
+     opera what support it has in America.
+
+     And then there is painting.  What a red rag is to a bull Turner's
+     "Slave Ship" is to me.  Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point
+     where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as
+     it throws me into one of rage.  His cultivation enables him to see
+     water in that yellow mud; his cultivation reconciles the floating of
+     unfloatable things to him--chains etc.; it reconciles him to fishes
+     swimming on top of the water.  The most of the picture is a manifest
+     impossibility, that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can
+     enable a man to find truth in a lie.  A Boston critic said the
+     "Slave Ship" reminded him of a cat having a fit in a platter of
+     tomatoes.  That went home to my non-cultivation, and I thought, here
+     is a man with an unobstructed eye.
+
+Mark Twain has dwelt somewhat upon these matters in 'A Tramp Abroad'.  He
+confesses in that book that later he became a great admirer of Turner,
+though perhaps never of the "Slave Ship" picture.  In fact, Mark Twain
+was never artistic, in the common acceptance of that term; neither his
+art nor his tastes were of an "artistic" kind.
+
+
+
+
+
+CXVIII
+
+TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL
+
+Twichell arrived on time, August 1st.  Clemens met him at Baden-Baden,
+and they immediately set out on a tramp through the Black Forest,
+excursioning as pleased them, and having an idyllic good time.  They did
+not always walk, but they often did.  At least they did sometimes, when
+the weather was just right and Clemens's rheumatism did not trouble him. 
+But they were likely to take a carriage, or a donkey-cart, or a train, or
+any convenient thing that happened along.  They did not hurry, but idled
+and talked and gathered flowers, or gossiped with wayside natives and
+tourists, though always preferring to wander along together, beguiling
+the way with discussion and speculation and entertaining tales.  They
+crossed on into Switzerland in due time and considered the conquest of
+the Alps.  The family followed by rail or diligence, and greeted them
+here and there when they rested from their wanderings.  Mark Twain found
+an immunity from attention in Switzerland, which for years he had not
+known elsewhere.  His face was not so well known and his pen-name was
+carefully concealed.
+
+It was a large relief to be no longer an object of public curiosity; but
+Twichell, as in the Bermuda trip, did not feel quite honest, perhaps, in
+altogether preserving the mask of unrecognition.  In one of his letters
+home he tells how; when a young man at their table was especially
+delighted with Mark Twain's conversation, he could not resist taking the
+young man aside and divulging to him the speaker's identity.
+
+"I could not forbear telling him who Mark was," he says, "and the mingled
+surprise and pleasure his face exhibited made me glad I had done so."
+
+They climbed the Rigi, after which Clemens was not in good walking trim
+for some time; so Twichell went on a trip on his own account, to give his
+comrade a chance to rest.  Then away again to Interlaken, where the
+Jungfrau rises, cold and white; on over the loneliness of Gemini Pass,
+with glaciers for neighbors and the unfading white peaks against the
+blue; to Visp and to Zermatt, where the Matterhorn points like a finger
+that directs mankind to God.  This was true Alpine wandering--sweet
+vagabondage.
+
+The association of the wanderers was a very intimate one.  Their minds
+were closely attuned, and there were numerous instances of thought--echo-
+mind answering to mind--without the employment of words.  Clemens records
+in his notes:
+
+     Sunday A.M., August 11th.  Been reading Romola yesterday afternoon,
+     last night, and this morning; at last I came upon the only passage
+     which has thus far hit me with force--Tito compromising with his
+     conscience, and resolving to do; not a bad thing, but not the best
+     thing.  Joe entered the room five minutes--no, three minutes later--
+     and without prelude said, "I read that book you've got there six
+     years ago, and got a mighty good text for a sermon out of it the
+     passage where the young fellow compromises with his conscience, and
+     resolves to do, not a bad thing, but not the best thing."  This is
+     Joe's first reference to this book since he saw me buy it twenty-
+     four hours ago.  So my mind operated on his in this instance.  He
+     said he was sitting yonder in the reading-room, three minutes ago (I
+     have not got up yet), thinking of nothing in particular, and didn't
+     know what brought Romola into his head; but into his head it came
+     and that particular passage.  Now I, forty feet away, in another
+     room, was reading that particular passage at that particular moment.
+
+     Couldn't suggest Romola to him earlier, because nothing in the book
+     had taken hold of me till I came to that one passage on page 112,
+     Tauchnitz edition.
+
+And again:
+
+     The instances of mind-telegraphing are simply innumerable.  This
+     evening Joe and I sat long at the edge of the village looking at the
+     Matterhorn.  Then Joe said, "We ought to go to the Cervin Hotel and
+     inquire for Livy's telegram."  If he had been but one instant later
+     I should have said those words instead of him.
+
+Such entries are frequent, and one day there came along a kind of object-
+lesson.  They were toiling up a mountainside, when Twichell began telling
+a very interesting story which had happened in connection with a friend
+still living, though Twichell had no knowledge of his whereabouts at this
+time.  The story finished just as they rounded a turn in, the cliff, and
+Twichell, looking up, ended his last sentence, "And there's the man!"
+Which was true, for they were face to face with the very man of whom he
+had been telling.
+
+Another subject that entered into their discussion was the law of
+accidents.  Clemens held that there was no such thing an accident: that
+it was all forewritten in the day of the beginning; that every event,
+however slight, was embryonic in that first instant of created life, and
+immutably timed to its appearance in the web of destiny.  Once on their
+travels, when they were on a high bank above a brawling stream, a little
+girl, who started to run toward them, slipped and rolled under the bottom
+rail of the protecting fence, her feet momentarily hanging out over the
+precipice and the tearing torrent below. It seemed a miraculous escape
+from death, and furnished an illustration for their discussion.  The
+condition of the ground, the force of her fall, the nearness of the fatal
+edge, all these had grown inevitably out of the first great projection of
+thought, and the child's fall and its escape had been invested in life's
+primal atom.
+
+The author of A Tramp Abroad tells us of the rushing stream that flows
+out of the Arcadian sky valley, the Gasternthal, and goes plunging down
+to Kandersteg, and how he took exercise by making "Harris" (Twichell) set
+stranded logs adrift while he lounged comfortably on a boulder, and
+watched them go tearing by; also how he made Harris run a race with one
+of those logs.  But that is literature.  Twichell, in a letter home, has
+preserved a likelier and lovelier story:
+
+     Mark is a queer fellow.  There is nothing that he so delights in as
+     a swift, strong stream.  You can hardly get him to leave one when
+     once he is within the influence of its fascinations.  To throw in
+     stones and sticks seems to afford him rapture.  Tonight, as we were
+     on our way back to the hotel, seeing a lot of driftwood caught by
+     the torrent side below the path, I climbed down and threw it in. 
+     When I got back to the path Mark was running down-stream after it as
+     hard as he could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the
+     wildest ecstasy, and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to
+     view in the foam below he would jump up and down and yell.  He said
+     afterward that he hadn't been so excited in three months.  He acted
+     just like a boy; another feature of his extreme sensitiveness in
+     certain directions.
+
+Then generalizing, Twichell adds:
+
+     He has coarse spots in him.  But I never knew a person so finely
+     regardful of the feelings of others in some ways.  He hates to pass
+     another person walking, and will practise some subterfuge to take
+     off what he feels is the discourtesy of it.  And he is exceedingly
+     timid, tremblingly timid, about approaching strangers; hates to ask
+     a question.  His sensitive regard for others extends to animals. 
+     When we are driving his concern is all about the horse.  He can't
+     bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard.  To-day,
+     when the driver clucked up his horse and quickened his pace a
+     little, Mark said, "The fellow's got the notion that we are in a
+     hurry."  He is exceedingly considerate toward me in regard of
+     everything--or most things.
+
+The days were not all sunshine.  Sometimes it rained and they took
+shelter by the wayside, or, if there was no shelter, they plodded along
+under their umbrellas, still talking away, and if something occurred that
+Clemens wanted to put down they would stand stock still in the rain, and
+Twichell would hold the umbrella while Clemens wrote--a good while
+sometimes--oblivious to storm and discomfort and the long way yet ahead.
+
+After the day on Gemmi Pass Twichell wrote home:
+
+     Mark, to-day, was immensely absorbed in the flowers.  He scrambled
+     around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest
+     pleasure in them.  He crowded a pocket of his note-book with his
+     specimens and wanted more room.  So I stopped the guide and got out
+     my needle and thread, and out of a stiff paper, a hotel
+     advertisement, I had about me made a paper bag, a cornucopia like,
+     and tied it to his vest in front, and it answered the purpose
+     admirably.  He filled it full with a beautiful collection, and as
+     soon as we got here to-night he transferred it to a cardboard box
+     and sent it by mail to Livy.  A strange Mark he is, full of
+     contradictions.  I spoke last night of his sensitive to others'
+     feelings.  To-day the guide got behind, and came up as if he would
+     like to go by, yet hesitated to do so.  Mark paused, went aside and
+     busied himself a minute picking a flower.  In the halt the guide got
+     by and resumed his place in front.  Mark threw the flower away,
+     saying, "I didn't want that.  I only wanted to give the old man a
+     chance to go on without seeming to pass us."  Mark is splendid to
+     walk with amid such grand scenery, for he talks so well about it,
+     has such a power of strong, picturesque expression.  I wish you
+     might have heard him to-day.  His vigorous speech nearly did justice
+     to the things we saw.
+
+In an address which Twichell gave many years later he recalls another
+pretty incident of their travels.  They had been toiling up the Gorner
+Grat.
+
+As we paused for a rest, a lamb from a flock of sheep near by ventured
+inquisitively toward us, whereupon Mark seated himself on a rock, and
+with beckoning hand and soft words tried to get it to come to him.
+
+On the lamb's part it was a struggle between curiosity and timidity, but
+in a succession of advances and retreats it gained confidence, though at
+a very gradual rate.  It was a scene for a painter: the great American
+humorist on one side of the game and that silly little creature on the
+other, with the Matterhorn for a background.  Mark was reminded that the
+time he was consuming was valuable--but to no purpose.  The Gorner Grat
+could wait.  He held on with undiscouraged perseverance till he carried
+his point: the lamb finally put its nose in his hand, and he was happy
+over it all the rest of the day.
+
+The matter of religion came up now and again in the drift of their
+discussions.  It was Twichell's habit to have prayers in their room every
+night at the hotels, and Clemens was willing to join in the observances. 
+Once Twichell, finding him in a responsive mood--a remorseful mood--gave
+his sympathy, and spoke of the larger sympathy of divinity.  Clemens
+listened and seemed soothed and impressed, but his philosophies were too
+wide and too deep for creeds and doctrines.  A day or two later, as they
+were tramping along in the hot sun, his honesty had to speak out.
+
+"Joe," he said, "I'm going to make a confession.  I don't believe in your
+religion at all.  I've been living a lie right straight along whenever I
+pretended to.  For a moment, sometimes, I have been almost a believer,
+but it immediately drifts away from me again.  I don't believe one word
+of your Bible was inspired by God any more than any other book.  I
+believe it is entirely the work of man from beginning to end--atonement
+and all.  The problem of life and death and eternity and the true
+conception of God is a bigger thing than is contained in that book."
+               
+So the personal side of religious discussion closed between them, and was
+never afterward reopened.
+
+They joined Mrs. Clemens and the others at Lausanne at last, and their
+Swiss holiday was over.  Twichell set out for home by way of England, and
+Clemens gave himself up to reflection and rest after his wanderings. 
+Then, as the days of their companionship passed in review, quickly and
+characteristically he sent a letter after his comrade:
+
+     DEAR OLD JOE, It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the
+     station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to
+     accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant
+     tramping and talking at an end.  Ah,, my boy! it has been such a
+     rich holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest
+     obligations to you for coming.  I am putting out of my mind all
+     memory of the times when I misbehaved toward you and hurt you; I am
+     resolved to consider it forgiven, and to store up and remember only
+     the charming hours of the journeys and the times when I was not
+     unworthy to be with you and share a companionship which to me stands
+     first after Livy's.  It is justifiable to do this; for why should I
+     let my small infirmities of disposition live and grovel among my
+     mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps?
+
+     Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone.  But you
+     are, and we cannot get around it.  So take our love with you, and
+     bear it also over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+CXIX
+
+ITALIAN DAYS
+
+The Clemens party wandered down into Italy--to the lakes, Venice,
+Florence, Rome--loitering through the galleries, gathering here and there
+beautiful furnishings--pictures, marbles, and the like--for the Hartford
+home.
+
+In Venice they bought an old careen bed, a massive regal affair with
+serpentine columns surmounted by singularly graceful cupids, and with
+other cupids sporting on the headboard: the work of some artist who had
+been dust three centuries maybe, for this bed had come out of an old
+Venetian palace, dismantled and abandoned.  It was a furniture with a
+long story, and the years would add mightily to its memories.  It would
+become a stately institution in the Clemens household.  The cupids on the
+posts were removable, and one of the highest privileges of childhood
+would be to occupy that bed and have down one of the cupids to play with. 
+It was necessary to be ill to acquire that privilege--not violently and
+dangerously ill, but interestingly so--ill enough to be propped up with
+pillows and have one's meals served on a tray, with dolls and picture-
+books handy, and among them a beautiful rosewood cupid who had kept
+dimpled and dainty for so many, many years.
+
+They spent three weeks in Venice: a dreamlike experience, especially for
+the children, who were on the water most of the time, and became fast
+friends with their gondolier, who taught them some Italian words; then a
+week in Florence and a fortnight in Rome. --[ From the note-book: 
+"BAY--When the waiter brought my breakfast this morning I spoke to him in
+Italian.
+"MAMA--What did you say?
+"B.--I said, 'Polly-vo fransay.'
+"M.--What does it mean?
+"B.--I don't know.  What does it mean, Susy?
+"S.-It means, 'Polly wants a cracker."]
+
+Clemens discovered that in twelve years his attitude had changed somewhat
+concerning the old masters.  He no longer found the bright, new copies an
+improvement on the originals, though the originals still failed to wake
+his enthusiasm.  Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding spent long hours
+wandering down avenues of art, accompanied by him on occasion, though not
+always willingly.  He wrote his sorrow to Twichell:
+
+I do wish you were in Rome to do my sight-seeing for me.  Rome interests
+me as much as East Hartford could, and no more; that is, the Rome which
+the average tourist feels an interest in.  There are other things here
+which stir me enough to make life worth living.  Livy and Clara are
+having a royal time worshiping the old masters, and I as good a time
+gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.
+
+Once when Sarah Orne Jewett was with the party he remarked that if the
+old masters had labeled their fruit one wouldn't be so likely to mistake
+pears for turnips.
+
+"Youth," said Mrs. Clemens, gravely, "if you do not care for these
+masterpieces yourself, you might at least consider the feelings of
+others"; and Miss Jewett, regarding him severely, added, in her quaint
+Yankee fashion:
+
+"Now, you've been spoke to!"
+
+He felt duly reprimanded, but his taste did not materially reform.  He
+realized that he was no longer in a proper frame of mind to write of
+general sight-seeing.  One must be eager, verdant, to write happily the
+story of travel.  Replying to a letter from Howells on the subject he
+said:
+
+     I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you
+     mention, but of course a man can't write successful satire except he
+     be in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate
+     hotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters.  In truth
+     I don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to
+     satirize it.  No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foam
+     at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp.  I have
+     got in two or three chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to
+     do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort
+     would burst me.
+
+Clemens became his own courier for a time in Italy, and would seem to
+have made more of a success of it than he did a good many years
+afterward, if we may believe the story he has left us of his later
+attempt:
+     
+"Am a shining success as a courier," he records, "by the use of francs. 
+Have learned how to handle the railway guide intelligently and with
+confidence."
+
+He declares that he will have no more couriers; but possibly he could
+have employed one to advantage on the trip out of Italy, for it was a
+desperately hard one, with bad connections and delayed telegrams.  When,
+after thirty-six hours weary, continuous traveling, they arrived at last
+in Munich in a drizzle and fog, and were domiciled in their winter
+quarters, at No. 1a, Karlstrasse, they felt that they had reached the
+home of desolation itself, the very throne of human misery.
+
+     And the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meager, and the
+     porcelain stove was grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable!  So Livy and
+     Clara Spaulding sat down forlorn and cried, and I retired to a
+     private place to pray.  By and by we all retired to our narrow
+     German beds, and when Livy and I had finished talking across the
+     room it was all decided that we should rest twenty-four hours, then
+     pay whatever damages were required and straightway fly to the south
+     of France.
+
+The rooms had been engaged by letter, months before, of their
+proprietress, Fraulein Dahlweiner, who had met them at the door with a
+lantern in her hand, full of joy in their arrival and faith in her
+ability to make them happy.  It was a faith that was justified.  Next
+morning, when they all woke, rested, the weather had cleared, there were
+bright fires in the rooms, the world had taken on a new aspect.  Fraulein
+Dahlweiner, the pathetic, hard-working little figure, became almost
+beautiful in their eyes in her efforts for their comfort.  She arranged
+larger rooms and better conveniences for them.  Their location was
+central and there was a near-by park.  They had no wish to change. 
+Clemens, in his letter to Howells, boasts that he brought the party
+through from Rome himself, and that they never had so little trouble
+before; but in looking over this letter, thirty years later, he
+commented, "Probably a lie."
+
+He secured a room some distance away for his work, but then could not
+find his Swiss note-book.  He wrote Twichell that he had lost it, and
+that after all he might not be obliged to write a volume of travels.  But
+the notebook turned up and the work on the new book proceeded.  For a
+time it went badly.  He wrote many chapters, only to throw them aside. 
+He had the feeling that he had somehow lost the knack of descriptive
+narrative.  He had become, as it seemed, too didactic.  He thought his
+description was inclined to be too literal, his humor manufactured. 
+These impressions passed, by and by; interest developed, and with it
+enthusiasm and confidence.  In a letter to Twichell he reported his
+progress:
+
+I was about to write to my publisher and propose some other book, when
+the confounded thing [the note-book] turned up, and down went my heart
+into my boots.  But there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work,
+tore up a great part of the MS. written in Heidelberg--wrote and tore up,
+continued to write and tear up--and at last, reward of patient and noble
+persistence, my pen got the old swing again!  Since then I'm glad that
+Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss notebook than I did.
+
+Further along in the same letter there breaks forth a true heart-answer
+to that voice of the Alps which, once heard, is never wholly silent:
+
+     O Switzerland!  The further it recedes into the enriching haze of
+     time, the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer
+     of it and the glory and majesty, and solemnity and pathos of it
+     grow.  Those mountains had a soul: they thought, they spoke.  And
+     what a voice it was!  And how real!  Deep down in my memory it is
+     sounding yet.  Alp calleth unto Alp!  That stately old Scriptural
+     wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's ocean.  How puny
+     we were in that awful Presence, and how painless it was to be so!
+     How fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the sense of
+     our unspeakable insignificance!  And Lord, how pervading were the
+     repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the
+     invisible Great Spirit of the mountains!
+
+     Now what is it?  There are mountains and mountains and mountains in
+     this world, but only these take you by the heartstrings.  I wonder
+     what the secret of it is.  Well, time and time and again it has
+     seemed to me that I must drop everything and flee to Switzerland
+     once more.  It is a longings deep, strong, tugging longing.  That is
+     the word.  We must go again, Joe.
+
+
+
+
+CXX
+
+IN MUNICH
+
+That winter in Munich was not recalled as an unpleasant one in after-
+years.  His work went well enough--always a chief source of
+gratification.  Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding found interest in the
+galleries, in quaint shops, in the music and picturesque life of that
+beautiful old Bavarian town.  The children also liked Munich.  It was
+easy for them to adopt any new environment or custom.  The German
+Christmas, with its lavish tree and toys and cakes, was an especial
+delight.  The German language they seemed fairly to absorb.  Writing to
+his mother Clemens said:
+
+I cannot see but that the children speak German as well as they do
+English.  Susy often translates Livy's orders to the servants.  I cannot
+work and study German at the same time; so I have dropped the latter and
+do not even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the
+news.
+
+In Munich--as was the case wherever they were known--there were many
+callers.  Most Americans and many foreigners felt it proper to call on
+Mark Twain.  It was complimentary, but it was wearying sometimes.  Mrs. 
+Clemens, in a letter written from Venice, where they had received even
+more than usual attention, declared there were moments when she almost
+wished she might never see a visitor again.
+
+Originally there was a good deal about Munich in the new book, and some
+of the discarded chapters might have been retained with advantage.  They
+were ruled out in the final weeding as being too serious, along with the
+French chapters.  Only a few Italian memories were left to follow the
+Switzerland wanderings.
+
+The book does record one Munich event, though transferring it to
+Heilsbronn.  It is the incident of the finding of the lost sock in the
+vast bedroom.  It may interest the reader to compare what really
+happened, as set down in a letter to Twichell, with the story as written
+for publication:
+
+     Last night I awoke at three this morning, and after raging to myself
+     for two interminable hours I gave it up.  I rose, assumed a catlike
+     stealthiness, to keep from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in
+     the pitch-dark.  Slowly but surely I got on garment after garment--
+     all down to one sock; I had one slipper on and the other in my hand. 
+     Well, on my hands and knees I crept softly around, pawing and
+     feeling and scooping along the carpet, and among chair-legs, for
+     that missing sock, I kept that up, and still kept it up, and kept it
+     up.  At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock," but that
+     soon ceased to answer.  My expletives grew steadily stronger and
+     stronger, and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat
+     down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting
+     the roof off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out
+     of me.  I could see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was
+     in the wrong place and could give me no information as to where I
+     was.  But I had one comfort--I had not waked Livy; I believed I
+     could find that sock in silence if the night lasted long enough.
+     So I started again and softly pawed all over the place, and sure
+     enough, at the end of half an hour I laid my hand on the missing
+     article.  I rose joyfully up and butted the washbowl and pitcher off
+     the stand, and simply raised ---- so to speak.  Livy screamed, then
+     said, "Who is it?  What is the matter?"  I said, "There ain't
+     anything the matter.  I'm hunting for my sock."  She said, "Are you
+     hunting for it with a club?"
+
+     I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury
+     subsided and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest
+     themselves.  So I lay on the sofa with note-book and pencil, and
+     transferred the adventure to our big room in the hotel at
+     Heilsbronn, and got it on paper a good deal to my satisfaction.
+
+He wrote with frequency to Howells, and sent him something for the
+magazine now and then: the "Gambetta Duel" burlesque, which would make a
+chapter in the book later, and the story of "The Great Revolution in
+Pitcairn." --[Included in The Stolen White Elephant volume.  The
+"Pitcairn" and "Elephant" tales were originally chapters in 'A Tramp
+Abroad'; also the unpleasant "Coffin-box" yarn, which Howells rejected
+for the Atlantic and generally condemned, though for a time it remained a
+favorite with its author.]
+
+
+Howells's novel, 'The Lady of the Aroostook', was then running through
+the 'Atlantic', and in one of his letters Clemens expresses the general
+deep satisfaction of his household in that tale:
+
+If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see
+what is lacking.  It is all such truth--truth to the life; everywhere
+your pen falls it leaves a photograph .  .  .  .  Possibly you will not
+be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead one hundred years--
+it is the fate of the Shakespeares of all genuine professions--but then
+your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe.  In that day I shall
+be in the encyclopedias too, thus: "Mark Twain, history and occupation
+unknown; but he was personally acquainted with Howells."
+
+Though in humorous form, this was a sincere tribute.  Clemens always
+regarded with awe William Dean Howells's ability to dissect and
+photograph with such delicacy the minutiae of human nature; just as
+Howells always stood in awe of Mark Twain's ability to light, with a
+single flashing sentence, the whole human horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CXXI
+
+PARIS, ENGLAND, AND HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+They decided to spend the spring months in Paris, so they gave up their
+pleasant quarters with Fraulein Dahlweiner, and journeyed across Europe,
+arriving at the French capital February 28, 1879.  Here they met another
+discouraging prospect, for the weather was cold and damp, the cabmen
+seemed brutally ill-mannered, their first hotel was chilly, dingy,
+uninviting.  Clemens, in his note-book, set down his impressions of their
+rooms.  A paragraph will serve:
+
+     Ten squatty, ugly arm-chairs, upholstered in the ugliest and
+     coarsest conceivable scarlet plush; two hideous sofas of the same--
+     uncounted armless chairs ditto.  Five ornamental chairs, seats
+     covered with a coarse rag, embroidered in flat expanse with a
+     confusion of leaves such as no tree ever bore, six or seven a dirty
+     white and the rest a faded red.  How those hideous chairs do swear
+     at the hideous sofa near them! This is the very hatefulest room I
+     have seen in Europe.
+
+     Oh, how cold and raw and unwarmable it is!
+
+It was better than that when the sun came out, and they found happier
+quarters presently at the Hotel Normandy, rue de l'Echelle.
+
+But, alas, the sun did not come out often enough.  It was one of those
+French springs and summers when it rains nearly every day, and is
+distressingly foggy and chill between times.  Clemens received a bad
+impression of France and the French during that Parisian-sojourn, from
+which he never entirely recovered.  In his note-book he wrote: "France
+has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals.  Apart from these drawbacks
+it is a fine country."
+
+The weather may not have been entirely accountable for his prejudice, but
+from whatever cause Mark Twain, to the day of his death, had no great
+love for the French as a nation.  Conversely, the French as a nation did
+not care greatly for Mark Twain.  There were many individual Frenchmen
+that Mark Twain admired, as there were many Frenchmen who admired the 
+work and personality of Mark Twain; but on neither side was there the
+warm, fond, general affection which elsewhere throughout Europe he
+invited and returned.
+
+His book was not yet finished.  In Paris he worked on it daily, but
+without enthusiasm.  The city was too noisy, the weather too dismal.
+His note-book says:
+
+May 7th.  I wish this terrible winter would come to an end.  Have had
+rain almost without intermission for two months and one week.
+
+May 28th.  This is one of the coldest days of this most damnable and
+interminable winter.
+
+It was not all gloom and discomfort.  There was congenial company in
+Paris, and dinner-parties, and a world of callers.  Aldrich the
+scintillating --[ Of Aldrich Clemens used to say: "When Aldrich speaks it
+seems to me he is the bright face of the moon, and I feel like the other
+side."  Aldrich, unlike Clemens, was not given to swearing.  The Parisian
+note-book has this memorandum:  "Aldrich gives his seat in the horse-car
+to a crutched cripple, and discovers that what he took for a crutch is
+only a length of walnut beading and the man not lame; whereupon Aldrich
+uses the only profanity that ever escaped his lips: 'Damn a dam'd man who
+would carry a dam'd piece of beading under his dam'd arm!'"]-- was there,
+also Gedney Bunce, of Hartford, Frank Millet and his wife, Hjalinar
+Hjorth Boyesen and his wife, and a Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, artist
+people whom the Clemenses had met pleasantly in Italy.  Turgenieff, as in
+London, came to call; also Baron Tauchnitz, that nobly born
+philanthropist of German publishers, who devoted his life, often at his
+personal cost, to making the literature of other nations familiar to his
+own.  Tauchnitz had early published the 'Innocents', following it with
+other Mark Twain volumes as they appeared, paying always, of his own will
+and accord, all that he could afford to pay for this privilege; which was
+not really a privilege, for the law did not require him to pay at all. 
+He traveled down to Paris now to see the author, and to pay his respects
+to him.  "A mighty nice old gentleman," Clemens found him.  Richard
+Whiteing was in Paris that winter, and there were always plenty of young
+American painters whom it was good to know.
+
+They had what they called the Stomach Club, a jolly organization, whose
+purpose was indicated by its name.  Mark Twain occasionally attended its
+sessions, and on one memorable evening, when Edwin A. Abbey was there,
+speeches were made which never appeared in any printed proceedings.  Mark
+Twain's address that night has obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs
+of the world, though no line of it, or even its title has ever found its
+way into published literature.
+
+Clemens had a better time in Paris than the rest of his party.  He could
+go and come, and mingle with the sociabilities when the abnormal weather
+kept the others housed in.  He did a good deal of sight-seeing of his own
+kind, and once went up in a captive balloon.  They were all studying
+French, more or less, and they read histories and other books relating to
+France.  Clemens renewed his old interest in Joan of Arc, and for the
+first time appears to have conceived the notion of writing the story of
+that lovely character.
+
+The Reign of Terror interested him.  He reread Carlyle's Revolution, a
+book which he was never long without reading, and they all read 'A Tale
+of Two Cities'.  When the weather permitted they visited the scenes of
+that grim period.
+
+In his note-book he comments:
+
+     "The Reign of Terror shows that, without distinction or rank, the
+     people were savages.  Marquises, dukes, lawyers, blacksmiths, they
+     each figure in due proportion to their crafts."
+
+And again:
+
+     "For 1,000 years this savage nation indulged itself in massacre;
+     every now and then a big massacre or a little one.  The spirit is
+     peculiar to France--I mean in Christendom--no other state has had
+     it.  In this France has always walked abreast, kept her end up with
+     her brethren, the Turks and the Burmese.  Their chief traits--love
+     of glory and massacre."
+
+Yet it was his sense of fairness that made him write, as a sort of
+quittance:
+
+     "You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. 
+     It is the tourists' custom.  When I see a man jump from the Vendome
+     Column I say, 'They like to do that in Paris.'"
+
+Following this implied atonement, he records a few conclusions, drawn
+doubtless from Parisian reading and observation:
+
+     "Childish race and great."
+
+     "I'm for cremation."
+
+     "I disfavor capital punishment."
+
+     "Samson was a Jew, therefore not a fool.  The Jews have the best
+     average brain of any people in the world.  The Jews are the only
+     race in the world who work wholly with their brains, and never with
+     their hands.  There are no Jew beggars, no Jew tramps, no Jew
+     ditchers, hod-carriers, day-laborers, or followers of toilsome
+     mechanical trade.
+
+     "They are peculiarly and conspicuously the world's intellectual
+     aristocracy."
+
+     "Communism is idiocy.  They want to divide up the property.  Suppose
+     they did it.  It requires brains to keep money as well as to make
+     it.  In a precious little while the money would be back in the
+     former owner's hands and the communist would be poor again.  The
+     division would have to be remade every three years or it would do
+     the communist no good."
+
+A curious thing happened one day in Paris.  Boyesen; in great excitement,
+came to the Normandy and was shown to the Clemens apartments.  He was
+pale and could hardly speak, for his emotion.  He asked immediately if. 
+his wife had come to their rooms.  On learning that she had not, he
+declared that she was lost or had met with an accident.  She had been
+gone several hours, he said, and had sent no word, a thing which she had
+never done before.  He besought Clemens to aid him in his search for her,
+to do something to help him find her.  Clemens, without showing the least
+emotion or special concentration of interest, said quietly:
+
+"I will."
+
+"Where will you go first," Boyesen demanded.
+
+Still in the same even voice Clemens said:
+
+"To the elevator."
+
+He passed out of the room, with Boyesen behind him, into the hall.  The
+elevator was just coming up, and as they reached it, it stopped at their
+landing, and Mrs. Boyesen stepped out.  She had been delayed by a
+breakdown and a blockade.  Clemens said afterward that he had a positive
+conviction that she would be on the elevator when they reached it.  It
+was one of those curious psychic evidences which we find all along during
+his life; or, if the skeptics prefer to call them coincidences, they are
+privileged to do so.
+
+     Paris, June 1, 1879.  Still this vindictive winter continues.  Had a
+     raw, cold rain to-day.  To-night we sit around a rousing wood fire.
+
+They stood it for another month, and then on the 10th of July, when it
+was still chilly and disagreeable, they gave it up and left for Brussels,
+which he calls "a dirty, beautiful (architecturally), interesting town."
+
+Two days in Brussels, then to Antwerp, where they dined on the Trenton
+with Admiral Roan, then to Rotterdam, Dresden, Amsterdam, and London,
+arriving there the 29th of July, which was rainy and cold, in keeping
+with all Europe that year.
+
+     Had to keep a rousing big cannel-coal fire blazing in the grate all
+     day.  A remarkable summer, truly!
+
+London meant a throng of dinners, as always: brilliant, notable affairs,
+too far away to recall.  A letter written by Mrs. Clemens at the time
+preserves one charming, fresh bit of that departed bloom.
+
+     Clara [Spaulding] went in to dinner with Mr. Henry James; she
+     enjoyed him very much.  I had a little chat with him before dinner,
+     and he was exceedingly pleasant and easy to talk with.  I had
+     expected just the reverse, thinking one would feel looked over by
+     him and criticized.
+
+     Mr. Whistler, the artist, was at the dinner, but he did not attract
+     me.  Then there was a lady, over eighty years old, a Mrs. Stuart,
+     who was Washington Irving's love, and she is said to have been his
+     only love, and because of her he went unmarried to his grave. --
+     [Mrs. Clemens was misinformed.  Irving's only "love" was a Miss
+     Hoffman.]-- She was also an intimate friend of Madame Bonaparte. 
+     You would judge Mrs. Stuart to be about fifty, and she was the life
+     of the drawing-room after dinner, while the ladies were alone,
+     before the gentlemen came up.  It was lovely to see such a sweet old
+     age; every one was so fond of her, every one deferred to her, yet
+     every one was joking her, making fun of her, but she was always
+     equal to the occasion, giving back as bright replies as possible;
+     you had not the least sense that she was aged.  She quoted French in
+     her stories with perfect ease and fluency, and had all the time such
+     a kindly, lovely way.  When she entered the room, before dinner, Mr.
+     James, who was then talking with me, shook hands with her and said,
+     "Good evening, you wonderful lady."  After she had passed .  .  . 
+     he said, "She is the youngest person in London.  She has the
+     youngest feelings and the youngest interests .  .  .  .  She is
+     always interested."
+
+     It was a perfect delight to hear her and see her.
+
+For more than two years they had had an invitation from Reginald
+Cholmondeley to pay him another visit.
+
+So they went for a week to Condover, where many friends were gathered,
+including Millais, the painter, and his wife (who had been the wife of
+Ruskin), numerous relatives, and other delightful company.  It was one of
+the happiest chapters of their foreign sojourn. --[Moncure D. Conway, who
+was in London at the time, recalls, in his Autobiography, a visit which
+he made with Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Stratford-on-Avon.  "Mrs. Clemens
+was an ardent Shakespearian, and Mark Twain determined to give her a
+surprise.  He told her that we were going on a journey to Epworth, and
+persuaded me to connive with the joke by writing to Charles Flower not to
+meet us himself, but send his carriage.  On arrival at the station we
+directed the driver to take us straight to the church.  When we entered,
+and Mrs. Clemens read on Shakespeare's grave, 'Good friend, for Jesus'
+sake, forbear,' she started back, exclaiming, 'where am I?'  Mark
+received her reproaches with an affluence of guilt, but never did lady
+enjoy a visit more than that to Avonbank.  Mrs. Charles Flower (nee
+Martineau) took Mrs. Clemens to her heart, and contrived that every
+social or other attraction of that region should surround her."]
+
+>From the note-book:
+
+     Sunday, August 17,'79.  Raw and cold, and a drenching rain.  Went to
+     hear Mr. Spurgeon.  House three-quarters full-say three thousand
+     people.  First hour, lacking one minute, taken up with two prayers,
+     two ugly hymns, and Scripture-reading.  Sermon three-quarters of an
+     hour long.  A fluent talker, good, sonorous voice.  Topic treated in
+     the unpleasant, old fashion: Man a mighty bad child, God working at
+     him in forty ways and having a world of trouble with him.
+
+     A wooden-faced congregation; just the sort to see no incongruity in
+     the majesty of Heaven stooping to plead and sentimentalize over
+     such, and see in their salvation an important matter.
+
+     Tuesday, August 19th.  Went up Windermere Lake in the steamer. 
+     Talked with the great Darwin.
+
+They had planned to visit Dr. Brown in Scotland.  Mrs. Clemens, in
+particular, longed to go, for his health had not been of the best, and
+she felt that they would never have a chance to see him again.  Clemens
+in after years blamed himself harshly for not making the trip, declaring
+that their whole reason for not going was an irritable reluctance on his
+part to take the troublesome journey and a perversity of spirit for which
+there was no real excuse.  There is documentary evidence against this
+harsh conclusion.  They were, in fact, delayed here and there by
+misconnections and the continued terrific weather, barely reaching
+Liverpool in time for their sailing date, August 23d.  Unquestionably he
+was weary of railway travel, far he always detested it.  Time would
+magnify his remembered reluctance, until, in the end, he would load his
+conscience with the entire burden of blame.
+
+Their ship was the Gallia, and one night, when they were nearing the
+opposite side of the Atlantic, Mark Twain, standing on deck, saw for the
+third time in his experience a magnificent lunar rainbow: a complete
+arch, the colors part of the time very brilliant, but little different
+from a day rainbow.  It is not given to many persons in this world to see
+even one of these phenomena.  After each previous vision there had come
+to him a period of good-fortune.  Perhaps this also boded well for him.
+
+
+
+
+CXXII
+
+AN INTERLUDE
+
+The Gallia reached New York September 3, 1879.  A report of his arrival,
+in the New York Sun, stated that Mark Twain had changed in his absence;
+that only his drawl seemed natural.
+
+     His hat, as he stood on the deck of the incoming Cunarder, Gallia,
+     was of the pattern that English officers wear in India, and his suit
+     of clothes was such as a merchant might wear in his store.  He
+     looked older than when he went to Germany, and his hair has turned
+     quite gray.
+
+It was a late hour when they were finally up to the dock, and Clemens,
+anxious to get through the Custom House, urged the inspector to accept
+his carefully prepared list of dutiable articles, without opening the
+baggage.  But the official was dubious.  Clemens argued eloquently, and a
+higher authority was consulted.  Again Clemens stated his case and
+presented his arguments.  A still higher chief of inspection was
+summoned, evidently from his bed.  He listened sleepily to the preamble,
+then suddenly said: "Oh, chalk his baggage, of course!  Don't you know
+it's Mark Twain and that he'll talk all night?"
+
+They went directly to the farm, for whose high sunlit loveliness they had
+been longing through all their days of absence.  Mrs. Clemens, in her
+letters, had never failed to dwell on her hunger for that fair hilltop. 
+>From his accustomed study-table Clemens wrote to Twichell:
+
+"You have run about a good deal, Joe, but you have never seen any place
+that was so divine as the farm.  Why don't you come here and take a
+foretaste of Heaven?"  Clemens declared he would roam no more forever,
+and settled down to the happy farm routine.  He took up his work, which
+had not gone well in Paris, and found his interest in it renewed.  In the
+letter to Twichell he said:
+
+     I am revising my MS.  I did not expect to like it, but I do.  I have
+     been knocking out early chapters for more than a year now, not
+     because they had not merit, but merely because they hindered the
+     flow of the narrative; it was a dredging process.  Day before
+     yesterday my shovel fetched up three more chapters and laid them,
+     reeking, on the festering shore-pile of their predecessors, and now
+     I think the yarn swims right along, without hitch or halt.  I
+     believe it will be a readable book of travels.  I cannot see that it
+     lacks anything but information.
+
+Mrs. Clemens was no less weary of travel than her husband.  Yet she had
+enjoyed their roaming, and her gain from it had been greater than his. 
+Her knowledge of art and literature, and of the personal geography of
+nations, had vastly increased; her philosophy of life had grown beyond
+all counting.
+
+She had lost something, too; she had outstripped her traditions.  One
+day, when she and her sister had walked across the fields, and had
+stopped to rest in a little grove by a pretty pond, she confessed,
+timidly enough and not without sorrow, how she had drifted away from her
+orthodox views.  She had ceased to believe, she said, in the orthodox
+Bible God, who exercised a personal supervision over every human soul. 
+The hordes of people she had seen in many lands, the philosophies she had
+listened to from her husband and those wise ones about him, the life away
+from the restricted round of home, all had contributed to this change. 
+Her God had become a larger God; the greater mind which exerts its care
+of the individual through immutable laws of time and change and
+environment--the Supreme Good which comprehends the individual flower,
+dumb creature, or human being only as a unit in the larger scheme of life
+and love.  Her sister was not shocked or grieved; she too had grown with
+the years, and though perhaps less positively directed, had by a path of
+her own reached a wider prospect of conclusions.  It was a sweet day
+there in the little grove by the water, and would linger in the memory of
+both so long as life lasted.  Certainly it was the larger faith; though
+the moment must always come when the narrower, nearer, more humanly
+protecting arm of orthodoxy lends closer comfort.  Long afterward, in the
+years that followed the sorrow of heavy bereavement, Clemens once said to
+his wife, "Livy, if it comforts you to lean on the Christian faith do
+so," and she answered," I can't, Youth.  I haven't any."
+
+And the thought that he had destroyed her illusion, without affording a
+compensating solace, was one that would come back to him, now and then,
+all his days.                      
+
+
+
+
+CXXIII
+
+THE GRANT SPEECH OF 1879
+
+If the lunar rainbow had any fortuitous significance, perhaps we may find
+it in the two speeches which Mark Twain made in November and December of
+that year.  The first of these was delivered at Chicago, on the occasion
+of the reception of General Grant by the Army of the Tennessee, on the
+evening of November 73, 1879.  Grant had just returned from his splendid
+tour of the world.  His progress from San Francisco eastward had been
+such an ovation as is only accorded to sovereignty.  Clemens received an
+invitation to the reunion, but, dreading the long railway journey, was at
+first moved to decline.  He prepared a letter in which he made "business"
+his excuse, and expressed his regret that he would not be present to see
+and hear the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee at the moment when
+their old commander entered the room and rose in his place to speak.
+
+"Besides," he said, "I wanted to see the General again anyway and renew
+the acquaintance.  He would remember me, because I was the person who did
+not ask him for an office."
+
+He did not send the letter.  Reconsidering, it seemed to him that there
+was something strikingly picturesque in the idea of a Confederate soldier
+who had been chased for a fortnight in the rain through Ralls and Monroe
+counties, Missouri, now being invited to come and give welcome home to
+his old imaginary pursuer.  It was in the nature of an imperative
+command, which he could not refuse to obey.
+
+He accepted and agreed to speak.  They had asked him to respond to the
+toast of "The Ladies," but for him the subject was worn out.  He had
+already responded to that toast at least twice.  He telegraphed that
+there was one class of the community that had always been overlooked upon
+such occasions, and that if they would allow him to do so he would take
+that class for a toast: the babies.  Necessarily they agreed, and he
+prepared himself accordingly.
+
+He arrived in Chicago in time for the prodigious procession of welcome. 
+Grant was to witness the march from a grand reviewing stand, which had
+been built out from the second story of the Palmer House.  Clemens had
+not seen the General since the "embarrassing" introduction in Washington,
+twelve years before.  Their meeting was characteristic enough.  Carter
+Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, arriving with Grant, stepped over to Clemens,
+and asked him if he wouldn't like to be presented.  Grant also came
+forward, and a moment later Harrison was saying:
+
+"General, let me present Mr. Clemens, a man almost as great as yourself." 
+They shook hands; there was a pause of a moment, then Grant said, looking
+at him gravely:
+
+"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed, are you?"
+
+So he remembered that first, long-ago meeting.  It was a conspicuous
+performance.  The crowd could not hear the words, but they saw the
+greeting and the laugh, and cheered both men.
+
+Following the procession, there were certain imposing ceremonies of
+welcome at Haverly's Theater where long, laudatory eloquence was poured
+out upon the returning hero, who sat unmoved while the storm of music and
+cheers and oratory swept about him.  Clemens, writing of it that evening
+to Mrs. Clemens, said:
+
+     I never sat elbow to elbow with so many historic names before. 
+     Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope, Logan, and so on.
+
+     What an iron man Grant is!  He sat facing the house, with his right
+     leg crossed over his left, his right boot sole tilted up at an
+     angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of his chair. 
+     You note that position?  Well, when glowing references were made to
+     other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a trifle
+     of nervous consciousness, and as these references came frequently
+     the nervous changes of position and attitude were also frequent. 
+     But Grant!  He was under a tremendous and ceaseless bombardment of
+     praise and congratulation; but as true as I'm sitting here he never
+     moved a muscle of his body for a single instant during thirty
+     minutes!  You could have played him on a stranger for an effigy. 
+     Perhaps he never would have moved, but at last a speaker made such a
+     particularly ripping and blood-stirring remark about him that the
+     audience rose and roared and yelled and stamped and clapped an
+     entire minute--Grant sitting as serene as ever-when General Sherman
+     stepped up to him, laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder,
+     bent respectfully down, and whispered in his ear.  Then Grant got up
+     and bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane.
+
+But it was the next evening that the celebration rose to a climax.  This
+was at the grand banquet at the Palmer House, where six hundred guests
+sat down to dinner and Grant himself spoke, and Logan and Hurlbut, and
+Vilas and Woodford and Pope, fifteen in all, including Robert G. 
+Ingersoll and Mark Twain.  Chicago has never known a greater event than
+that dinner, for there has never been a time since when those great
+soldiers and citizens could have been gathered there.
+
+To Howells Clemens wrote:
+
+     Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-shredded old battle-flag
+     reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-aged soldiers,
+     most of whom hadn't seen it since they saw it advancing over
+     victorious fields when they were in their prime.  And imagine what
+     it was like when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view
+     while they were still going mad over the flag, and then right in the
+     midst of it all somebody struck up "When we were marching through
+     Georgia."  Well, you should have heard the thousand voices lift that
+     chorus and seen the tears stream down.  If I live a hundred years I
+     sha'n't ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about them.  I
+     sha'n't ever forget that I saw Phil Sheridan, with martial cloak and
+     plumed chapeau, riding his big black horse in the midst of his own
+     cannon; by all odds the superbest figure of a soldier.  I ever
+     looked upon!
+     Grand times, my boy, grand times!
+
+Mark Twain declared afterward that he listened to four speeches that
+night which he would remember as long as he lived.  One of them was by
+Emory Storrs, another by General Vilas, another by Logan, and the last
+and greatest by Robert Ingersoll, whose eloquence swept the house like a
+flame.  The Howells letter continues:
+
+     I doubt if America has ever seen anything quite equal to it; I am
+     well satisfied I shall not live to see its equal again.  How pale
+     those speeches are in print, but how radiant, how full of color, how
+     blinding they were in the delivery!  Bob Ingersoll's music will sing
+     through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my
+     ears.  And I shall always see him, as he stood that night on a
+     dinner-table, under the flash of lights and banners, in the midst of
+     seven hundred frantic shouters, the most beautiful human creature
+     that ever lived.  "They fought, that a mother might own her child." 
+     The words look like any other print, but, Lord bless me!  he
+     borrowed the very accent of the angel of mercy to say them in, and
+     you should have seen that vast house rise to its feet; and you
+     should have heard the hurricane that followed.  That's the only
+     test!  People may shout, clap their hands, stamp, wave their
+     napkins, but none but the master can make them get up on their feet.
+
+Clemens's own speech came last.  He had been placed at the end to hold
+the house.  He was preceded by a dull speaker, and his heart sank, for it
+was two o'clock and the diners were weary and sleepy, and the dreary
+speech had made them unresponsive.
+
+They gave him a round of applause when he stepped up upon the table in
+front of him--a tribute to his name.  Then he began the opening words of
+that memorable, delightful fancy.
+
+"We haven't all had the good-fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been
+generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the
+babies--we stand on common ground--"
+
+The tired audience had listened in respectful silence through the first
+half of the sentence.  He made one of his effective pauses on the word
+"babies," and when he added, in that slow, rich measure of his, "we stand
+on common ground," they let go a storm of applause.  There was no
+weariness and inattention after that.  At the end of each sentence, he
+had to stop to let the tornado roar itself out and sweep by.  When he
+reached the beginning of the final paragraph, "Among the three or four
+million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would
+preserve for ages as sacred things if we could know which ones they are,"
+the vast audience waited breathless for his conclusion.  Step by step he
+led toward some unseen climax--some surprise, of course, for that would
+be his way.  Then steadily, and almost without emphasis, he delivered the
+opening of his final sentence:
+
+"And now in his cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
+commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his
+approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole
+strategic mind, at this moment, to trying to find out some way to get his
+own big toe into his mouth, an achievement which (meaning no disrespect)
+the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his attention to some
+fifty-six years ago."
+
+He paused, and the vast crowd had a chill of fear.  After all, he seemed
+likely to overdo it to spoil everything with a cheap joke at the end.
+No one ever knew better than Mark Twain the value of a pause.  He waited
+now long enough to let the silence become absolute, until the tension was
+painful, then wheeling to Grant himself he said, with all the dramatic
+power of which he was master:
+
+"And if the child is but the father of the man, there are mighty few who
+will doubt that he succeeded!"
+
+The house came down with a crash.  The linking of their hero's great
+military triumphs with that earliest of all conquests seemed to them so
+grand a figure that they went mad with the joy of it.  Even Grant's iron
+serenity broke; he rocked and laughed while the tears streamed down his
+cheeks.
+
+They swept around the speaker with their congratulations, in their
+efforts to seize his hand.  He was borne up and down the great dining-
+hall.  Grant himself pressed up to make acknowledgments.
+
+"It tore me all to pieces," he said; and Sherman exclaimed, "Lord bless
+you, my boy!  I don't know how you do it!"
+
+The little speech has been in "cold type" so many years since then that
+the reader of it to-day may find it hard to understand the flame of
+response it kindled so long ago.  But that was another day--and another
+nation--and Mark Twain, like Robert Ingersoll, knew always his period and
+his people.
+
+
+
+
+CXXIV
+
+ANOTHER "ATLANTIC" SPEECH
+
+The December good-fortune was an opportunity Clemens had to redeem
+himself with the Atlantic contingent, at a breakfast given to Dr. Holmes.
+
+Howells had written concerning it as early as October, and the first
+impulse had been to decline.  It would be something of an ordeal; for
+though two years had passed since the fatal Whittier dinner, Clemens had
+not been in that company since, and the lapse of time did not signify. 
+Both Howells and Warner urged him to accept, and he agreed to do so on
+condition that he be allowed to speak.
+
+If anybody talks there I shall claim the right to say a word myself, and
+be heard among the very earliest, else it would be confoundedly awkward
+for me--and for the rest, too.  But you may read what I say beforehand,
+and strike out whatever you choose.
+
+Howells advised against any sort of explanation.  Clemens accepted this
+as wise counsel, and prepared an address relevant only to the guest of
+honor.
+
+It was a noble gathering.  Most of the guests of the Whittier dinner were
+present, and this time there were ladies.  Emerson, Longfellow, and
+Whittier were there, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe; also the
+knightly Colonel Waring, and Stedman, and Parkman, and grand old John
+Bigelow, old even then. --[He died in 1911 in his 94th year.]
+
+Howells was conservative in his introduction this time.  It was better
+taste to be so.  He said simply:
+
+"We will now listen to a few words of truth and soberness from Mark
+Twain."
+
+Clemens is said to have risen diffidently, but that was his natural
+manner.  It probably did not indicate anything of the inner tumult he
+really felt.
+
+Outwardly he was calm enough, and what he said was delicate and
+beautiful, the kind of thing that he could say so well.  It seems fitting
+that it should be included here, the more so that it tells a story not
+elsewhere recorded.  This is the speech in full:
+
+     MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN,--I would have traveled a much
+     greater distance than I have come to witness the paying of honors to
+     Dr. Holmes, for my feeling toward him has always been one of
+     peculiar warmth.  When one receives a letter from a great man for
+     the first time in his life it is a large event to him, as all of you
+     know by your own experience.  You never can receive letters enough
+     from famous men afterward to obliterate that one or dim the memory
+     of the pleasant surprise it was and the gratification it gave you. 
+     Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap.  Well, the first
+     great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest, Oliver Wendell
+     Holmes.  He was also the first great literary man I ever stole
+     anything from, and that is how I came to write to him and he to me. 
+     When my first book was new a friend of mine said, "The dedication is
+     very neat."  Yes, I said, I thought it was.  My friend said,
+     "I always admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad." 
+     I naturally said, "What do you mean?  Where did you ever see it
+     before?" "Well, I saw it first, some years ago, as Dr. Holmes's
+     dedication to his Songs in Many Keys."  Of course my first impulse
+     was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection I
+     said I would reprieve him for a moment or two, and give him a chance
+     to prove his assertion if he could.  We stepped into a book-store. 
+     and he did prove it.  I had stolen that dedication almost word for
+     word.  I could not imagine how this curious thing happened; for I
+     knew one thing, for a dead certainty--that a certain amount of pride
+     always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride
+     protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas. 
+     That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man, and admirers
+     had often told me I had nearly a basketful, though they were rather
+     reserved as to the size of the basket.  However, I thought the thing
+     out and solved the mystery.  Some years before I had been laid up a
+     couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and reread Dr.
+     Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the
+     brim.  The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I
+     unconsciously took it.  Well, of course, I wrote to Dr. Holmes and
+     told him I hadn't meant to steal, and he wrote back and said, in the
+     kindest way, that it was all right, and no harm done, and added that
+     he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in
+     reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. 
+     He stated a truth and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over
+     my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was rather glad I
+     had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter.  I afterward
+     called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of
+     mine that struck him as good protoplasm for poetry.  He could see by
+     that time that there wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along,
+     right from the start. --[Holmes in his letter had said: "I rather
+     think The Innocents Abroad will have many more readers than Songs in
+     Many Keys.  .  .  You will be stolen from a great deal oftener than
+     you will borrow from other people."]
+
+     I have met Dr. Holmes many times since; and lately he said--However,
+     I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got on my feet
+     to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of
+     the great public, and likewise to say I am right glad to see that
+     Dr. Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life, and as
+     age is not determined by years but by trouble, and by infirmities of
+     mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before any can
+     truthfully say, "He is growing old."
+
+Whatever Mark Twain may have lost on that former occasion, came back to
+him multiplied when he had finished this happy tribute.  So the year for
+him closed prosperously.  The rainbow of promise was justified.
+
+
+
+
+CXXV
+
+THE QUIETER THINGS OF HOME
+
+Upset and disturbed as Mark Twain often was, he seldom permitted his
+distractions to interfere with the program of his fireside.  His days and
+his nights might be fevered, but the evenings belonged to another world. 
+The long European wandering left him more than ever enamoured of his
+home; to him it had never been so sweet before, so beautiful, so full of
+peace.  Company came: distinguished guests and the old neighborhood
+circles.  Dinner-parties were more frequent than ever, and they were
+likely to be brilliant affairs.  The best minds, the brightest wits,
+gathered around Mark Twain's table.  Booth, Barrett, Irving, Sheridan,
+Sherman, Howells, Aldrich: they all assembled, and many more.  There was
+always some one on the way to Boston or New York who addressed himself
+for the day or the night, or for a brief call, to the Mark Twain
+fireside.
+
+Certain visitors from foreign lands were surprised at his environment,
+possibly expecting to find him among less substantial, more bohemian
+surroundings.  Henry Drummond, the author of Natural Law in the Spiritual
+World, in a letter of this time, said:
+
+     I had a delightful day at Hartford last Wednesday .  .  .  .  Called
+     on Mark Twain, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the widow of Horace
+     Bushnell.  I was wishing A---- had been at the Mark Twain interview. 
+     He is funnier than any of his books, and to my surprise a most
+     respected citizen, devoted to things esthetic, and the friend of the
+     poor and struggling. --[Life of Henry Drummond, by George Adam
+     Smith.]
+
+The quieter evenings were no less delightful.  Clemens did not often go
+out.  He loved his own home best.  The children were old enough now to
+take part in a form of entertainment that gave him and them especial
+pleasure-acting charades.  These he invented for them, and costumed the
+little performers, and joined in the acting as enthusiastically and as
+unrestrainedly as if he were back in that frolicsome boyhood on John
+Quarles's farm.  The Warner and Twichell children were often there and
+took part in the gay amusements.  The children of that neighborhood
+played their impromptu parts well and naturally.  They were in a dramatic
+atmosphere, and had been from infancy.  There was never any preparation
+for the charades.  A word was selected and the parts of it were whispered
+to the little actors.  Then they withdrew to the hall, where all sorts of
+costumes had been laid out for the evening, dressed their parts, and each
+detachment marched into the library, performed its syllable and retired,
+leaving the audience, mainly composed of parents, to guess the answer. 
+Often they invented their own words, did their own costuming, and
+conducted the entire performance independent of grown-up assistance or
+interference.  Now and then, even at this early period, they conceived
+and produced little plays, and of course their father could not resist
+joining in these.  At other times, evenings, after dinner, he would sit
+at the piano and recall the old darky songs-spirituals and jubilee
+choruses-singing them with fine spirit, if not with perfect technic, the
+children joining in these moving melodies.
+
+He loved to read aloud to them.  It was his habit to read his manuscript
+to Mrs. Clemens, and, now that the children were older, he was likely to
+include them in his critical audience.
+
+It would seem to have been the winter after their return from Europe that
+this custom was inaugurated, for 'The Prince and the Pauper' manuscript
+was the first one so read, and it was just then he was resuming work on
+this tale.  Each afternoon or evening, when he had finished his chapter,
+he assembled his little audience and read them the result.  The children
+were old enough to delight in that half real, half fairy tale of the
+wandering prince and the royal pauper: and the charm and simplicity of
+the story are measurably due to those two small listeners, to whom it was
+adapted in that early day of its creation.
+
+Clemens found the Prince a blessed relief from 'A Tramp Abroad', which
+had become a veritable nightmare.  He had thought it finished when he
+left the farm, but discovered that he must add several hundred pages to
+complete its bulk.  It seemed to him that he had been given a life-
+sentence.  He wrote six hundred pages and tore up all but two hundred and
+eighty-eight.  He was about to destroy these and begin again, when Mrs.
+Clemens's health became poor and he was advised to take her to Elmira,
+though it was then midwinter.  To Howells he wrote:
+
+     I said, "if there is one death that is painfuler than another, may I
+     get it if I don't do that thing."
+
+     So I took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last
+     line I should ever write on this book (a book which required 600
+     pages of MS., and I have written nearly four thousand, first and
+     last).
+
+     I am as soary (and flighty) as a rocket to-day, with the unutterable
+     joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has
+     been roosting more than a year and a half.
+
+They remained a month at Elmira, and on their return Clemens renewed work
+on 'The Prince and the Pauper'.  He reported to Howells that if he never
+sold a copy his jubilant delight in writing it would suffer no
+diminution.  A week later his enthusiasm had still further increased:
+
+     I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loath to hurry, not
+     wanting to get it done.  Did I ever tell you the plot of it?  It
+     begins at 9 A.M., January 27, 1547.
+
+He follows with a detailed synopsis of his plot, which in this instance
+he had worked out with unusual completeness--a fact which largely
+accounts for the unity of the tale.  Then he adds:
+
+     My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of
+     the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the
+     king himself, and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them
+     applied to others; all of which is to account for certain mildnesses
+     which distinguished Edward VI.'s reign from those that precede it
+     and follow it.
+
+     Imagine this fact: I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this
+     yarn for youth.  My stuff generally gets considerable damning with
+     faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way.  She
+     is become the horse-leech's daughter, and my mill doesn't grind fast
+     enough to suit her.  This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.
+
+He forgot, perhaps, to mention his smaller auditors, but we may believe
+they were no less eager in their demands for the tale's continuance.
+
+
+
+
+CXXVI
+
+"A TRAMP ABROAD"
+
+'A Tramp Abroad' came from the presses on the 13th of March, 1880.  It
+had been widely heralded, and there was an advance sale of twenty-five
+thousand copies.  It was of the same general size and outward character
+as the Innocents, numerously illustrated, and was regarded by its
+publishers as a satisfactory book.
+
+It bore no very striking resemblance to the Innocents on close
+examination.  Its pictures-drawn, for the most part, by a young art
+student named Brown, whom Clemens had met in Paris--were extraordinarily
+bad, while the crude engraving process by which they had been reproduced;
+tended to bring them still further into disrepute.  A few drawings by
+True Williams were better, and those drawn by Clemens himself had a value
+of their own.  The book would have profited had there been more of what
+the author calls his "works of art."
+
+Mark Twain himself had dubious anticipations as to the book's reception.
+
+But Howells wrote:
+
+     Well, you are a blessing.  You ought to believe in God's goodness,
+     since he has bestowed upon the world such a delightful genius as
+     yours to lighten its troubles.
+
+Clemens replied:
+
+     Your praises have been the greatest uplift I ever had.  When a body
+     is not even remotely expecting such things, how the surprise takes
+     the breath away!  We had been interpreting your stillness to
+     melancholy and depression, caused by that book.  This is honest. 
+     Why, everything looks brighter now.  A check for untold cash could
+     not have made our hearts sing as your letter has done.
+
+A letter from Tauchnitz, proposing to issue an illustrated edition in
+Germany, besides putting it into his regular series, was an added
+satisfaction.  To be in a Tauchnitz series was of itself a recognition of
+the book's merit.
+
+To Twichell, Clemens presented a special copy of the Tramp with a
+personal inscription, which must not be omitted here:
+
+     MY DEAR "HARRIS"--NO, I MEAN MY DEAR JOE,--Just imagine it for a
+     moment: I was collecting material in Europe during fourteen months
+     for a book, and now that the thing is printed I find that you, who
+     were with me only a month and a half of the fourteen, are in actual
+     presence (not imaginary) in 440 of the 531 pages the book contains!
+     Hang it, if you had stayed at home it would have taken me fourteen
+     years to get the material.  You have saved me an intolerable whole
+     world of hated labor, and I'll not forget it, my boy.
+
+     You'll find reminders of things, all along, that happened to us, and
+     of others that didn't happen; but you'll remember the spot where
+     they were invented.  You will see how the imaginary perilous trip up
+     the Riffelberg is preposterously expanded.  That horse-student is on
+     page 192.  The "Fremersberg" is neighboring.  The Black Forest novel
+     is on page 211.  I remember when and where we projected that: in the
+     leafy glades with the mountain sublimities dozing in the blue haze
+     beyond the gorge of Allerheiligen.  There's the "new member," page
+     213; the dentist yarn, 223; the true Chamois, 242; at page 248 is a
+     pretty long yarn, spun from a mighty brief text meeting, for a
+     moment, that pretty girl who knew me and whom I had forgotten; at
+     281 is "Harris," and should have been so entitled, but Bliss has
+     made a mistake and turned you into some other character; 305 brings
+     back the whole Rigi tramp to me at a glance; at 185 and 186 are
+     specimens of my art; and the frontispiece is the combination which I
+     made by pasting one familiar picture over the lower half of an
+     equally familiar one.  This fine work being worthy of Titian, I have
+     shed the credit of it upon him.  Well, you'll find more reminders of
+     things scattered through here than are printed, or could have been
+     printed, in many books.
+
+     All the "legends of the Neckar," which I invented for that unstoried
+     region, are here; one is in the Appendix.  The steel portrait of me
+     is just about perfect.
+
+     We had a mighty good.  time, Joe, and the six weeks I would dearly
+     like to repeat any time; but the rest of the fourteen months-never. 
+     With love,   
+                                        Yours, MARK.
+
+     Hartford, March 16, 1880.
+
+
+Possibly Twichell had vague doubts concerning a book of which he was so
+large a part, and its favorable reception by the critics and the public
+generally was a great comfort.  When the Howells letter was read to him
+he is reported as having sat with his hands on his knees, his head bent
+forward--a favorite attitude--repeating at intervals:
+
+"Howells said that, did he?  Old Howells said that!"
+
+There have been many and varying opinions since then as to the literary
+merits of 'A Tramp Abroad'.  Human tastes differ, and a "mixed" book of
+this kind invites as many opinions as it has chapters.  The word "uneven"
+pretty safely describes any book of size, but it has a special
+application to this one.  Written under great stress and uncertainty of
+mind, it could hardly be uniform.  It presents Mark Twain at his best,
+and at his worst.  Almost any American writer was better than Mark Twain
+at his worst: Mark Twain at his best was unapproachable.
+
+It is inevitable that 'A Tramp Abroad' and 'The Innocents Abroad' should
+be compared, though with hardly the warrant of similarity.  The books are
+as different as was their author at the periods when they were written. 
+'A Tramp Abroad' is the work of a man who was traveling and observing for
+the purpose of writing a book, and for no other reason.  The Innocents
+Abroad was written by a man who was reveling in every scene and
+experience, every new phase and prospect; whose soul was alive to every
+historic association, and to every humor that a gay party of young sight-
+seers could find along the way.  The note-books of that trip fairly glow
+with the inspiration of it; those of the later wanderings are mainly
+filled with brief, terse records, interspersed with satire and
+denunciation.  In the 'Innocents' the writer is the enthusiast with a
+sense of humor.  In the 'Tramp' he has still the sense of humor, but he
+has become a cynic; restrained, but a cynic none the less.  In the
+'Innocents' he laughs at delusions and fallacies--and enjoys them.  In
+the 'Tramp' he laughs at human foibles and affectations--and wants to
+smash them.  Very often he does not laugh heartily and sincerely at all,
+but finds his humor in extravagant burlesque.  In later life his gentler
+laughter, his old, untroubled enjoyment of human weakness, would return,
+but just now he was in that middle period, when the "damned human race"
+amused him indeed, though less tenderly.  (It seems proper to explain
+that in applying this term to mankind he did not mean that the race was
+foredoomed, but rather that it ought to be.)
+
+Reading the 'Innocents', the conviction grows that, with all its faults,
+it is literature from beginning to end.  Reading the 'Tramp', the
+suspicion arises that, regardless of technical improvement, its
+percentage of literature is not large.  Yet, as noted in an earlier
+volume, so eminent a critic as Brander Matthews has pronounced in its
+favor, and he undoubtedly had a numerous following; Howells expressed. 
+his delight in the book at the time of its issue, though one wonders how
+far the personal element entered into his enjoyment, and what would be
+his final decision if he read the two books side by side to-day.  He
+reviewed 'A Tramp Abroad' adequately and finely in the Atlantic, and
+justly; for on the whole it is a vastly entertaining book, and he did not
+overpraise it.
+
+'A Tramp Abroad' had an "Introduction" in the manuscript, a pleasant word
+to the reader but not a necessary one, and eventually it was omitted. 
+Fortunately the appendix remained.  Beyond question it contains some of
+the very best things in the book.  The descriptions of the German Portier
+and the German newspaper are happy enough, and the essay on the awful
+German language is one of Mark Twain's supreme bits of humor.  It is Mark
+Twain at his best; Mark Twain in a field where he had no rival, the field
+of good-natured, sincere fun-making-ridicule of the manifest absurdities
+of some national custom or institution which the nation itself could
+enjoy, while the individual suffered no wound.  The present Emperor of
+Germany is said to find comfort in this essay on his national speech when
+all other amusements fail.  It is delicious beyond words to express; it
+is unique.
+
+In the body of the book there are also many delights.  The description of
+the ant might rank next to the German language almost in its humor, and
+the meeting with the unrecognized girl at Lucerne has a lively charm.
+
+Of the serious matter, some of the word-pictures are flawless in their
+beauty; this, for instance, suggested by the view of the Jungfrau from
+Interlaken:
+
+     There was something subduing in the influence of that silent and
+     solemn and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the
+     indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial
+     and fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply by the
+     contrast.  One had the sense of being under the brooding
+     contemplation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a
+     spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of ages, upon a
+     million vanished races of men and judged them; and would judge a
+     million more--and still be there, watching unchanged and
+     unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have
+     become a vacant desolation
+
+     While I was feeling these things, I was groping, without knowing it,
+     toward an understanding of what the spell is which people find in
+     the Alps, and in no other mountains; that strange, deep, nameless
+     influence which, once felt, cannot be forgotten; once felt, leaves
+     always behind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing
+     which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning, which
+     will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will.  I met
+     dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative, cultivated and
+     uncultivated, who had come from far countries and roamed through the
+     Swiss Alps year after year--they could not explain why.  They had
+     come first, they said, out of idle curiosity, because everybody
+     talked about it; they had come since because they could not help it,
+     and they should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same
+     reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, but it
+     was futile; now they had no desire to break them.  Others came
+     nearer formulating what they felt; they said they could find perfect
+     rest and peace nowhere else when they were troubled: all frets and
+     worries and chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant
+     serenity of the Alps; the Great Spirit of the mountain breathed his
+     own peace upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them;
+     they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid things
+     here, before the visible throne of God.
+
+Indeed, all the serious matter in the book is good.  The reader's chief
+regret is likely to be that there is not more of it.  The main difficulty
+with the humor is that it seems overdone.  It is likely to be carried too
+far, and continued too long.  The ascent of Riffelberg is an example. 
+Though spotted with delights it seems, to one reader at least, less
+admirable than other of the book's important features, striking, as it
+does, more emphatically the chief note of the book's humor--that is to
+say, exaggeration.
+
+Without doubt there must be many--very many--who agree in finding a
+fuller enjoyment in 'A Tramp Abroad' than in the 'Innocents'; only, the
+burden of the world's opinion lies the other way.  The world has a
+weakness for its illusions: the splendor that falls on castle walls, the
+glory of the hills at evening, the pathos of the days that are no more. 
+It answers to tenderness, even on the page of humor, and to genuine
+enthusiasm, sharply sensing the lack of these things; instinctively
+resenting, even when most amused by it, extravagance and burlesque.  The
+Innocents Abroad is more soul-satisfying than its successor, more poetic;
+more sentimental, if you will.  The Tramp contains better English usage,
+without doubt, but it is less full of happiness and bloom and the halo of
+romance.  The heart of the world has felt this, and has demanded the book
+in fewer numbers. --[The sales of the Innocents during the earlier years
+more than doubled those of the Tramp during a similar period.  The later
+ratio of popularity is more nearly three to one.  It has been repeatedly
+stated that in England the Tramp has the greater popularity, an assertion
+not sustained by the publisher's accountings.]
+
+
+
+
+CXXVII
+
+LETTERS, TALES, AND PLANS
+
+The reader has not failed to remark the great number of letters which
+Samuel Clemens wrote to his friend William Dean Howells; yet
+comparatively few can even be mentioned.  He was always writing to
+Howells, on every subject under the sun; whatever came into his mind--
+business, literature, personal affairs--he must write about it to
+Howells.  Once, when nothing better occurred, he sent him a series of
+telegrams, each a stanza from an old hymn, possibly thinking they might
+carry comfort.--["Clemens had then and for many years the habit of
+writing to me about what he was doing, and still more of what he was
+experiencing.  Nothing struck his imagination, in or out of the daily
+routine, but he wished to write me of it, and he wrote with the greatest
+fullness and a lavish dramatization, sometimes to the length of twenty or
+forty pages:" (My Mark Twain, by W.  D.  Howells.)]  Whatever of
+picturesque happened in the household he immediately set it down for
+Howells's entertainment.  Some of these domestic incidents carry the
+flavor of his best humor.  Once he wrote:
+
+     Last night, when I went to bed, Mrs. Clemens said, "George didn't
+     take the cat down to the cellar; Rosa says he has left it shut up in
+     the conservatory."  So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat). 
+     About three in the morning Mrs. C.  woke me and said, "I do believe
+     I hear that cat in the drawing-room.  What did you do with him?"  I
+     answered with the confidence of a man who has managed to do the
+     right thing for once, and said, "I opened the conservatory doors,
+     took the library off the alarm, and spread everything open, so that
+     there wasn't any obstruction between him and the cellar."  Language
+     wasn't capable of conveying this woman's disgust.  But the sense of
+     what she said was, "He couldn't have done any harm in the
+     conservatory; so you must go and make the entire house free to him
+     and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to the
+     drawing-room.  If you had had Mr. Howells to help you I should have
+     admired, but not have been astonished, because I should know that
+     together you would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive
+     such a stately blunder all by yourself is what I cannot understand."
+
+     So, you see, even she knows how to apprecaite our gifts....
+
+     I knocked off during these stirring hours, and don't intend to go to
+     work again till we go away for the summer, four or six weeks hence. 
+     So I am writing to you, not because I have anything to say, but
+     because you don't have to answer and I need something to do this
+     afternoon.
+
+     The rightful earl has----
+
+                    Friday, 7th.
+
+     Well, never mind about the rightful earl; he merely wanted to-borrow
+     money.  I never knew an American earl that didn't.
+
+After a trip to Boston, during which Mrs. Clemens did some bric-a-brac
+shopping, he wrote:
+
+     Mrs. Clemens has two imperishable topics now: the museum of andirons
+     which she collected and your dinner.  It is hard to tell which she
+     admires the most.  Sometimes she leans one way and sometimes the
+     other; but I lean pretty steadily toward the dinner because I can
+     appreciate that, whereas I am no prophet in andirons.  There has
+     been a procession of Adams Express wagons filing before the door all
+     day delivering andirons.
+
+In a more serious vein he refers to the aged violinist Ole Bull and his
+wife, whom they had met during their visit, and their enjoyment of that
+gentle-hearted pair.
+
+Clemens did some shorter work that spring, most of which found its way
+into the Atlantic.  "Edward Mills and George Benton," one of the
+contributions of this time, is a moral sermon in its presentation of a
+pitiful human spectacle and misdirected human zeal.
+
+It brought a pack of letters of approval, not only from laity, but the
+church, and in some measure may have helped to destroy the silly
+sentimentalism which manifested itself in making heroes of spectacular
+criminals.  That fashion has gone out, largely.  Mark Twain wrote
+frequently on the subject, though never more effectively than in this
+particular instance.  "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning" was another
+Atlantic story, a companion piece to "Mrs. McWilliams's Experience with
+the Membranous Croup," and in the same delightful vein--a vein in which
+Mark Twain was likely to be at his best--the transcription of a scene not
+so far removed in character from that in the "cat" letter just quoted:
+something which may or may not have happened, but might have happened,
+approximately as set down.  Rose Terry Cooke wrote:
+
+     Horrid man, how did you know the way I behave in a thunderstorm? 
+     Have you been secreted in the closet or lurking on the shed roof?
+     I hope you got thoroughly rained on; and worst of all is that you
+     made me laugh at myself; my real terrors turned round and grimaced
+     at me: they were sublime, and you have made them ridiculous just
+     come out here another year and have four houses within a few rods of
+     you struck and then see if you write an article of such exasperating
+     levity.  I really hate you, but you are funny.
+
+In addition to his own work, he conceived a plan for Orion.  Clemens
+himself had been attempting, from time to time, an absolutely faithful
+autobiography; a document in which his deeds and misdeeds, even his moods
+and inmost thoughts, should be truly set down.  He had found it an
+impossible task.  He confessed freely that he lacked the courage, even
+the actual ability, to pen the words that would lay his soul bare, but he
+believed Orion equal to the task.  He knew how rigidly honest he was, how
+ready to confess his shortcomings, how eager to be employed at some
+literary occupation.  It was Mark Twain's belief that if Orion would
+record in detail his long, weary struggle, his succession of attempts and
+failures, his past dreams and disappointments, along with his sins of
+omission and commission, it would make one of those priceless human
+documents such as have been left by Benvenuto Cellini, Cazenova, and
+Rousseau.
+
+"Simply tell your story to yourself," he wrote, "laying all hideousness
+utterly bare, reserving nothing.  Banish the idea of the audience and all
+hampering things."
+
+Orion, out in Keokuk, had long since abandoned the chicken farm and a
+variety of other enterprises.  He had prospected insurance, mining,
+journalism, his old trade of printing, and had taken down and hung up his
+law shingle between each of these seizures.  Aside from business, too, he
+had been having a rather spectacular experience.  He had changed his
+politics three times (twice in one day), and his religion as many more. 
+Once when he was delivering a political harangue in the street, at night,
+a parade of the opposition (he had but just abandoned them) marched by
+carrying certain flaming transparencies, which he himself had made for
+them the day before.  Finally, after delivering a series of infidel
+lectures; he had been excommunicated and condemned to eternal flames by
+the Presbyterian Church.  He was therefore ripe for any new diversion,
+and the Autobiography appealed to him.  He set about it with splendid
+enthusiasm, wrote a hundred pages or so of his childhood with a startling
+minutia of detail and frankness, and mailed them to his brother for
+inspection.
+
+They were all that Mark Twain had expected; more than he had expected. 
+He forwarded them to Howells with great satisfaction, suggesting, with
+certain excisions, they be offered anonymously to the Atlantic readers.
+
+But Howells's taste for realism had its limitations.  He found the story
+interesting--indeed, torturingly, heart-wringingly so--and, advising
+strongly against its publication, returned it.
+
+Onion was steaming along at the rate of ten to twenty pages a day now,
+forwarding them as fast as written, while his courage was good and the
+fires warm.  Clemens, receiving a package by every morning mail, soon
+lost interest, then developed a hunted feeling, becoming finally
+desperate.  He wrote wildly to shut Orion off, urging him to let his
+manuscript accumulate, and to send it in one large consignment at the
+end.  This Orion did, and it is fair to say that in this instance at
+least he stuck to his work faithfully to the bitter, disheartening end. 
+And it would have been all that Mark Twain had dreamed it would be, had
+Orion maintained the simple narrative spirit of its early pages.  But he
+drifted off into theological byways; into discussions of his
+excommunication and infidelities, which were frank enough, but lacked
+human interest.
+
+In old age Mark Twain once referred to Orion's autobiography in print and
+his own disappointment in it, which he attributed to Orion's having
+departed from the idea of frank and unrestricted confession to exalt
+himself as a hero-a statement altogether unwarranted, and due to one of
+those curious confusions of memory and imagination that more than once
+resulted in a complete reversal of the facts.  A quantity of Orion's
+manuscript has been lost and destroyed, but enough fragments of it remain
+to show its fidelity to the original plan.  It is just one long record of
+fleeting hope, futile effort, and humiliation.  It is the story of a life
+of disappointment; of a man who has been defeated and beaten down and
+crushed by the world until he has nothing but confession left to
+surrender. --[Howells, in his letter concerning the opening chapters,
+said that they would some day make good material.  Fortunately the
+earliest of these chapters were preserved, and, as the reader may
+remember, furnished much of the childhood details for this biography.]
+
+Whatever may have been Mark Twain's later impression of his brother's
+manuscript, its story of failure and disappointment moved him to definite
+action at the time.
+
+Several years before, in Hartford, Orion had urged him to make his
+publishing contracts on a basis of half profits, instead of on the
+royalty plan.  Clemens, remembering this, had insisted on such an
+arrangement for the publication of 'A Tramp Abroad', and when his first
+statement came in he realized that the new contract was very largely to
+his advantage.  He remembered Orion's anxiety in the matter, and made it
+now a valid excuse for placing his brother on a firm financial footing.
+
+Out of the suspicions which you bred in me years ago has grown this
+result, to wit: that I shall within the twelve months get $40,000 out of
+this Tramp, instead of $20,000.  $20,000, after taxes and other expenses
+are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a month, so I shall
+tell Mr. Perkins [his lawyer and financial agent] to make your check that
+amount per month hereafter....  This ends the loan business, and
+hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on borrowed money, but
+on money which you have squarely earned, and which has no taint or savor
+of charity about it, and you can also reflect that the money which you
+have been receiving of me is charged against the heavy bill which the
+next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine.
+
+>From that time forward Orion Clemens was worth substantially twenty
+thousand dollars--till the day of his death, and, after him, his widow. 
+Far better was it for him that the endowment be conferred in the form of
+an income, than had the capital amount been placed in his hands.
+
+
+
+CXXVIII
+
+MARK TWAIN's ABSENT-MINDEDNESS
+
+A number of amusing incidents have been more or less accurately reported
+concerning Mark Twain's dim perception of certain physical surroundings,
+and his vague resulting memories--his absent-mindedness, as we say.
+
+It was not that he was inattentive--no man was ever less so if the
+subject interested him--but only that the casual, incidental thing seemed
+not to find a fixed place in his deeper consciousness.
+
+By no means was Mark Twain's absent-mindedness a development of old age. 
+On the two occasions following he was in the very heyday of his mental
+strength.  Especially was it, when he was engaged upon some absorbing or
+difficult piece of literature, that his mind seemed to fold up and shut
+most of the world away.  Soon after his return from Europe, when he was
+still struggling with 'A Tramp Abroad', he wearily put the manuscript
+aside, one day, and set out to invite F. G. Whitmore over for a game of
+billiards.  Whitmore lived only a little way down the street, and Clemens
+had been there time and again.  It was such a brief distance that he
+started out in his slippers and with no hat.  But when he reached the
+corner where the house, a stone's-throw away, was in plain view he
+stopped.  He did not recognize it.  It was unchanged, but its outlines
+had left no impress upon his mind.  He stood there uncertainly a little
+while, then returned and got the coachman, Patrick McAleer, to show him
+the way.
+
+The second, and still more picturesque instance, belongs also to this
+period.  One day, when he was playing billiards with Whitmore, George,
+the butler, came up with a card.
+
+"Who is he, George?" Clemens asked, without looking at the card.
+
+"I don't know, suh, but he's a gentleman, Mr. Clemens."
+
+"Now, George, how many times have I told you I don't want to see
+strangers when I'm playing billiards!  This is just some book agent, or
+insurance man, or somebody with something to sell.  I don't want to see
+him, and I'm not going to."
+
+"Oh, but this is a gentleman, I'm sure, Mr. Clemens.  Just look at his
+card, suh."
+
+"Yes, of course, I see--nice engraved card--but I don't know him, and if
+it was St. Peter himself I wouldn't buy the key of salvation!  You tell
+him so--tell him--oh, well, I suppose I've got to go and get rid of him
+myself.  I'll be back in a minute, Whitmore."
+
+He ran down the stairs, and as he got near the parlor door, which stood
+open, he saw a man sitting on a couch with what seemed to be some framed
+water-color pictures on the floor near his feet.
+
+"Ah, ha!" he thought, "I see.  A picture agent.  I'll soon get rid of
+him."
+
+He went in with his best, " Well, what can I do for you?" air, which he,
+as well as any man living, knew how to assume; a friendly air enough, but
+not encouraging.  The gentleman rose and extended his hand.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Clemens?" he said.
+
+Of course this was the usual thing with men who had axes to grind or
+goods to sell.  Clemens did not extend a very cordial hand.  He merely
+raised a loose, indifferent hand--a discouraging hand.
+
+"And how is Mrs. Clemens?" asked the uninvited guest.
+
+So this was his game.  He would show an interest in the family and
+ingratiate himself in that way; he would be asking after the children
+next.
+
+"Well--Mrs. Clemens is about as usual--I believe."
+
+"And the children--Miss Susie and little Clara?"
+
+This was a bit startling.  He knew their names!  Still, that was easy to
+find out.  He was a smart agent, wonderfully smart.  He must be got rid
+of.
+
+"The children are well, quite well," and (pointing down at the pictures)-
+-"We've got plenty like these.  We don't want any more.  No, we don't
+care for any more," skilfully working his visitor toward the door as he
+talked.
+
+The man, looking non-plussed--a good deal puzzled--allowed himself to be
+talked into the hall and toward the front door.  Here he paused a moment:
+
+"Mr. Clemens, will you tell me where Mr. Charles Dudley Warner lives?"
+
+This was the chance!  He would work him off on Charlie Warner.  Perhaps
+Warner needed pictures.
+
+"Oh, certainly, certainly!  Right across the yard.  I'll show you.  
+There's a walk right through.  You don't need to go around the front way
+at all.  You'll find him at home, too, I'm pretty sure"; all the time
+working his caller out and down the step and in the right direction.
+
+The visitor again extended his hand.
+
+"Please remember me to Mrs. Clemens and the children."
+
+"Oh, certainly, certainly, with pleasure.  Good day.  Yes, that's the
+house Good-by."
+
+On the way back to the billiard-room Mrs. Clemens called to him.  She was
+ill that day.
+
+"Youth!"
+
+"Yes, Livy."  He went in for a word.
+
+"George brought me Mr. B----'s card.  I hope you were very nice to him;
+the B----s were so nice to us, once last year, when you were gone.",
+
+"The B----s-- Why, Livy----"
+
+"Yes, of course, and I asked him to be sure to call when he came to
+Hartford."
+
+He gazed at her helplessly.
+
+"Well, he's been here."
+
+"Oh, Youth, have you done anything?"
+
+"Yes, of course I have.  He seemed to have some pictures to sell, so I
+sent him over to Warner's.  I noticed he didn't take them with him.  Land
+sakes, Livy, what can I do?"
+
+"Which way did he go, Youth?"
+
+"Why, I sent him to Charlie Warner's.  I thought----"
+
+"Go right after him.  Go quick!  Tell him what you have done."
+
+He went without further delay, bareheaded and in his slippers, as usual. 
+Warner and B---- were in cheerful and friendly converse.  They had met
+before.  Clemens entered gaily:
+
+"Oh Yes, I see!  You found him all right.  Charlie, we met Mr. B---- and
+his wife in Europe last summer and they made things pleasant for us.  I
+wanted to come over here with him, but was a good deal occupied just
+then.  Livy isn't very well, but she seems a good deal better, so I just
+followed along to have a good talk, all together."
+
+He stayed an hour, and whatever bad impression had formed in B----'s mind
+faded long before the hour ended.  Returning home Clemens noticed the
+pictures still on the parlor floor.
+
+"George," he said, "what pictures are those that gentleman left?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Clemens, those are our own pictures.  I've been straightening
+up the room a little, and Mrs. Clemens had me set them around to see how
+they would look in new places.  The gentleman was looking at them while
+he was waiting for you to come down."
+
+
+
+
+CXXIX
+
+FURTHER AFFAIRS AT THE FARM
+
+It was at Elmira, in July (1880), that the third little girl came--Jane
+Lampton, for her grandmother, but always called Jean.  She was a large,
+lovely baby, robust and happy.  When she had been with them a little more
+than a month Clemens, writing to Twichell, said:
+
+     DEAR OLD JOE,--Concerning Jean Clemens, if anybody said he "didn't
+     see no pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," I
+     should think he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor sort
+     of observer.  She is the comeliest and daintiest and perfectest
+     little creature the continents and archipelagos have seen since the
+     Bay and Susy were her size.  I will not go into details; it is not
+     necessary; you will soon be in Hartford, where I have already hired
+     a hall; the admission fee will be but a trifle.
+
+     It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotations of the
+     Affection Board brought about by throwing this new security on the
+     market.  Four weeks ago the children still put Mama at the head of
+     the list right along, where she had always been.  But now:
+
+                    Jean
+                    Mama
+                    Motley    |cats
+                    Fraulein  |
+                    Papa
+
+     That is the way it stands now.  Mama is become No. 2; I have dropped
+     from No. 4, and am become No. 5.  Some time ago it used to be nip
+     and tuck between me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I
+     didn't stand any more show.
+
+     Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence.  Have read a
+     hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or
+     bathostic) letters, written in that dim (no, vanished) past, when he
+     was a student.  And Lord!  to think that this boy, who is so real to
+     me now, and so booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life,
+     and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame
+     and stood against the sun one brief, tremendous moment with the
+     world's eyes on him, and then---- fzt!  where is he?  Why, the only
+     long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business, is
+     the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has
+     drifted by since then; a vast, empty level, it seems, with a
+     formless specter glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that
+     lie along its remote verge.
+
+     Well, we are all getting along here first-rate.  Livy gains strength
+     daily and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and---- But no
+     more of this.  Somebody may be reading this letter eighty years
+     hence.  And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding
+     this yellow paper in your hand in 1960), save yourself the trouble
+     of looking further.  I know how pathetically trivial our small
+     concerns would seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane
+     them.  No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion.  Suffice it you
+     to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind
+     now, and once more tooth less; and the rest of us are shadows these
+     many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh!
+                                                            MARK. 
+
+It is the ageless story.  He too had written his youthful letters, and
+later had climbed the Alps of fame and was still outlined against the
+sun.  Happily, the little child was to evade that harsher penalty--the
+unwarranted bitterness and affront of a lingering, palsied age.
+
+Mrs. Clemens, in a letter somewhat later, set down a thought similar to
+his:
+
+"We are all going so fast.  Pretty soon we shall have been dead a hundred
+years."
+
+Clemens varied his work that summer, writing alternately on 'The Prince
+and the Pauper' and on the story about 'Huck Finn', which he had begun
+four years earlier. 
+
+He read the latter over and found in it a new interest.  It did not
+fascinate him, as did the story of the wandering prince.  He persevered
+only as the spirit moved him, piling up pages on both the tales.
+
+He always took a boy's pride in the number of pages he could complete at
+a sitting, and if the day had gone well he would count them triumphantly,
+and, lighting a fresh cigar, would come tripping down the long stair that
+led to the level of the farm-house, and, gathering his audience, would
+read to them the result of his industry; that is to say, he proceeded
+with the story of the Prince.  Apparently he had not yet acquired
+confidence or pride enough in poor Huck to exhibit him, even to friends.
+
+The reference (in the letter to Twichell) to the cats at the farm
+introduces one of the most important features of that idyllic resort. 
+There were always cats at the farm.  Mark Twain himself dearly loved
+cats, and the children inherited this passion.  Susy once said:
+
+"The difference between papa and mama is, that mama loves morals and papa
+loves cats."
+
+The cats did not always remain the same, but some of the same ones
+remained a good while, and were there from season to season, always
+welcomed and adored.  They were commendable cats, with such names as
+Fraulein, Blatherskite, Sour Mash, Stray Kit, Sin, and Satan, and when,
+as happened now and then, a vacancy occurred in the cat census there
+followed deep sorrow and elaborate ceremonies.
+
+Naturally, there would be stories about cats: impromptu bedtime stories,
+which began anywhere and ended nowhere, and continued indefinitely
+through a land inhabited only by cats and dreams.  One of these stories,
+as remembered and set down later, began:
+
+     Once upon a time there was a noble, big cat whose christian name was
+     Catasaqua, because she lived in that region; but she didn't have any
+     surname, because she was a short-tailed cat, being a manx, and
+     didn't need one.  It is very just and becoming in a long-tailed cat
+     to have a surname, but it would be very ostentatious, and even
+     dishonorable, in a manx.  Well, Catasaqua had a beautiful family of
+     cattings; and they were of different colors, to harmonize with their
+     characters.  Cattaraugus, the eldest, was white, and he had high
+     impulses and a pure heart; Catiline, the youngest, was black, and he
+     had a self-seeking nature, his motives were nearly always base, he
+     was truculent and insincere.  He was vain and foolish, and often
+     said that he would rather be what he was, and live like a bandit,
+     yet have none above him, than be a cat-o'-nine-tails and eat with
+     the king.
+
+And so on without end, for the audience was asleep presently and the end
+could wait.
+
+There was less enthusiasm over dogs at Quarry Farm.
+
+Mark Twain himself had no great love for the canine breed.  To a woman
+who wrote, asking for his opinion on dogs, he said, in part:
+
+     By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a "noble" animal? 
+     The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your
+     fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully
+     misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve
+     toward you afterward you can never get her full confidence again.
+
+He was not harsh to dogs; occasionally he made friends with them.  There
+was once at the farm a gentle hound, named Bones, that for some reason
+even won his way into his affections.  Bones was always a welcome
+companion, and when the end of summer came, and Clemens, as was his
+habit, started down the drive ahead of the carriage, Bones, half-way to
+the entrance, was waiting for him.  Clemens stooped down, put his arms
+around him, and bade him an affectionate good-by.  He always recalled
+Bones tenderly, and mentioned him in letters to the farm.
+
+
+
+
+CXXX
+
+COPYRIGHT AND OTHER FANCIES
+
+The continued assault of Canadian pirates on his books kept Mark Twain's
+interest sharply alive on the subject of copyright reform.  He invented
+one scheme after another, but the public-mind was hazy on the subject,
+and legislators were concerned with purposes that interested a larger
+number of voters.  There were too few authors to be of much value at the
+polls, and even of those few only a small percentage were vitally
+concerned.  For the others, foreign publishers rarely paid them the
+compliment of piracy, while at home the copyright limit of forty-two
+years was about forty-two times as long as they needed protection.  Bliss
+suggested a law making the selling of pirated books a penal offense, a
+plan with a promising look, but which came to nothing.
+
+Clemens wrote to his old friend Rollin M. Daggett, who by this time was a
+Congressman.  Daggett replied that he would be glad to introduce any bill
+that the authors might agree upon, and Clemens made at least one trip to
+Washington to discuss the matter, but it came to nothing in the end.  It
+was a Presidential year, and it would do just as well to keep the authors
+quiet by promising to do something next year.  Any legislative stir is
+never a good thing for a campaign.
+
+Clemens's idea for copyright betterment was not a fixed one.  Somewhat
+later, when an international treaty which would include protection for
+authors was being discussed, his views had undergone a change.  He wrote,
+asking Howells:
+
+     Will the proposed treaty protect us (and effectually) against
+     Canadian piracy?  Because, if it doesn't, there is not a single
+     argument in favor of international copyright which a rational
+     American Senate could entertain for a moment.  My notions have
+     mightily changed lately.  I can buy Macaulay's History, three vols.;
+     bound, for $1.25; Chambers's Cyclopaedia, ten vols., cloth, for
+     $7.25 (we paid $60), and other English copyrights in proportion; I
+     can buy a lot of the great copyright classics, in paper, at from
+     three cents to thirty cents apiece.  These things must find their
+     way into the very kitchens and hovels of the country.  A generation
+     of this sort of thing ought to make this the most intelligent and
+     the best-read nation in the world.  International copyright must
+     becloud this sun and bring on the former darkness and dime novel
+     reading.
+
+     Morally this is all wrong; governmentally it is all right.  For it
+     is the duty of governments and families to be selfish, and look out
+     simply for their own.  International copyright would benefit a few
+     English authors and a lot of American publishers, and be a profound
+     detriment to twenty million Americans; it would benefit a dozen
+     American authors a few dollars a year, and there an end.  The real
+     advantages all go to English authors and American publishers.
+
+     And even if the treaty will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me
+     an average of $5,000 a year, I'm down on it anyway, and I'd like
+     cussed well to write an article opposing the treaty.
+
+It is a characteristic expression.  Mark Twain might be first to grab for
+the life-preserver, but he would also be first to hand it to a humanity
+in greater need.  He could damn the human race competently, but in the
+final reckoning it was the interest of that race that lay closest to his
+heart.
+
+Mention has been made in an earlier chapter of Clemens's enthusiasms or
+"rages" for this thing and that which should benefit humankind.  He was
+seldom entirely without them.  Whether it was copyright legislation, the
+latest invention, or a new empiric practice, he rarely failed to have a
+burning interest in some anodyne that would provide physical or mental
+easement for his species.  Howells tells how once he was going to save
+the human race with accordion letter-files--the system of order which
+would grow out of this useful device being of such nerve and labor saving
+proportions as to insure long life and happiness to all.  The fountain-
+pen, in its first imperfect form, must have come along about the same
+time, and Clemens was one of the very earliest authors to own one.  For a
+while it seemed that the world had known no greater boon since the
+invention of printing; but when it clogged and balked, or suddenly
+deluged his paper and spilled in his pocket, he flung it to the outer
+darkness.  After which, the stylo-graphic pen.  He tried one, and wrote
+severally to Dr. Brown, to Howells, and to Twichell, urging its adoption. 
+Even in a letter to Mrs. Howells he could not forget his new possession:
+
+     And speaking of Howells, he ought to use the stylographic pen, the
+     best fountain-pen yet invented; he ought to, but of course he won't-
+     -a blamed old sodden-headed conservative--but you see yourself what
+     a nice, clean, uniform MS. it makes.
+
+And at the same time to Twichell:
+
+     I am writing with a stylographic pen.  It takes a royal amount of
+     cussing to make the thing go the first few days or a week, but by
+     that time the dullest ass gets the hang of the thing, and after that
+     no enrichments of expression are required, and said ass finds the
+     stylographic a genuine God's blessing.  I carry one in each breeches
+     pocket, and both loaded.  I'd give you one of them if I had you
+     where I could teach you how to use it--not otherwise.  For the
+     average ass flings the thing out of the window in disgust the second
+     day, believing it hath no virtue, no merit of any sort; whereas the
+     lack lieth in himself, God of his mercy damn him.
+
+It was not easy to withstand Mark Twain's enthusiasm.  Howells, Twichell,
+and Dr. Brown were all presently struggling and swearing (figuratively)
+over their stylographic pens, trying to believe that salvation lay in
+their conquest.  But in the midst of one letter, at last, Howells broke
+down, seized his old steel weapon, and wrote savagely: "No white man
+ought to use a stylographic pen, anyhow!"  Then, with the more ancient
+implement, continued in a calmer spirit.
+
+It was only a little later that Clemens himself wrote:
+
+     You see I am trying a new pen.  I stood the stylograph as long as I
+     could, and then retired to the pencil.  The thing I am trying now is
+     that fountain-pen which is advertised to employ and accommodate
+     itself to any kind of pen.  So I selected an ordinary gold pen--a
+     limber one--and sent it to New York and had it cut and fitted to
+     this thing.  It goes very well indeed--thus far; but doubtless the
+     devil will be in it by tomorrow.
+
+Mark Twain's schemes were not all in the line of human advancement; some
+of them were projected, primarily at least, for diversion.  He was likely
+at any moment to organize a club, a sort of private club, and at the time
+of which we are writing he proposed what was called the "Modest" Club. 
+He wrote to Howells, about it:
+
+     At present I am the only member, and as the modesty required must be
+     of a quite aggravated type the enterprise did seem for a time doomed
+     to stop dead still with myself, for lack of further material; but on
+     reflection I have come to the conclusion that you are eligible. 
+     Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted to offer you the
+     distinction of membership.  I do not know that we can find any
+     others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner, Twichell,
+     Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more, together with
+     Mrs. Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others of the sex.  I have
+     long felt there ought to be an organized gang of our kind.
+
+He appends the by-laws, the main ones being:
+
+     The object of the club shall be to eat and talk.
+
+     Qualification for membership shall be aggravated modesty,
+     unobtrusiveness, native humility, learning, talent, intelligence,
+     unassailable character.
+
+     There shall be no officers except a president, and any member who
+     has anything to eat and talk about may constitute himself president
+     for the time being.
+
+     Any brother or sister of the order finding a brother or a sister in
+     imminently deadly peril shall forsake his own concerns, no matter at
+     what cost, and call the police.
+
+     Any member knowing anything scandalous about himself shall
+     immediately inform the club, so that they shall call a meeting and
+     have the first chance to talk about it.
+
+It was one of his whimsical fancies, and Howells replied that he would
+like to join it, only that he was too modest--that is, too modest to
+confess that he was modest enough for membership.
+
+He added that he had sent a letter, with the rules, to Hay, but doubted
+his modesty.  He said:
+
+"He will think he has a right to belong as much as you or I."
+
+Howells agreed that his own name might be put down, but the idea seems
+never to have gone any further.  Perhaps the requirements of membership
+were too severe.
+
+
+
+
+CXXXI
+
+WORKING FOR GARFIELD
+
+Eighteen hundred and eighty was a Presidential year.  General Garfield
+was nominated on the Republican ticket (against General Hancock), and
+Clemens found him satisfactory.
+
+Garfield suits me thoroughly and exactly [he wrote Howells].  I prefer
+him to Grant's friends).  The Presidency can't add anything to Grant; he
+will shine on without it.  It is ephemeral; he is eternal.
+
+That was the year when the Republican party became panicky over the
+disaffection in its ranks, due to the defeat of Grant in the convention,
+and at last, by pleadings and promises, conciliated Platt and Conkling
+and brought them into the field.  General Grant also was induced to save
+the party from defeat, and made a personal tour of oratory for that
+purpose.  He arrived in Hartford with his family on the 16th of October,
+and while his reception was more or less partizan, it was a momentous
+event.  A vast procession passed in review before him, and everywhere
+houses and grounds were decorated.  To Mrs. Clemens, still in Elmira,
+Clemens wrote:
+
+     I found Mr. Beals hard at work in the rain with his decorations. 
+     With a ladder he had strung flags around our bedroom balcony, and
+     thence around to the porte-cochere, which was elaborately flagged;
+     thence the flags of all nations were suspended from a line which
+     stretched past the greenhouse to the limit of our grounds.  Against
+     each of the two trees on the mound, half-way down to our gate,
+     stands a knight in complete armor.  Piles of still-bundled flags
+     clutter up the ombra (to be put up), also gaudy shields of various
+     shapes (arms of this and other countries), also some huge glittering
+     arches and things done in gold and silver paper, containing mottoes
+     in big letters.  I broke Mr. Beals's heart by persistently and
+     inflexibly annulling and forbidding the biggest and gorgeousest of
+     the arches--it had on it, in all the fires of the rainbow, "The Home
+     of Mark Twain," in letters as big as your head.  Oh, we're going to
+     be decorated sufficient, don't you worry about that, madam.
+
+Clemens was one of those delegated to receive Grant and to make a speech
+of welcome.  It was a short speech but an effective one, for it made
+Grant laugh.  He began:
+
+     "I am among those deputed to welcome you to the sincere and cordial
+     hospitalities of Hartford, the city of the historic and revered
+     Charter Oak, of which most of the town is built."  He seemed to be
+     at loss what to say next, and, leaning over, pretended to whisper to
+     Grant; then, as if he had obtained the information he wanted, he
+     suddenly straightened up and poured out the old-fashioned eulogy on
+     Grant's achievements, adding, in an aside, as he finished:
+
+     "I nearly forgot that part of my speech," which evoked roars of
+     laughter from the assembly and a grim smile from Grant.  He spoke of
+     Grant as being out of public employment, with private opportunities
+     closed against him, and added, "But your country will reward you,
+     never fear."
+
+Then he closed:
+
+     When Wellington won Waterloo, a battle about on a level with any one
+     of a dozen of your victories, sordid England tried to pay him for
+     that service with wealth and grandeurs.  She made him a duke and
+     gave him $4,000,000.  If you had done and suffered for any other
+     country what you have done and suffered for your own you would have
+     been affronted in the same sordid way.  But, thank God!  this vast
+     and rich and mighty republic is imbued to the core with a delicacy
+     which will forever preserve her from so degrading you.
+
+     Your country loves you--your country's proud of you--your country is
+     grateful to you.  Her applauses, which have been many, thundering in
+     your ears all these weeks and months, will never cease while the
+     flag you saved continues to wave.
+
+     Your country stands ready from this day forth to testify her
+     measureless love and pride and gratitude toward you in every
+     conceivable--inexpensive way.  Welcome to Hartford, great soldier,
+     honored statesman, unselfish citizen.
+
+Grant's grim smile showed itself more than once during the speech, and
+when Clemens reached the sentence that spoke of his country rewarding him
+in "every conceivable--inexpensive way" his composure broke up completely
+and he "nearly laughed his entire head off," according to later
+testimony, while the spectators shouted their approval.
+
+Grant's son, Col. Fred Grant, --[Maj.-Gen'l, U. S. Army, 1906.  Died
+April, 1912.]-- dined at the Clemens home that night, and Rev. Joseph
+Twichell and Henry C.  Robinson.  Twichell's invitation was in the form
+of a telegram.  It said:
+
+     I want you to dine with us Saturday half past five and meet Col.
+     Fred Grant.  No ceremony.  Wear the same shirt you always wear.
+
+The campaign was at its height now, and on the evening of October 26th
+there was a grand Republican rally at the opera-house with addresses by
+Charles Dudley Warner, Henry C. Robinson, and Mark Twain.  It was an
+unpleasant, drizzly evening, but the weather had no effect on their
+audience.  The place was jammed and packed, the aisles, the windows, and
+the gallery railings full.  Hundreds who came as late as the hour
+announced for the opening were obliged to turn back, for the building had
+been thronged long before.  Mark Twain's speech that night is still
+remembered in Hartford as the greatest effort of his life.  It was hardly
+that, except to those who were caught in the psychology of the moment,
+the tumult and the shouting of patriotism, the surge and sweep of the
+political tide.  The roaring delight of the audience showed that to them
+at least it was convincing.  Howells wrote that he had read it twice, and
+that he could not put it out of his mind.  Whatever its general effect
+was need not now be considered.  Garfield was elected, and perhaps
+Grant's visit to Hartford and the great mass-meeting that followed
+contributed their mite to that result.
+
+Clemens saw General Grant again that year, but not on political business. 
+The Educational Mission, which China had established in Hartford--a
+thriving institution for eight years or more--was threatened now by
+certain Chinese authorities with abolishment.  Yung Wing (a Yale
+graduate), the official by whom it had been projected and under whose
+management it had prospered, was deeply concerned, as was the Rev. Joseph
+Twichell, whose interest in the mission was a large and personal one. 
+Yung Wing declared that if influence could be brought upon Li Hung Chang,
+then the most influential of Chinese counselors, the mission might be
+saved.  Twichell, remembering the great honors which Li Hung Chang had
+paid to General Grant in China, also Grant's admiration of Mark Twain,
+went to the latter without delay.  Necessarily Clemens would be
+enthusiastic, and act promptly.  He wrote to Grant, and Grant replied by
+telegraph, naming a day when he would see them in New York.
+
+They met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  Grant was in fine spirits, and by no
+means the "silent man" of his repute.
+
+He launched at once into as free and flowing talk as I have ever heard
+[says Twichell], marked by broad and intelligent views on the subject of
+China, her wants, disadvantages, etc.  Now and then he asked a question,
+but kept the lead of the conversation.  At last he proposed, of his own
+accord, to write a letter to Li Hung Chang, advising the continuance of
+the Mission, asking only that I would prepare him some notes, giving him
+points to go by.  Thus we succeeded easily beyond our expectations,
+thanks, very largely, to Clemens's assistance.
+
+Clemens wrote Howells of the interview, detailing at some length
+Twichell's comical mixture of delight and chagrin at not being given time
+to air the fund of prepared statistics with which he had come loaded.
+It was as if he had come to borrow a dollar and had been offered a
+thousand before he could unfold his case."
+
+
+
+
+
+CXXXII
+
+A NEW PUBLISHER
+
+It was near the end of the year that Clemens wrote to his mother:
+
+     I have two stories, and by the verbal agreement they are both going
+     into the same book; but Livy says they're not, and by George! she
+     ought to know.  She says they're going into separate books, and that
+     one of them is going to be elegantly gotten up, even if the elegance
+     of it eats up the publisher's profits and mine too.
+
+     I anticipate that publisher's melancholy surprise when he calls here
+     Tuesday.  However, let him suffer; it is his own fault.  People who
+     fix up agreements with me without first finding out what Livy's
+     plans are take their fate into their own hands.
+
+     I said two stories, but one of them is only half done; two or three
+     months' work on it yet.  I shall tackle it Wednesday or Thursday;
+     that is, if Livy yields and allows both stories to go in one book,
+     which I hope she won't.
+
+The reader may surmise that the finished story--the highly regarded
+story--was 'The Prince and the Pauper'.  The other tale--the unfinished
+and less considered one was 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'.  Nobody
+appears to have been especially concerned about Huck, except, possibly,
+the publisher.
+
+The publisher was not the American Company.  Elisha Bliss, after long ill
+health, had died that fall, and this fact, in connection with a growing
+dissatisfaction over the earlier contracts, had induced Clemens to listen
+to offers from other makers of books.  The revelation made by the "half-
+profit" returns from A Tramp Abroad meant to him, simply that the profits
+had not been fairly apportioned, and he was accordingly hostile.  To
+Orion he wrote that, had Bliss lived, he would have remained with the
+company and made it reimburse him for his losses, but that as matters
+stood he would sever the long connection.  It seemed a pity, later, that
+he did this, but the break was bound to come.  Clemens was not a business
+man, and Bliss was not a philanthropist.  He was, in fact, a shrewd,
+capable publisher, who made as good a contract as he could; yet he was
+square in his dealings, and the contract which Clemens held most bitterly
+against him--that of 'Roughing It'--had been made in good faith and in
+accordance with the conditions, of that period.  In most of the later
+contracts Clemens himself had named his royalties, and it was not in
+human nature--business human nature--for Bliss to encourage the size of
+these percentages.  If one wished to draw a strictly moral conclusion
+from the situation, one might say that it would have been better for the
+American Publishing Company, knowing Mark Twain, voluntarily to have
+allowed him half profits, which was the spirit of his old understanding
+even if not the letter of it, rather than to have waited till he demanded
+it and then to lose him by the result.  Perhaps that would be also a
+proper business deduction; only, as a rule, business morals are regulated
+by the contract, and the contract is regulated by the necessities and the
+urgency of demand.
+
+Never mind.  Mark Twain revised 'The Prince and the Pauper', sent it to
+Howells, who approved of it mightily (though with reservations as to
+certain chapters), and gave it to James R. Osgood, who was grateful and
+agreed to make it into a book upon which no expense for illustration or
+manufacture should be spared.  It was to be a sort of partnership
+arrangement as between author and publisher, and large returns were
+anticipated.
+
+Among the many letters which Clemens was just then writing to Howells one
+was dated "Xmas Eve."  It closes with the customary pleasantries and the
+final line:
+
+"But it is growing dark.  Merry Christmas to all of you!"
+
+That last was a line of large significance.  It meant that the air was
+filled with the whisper of hovering events and that he must mingle with
+the mystery of preparation.  Christmas was an important season in the
+Clemens home.  Almost the entire day before, Patrick was out with the
+sleigh, delivering food and other gifts in baskets to the poor, and the
+home preparations were no less busy.  There was always a tree--a large
+one--and when all the gifts had been gathered in--when Elmira and
+Fredonia had delivered their contributions, and Orion and his wife in
+Keokuk had sent the annual sack of hickory-nuts (the big river-bottom
+nuts, big as a silver dollar almost, such nuts as few children of this
+later generation ever see) when all this happy revenue had been gathered,
+and the dusk of Christmas Eve had hurried the children off to bed, it was
+Mrs. Clemens who superintended the dressing of the tree, her husband
+assisting, with a willingness that was greater than his skill, and with a
+boy's anticipation in the surprise of it next morning.
+
+Then followed the holidays, with parties and dances and charades, and
+little plays, with the Warner and Twichell children.  To the Clemens home
+the Christmas season brought all the old round of juvenile happiness--the
+spirit of kindly giving, the brightness and the merrymaking, the gladness
+and tenderness and mystery that belong to no other season, and have been
+handed down through all the ages since shepherds watched on the plains of
+Bethlehem.
+
+
+
+
+CXXXIII
+
+THE THREE FIRES--SOME BENEFACTIONS
+
+The tradition that fires occur in groups of three was justified in the
+Clemens household that winter. On each of three successive days flames
+started that might have led to ghastly results.
+
+The children were croupy, and one morning an alcohol lamp near little
+Clara's bed, blown by the draught, set fire to the canopy.  Rosa, the
+nurse, entered just as the blaze was well started.  She did not lose her
+presence of mind, --[Rosa was not the kind to lose her head.  Once, in
+Europe, when Bay had crept between the uprights of a high balustrade, and
+was hanging out over destruction, Rosa, discovering her, did not scream
+but spoke to her playfully and lifted her over into safety.]-- but
+snatched the little girl out of danger, then opened the window and threw
+the burning bedding on the lawn.  The child was only slightly scorched,
+but the escape was narrow enough.
+
+Next day little Jean was lying asleep in her crib, in front of an open
+wood fire, carefully protected by a firescreen, when a spark, by some
+ingenuity, managed to get through the mesh of the screen and land on the
+crib's lace covering.  Jean's nurse, Julia, arrived to find the lace a
+gust of flame and the fire spreading.  She grabbed the sleeping Jean and
+screamed.  Rosa, again at hand, heard the scream, and rushing in once
+more opened a window and flung out the blazing bedclothes.  Clemens
+himself also arrived, and together they stamped out the fire.
+
+On the third morning, just before breakfast-time, Susy was practising at
+the piano in the school-room, which adjoined the nursery.  At one end of
+the room a fire of large logs was burning.  Susy was at the other end of
+the room, her back to the fire.  A log burned in two and fell, scattering
+coals around the woodwork which supported the mantel.  Just as the blaze
+was getting fairly started a barber, waiting to trim Mr. Clemens's hair,
+chanced to look in and saw what was going -on.  He stepped into the
+nursery bath-room, brought a pitcher of water and extinguished the
+flames.  This period was always referred to in the Clemens household as
+the "three days of fire."
+
+Clemens would naturally make philosophical deductions from these
+coincidental dangers and the manner in which they had been averted.  He
+said that all these things were comprehended in the first act of the
+first atom; that, but for some particular impulse given in that remote
+time, the alcohol flame would not have blown against the canopy, the
+spark would not have found its way through the screen, the log would not
+have broken apart in that dangerous way, and that Rosa and Julia and the
+barber would not have been at hand to save precious life and property. 
+He did not go further and draw moral conclusions as to the purpose of
+these things: he never drew conclusions as to purpose.  He was willing to
+rest with the event.  Logically he did not believe in reasons for things,
+but only that things were.
+
+Nevertheless, he was always trying to change them; to have a hand in
+their improvement.  Had you asked him, he would have said that this, too,
+was all in the primal atom; that his nature, such as it was, had been
+minutely embodied there.
+
+In that charming volume, 'My Mark Twain', Howells tells us of Clemens's
+consideration, and even tenderness, for the negro race and his effort to
+repair the wrong done by his nation.  Mark Twain's writings are full of
+similar evidence, and in his daily life he never missed an opportunity to
+pay tribute to the humbler race.  He would go across the street to speak
+to an old negro, and to take his hand.  He would read for a negro church
+when he would have refused a cathedral.  Howells mentions the colored
+student whose way through college Clemens paid as a partial reparation
+"due from every white man to every black man." --[Mark Twain paid two
+colored students through college.  One of them, educated in a Southern
+institution, became a minister of the gospel.  The other graduated from
+the Yale Law School.]-- This incident belongs just to the period of which
+we are now writing, and there is another which, though different enough,
+indicates the same tendency.
+
+Garfield was about to be inaugurated, and it was rumored that Frederick
+Douglass might lose his position as Marshal of the District of Columbia. 
+Clemens was continually besought by one and another to use his influence
+with the Administration, and in every case had refused.  Douglass had
+made no such, application.  Clemens, learning that the old negro's place
+was in danger, interceded for him of his own accord.  He closed his
+letter to General Garfield:
+
+     A simple citizen may express a desire, with all propriety, in the
+     matter of recommendation to office, and so I beg permission to hope
+     that you will retain Mr. Douglass in his present office of Marshal
+     of the District of Columbia, if such a course will not clash with
+     your own preferences or with the expediencies and interests of your
+     Administration.  I offer this petition with peculiar pleasure and
+     strong desire, because I so honor this man's high and blemishless
+     character, and so admire his brave, long crusade for the liberties
+     and elevation of his race.
+
+     He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point;
+     his history would move me to say these things without that, and I
+     feel them, too.
+
+Douglass wrote to Clemens, thanking him for his interest; at the end he
+said:
+
+     I think if a man is mean enough to want an office he ought to be
+     noble enough to ask for it, and use all honorable means of getting
+     it.  I mean to ask, and I will use your letter as a part of my
+     petition.  It will put the President-elect in a good humor, in any
+     case, and that is very important.
+
+               With great respect,
+                         Gratefully yours,
+                                   FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+
+
+Mark Twain's benefactions were not all for the colored race.  One morning
+in February of this same year, while the family were at late breakfast,
+George came in to announce "a lady waiting to see Mr. Clemens in the
+drawing-room."  Clemens growled.
+
+"George," he said, "it's a book agent.  I won't see her.  I'll die, in my
+tracks first."
+
+He went, fuming and raging inwardly, and began at once to ask the nature
+of the intruder's business.  Then he saw that she was very young and
+modest, with none of the assurance of a canvasser, so he gave her a
+chance to speak.  She told him that a young man employed in Pratt &
+Whitney's machine-shops had made a statue in clay, and would like to have
+Mark Twain come and look at it and see if it showed any promise of future
+achievement.  His name, she said, was Karl Gerhardt, and he was her
+husband.  Clemens protested that he knew nothing about art, but the young
+woman's manner and appearance (she seemed scarcely more than a child) won
+him.  He wavered, and finally promised that he would come the first
+chance he had; that in fact he would come some time during the next week. 
+On her suggestion he agreed to come early in the week; he specified
+Monday, "without fail."
+
+When she was gone, and the door shut behind her, his usual remorse came
+upon him.  He said to himself:
+
+"Why didn't I go now?  Why didn't I go with her now?"
+
+She went from Clemens's over to Warner's.  Warner also resisted, but,
+tempted beyond his strength by her charm, laid down his work and went at
+once.  When he returned he urged Clemens to go without fail, and, true to
+promise, Clemens took Patrick, the coachman, and hunted up the place. 
+Clemens saw the statue, a seminude, for which the young wife had posed,
+and was struck by its evident merit.  Mrs. Gerhardt told him the story of
+her husband's struggles between his daily work and the effort to develop
+his talent.  He had never had a lesson, she said; if he could only have
+lessons what might he not accomplish?
+
+Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding called next day, and were equally carried
+away with Karl Gerhardt, his young wife, and his effort to win his way in
+art.  Clemens and Warner made up their minds to interest themselves
+personally in the matter, and finally persuaded the painter J. Wells
+Champney to come over from New York and go with them to the Gerhardts'
+humble habitation, to see his work.  Champney approved of it.  He thought
+it well worth while, he said, for the people of Hartford to go to the
+expense of Gerhardt's art education.  He added that it would be better to
+get the judgment of a sculptor.  So they brought over John Quincy Adams 
+Ward, who, like all the others, came away bewitched with these young
+people and their struggles for the sake of art.  Ward said:
+
+"If any stranger had told me that this 'prentice did not model that thing
+from plaster-casts I should not have believed it.  It's full of
+crudities, but it's full of genius, too.  Hartford must send him to Paris
+for two years; then, if the promise holds good, keep him there three
+more."
+
+When he was gone Mrs. Clemens said:
+
+"Youth, we won't wait for Hartford to do it.  It would take too long. 
+Let us send the Gerhardts to Paris ourselves, and say nothing about it to
+any one else."
+
+So the Gerhardts, provided with funds and an arrangement that would
+enable them to live for five years in Paris if necessary, were started
+across the sea without further delay.
+
+Clemens and his wife were often doing something of this sort.  There was
+seldom a time that they were not paying the way of some young man or
+woman through college, or providing means and opportunity for development
+in some special field of industry.
+
+
+
+
+CXXXIV
+
+LITERARY PROJECTS AND A MONUMENT TO ADAM
+
+Mark Twain's literary work languished during this period.  He had a world
+of plans, as usual, and wrote plentifully, but without direction or
+conclusion.  "A Curious Experience," which relates a circumstance told to
+him by an army officer, is about the most notable of the few completed
+manuscripts of this period.
+
+Of the books projected (there were several), a burlesque manual of
+etiquette would seem to have been the most promising.  Howells had faith
+in it, and of the still remaining fragments a few seem worth quoting:
+
+                              AT BILLIARDS
+
+     If your ball glides along in the intense and immediate vicinity of
+     the object-ball, and a count seems exquisitely imminent, lift one
+     leg; then one shoulder; then squirm your body around in sympathy
+     with the direction of the moving ball; and at the instant when the
+     ball seems on the point of colliding throw up both of your arms
+     violently.  Your cue will probably break a chandelier, but no
+     matter; you have done what you could to help the count.
+
+                              AT THE DOG-FIGHT
+
+     If it occur in your block, courteously give way to strangers
+     desiring a view, particularly ladies.
+
+     Avoid showing partiality toward the one dog, lest you hurt the
+     feelings of the other one.
+
+     Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the
+     under dog in the fight--this is magnanimity; but bet on the other
+     one--this is business.
+
+                              AT POKER
+
+     If you draw to a flush and fail to fill, do not continue the
+     conflict.
+
+     If you hold a pair of trays, and your opponent is blind, and it
+     costs you fifty to see him, let him remain unperceived.
+
+     If you hold nothing but ace high, and by some means you know that
+     the other man holds the rest of the aces, and he calls, excuse
+     yourself; let him call again another time.
+
+                              WALL STREET
+
+     If you live in the country, buy at 80, sell at 40.  Avoid all forms
+     of eccentricity.
+
+                              IN THE RESTAURANT
+
+     When you wish to get the waiter's attention, do not sing out "Say!"
+     Simply say "Szt!"
+
+
+His old abandoned notion of "Hamlet" with an added burlesque character
+came back to him and stirred his enthusiasm anew, until even Howells
+manifested deep interest in the matter.  One reflects how young Howells
+must have been in those days; how full of the joy of existence; also how
+mournfully he would consider such a sacrilege now.
+
+Clemens proposed almost as many things to Howells as his brother Orion
+proposed to him.  There was scarcely a letter that didn't contain some
+new idea, with a request for advice or co-operation.  Now it was some
+book that he meant to write some day, and again it would be a something
+that he wanted Howells to write.
+
+Once he urged Howells to make a play, or at least a novel, out of Orion. 
+At another time he suggested as material the "Rightful Earl of Durham."
+
+He is a perfectly stunning literary bonanza, and must be dug up and put
+on the market.  You must get his entire biography out of him and have it
+ready for Osgood's magazine.  Even if it isn't worth printing, you must
+have it anyway, and use it one of these days in one of your stories or in
+a play.
+
+It was this notion about 'The American Claimant' which somewhat later
+would lead to a collaboration with Howells on a drama, and eventually to
+a story of that title.
+
+But Clemens's chief interest at this time lay in publishing, rather than
+in writing.  His association with Osgood inspired him to devise new
+ventures of profit.  He planned a 'Library of American Humor', which
+Howells (soon to leave the Atlantic) and "Charley" Clark--[Charles
+Hopkins Clark, managing editor of the Hartford Courant.]--were to edit,
+and which Osgood would publish, for subscription sale.  Without realizing
+it, Clemens was taking his first step toward becoming his own publisher. 
+His contract with Osgood for 'The Prince and the Pauper' made him
+essentially that, for by the terms of it he agreed to supply all the
+money for the making of the book, and to pay Osgood a royalty of seven
+and one-half per cent. for selling it, reversing the usual conditions. 
+The contract for the Library of Humor was to be a similar one, though in
+this case Osgood was to have a larger royalty return, and to share
+proportionately in the expense and risk.  Mark Twain was entering into a
+field where he did not belong; where in the end he would harvest only
+disaster and regret.
+
+One curious project came to an end in 1881--the plan for a monument to
+Adam.  In a sketch written a great many years later Mark Twain tells of
+the memorial which the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher and himself once proposed
+to erect to our great common ancestor.  The story is based on a real
+incident.  Clemens, in Elmira one day (it was October, 1879), heard of a
+jesting proposal made by F. G. Hall to erect a monument in Elmira to
+Adam.  The idea promptly caught Mark Twain's fancy.  He observed to
+Beecher that the human race really showed a pretty poor regard for its
+great progenitor, who was about to be deposed by Darwin's simian, not to
+pay him the tribute of a single monument.  Mankind, he said, would
+probably accept the monkey ancestor, and in time the very name of Adam
+would be forgotten.  He declared Mr. Hall's suggestion to be a sound
+idea.
+
+Beecher agreed that there were many reasons why a monument should be
+erected to Adam, and suggested that a subscription be started for the
+purpose.  Certain business men, seeing an opportunity for advertising the
+city, took the matter semi-seriously, and offered to contribute large
+sums in the interest of the enterprise.  Then it was agreed that Congress
+should be petitioned to sanction the idea exclusively to Elmira,
+prohibiting the erection of any such memorial elsewhere.  A document to
+this effect was prepared, headed by F. G. Hall, and signed by other
+leading citizens of Elmira, including Beecher himself.  General Joe
+Hawley came along just then on a political speech-making tour.  Clemens
+introduced him, and Hawley, in turn, agreed to father the petition in
+Congress.  What had begun merely as pleasantry began to have a formidable
+look.
+
+But alas! in the end Hawley's courage had failed him.  He began to hate
+his undertaking.  He was afraid of the national laugh it would arouse,
+the jeers of the newspapers.  It was certain to leak out that Mark Twain
+was behind it, in spite of the fact that his name nowhere appeared; that
+it was one of his colossal jokes.  Now and then, in the privacy of his
+own room at night, Hawley would hunt up the Adam petition and read it and
+feel the cold sweat breaking out.  He postponed the matter from one
+session to another till the summer of 1881, when he was about to sail for
+Europe.  Then he gave the document to his wife, to turn over to Clemens,
+and ignominiously fled.
+
+[For text of the petition in full, etc., see Appendix P, at the end of
+last volume.
+
+Mark Twain's introduction of Hawley at Elmira contained this pleasantry:
+"General Hawley was president of the Centennial Commission.  Was a
+gallant soldier in the war.  He has been Governor of Connecticut, member
+of Congress, and was president of the convention that nominated Abraham
+Lincoln."
+
+General Hawley: "That nominated Grant."
+
+Twain: "He says it was Grant, but I know better.  He is a member of my
+church at Hartford, and the author of 'Beautiful Snow.' Maybe he will
+deny that.  But I am only here to give him a character from his last
+place.  As a pure citizen, I respect him; as a personal friend of years,
+I have the warmest regard for him; as a neighbor whose vegetable garden
+joins mine, why--why, I watch him.  That's nothing; we all do that with
+any neighbor.  General Hawley keeps his promises, not only in private,
+but in public.  He is an editor who believes what he writes in his own
+paper.  As the author of 'Beautiful Snow' he added a new pang to winter. 
+He is broad-souled, generous, noble, liberal, alive to his moral and
+religious responsibilities.  Whenever the contribution-box was passed I
+never knew him to take out a cent."]
+
+
+
+
+CXXXV
+
+A TRIP WITH SHERMAN AND AN INTERVIEW WITH GRANT.
+
+The Army of the Potomac gave a dinner in Hartford on the 8th of June,
+1881.  But little memory remains of it now beyond Mark Twain's speech and
+a bill of fare containing original comments, ascribed to various revered
+authors, such as Johnson, Milton, and Carlyle.  A pleasant incident
+followed, however, which Clemens himself used to relate.  General Sherman
+attended the banquet, and Secretary of War, Robert Lincoln.  Next morning
+Clemens and Twichell were leaving for West Point, where they were to
+address the military students, guests on the same special train on which
+Lincoln and Sherman had their private car.  This car was at the end of
+the train, and when the two passengers reached the station, Sherman and
+Lincoln were out on the rear platform addressing the multitude.  Clemens
+and Twichell went in and, taking seats, waited for them.
+
+As the speakers finished the train started, but they still remained
+outside, bowing and waving to the assembled citizens, so that it was
+under good headway before they came in.  Sherman came up to Clemens, who
+sat smoking unconcernedly.
+
+"Well," he said, "who told you you could go in this car?"
+
+"Nobody," said Clemens.
+
+"Do you expect to pay extra fare?" asked Sherman.
+
+"No," said Clemens.  "I don't expect to pay any fare."
+
+"Oh, you don't.  Then you'll work your way."
+
+Sherman took off his coat and military hat and made Clemens put them on.
+
+"Now," said he, "whenever the train stops you go out on the platform and
+represent me and make a speech."
+
+It was not long before the train stopped, and Clemens, according to
+orders, stepped out on the rear platform and bowed to the crowd.  There
+was a cheer at the sight of his military uniform.  Then the cheer waned,
+became a murmur of uncertainty, followed by an undertone of discussion. 
+Presently somebody said:
+
+"Say, that ain't Sherman, that's Mark Twain," which brought another
+cheer.
+
+Then Sherman had to come out too, and the result was that both spoke. 
+They kept this up at the different stations, and sometimes Lincoln came
+out with them.  When there was time all three spoke, much to the
+satisfaction of their audiences.
+
+President Garfield was shot that summer--July 2, 1881. --[On the day that
+President Garfield was shot Mrs. Clemens received from their friend
+Reginald Cholmondeley a letter of condolence on the death of her husband
+in Australia; startling enough, though in reality rather comforting than
+otherwise, for the reason that the "Mark Twain" who had died in Australia
+was a very persistent impostor.  Clemens wrote Cholmondeley: "Being dead
+I might be excused from writing letters, but I am not that kind of a
+corpse.  May I never be so dead as to neglect the hail of a friend from a
+far land."  Out of this incident grew a feature of an anecdote related in
+Following the Equator the joke played by the man from Bendigo.]-- He died
+September 19th, and Arthur came into power.  There was a great feeling of
+uncertainty as to what he would do.  He was regarded as "an excellent
+gentleman with a weakness for his friends."  Incumbents holding
+appointive offices were in a state of dread.
+
+Howells's father was consul at Toronto, and, believing his place to be in
+danger, he appealed to his son.  In his book Howells tells how, in turn,
+he appealed to Clemens, remembering his friendship with Grant and Grant's
+friendship with Arthur.  He asked Clemens to write to Grant, but Clemens
+would hear of nothing less than a call on the General, during which the
+matter would be presented to him in person.  Howells relates how the
+three of them lunched together, in a little room just out of the office,
+on baked beans and coffee, brought in from some near-by restaurant:
+
+     The baked beans and coffee were of about the railroad-refreshment
+     quality; but eating them with Grant was like sitting down to baked
+     beans and coffee with Julius Caesar, or Alexander, or some other
+     great Plutarchan captain.
+
+Clemens, also recalling the interview, once added some interesting
+details:
+
+"I asked Grant if he wouldn't write a word on a card which Howells could
+carry to Washington and hand to the President.  But, as usual, General
+Grant was his natural self--that is to say, ready and determined to do a
+great deal more for you than you could possibly ask him to do.  He said
+he was going to Washington in a couple of days to dine with the
+President, and he would speak to him himself on the subject and make it a
+personal matter.  Grant was in the humor to talk--he was always in a
+humor to talk when no strangers were present--he forced us to stay and
+take luncheon in a private room, and continued to talk all the time.  It
+was baked beans, but how 'he sits and towers,' Howells said, quoting
+Dame.  Grant remembered 'Squibob' Derby (John Phoenix) at West Point very
+well.  He said that Derby was always drawing caricatures of the
+professors and playing jokes on every body.  He told a thing which I had
+heard before but had never seen in print.  A professor questioning a
+class concerning certain particulars of a possible siege said, 'Suppose a
+thousand men are besieging a fortress whose equipment of provisions is
+so-and-so; it is a military axiom that at the end of forty-five days the
+fort will surrender.  Now, young men, if any of you were in command of
+such a fortress, how would you proceed?'
+
+"Derby held up his hand in token that he had an answer for that question. 
+He said, 'I would march out, let the enemy in, and at the end of forty-
+five days I would change places with him.'
+
+"I tried hard, during that interview, to get General Grant to agree to
+write his personal memoirs for publication, but he wouldn't listen to the
+suggestion.  His inborn diffidence made him shrink from voluntarily
+coming before the public and placing himself under criticism as an
+author.  He had no confidence in his ability to write well; whereas we
+all know now that he possessed an admirable literary gift and style.  He
+was also sure that the book would have no sale, and of course that would
+be a humility too.  I argued that the book would have an enormous sale,
+and that out of my experience I could save him from making unwise
+contracts with publishers, and would have the contract arranged in such a
+way that they could not swindle him, but he said he had no necessity for
+any addition to his income.  Of course he could not foresee that he was
+camping on a volcano; that as Ward's partner he was a ruined man even
+then, and of course I had no suspicion that in four years from that time
+I would become his publisher.  He would not agree to write his memoirs. 
+He only said that some day he would make very full notes and leave them
+behind him, and then if his children chose to make them into a book they
+could do so.  We came away then.  He fulfilled his promise entirely
+concerning Howells's father, who held his office until he resigned of his
+own accord."
+
+
+
+
+CXXXVI
+
+"THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER"
+
+During the summer absence alterations were made in the Hartford home,
+with extensive decorations by Tiffany.  The work was not completed when
+the family returned.  Clemens wrote to Charles Warren Stoddard, then in
+the Sandwich Islands, that the place was full of carpenters and
+decorators, whereas what they really needed was "an incendiary."
+
+If the house would only burn down we would pack up the cubs and fly to
+the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of
+the crater of Haleakala and get a good rest, for the mails do not intrude
+there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph; and after resting we
+would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-
+clouted native, and eat poi and dirt, and give thanks to whom all thanks
+belong for these privileges, and never housekeep any more.
+
+They had acquired more ground.  One morning in the spring Mark Twain had
+looked out of his window just in time to see a man lift an ax to cut down
+a tree on the lot which lay between his own and that of his neighbor.  He
+had heard that a house was to be built there; altogether too close to him
+for comfort and privacy.  Leaning out of the window he called sonorously,
+"Woodman, spare that tree!"  Then he hurried down, obtained a stay of
+proceedings, and without delay purchased the lot from the next-door
+neighbor who owned it, acquiring thereby one hundred feet of extra ground
+and a greenhouse which occupied it.  It was a costly purchase; the owner
+knew he could demand his own price; he asked and received twelve thousand
+dollars for the strip.
+
+In November, Clemens found that he must make another trip to Canada. 
+'The Prince and the Pauper' was ready for issue, and to insure Canadian
+copyright the author must cross the line in person.  He did not enjoy the
+prospect of a cold-weather trip to the north, and tried to tempt Howells
+to go with him, but only succeeded in persuading Osgood, who would do
+anything or go anywhere that offered the opportunity for pleasant company
+and junket.
+
+It was by no means an unhappy fortnight.  Clemens took a note-book, and
+there are plenty of items that give reality to that long-ago excursion. 
+He found the Canadian girls so pretty that he records it as a relief now
+and then to see a plain one.  On another page he tells how one night in
+the hotel a mouse gnawed and kept him awake, and how he got up and hunted
+for it, hoping to destroy it.  He made a rebus picture for the children
+of this incident in a letter home.
+
+We get a glimpse just here of how he was constantly viewing himself as
+literary material--human material--an example from which some literary
+aspect or lesson may be drawn.  Following the mouse adventure we find it
+thus dramatized:
+     Trace Father Brebeuf all through this trip, and when I am in a rage
+     and can't endure the mouse be reading of Brebeuf's marvelous
+     endurances and be shamed.
+
+     And finally, after chasing the bright-eyed rascal several days, and
+     throwing things and trying to jump on him when in my overshoes, he
+     darts away with those same bright eyes, then straightway I read
+     Brebeuf's magnificent martyrdom, and turn in, subdued and wondering. 
+     By and by the thought occurs to me, Brebeuf, with his good, great
+     heart would spare even that poor humble mousie--and for his sake so
+     will I--I will throw the trap in the fire--jump out of bed, reach
+     under, fetch out the trap, and find him throttled there and not two
+     minutes dead.
+
+They gave him a dinner in Montreal.  Louis Frechette, the Canadian poet,
+was there and Clemens addressed him handsomely in the response he made to
+the speech of welcome.  From that moment Frechette never ceased to adore
+Mark Twain, and visited him soon after the return to Hartford.
+
+'The Prince and the Pauper' was published in England, Canada, Germany,
+and America early in December, 1881.  There had been no stint of money,
+and it was an extremely handsome book.  The pen-and-ink drawings were
+really charming, and they were lavish as to number.  It was an attractive
+volume from every standpoint, and it was properly dedicated "To those
+good-mannered and agreeable children, Susy and Clara Clemens."
+
+The story itself was totally unlike anything that Mark Twain had done
+before.  Enough of its plan and purpose has been given in former chapters
+to make a synopsis of it unnecessary here.  The story of the wandering
+prince and the pauper king--an impressive picture of ancient legal and
+regal cruelty--is as fine and consistent a tale as exists in the realm of
+pure romance.  Unlike its great successor, the 'Yankee at King Arthur's
+Court', it never sacrifices the illusion to the burlesque, while through
+it all there runs a delicate vein of humor.  Only here and there is there
+the slightest disillusion, and this mainly in the use of some ultra-
+modern phrase or word.
+
+Mark Twain never did any better writing than some of the splendid scenes
+in 'The Prince and the Pauper'.  The picture of Old London Bridge; the
+scene in the vagabond's retreat, with its presentation to the little king
+of the wrongs inflicted by the laws of his realm; the episode of the jail
+where his revelation reaches a climax--these are but a few of the
+splendid pictures which the chapters portray, while the spectacle of
+England acquiring mercy at the hands of two children, a king and a
+beggar, is one which only genius could create.  One might quote here, but
+to do so without the context would be to sacrifice atmosphere, half the
+story's charm.  How breathlessly interesting is the tale of it!  We may
+imagine that first little audience at Mark Twain's fireside hanging
+expectant on every paragraph, hungry always for more.  Of all Mark
+Twain's longer works of fiction it is perhaps the most coherent as to
+plot, the most carefully thought out, the most perfect as to workmanship. 
+This is not to say that it is his greatest story.  Probably time will not
+give it that rank, but it comes near to being a perfectly constructed
+story, and it has an imperishable charm.
+
+It was well received, though not always understood by the public.  The
+reviewer was so accustomed to looking for the joke in Mark Twain's work,
+that he found it hard to estimate this new product.  Some even went so
+far as to refer to it as one of Mark Twain's big jokes, meaning probably
+that he had created a chapter in English history with no foundation
+beyond his fancy.  Of course these things pained the author of the book. 
+At one time, he had been inclined to publish it anonymously, to avert
+this sort of misunderstanding, and sometimes now he regretted not having
+done so.
+
+Yet there were many gratifying notices.  The New York Herald reviewer
+gave the new book two columns of finely intelligent appreciation.  In
+part he said:
+
+     To those who have followed the career of Mark Twain, his appearance
+     as the author of a charming and noble romance is really no more of a
+     surprise than to see a stately structure risen upon sightly ground
+     owned by an architect of genius, with the resources of abundant
+     building material and ample training at command.  Of his capacity
+     they have had no doubt, and they rejoice in his taking a step which
+     they felt he was able to take.  Through all his publications may be
+     traced the marks of the path which half led up to this happy height. 
+     His humor has often been the cloak, but not the mask, of a sturdy
+     purpose.  His work has been characterized by a manly love of truth,
+     a hatred of humbug, and a scorn for cant.  A genial warmth and
+     whole-souledness, a beautiful fancy, a fertile imagination, and a
+     native feeling for the picturesque and a fine eye for color have
+     afforded the basis of a style which has become more and more plastic
+     and finished.
+
+And in closing:
+
+     The characters of these two boys, twins in spirit, will rank with
+     the purest and loveliest creations of child-life in the realm of
+     fiction.
+
+
+
+
+CXXXVII
+
+CERTAIN ATTACKS AND REPRISALS
+
+Beyond the publication of The Prince and the Pauper Clemens was sparingly
+represented in print in '81.  A chapter originally intended for the book,
+the "Whipping Boy's Story," he gave to the Bazaar Budget, a little
+special-edition sheet printed in Hartford.  It was the story of the 'Bull
+and the Bees' which he later adapted for use in Joan of Arc, the episode
+in which Joan's father rides a bull to a funeral.  Howells found that it
+interfered with the action in the story of the Prince, and we might have
+spared it from the story of Joan, though hardly without regret.
+
+The military story "A Curious Episode" was published in the Century
+Magazine for November.  The fact that Clemens had heard, and not
+invented, the story was set forth quite definitely and fully in his
+opening paragraphs.  Nevertheless, a "Captious Reader" thought it
+necessary to write to a New York publication concerning its origin:
+
+     I am an admirer of the writings of Mr. Mark Twain, and consequently,
+     when I saw the table of contents of the November number of the
+     Century, I bought it and turned at once to the article bearing his
+     name, and entitled, "A Curious Episode."  When I began to read it,
+     it struck me as strangely familiar, and I soon recognized the story
+     as a true one, told me in the summer of 1878 by an officer of the
+     United States artillery.  Query: Did Mr. Twain expect the public to
+     credit this narrative to his clever brain?
+
+The editor, seeing a chance for Mark Twain "copy," forwarded a clipping
+to Clemens and asked him if he had anything to say in the matter. 
+Clemens happened to know the editor very well, and he did have something
+to say, not for print, but for the editor's private ear.
+
+     The newspaper custom of shooting a man in the back and then calling
+     upon him to come out in a card and prove that he was not engaged in
+     any infamy at the time is a good enough custom for those who think
+     it justifiable.  Your correspondent is not stupid, I judge, but
+     purely and simply malicious.  He knew there was not the shadow of a
+     suggestion, from the beginning to the end of "A Curious Episode,"
+     that the story was an invention; he knew he had no warrant for
+     trying to persuade the public that I had stolen the narrative and
+     was endeavoring to palm it off as a piece of literary invention; he
+     also knew that he was asking his closing question with a base
+     motive, else he would have asked it of me by letter, not spread it
+     before the public.
+
+     I have never wronged you in any way, and I think you had no right to
+     print that communication; no right, neither any excuse.  As to
+     publicly answering that correspondent, I would as soon think of
+     bandying words in public with any other prostitute.
+
+The editor replied in a manly, frank acknowledgment of error.  He had not
+looked up the article itself in the Century before printing the
+communication.
+
+     "Your letter has taught me a lesson," he said.  "The blame belongs
+     to me for not hunting up the proofs.  Please accept my apology."
+
+Mark Twain was likely to be peculiarly sensitive to printed innuendos. 
+Not always.  Sometimes he would only laugh at them or be wholly
+indifferent.  Indeed, in his later years, he seldom cared to read
+anything about himself, one way or the other, but at the time of which we
+are now writing--the period of the early eighties--he was alive to any
+comment of the press.  His strong sense of humor, and still stronger
+sense of human weakness, caused him to overlook many things which another
+might regard as an affront; but if the thing printed were merely an
+uncalled-for slur, an inexcusable imputation, he was inclined to rage and
+plan violence.  Sometimes he conceived retribution in the form of libel
+suits with heavy damages.  Sometimes he wrote blasting answers, which
+Mrs. Clemens would not let him print.
+
+At one time he planned a biography of a certain editor who seemed to be
+making a deliberate personal campaign against his happiness.  Clemens had
+heard that offending items were being printed in this man's paper;
+friends, reporting with customary exaggeration, declared that these
+sneers and brutalities appeared almost daily, so often as to cause
+general remark.
+
+This was enough.  He promptly began to collect data--damaging data--
+relating to that editor's past history.  He even set a man to work in
+England collecting information concerning his victim.  One of his
+notebooks contains the memoranda; a few items will show how terrific was
+to be the onslaught.
+
+     When the naturalist finds a new kind of animal, he writes him up in
+     the interest of science.  No matter if it is an unpleasant animal. 
+     This is a new kind of animal, and in the cause of society must be
+     written up.  He is the polecat of our species .  .  .  .  He is
+     purely and simply a Guiteau with the courage left out .  .  .  .
+
+     Steel portraits of him as a sort of idiot, from infancy up--to a
+     dozen scattered through the book--all should resemble him.
+
+But never mind the rest.  When he had got thoroughly interested in his
+project Mrs. Clemens, who had allowed the cyclone to wear itself out a
+little with its own vehemence, suggested that perhaps it would be well to
+have some one make an examination of the files of the paper and see just
+what had been said of him.  So he subscribed for the paper himself and
+set a man to work on the back numbers.  We will let him tell the
+conclusion of the matter himself, in his report of it to Howells:
+
+     The result arrived from my New York man this morning.  Oh, what a
+     pitiable wreck of high hopes!  The "almost daily" assaults for two
+     months consist of (1) adverse criticism of P. & P.  from an enraged
+     idiot in the London Athenaeum, (2) paragraphs from some indignant
+     Englishman in the Pall Mall Gazette, who pays me the vast compliment
+     of gravely rebuking some imaginary ass who has set me up in the
+     neighborhood of Rabelais, (3) a remark about the Montreal dinner,
+     touched with an almost invisible satire, and, (4) a remark about
+     refusal of Canadian copyright, not complimentary, but not
+     necessarily malicious; and of course adverse criticism which is not
+     malicious is a thing which none but fools irritate themselves about.
+
+     There, that is the prodigious bugaboo in its entirety!  Can you
+     conceive of a man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive
+     a provocation?  I am sure I can't.  What the devil can those friends
+     of mine have been thinking about to spread those three or four
+     harmless things out into two months of daily sneers and affronts?
+
+     Boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply this:
+     one jest (one can make nothing more serious than that out of it). 
+     One jest, and that is all; for foreign criticisms do not count, they
+     being matters of news, and proper for publication in anybody's
+     newspaper .  .  .  .
+
+     Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently
+     small mouse it is, God knows.  And my three weeks' hard work has got
+     to go into the ignominious pigeonhole.  Confound it, I could have
+     earned ten thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble.
+
+Howells refers to this episode, and concludes:
+
+     So the paper was acquitted and the editor's life was spared.  The
+     wretch never, never knew how near he was to losing it, with
+     incredible preliminaries of obloquy, and a subsequent devotion to
+     lasting infamy.
+
+
+
+
+CXXXVIII
+
+MANY UNDERTAKINGS
+
+To write a detailed biography of Mark Twain at this period would be to
+defy perusal.  Even to set down all the interesting matters, interesting
+to the public of his time, would mean not only to exhaust the subject,
+but the reader.  He lived at the top of his bent, and almost anything
+relating to him was regarded as news.  Daily and hourly he mingled with
+important matters or spoke concerning them.  A bare list of the
+interesting events of Mark Twain's life would fill a large volume.
+
+He was so busy, so deeply interested himself, so vitally alive to every
+human aspect.  He read the papers through, and there was always enough to
+arouse his indignation--the doings of the human race at large could be
+relied upon to do that--and he would write, and write, to relieve
+himself.  His mental Niagara was always pouring away, turning out
+articles, essays, communications on every conceivable subject, mainly
+with the idea of reform.  There were many public and private abuses, and
+he wanted to correct them all.  He covered reams of paper with lurid
+heresies--political, religious, civic--for most of which there was no
+hope of publication.
+
+Now and then he was allowed to speak out: An order from the Past-office
+Department at Washington concerning the superscription of envelopes
+seemed to him unwarranted.  He assailed it, and directly the nation was
+being entertained by a controversy between Mark Twain and the Postmaster-
+General's private secretary, who subsequently receded from the field.
+At another time, on the matter of postage rates he wrote a paper which
+began: "Reader, suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member
+of Congress.  But I repeat myself."
+
+It is hardly necessary to add that the paper did not appear.
+
+On the whole, Clemens wrote his strictures more for relief than to print,
+and such of these papers as are preserved to-day form a curious
+collection of human documents.  Many of them could be printed to-day,
+without distress to any one.  The conditions that invited them are
+changed; the heresies are not heresies any more.  He may have had some
+thought of their publication in later years, for once he wrote:
+
+     Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put
+     them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then
+     all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the result. 
+     I have just finished an article of this kind, and it satisfies me
+     entirely.  It does my weather-beaten soul good to read it, and
+     admire the trouble it would make for me and the family.  I will
+     leave it behind and utter it from the grave.  There is a free speech
+     there, and no harm to the family.
+
+It is too late and too soon to print most of these things; too late to
+print them for their salutary influence, too soon to print them as
+literature.
+
+He was interested in everything: in music, as little as he knew of it. 
+He had an ear for melody, a dramatic vision, and the poetic conception of
+sound.  Reading some lilting lyric, he could fancy the words marching to
+melody, and would cast about among his friends for some one who could
+supply a tuneful setting.  Once he wrote to his friend the Rev. Dr.
+Parker, who was a skilled musician, urging him to write a score for
+Tennyson's "Bugle Song," outlining an attractive scheme for it which the
+order of his fancy had formulated.  Dr. Parker replied that the "Bugle
+Song," often attempted, had been the despair of many musicians.
+
+He was interested in business affairs.  Already, before the European
+trip, he had embarked in, and disembarked from, a number of pecuniary
+ventures.  He had not been satisfied with a strictly literary income. 
+The old tendency to speculative investment, acquired during those
+restless mining days, always possessed him.  There were no silver mines
+in the East, no holes in the ground into which to empty money and effort;
+but there were plenty of equivalents--inventions, stock companies, and
+the like.  He had begun by putting five thousand dollars into the
+American Publishing Company; but that was a sound and profitable venture,
+and deserves to be remembered for that reason.
+
+Then a man came along with a patent steam generator which would save
+ninety per cent. of the fuel energy, or some such amount, and Mark Twain
+was early persuaded that it would revolutionize the steam manufactures of
+the world; so he put in whatever bank surplus he had and bade it a
+permanent good-by.
+
+Following the steam generator came a steam pulley, a rather small
+contrivance, but it succeeded in extracting thirty-two thousand dollars
+from his bank account in a period of sixteen months.
+
+By the time he had accumulated a fresh balance, a new method of marine
+telegraphy was shown him, so he used it up on that, twenty-five thousand
+dollars being the price of this adventure.
+
+A watch company in western New York was ready to sell him a block of
+shares by the time he was prepared to experiment again, but it did not
+quite live to declare the first dividend on his investment.
+
+Senator John P.  Jones invited him to join in the organization of an
+accident insurance company, and such was Jones's confidence in the
+venture that he guaranteed Clemens against loss.  Mark Twain's only
+profit from this source was in the delivery of a delicious speech, which
+he made at a dinner given to Cornelius Walford, of London, an insurance
+author of repute.  Jones was paying back the money presently, and about
+that time came a young inventor named Graham Bell, offering stock in a
+contrivance for carrying the human voice on an electric wire.  At almost
+any other time Clemens would eagerly have welcomed this opportunity; but
+he was so gratified at having got his money out of the insurance venture
+that he refused to respond to the happy "hello" call of fortune.  In some
+memoranda made thirty years later he said:
+
+I declined.  I said I didn't want anything more to do with wildcat
+speculation.  Then he [Bell] offered the stock to me at twenty-five.  I
+said I didn't want it at any price.  He became eager; insisted that I
+take five hundred dollars' worth.  He said he would sell me as much as I
+wanted for five hundred dollars; offered to let me gather it up in my
+hands and measure it in a plug hat; said I could have a whole hatful for
+five hundred dollars.  But I was the burnt child, and I resisted all
+these temptations-resisted them easily; went off with my check intact,
+and next day lent five thousand of it, on an unendorsed note, to a friend
+who was going to go bankrupt three days later.
+
+About the end of the year I put up a telephone wire from my house down to
+the Courant office, the only telephone wire in town, and the first one
+that was ever used in a private house in the world.
+
+That had been only a little while before he sailed for Europe.  When he
+returned he would have been willing to accept a very trifling interest in
+the telephone industry for the amount of his insurance salvage.
+
+He had a fresh interest in patents now, and when his old friend Dan Slote
+got hold of a new process for engraving--the kaolatype or "chalk-plate"
+process--which was going to revolutionize the world of illustration, he
+promptly acquired a third interest, and eventually was satisfied with
+nothing short of control.  It was an ingenious process: a sheet of
+perfectly smooth steel was coated with a preparation of kaolin (or china
+clay), and a picture was engraved through the coating down to the steel
+surface.  This formed the matrix into which the molten metal was poured
+to make the stereotype plate, or die, for printing.  It was Clemens's
+notion that he could utilize this process for the casting of brass dies
+for stamping book covers--that, so applied, the fortunes to be made out
+of it would be larger and more numerous.  Howells tells how, at one time,
+Clemens thought the "damned human race" was almost to be redeemed by a
+process of founding brass without air-bubbles in it.  This was the time
+referred to and the race had to go unredeemed; for, after long, worried,
+costly experimenting, the brass refused to accommodate its nature to the
+new idea, while the chalk plate itself, with all its subsidiary and
+auxiliary possibilities, was infringed upon right and left, and the
+protecting patent failed to hold.  The process was doomed, in any case. 
+It was barely established before the photographic etching processes,
+superior in all ways, were developed and came quickly into use.  The
+kaolatype enterprise struggled nobly for a considerable period.  Clemens
+brought his niece's husband, young Charles L. Webster, from Fredonia to
+manage it for him, and backed it liberally.  Webster was vigorous, hard-
+working, and capable; but the end of each month showed a deficit, until
+Clemens was from forty to fifty thousand dollars out of pocket in his
+effort to save the race with chalk and brass.  The history of these
+several ventures (and there were others), dismissed here in a few
+paragraphs, would alone make a volume not without interest, certainly not
+without humor.  Following came the type-setting machine, but we are not
+ready for that.  Of necessity it is a longer, costlier story.
+
+Mrs. Clemens did not share his enthusiasm in these various enterprises. 
+She did not oppose them, at least not strenuously, but she did not
+encourage them.  She did not see their need.  Their home was beautiful;
+they were happy; he could do his work in deliberation and comfort.  She
+knew the value of money better than he, cared more for it in her own way;
+but she had not his desire to heap up vast and sudden sums, to revel in
+torrential golden showers.  She was willing to let well enough alone. 
+Clemens could not do this, and suffered accordingly.  In the midst of
+fair home surroundings and honors we find him writing to his mother:
+
+     Life has come to be a very serious matter with me.  I have a
+     badgered, harassed feeling a good part of my time.  It comes mainly
+     from business responsibilities and annoyances.
+
+He had no moral right to be connected with business at all.  He had a
+large perception of business opportunity, but no vision of its
+requirements--its difficulties and details.  He was the soul of honor,
+but in anything resembling practical direction he was but a child. 
+During any period of business venture he was likely to be in hot water:
+eagerly excited, worried, impatient; alternately suspicious and over-
+trusting, rash, frenzied, and altogether upset.
+
+Yet never, even to the end of his days, would he permanently lose faith
+in speculative ventures.  Human traits are sometimes modified, but never
+eliminated.  The man who is born to be a victim of misplaced confidence
+will continue to be one so long as he lives and there are men willing to
+victimize him.  The man who believes in himself as an investor will
+uphold that faith against all disaster so long as he draws breath and has
+money to back his judgments.
+
+
+
+
+CXXXIX
+
+FINANCIAL AND LITERARY
+
+By a statement made on the 1st of January, 1882, of Mark Twain's
+disbursements for the preceding year, it is shown that considerably more
+than one hundred thousand dollars had been expended during that twelve
+months.  It is a large sum for an author to pay out in one year.  It
+would cramp most authors to do it, and it was not the best financing,
+even for Mark Twain.  It required all that the books could earn, all the
+income from the various securities, and a fair sum from their principal.
+There is a good deal of biography in the statement.  Of the amount
+expended forty-six thousand dollars represented investments; but of this
+comfortable sum less than five thousand dollars would cover the
+legitimate purchases; the rest had gone in the "ventures" from whose
+bourne no dollar would ever return.  Also, a large sum had been spent for
+the additional land and for improvements on the home--somewhat more than
+thirty thousand dollars altogether--while the home life had become more
+lavish, the establishment had grown each year to a larger scale, the
+guests and entertainments had become more and, more numerous, until the
+actual household expenditure required about as much as the books and
+securities could earn.
+
+It was with the increased scale of living that Clemens had become
+especially eager for some source of commercial profit; something that
+would yield a return, not in paltry thousands, but hundreds of thousands. 
+Like Colonel Sellers, he must have something with "millions in it." 
+Almost any proposition that seemed to offer these possible millions
+appealed to him, and in his imagination he saw the golden freshet pouring
+in.
+
+His natural taste was for a simple, inexpensive life; yet in his large
+hospitality, and in a certain boyish love of grandeur, he gloried in the
+splendor of his entertainment, the admiration and delight of his guests. 
+There were always guests; they were coming and going constantly.  Clemens
+used to say that he proposed to establish a bus line between their house
+and the station for the accommodation of his company.  He had the
+Southern hospitality.  Much company appealed to a very large element in
+his strangely compounded nature.  For the better portion of the year he
+was willing to pay the price of it, whether in money or in endurance, and
+Mrs. Clemens heroically did her part.  She loved these things also, in
+her own way.  She took pride in them, and realized that they were a part
+of his vast success.  Yet in her heart she often longed for the simpler
+life--above all, for the farm life at Elmira.  Her spirit cried out for
+the rest and comfort there.  In one of her letters she says:
+     The house has been full of company, and I have been "whirled
+     around."  How can a body help it?  Oh, I cannot help sighing for the
+     peace and quiet of the farm.  This is my work, and I know that I do
+     very wrong when I feel chafed by it, but how can I be right about
+     it?  Sometimes it seems as if the simple sight of people would drive
+     me mad.  I am all wrong; if I would simply accept the fact that this
+     is my work and let other things go, I know I should not be so
+     fretted; but I want so much to do other things, to study and do
+     things with the children, and I cannot.
+
+     I have the best French teacher that I ever had, and if I could give
+     any time to it I could not help learning French.
+
+When we reflect on the conditions, we are inclined to say how much better
+it would have been to have remained there among the hills in that quiet,
+inexpensive environment, to have let the world go.  But that was not
+possible.  The game was of far larger proportions than any that could be
+restricted to the limits of retirement and the simpler round of life. 
+Mark Twain's realm had become too large for his court to be established
+in a cottage.
+
+It is hard to understand that in spite of a towering fame Mark Twain was
+still not regarded by certain American arbiters of reputations as a
+literary fixture; his work was not yet recognized by them as being of
+important meaning and serious purport.
+
+In Boston, at that time still the Athens of America, he was enjoyed,
+delighted in; but he was not honored as being quite one of the elect. 
+Howells tells us that:
+
+     In proportion as people thought themselves refined they questioned
+     that quality which all recognize in him now, but which was then the
+     inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude.
+
+Even at the Atlantic dinners his place was "below the salt"--a place of
+honor, but not of the greatest honor.  He did not sit on the dais with
+Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Howells, and Aldrich.  We of a
+later period, who remember him always as the center of every board--the
+one supreme figure, his splendid head and crown of silver hair the target
+of every eye-find it hard to realize the Cambridge conservatism that clad
+him figuratively always in motley, and seated him lower than the throne
+itself.
+
+Howells clearly resented this condition, and from random review corners
+had ventured heresy.  Now in 1882 he seems to have determined to declare
+himself, in a large, free way, concerning his own personal estimate of
+Mark Twain.  He prepared for the Century Magazine a biographical
+appreciation, in which he served notice to the world that Mark Twain's
+work, considered even as literature, was of very considerable importance
+indeed.  Whether or not Howells then realized the "inspired knowledge of
+the multitude," and that most of the nation outside of the counties of
+Suffolk and Essex already recognized his claim, is not material.  Very
+likely he did; but he also realized the mental dusk of the cultured
+uninspired and his prerogative to enlighten them.  His Century article
+was a kind of manifesto, a declaration of independence, no longer
+confined to the obscurities of certain book notices, where of course one
+might be expected to stretch friendly favor a little for a popular
+Atlantic contributor.  In the open field of the Century Magazine Howells
+ventured to declare:
+
+     Mark Twain's humor is as simple in form and as direct as the
+     statesmanship of Lincoln or the generalship of Grant.
+
+     When I think how purely and wholly American it is I am a little
+     puzzled at its universal acceptance .  .  .  .  Why, in fine, should
+     an English chief-justice keep Mark Twain's books always at hand? 
+     Why should Darwin have gone to them for rest and refreshment at
+     midnight, when spent with scientific research?
+
+     I suppose that Mark Twain transcends all other American humorists in
+     the universal qualities.  He deals very little with the pathetic,
+     which he nevertheless knows very well how to manage, as he has
+     shown, notably in the true story of the old slave-mother; but there
+     is a poetic lift in his work, even when he permits you to recognize
+     it only as something satirized.  There is always the touch of
+     nature, the presence of a sincere and frank manliness in what he
+     says, the companionship of a spirit which is at once delightfully
+     open and deliciously shrewd.  Elsewhere I have tried to persuade the
+     reader that his humor is, at its best, the foamy break of the strong
+     tide of earnestness in him.  But it would be limiting him unjustly
+     to describe him as a satirist, and it is hardly practicable to
+     establish him in people's minds as a moralist; he has made them
+     laugh too long; they will not believe him serious; they think some
+     joke is always intended.  This is the penalty, as Dr. Holmes has
+     pointed out, of making one's first success as a humorist.  There was
+     a paper of Mark Twain's printed in the Atlantic Monthly some years
+     ago and called, "The Facts Concerning the Late Carnival of Crime in
+     Connecticut," which ought to have won popular recognition of the
+     ethical intelligence underlying his humor.  It was, of course,
+     funny; but under the fun it was an impassioned study of the human
+     conscience.  Hawthorne or Bunyan might have been proud to imagine
+     that powerful allegory, which had a grotesque force far beyond
+     either of them....  Yet it quite failed of the response I had hoped
+     for it, and I shall not insist here upon Mark Twain as a moralist;
+     though I warn the reader that if he leaves out of the account an
+     indignant sense of right and wrong, a scorn of all affectations and
+     pretense, an ardent hate of meanness and injustice, he will come
+     infinitely short of knowing Mark Twain.
+
+Howells realized the unwisdom and weakness of dogmatic insistence, and
+the strength of understatement.  To him Mark Twain was already the
+moralist, the philosopher, and the statesman; he was willing that the
+reader should take his time to realize these things.  The article, with
+his subject's portrait as a frontispiece, appeared in the Century for
+September, 1882.  If it carried no new message to many of its readers, it
+at least set the stamp of official approval upon what they had already
+established in their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CXL
+
+DOWN THE RIVER
+
+Osgood was doing no great things with The Prince and the Pauper, but
+Clemens gave him another book presently, a collection of sketches--The
+Stolen White Elephant.  It was not an especially important volume, though
+some of the features, such as "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning" and the
+"Carnival of Crime," are among the best of their sort, while the
+"Elephant" story is an amazingly good take-off on what might be called
+the spectacular detective.  The interview between Inspector Blunt and the
+owner of the elephant is typical.  The inspector asks:
+
+     "Now what does this elephant eat, and how much?"
+
+     "Well, as to what he eats--he will eat anything.  He will eat a man,
+     he will eat a Bible; he will eat anything between a man and a
+     Bible."
+
+     "Good-very good, indeed, but too general.  Details are necessary;
+     details are the only valuable thing in our trade.  Very well, as to
+     men.  At one meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how many men
+     will he eat if fresh?"
+
+     "He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal
+     he would eat five ordinary men."
+
+     "Very good; five men.  We will put that down.  What nationalities
+     would he prefer?"
+
+     "He is indifferent about nationalities.  He prefers acquaintances,
+     but is not prejudiced against strangers."
+
+     "Very good.  Now, as to Bibles.  How many Bibles would he eat at a
+     meal?"
+
+     "He would eat an entire edition."
+
+Clemens and Osgood had a more important publishing enterprise on hand. 
+The long-deferred completion of the Mississippi book was to be
+accomplished; the long-deferred trip down the river was to be taken. 
+Howells was going abroad, but the charming Osgood was willing to make the
+excursion, and a young man named Roswell Phelps, of Hartford, was engaged
+as a stenographer to take the notes.
+
+Clemens made a farewell trip to Boston to see Howells before his
+departure, and together they went to Concord to call on Emerson; a
+fortunate thing, for he lived but a few weeks longer.  They went again in
+the evening, not to see him, but to stand reverently outside and look at
+his house.  This was in April.  Longfellow had died in March.  The fact
+that Howells was going away indefinitely, made them reminiscent and sad.
+
+Just what breach Clemens committed during this visit is not remembered
+now, and it does not matter; but his letter to Howells, after his return
+to Hartford, makes it pretty clear that it was memorable enough at the
+time.  Half-way in it he breaks out:
+
+     But oh, hell, there is no hope for a person that is built like me,
+     because there is no cure, no cure.
+
+     If I could only know when I have committed a crime: then I could
+     conceal it, and not go stupidly dribbling it out, circumstance by
+     circumstance, into the ears of a person who will give no sign till
+     the confession is complete; and then the sudden damnation drops on a
+     body like the released pile-driver, and he finds himself in the
+     earth down to his chin.  When he merely supposed he was being
+     entertaining.
+
+Next day he was off with Osgood and the stenographer for St. Louis, where
+they took the steamer Gold Dust down the river.  He intended to travel
+under an assumed name, but was promptly recognized, both at the Southern
+Hotel and on the boat.  In 'Life on the Mississippi' he has given us the
+atmosphere of his trip, with his new impressions of old scenes; also his
+first interview with the pilot, whom he did not remember, but who easily
+remembered him.
+
+"I did not write that story in the book quite as it happened," he
+reflected once, many years later.  "We went on board at night.  Next
+morning I was up bright and early and out on deck to see if I could
+recognize any of the old landmarks.  I could not remember any.  I did not
+know where we were at all.  It was a new river to me entirely.  I climbed
+up in the pilot-house and there was a fellow of about forty at the wheel. 
+I said 'Good morning.' He answered pleasantly enough.  His face was
+entirely strange to me.  Then I sat down on the high seat back of the
+wheel and looked out at the river and began to ask a few questions, such
+as a landsman would ask.  He began, in the old way, to fill me up with
+the old lies, and I enjoyed letting him do it.  Then suddenly he turned
+round to me and said:
+
+"'I want to get a cup of coffee.  You hold her, will you, till I come
+back?'  And before I could say a word he was out of the pilot-house door
+and down the steps.  It all came so suddenly that I sprang to the wheel,
+of course, as I would have done twenty years before.  Then in a moment I
+realized my position.  Here I was with a great big steamboat in the
+middle of the Mississippi River, without any further knowledge than that
+fact, and the pilot out of sight.  I settled my mind on three
+conclusions: first, that the pilot might be a lunatic; second, that he
+had recognized me and thought I knew the river; third, that we were in a
+perfectly safe place, where I could not possibly kill the steamboat.  But
+that last conclusion, though the most comforting, was an extremely
+doubtful one.  I knew perfectly well that no sane pilot would trust his
+steamboat for a single moment in the hands of a greenhorn unless he were
+standing by the greenhorn's side.  Of course, by force of habit, when I
+grabbed the wheel, I had taken the steering marks ahead and astern, and I
+made up my mind to hold her on those marks to the hair; but I could feel
+myself getting old and gray.  Then all at once I recognized where we
+were; we were in what is called the Grand Chain--a succession of hidden
+rocks, one of the most dangerous places on the river.  There were two
+rocks there only about seventy feet apart, and you've got to go exactly
+between them or wreck the boat.  There was a time when I could have done
+it without a tremor, but that time wasn't now.  I would have given any
+reasonable sum to have been on the shore just at that moment.  I think I
+was about ready to drop dead when I heard a step on the pilothouse stair;
+then the door opened and the pilot came in, quietly picking his teeth,
+and took the wheel, and I crawled weakly back to the seat.  He said:
+
+"'You thought you were playing a nice joke on me, didn't you?  You
+thought I didn't know who you were.  Why, I recognized that drawl of
+yours as soon as you opened your mouth.'
+
+"I said, 'Who the h--l are you?  I don't remember you.'
+
+"'Well,'  he said, 'perhaps you don't, but I was a cub pilot on the
+river before the war, when you were a licensed pilot, and I couldn't get
+a license when I was qualified for one, because the Pilots' Association
+was so strong at that time that they could keep new pilots out if they
+wanted to, and the law was that I had to be examined by two licensed
+pilots, and for a good while I could not get any one to make that
+examination.  But one day you and another pilot offered to do it, and you
+put me through a good, healthy examination and indorsed my application
+for a license.  I had never seen you before, and I have never seen you
+since until now, but I recognized you.'
+
+"'All right,' I said.  'But if I had gone half a mile farther with that
+steamboat we might have all been at the bottom of the river.'
+
+"We got to be good friends, of course, and I spent most of my time up
+there with him.  When we got down below Cairo, and there was a big, full
+river--for it was highwater season and there was no danger of the boat
+hitting anything so long as she kept in the river--I had her most of the
+time on his watch.  He would lie down and sleep, and leave me there to
+dream that the years had not slipped away; that there had been no war, no
+mining days, no literary adventures; that I was still a pilot, happy and
+care-free as I had been twenty years before."
+
+>From the book we gather that he could not keep out of the pilot-house. 
+He was likely to get up at any hour of the night to stand his watch, and
+truly enough the years had slipped away.  He was the young fellow in his
+twenties again, speculating on the problems of existence and reading his
+fortune in the stars.  To heighten the illusion, he had himself called
+regularly with the four-o'clock watch, in order not to miss the mornings.
+--[It will repay the reader to turn to chap.  xxx of Life on the
+Mississippi, and consider Mark Twain's word-picture of the river
+sunrise.]
+
+The majesty and solitude of the river impressed him more than ever
+before, especially its solitude.  It had been so full of life in his
+time; now it had returned once more to its primal loneliness--the
+loneliness of God.
+
+At one place two steamboats were in sight at once an unusual spectacle. 
+Once, in the mouth of a river, he noticed a small boat, which he made out
+to be the Mark Twain.  There had been varied changes in twenty-one years;
+only the old fascination of piloting remained unchanged.  To Bixby
+afterward he wrote:
+
+"I'd rather be a pilot than anything else I've ever done in my life.  How
+do you run Plum Point?"
+
+He met Bixby at New Orleans.  Bixby was captain now on a splendid new
+Anchor Line steamboat, the City of Baton Rouge.  The Anchor Line steamers
+were the acme of Mississippi River steamboat-building, and they were
+about the end of it.  They were imposingly magnificent, but they were
+only as gorgeous clouds that marked the sunset of Mississippi steamboat
+travel.  Mark Twain made his trip down the river just in time.
+
+In New Orleans he met George W. Cable and Joel Chandler Harris, and they
+had a fraternizing good time together, mousing about the old French
+Quarter or mingling with the social life of the modern city.  He made a
+trip with Bixby in a tug to the Warmouth plantation, and they reviewed
+old days together, as friends parted for twenty-one years will. 
+Altogether the New Orleans sojourn was a pleasant one, saddened only by a
+newspaper notice of the death, in Edinburgh, of the kindly and gentle and
+beloved Dr. Brown.
+
+Clemens arranged to make the trip up the river on the Baton Rouge.  Bixby
+had one pretty inefficient pilot, and stood most of the watches himself,
+so that with "Sam Clemens" in the pilot-house with him, it was
+wonderfully like those old first days of learning the river, back in the
+fifties.
+
+"Sam was ever making notes in his memorandum-book, just as he always
+did," said Bixby to the writer, recalling the time.  "I was sorry I had
+to stay at the wheel so much.  I wanted to have more time with Sam
+without thinking of the river at all.  Sam was sorry, too, from what he
+wrote after he got home."
+
+Bixby produced a letter in the familiar handwriting.  It was a tender,
+heart-spoken letter:
+
+     I didn't see half enough of you.  It was a sore disappointment. 
+     Osgood could have told you, if he would--discreet old dog--I
+     expected to have you with me all the time.  Altogether, the most
+     pleasant part of my visit with you was after we arrived in St. 
+     Louis, and you were your old natural self again.  Twenty years have
+     not added a month to your age or taken a fraction from your
+     loveliness.
+
+Said Bixby: "When we arrived in St. Louis we came to the Planters' Hotel;
+to this very table where you and I are sitting now, and we had a couple
+of hot Scotches between us, just as we have now, and we had a good last
+talk over old times and old acquaintances.  After he returned to New York
+he sent for my picture.  He wanted to use it in his book."
+
+At St. Louis the travelers changed boats, and proceeded up the
+Mississippi toward St. Paul.  Clemens laid off three days at Hannibal.
+
+Delightful days [he wrote home].  Loitering around all day long,
+examining the old localities, and talking with the gray heads who were
+boys and girls with me thirty or forty years ago.  I spent my nights with
+John and Helen Garth, three miles from town, in their spacious and
+beautiful house.  They were children with me, and afterward schoolmates. 
+That world which I knew in its blooming youth is old and bowed and
+melancholy now; its soft cheeks are leathery and withered, the fire has
+gone out of its eyes, the spring from its step.  It will be dust and
+ashes when I come again.
+
+He had never seen the far upper river, and he found it very satisfying. 
+His note-book says:
+
+     The bluffs all along up above St. Paul are exquisitely beautiful
+     where the rough and broken turreted rocks stand up against the sky
+     above the steep, verdant slopes.  They are inexpressibly rich and
+     mellow in color; soft dark browns mingled with dull greens--the very
+     tints to make an artist worship.
+
+In a final entry he wrote:
+
+The romance of boating is gone now.  In Hannibal the steamboat man is no
+longer the god.
+
+
+
+
+CXLI
+
+LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY
+
+Clemens took a further step toward becoming a publisher on his own
+account.  Not only did he contract to supply funds for the Mississippi
+book, but, as kaolatype, the chalk-engraving process, which had been
+lingeringly and expensively dying, was now become merely something to
+swear at, he had his niece's husband, Webster, installed as Osgood's New
+York subscription manager, with charge of the general agencies.  There 
+was no delay in this move.  Webster must get well familiarized with the
+work before the Mississippi book's publication.
+
+He had expected to have the manuscript finished pretty promptly, but the
+fact that he had promised it for a certain time paralyzed his effort. 
+Even at the farm he worked without making much headway.  At the end of
+October he wrote Howells:
+
+     The weather turned cold, and we had to rush home, while I still
+     lacked thirty thousand words.  I had been sick and got delayed.  I
+     am going to write all day and two-thirds of the night until the
+     thing is done or break down at it.  The spur and burden of the
+     contract are intolerable to me.  I can endure the irritation of it
+     no longer.  I went to work at nine o'clock yesterday morning and
+     went to bed an hour after midnight.  Result of the day (mainly
+     stolen from books though credit given), 9,500 words, so I reduced my
+     burden by one-third in one day.  It was five days' work in one.  I
+     have nothing more to borrow or steal; the rest must all be written. 
+     It is ten days' work and unless something breaks it will be finished
+     in five.
+
+He had sworn once, when he had finally finished 'A Tramp Abroad', that he
+would never limit himself as to time again.  But he had forgotten that
+vow, and was suffering accordingly.
+
+Howells wrote from London urging him to drop everything and come over to
+Europe for refreshment.
+
+     We have seen lots of nice people, and have been most pleasantly made
+     of; but I would rather have you smoke in my face and talk for half a
+     day, just for pleasure, than to go to the best house or club in
+     London.
+
+Clemens answered:
+
+     Yes, it would be more profitable to me to do that because, with your
+     society to help me, I should swiftly finish this now apparently
+     interminable book.  But I cannot come, because I am not boss here,
+     and nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens away from home in the
+     winter season.
+
+This was in November, and he had broken all restrictions as to time.  He
+declared that he had never had such a fight over any book before, and
+that he had told Osgood and everybody concerned that they must wait.
+
+     I have said with sufficient positiveness that I will finish the book
+     at no particular date; that I will not hurry it; that I will not
+     hurry myself; that I will take things easy and comfortably--write
+     when I choose to write, leave it alone when I do so prefer .  .  . 
+     .  I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where it
+     ought to be, and that is where it must remain; to follow any other
+     policy would be to make the book worse than it already is.  I ought
+     to have finished it before showing it to anybody, and then sent it
+     across the ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for you seem to be a
+     great many shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I had
+     thought of this thing earlier I would have acted upon it and taken
+     the tuck somewhat out of your joyousness.
+
+It was a long, heartfelt letter.  Near the end of it he said:
+
+     Cable has been here, creating worshipers on all hands.  He is a
+     marvelous talker on a deep subject.  I do not see how even Spencer
+     could unwind a thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in
+     cleaner, clearer, crisper English.  He astounded Twichell with his
+     faculty.  You know that when it comes down to moral honesty, limpid
+     innocence, and utterly blemishless piety, the apostles were mere
+     policemen to Cable; so with this in mind you must imagine him at a
+     midnight dinner in Boston the other night, where we gathered around
+     the board of the Summerset Club: Osgood full, Boyle O'Reilly full,
+     Fairchild responsively loaded, and Aldrich and myself possessing the
+     floor and properly fortified.  Cable told Mrs. Clemens, when he
+     returned here, that he seemed to have been entertaining himself with
+     horses, and had a dreamy idea that he must have gone to Boston in a
+     cattle-car.  It was a very large time.  He called it an orgy.  And
+     no doubt it was, viewed from his standpoint.
+
+Osgood wanted Mark Twain to lecture that fall, as preliminary advertising
+for the book, with "Life on the Mississippi" as his subject.  Osgood was
+careful to make this proposition by mail, and probably it was just as
+well; for if there was any single straw that could have broken the back
+of Clemens's endurance and made him violent at this particular time, it
+was a proposition to go back on the platform.  His answer to Osgood has
+not been preserved.
+
+Clemens spoke little that winter.  In February he addressed the Monday
+Evening Club on "What is Happiness?" presenting a theory which in later
+years he developed as a part of his "gospel," and promulgated in a
+privately printed volume, 'What is Man'?  It is the postulate already
+mentioned in connection with his reading of Lecky, that every human
+action, bad or good, is the result of a selfish impulse; that is to say,
+the result of a desire for the greater content of spirit.  It is not a
+new idea; philosophers in all ages have considered it, and accepted or
+rejected it, according to their temperament and teachings, but it was
+startling and apparently new to the Monday Evening Club.  They scoffed
+and jeered at it; denounced it as a manifest falsity.  They did not quite
+see then that there may be two sorts of selfishness--brutal and divine;
+that he who sacrifices others to himself exemplifies the first, whereas
+he who sacrifices himself for others personifies the second--the divine
+contenting of his soul by serving the happiness of his fellow-men.  Mark
+Twain left this admonition in furtherance of that better sort:
+
+"Diligently train your ideals upward, and still upward, toward a summit
+where you will find your chiefest pleasure, in conduct which, while
+contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and
+the community."
+
+It is a divine admonition, even if, in its suggested moral freedom, it
+does seem to conflict with that other theorythe inevitable sequence of
+cause and effect, descending from the primal atom.  There is seeming
+irrelevance in introducing this matter here; but it has a chronological
+relation, and it presents a mental aspect of the time.  Clemens was
+forty-eight, and becoming more and more the philosopher; also, in logic
+at least, a good deal of a pessimist.  He made a birthday aphorism on the
+subject:
+
+"The man who is a pessimist before he is forty-eight knows too much; the
+man who is an optimist after he is forty-eight knows too little."
+
+He was never more than a pessimist in theory at any time.  In practice he
+would be a visionary; a builder of dreams and fortunes, a veritable
+Colonel Sellers to the end of his days.
+
+
+
+
+CXLII
+
+"LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI"
+
+The Mississippi book was completed at last and placed in Osgood's hands
+for publication.  Clemens was immensely fond of Osgood.  Osgood would
+come down to Hartford and spend days discussing plans and playing
+billiards, which to Mark Twain's mind was the proper way to conduct
+business.  Besides, there was Webster, who by this time, or a very little
+later, had the word "publisher" printed in his letter-heads, and was
+truly that, so far as the new book was concerned.  Osgood had become
+little more than its manufacturer, shipping-agent, and accountant.  It
+should be added that he made the book well, though somewhat expensively. 
+He was unaccustomed to getting out big subscription volumes.  His taste
+ran to the artistic, expensive product.
+
+"That book cost me fifty thousand dollars to make," Clemens once
+declared.  "Bliss could have built a whole library, for that sum.  But
+Osgood was a lovely fellow."
+
+Life on the Mississippi was issued about the middle of May.  It was a
+handsome book of its kind and a successful book, but not immediately a
+profitable one, because of the manner of its issue.  It was experimental,
+and experiments are likely to be costly, even when successful in the
+final result.
+
+Among other things, it pronounced the final doom of kaolatype.  The
+artists who drew the pictures for it declined to draw them if they were
+to be reproduced by that process, or indeed unless some one of the lately
+discovered photographic processes was used.  Furthermore, the latter were
+much cheaper, and it was to the advantage of Clemens himself to repudiate
+kaolatype, even for his own work.
+
+Webster was ordered to wind up the last ends of the engraving business
+with as little sacrifice as possible, and attend entirely to more
+profitable affairs--viz., the distribution of books.
+
+As literature, the Mississippi book will rank with Mark Twain's best--so
+far, at least, as the first twenty chapters of it are concerned.  Earlier
+in this history these have been sufficiently commented upon.  They
+constitute a literary memorial seemingly as enduring as the river itself.
+
+Concerning the remaining chapters of the book, they are also literature,
+but of a different class.  The difference is about the same as that
+between 'A Tramp Abroad' and the 'Innocents'.  It is the difference
+between the labors of love and duty; between art and industry, literature
+and journalism.
+
+But the last is hardly fair.  It is journalism, but it is literary
+journalism, and there are unquestionably areas that are purely literary,
+and not journalistic at all.  There would always be those in any book of
+travel he might write.  The story of the river revisited is an
+interesting theme; and if the revisiting had been done, let us say eight
+or ten years earlier, before he had become a theoretical pessimist, and
+before the river itself had become a background for pessimism, the tale
+might have had more of the literary glamour and illusion, even if less
+that is otherwise valuable.
+
+'Life on the Mississippi' has been always popular in Germany.  The
+Emperor William of Germany once assured Mark Twain that it was his
+favorite American book, and on the same evening the portier of the
+author's lodging in Berlin echoed the Emperor's opinion.
+
+Paul Lindau, a distinguished German author and critic, in an interview at
+the time the Mississippi book appeared, spoke of the general delight of
+his countrymen in its author.  When he was asked, "But have not the
+Germans been offended by Mark Twain's strictures on their customs and
+language in his Tramp Abroadf" he replied, "We know what we are and how
+we look, and the fanciful picture presented to our eyes gives us only
+food for laughter, not cause for resentment.  The jokes he made on our
+long words, our inverted sentences, and the position of the verb have
+really led to a reform in style which will end in making our language as
+compact and crisp as the French or English.  I regard Mark Twain as the
+foremost humorist of the age."
+
+Howells, traveling through Europe, found Lindau's final sentiment echoed
+elsewhere, and he found something more: in Europe Mark Twain was already
+highly regarded as a serious writer.  Thomas Hardy said to Howells one
+night at dinner:
+
+"Why don't people understand that Mark Twain is not merely a great
+humorist?  He is a very remarkable fellow in a very different way."
+
+The Rev. Dr. Parker, returning from England just then, declared that,
+wherever he went among literary people, the talk was about Mark Twain;
+also that on two occasions, when he had ventured diffidently to say that
+he knew that author personally, he was at once so evidently regarded as
+lying for effect that he felt guilty, and looked it, and did not venture
+to say it any more; thus, in a manner, practising untruth to save his
+reputation for veracity.
+
+That the Mississippi book throughout did much to solidify this foreign
+opinion of Mark Twain's literary importance cannot be doubted, and it is
+one of his books that will live longest in the memory of men.
+
+
+
+
+CXLIII
+
+A GUEST OF ROYALTY
+
+For purposes of copyright another trip to Canada was necessary, and when
+the newspapers announced (May, 1883) that Mark Twain was about to cross
+the border there came one morning the following telegram:
+
+     Meeting of Literary and Scientific Society at Ottawa from 22d to
+     26th.  It would give me much pleasure if you could come and be my
+     guest during that time.
+
+                                                  LORNE.
+
+
+The Marquis of Lorne, then Governor-General of Canada, was the husband of
+Queen Victoria's daughter, the Princess Louise.  The invitation was
+therefore in the nature of a command.  Clemens obeyed it graciously
+enough, and with a feeling of exaltation no doubt.  He had been honored
+by the noble and the great in many lands, but this was royalty--English
+royalty--paying a tribute to an American writer whom neither the Marquis
+nor the Princess, his wife, had ever seen.  They had invited him because
+they had cared enough for his books to make them wish to see him, to have
+him as a guest in Rideau Hall, their home.  Mark Twain was democratic.
+A king to him was no more than any other man; rather less if he were not
+a good king.  But there was something national in this tribute; and,
+besides, Lord Lorne and the Princess Louise were the kind of sovereigns
+that honored their rank, instead of being honored by it.
+
+It is a good deal like a fairy tale when you think of it; the barefooted
+boy of Hannibal, who had become a printer, a pilot, a rough-handed miner,
+being summoned, not so many years later, by royalty as one of America's
+foremost men of letters.  The honor was no greater than many others he
+had received, certainly not greater than the calls of Canon Kingsley and
+Robert Browning and Turgenieff at his London hotel lodgings, but it was
+of a less usual kind.
+
+Clemens enjoyed his visit.  Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne kept
+him with them almost continually, and were loath to let him go.  Once
+they took him tobogganing--an exciting experience.
+
+It happened that during his stay with them the opening of the Canadian
+Parliament took place.  Lord Lorne and the principal dignitaries of state
+entered one carriage, and in a carriage behind them followed Princess
+Louise with Mark Twain.  As they approached the Parliament House the
+customary salute was fired.  Clemens pretended to the Princess
+considerable gratification.  The temptation was too strong to resist:
+
+     "Your Highness," he said, "I have had other compliments paid to me,
+     but none equal to this one.  I have never before had a salute fired
+     in my honor."
+
+Returning to Hartford, he sent copies of his books to Lord Lome, and to
+the Princess a special copy of that absurd manual, The New Guide of the
+Conversation in Portuguese and English, for which he had written an
+introduction. --[A serious work, in Portugal, though issued by Osgood
+('83) as a joke.  Clemens in the introduction says: "Its delicious,
+unconscious ridiculousness and its enchanting naivety are as supreme and
+unapproachable in their way as Shakespeare's sublimities."  An extract,
+the closing paragraph from the book's preface, will illustrate his
+meaning:
+
+"We expect then, who the little book (for the care that we wrote him, and
+for her typographical correction), that maybe worth the acceptation of
+the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate
+him particularly."
+
+
+
+
+CXLIV
+
+A SUMMER LITERARY HARVEST
+
+Arriving at the farm in June, Clemens had a fresh crop of ideas for
+stories of many lengths and varieties.  His note-book of that time is
+full of motifs and plots, most of them of that improbable and extravagant
+kind which tended to defeat any literary purpose, whether humorous or
+otherwise.  It seems worth while setting down one or more of these here,
+for they are characteristic of the myriad conceptions that came and went,
+and beyond these written memoranda left no trace behind.  Here is a fair
+example of many:
+
+     Two men starving on a raft.  The pauper has a Boston cracker,
+     resolves to keep it till the multimillionaire is beginning to
+     starve, then make him pay $50,000 for it.  Millionaire agrees. 
+     Pauper's cupidity rises, resolves to wait and get more; twenty-four
+     hours later asks him a million for the cracker.  Millionaire agrees. 
+     Pauper has a wild dream of becoming enormously rich off his cracker;
+     backs down; lies all night building castles in the air; next day
+     raises his price higher and higher, till millionaire has offered
+     $100,000,000, every cent he has in the world.  Pauper accepts. 
+     Millionaire: "Now give it to me."
+
+     Pauper: "No; it isn't a trade until you sign documental history of
+     the transaction and make an oath to pay."
+
+     While pauper is finishing the document millionaire sees a ship. 
+     When pauper says, "Sign and take the cracker," millionaire smiles a
+     smile, declines, and points to the ship.
+
+Yet this is hardly more extravagant than another idea that is mentioned
+repeatedly among the notes--that of an otherwise penniless man wandering
+about London with a single million-pound bank-note in his possession, a
+motif which developed into a very good story indeed.
+
+
+                 IDEA FOR "STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN"
+
+     In modern times the halls of heaven are warmed by registers
+     connected with hell; and this is greatly applauded by Jonathan
+     Edwards, Calvin, Baxter and Company, because it adds a new pang to
+     the sinner's sufferings to know that the very fire which tortures
+     him is the means of making the righteous comfortable.
+
+Then there was to be another story, in which the various characters were
+to have a weird, pestilential nomenclature; such as "Lockjaw Harris,"
+"Influenza Smith," "Sinapism Davis," and a dozen or two more, a perfect
+outbreak of disorders.
+
+Another--probably the inspiration of some very hot afternoon--was to
+present life in the interior of an iceberg, where a colony would live for
+a generation or two, drifting about in a vast circular current year after
+year, subsisting on polar bears and other Arctic game.
+
+An idea which he followed out and completed was the 1002d Arabian Night,
+in which Scheherazade continues her stories, until she finally talks the
+Sultan to death.  That was a humorous idea, certainly; but when Howells
+came home and read it in the usual way he declared that, while the 
+opening was killingly funny, when he got into the story itself it seemed
+to him that he was "made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan from
+Scheherazade's prolixity."
+
+"On the whole," he said, "it is not your best, nor your second best; but
+all the way it skirts a certain kind of fun which you can't afford to
+indulge in."
+
+And that was the truth.  So the tale, neatly typewritten, retired to
+seclusion, and there remains to this day.
+
+Clemens had one inspiration that summer which was not directly literary,
+but historical, due to his familiarity with English dates.  He wrote
+Twichell:
+
+     Day before yesterday, feeling not in condition for writing, I left
+     the study, but I couldn't hold in--had to do something; so I spent
+     eight hours in the sun with a yardstick, measuring off the reigns of
+     the English kings on the roads in these grounds, from William the
+     Conqueror to 1883, calculating to invent an open-air game which
+     shall fill the children's heads with dates without study.  I give
+     each king's reign one foot of space to the year and drive one stake
+     in the ground to mark the beginning of each reign, and I make the
+     children call the stake by the king's name.  You can stand in the
+     door and take a bird's-eye view of English monarchy, from the
+     Conqueror to Edward IV.; then you can turn and follow the road up
+     the hill to the study and beyond with an opera-glass, and bird's-eye
+     view the rest of it to 1883.
+
+     You can mark the sharp difference in the length of reigns by the
+     varying distances of the stakes apart.  You can see Richard II., two
+     feet; Oliver Cromwell, two feet; James II., three feet, and so on--
+     and then big skips; pegs standing forty-five, forty-six, fifty,
+     fifty-six, and sixty feet apart (Elizabeth, Victoria, Edward III.,
+     Henry III., and George III.).  By the way, third's a lucky number
+     for length of days, isn't it?  Yes, sir; by my scheme you get a
+     realizing notion of the time occupied by reigns.
+
+     The reason it took me eight hours was because, with little Jean's
+     interrupting assistance, I had to measure from the Conquest to the
+     end of Henry VI. three times over, and besides I had to whittle out
+     all those pegs.
+
+     I did a full day's work and a third over, yesterday, but was full of
+     my game after I went to bed trying to fit it for indoors.  So I
+     didn't get to sleep till pretty late; but when I did go off I had
+     contrived a new way to play my history game with cards and a board.
+
+We may be sure the idea of the game would possess him, once it got a fair
+start like that.  He decided to save the human race that year with a
+history game.  When he had got the children fairly going and interested
+in playing it, he adapted it to a cribbage-board, and spent his days and
+nights working it out and perfecting it to a degree where the world at
+large might learn all the facts of all the histories, not only without
+effort, but with an actual hunger for chronology.  He would have a game
+not only of the English kings, but of the kings of every other nation;
+likewise of great statesmen, vice-chancellors, churchmen, of celebrities
+in every line.  He would prepare a book to accompany these games.  Each
+game would contain one thousand facts, while the book would contain eight
+thousand; it would be a veritable encyclopedia.  He would organize clubs
+throughout the United States for playing the game; prizes were to be
+given.  Experts would take it up.  He foresaw a department in every
+newspaper devoted to the game and its problems, instead of to chess and
+whist and other useless diversions.  He wrote to Orion, and set him to
+work gathering facts and dates by the bushel.  He wrote to Webster, sent
+him a plan, and ordered him to apply for the patent without delay. 
+Patents must also be applied for abroad.  With all nations playing this
+great game, very likely it would produce millions in royalties; and so,
+in the true Sellers fashion, the iridescent bubble was blown larger and
+larger, until finally it blew up.  The game on paper had become so large,
+so elaborate, so intricate, that no one could play it.  Yet the first
+idea was a good one: the king stakes driven along the driveway and up the
+hillside of Quarry Farm.  The children enjoyed it, and played it through
+many sweet summer afternoons.  Once, in the days when he had grown old,
+he wrote, remembering:
+
+     Among the principal merits of the games which we played by help of
+     the pegs were these: that they had to be played in the open air, and
+     that they compelled brisk exercise.  The peg of William the
+     Conqueror stood in front of the house; one could stand near the
+     Conqueror and have all English history skeletonized and landmarked
+     and mile-posted under his eye .  .  .  .  The eye has a good memory. 
+     Many years have gone by and the pegs have disappeared, but I still
+     see them and each in its place; and no king's name falls upon my ear
+     without my seeing his pegs at once, and noticing just how many feet
+     of space he takes up along the road.
+
+It turned out an important literary year after all.  In the Mississippi
+book he had used a chapter from the story he had been working at from
+time to time for a number of years, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. 
+Reading over the manuscript now he found his interest in it sharp and
+fresh, his inspiration renewed.  The trip down the river had revived it. 
+The interest in the game became quiescent, and he set to work to finish
+the story at a dead heat.
+
+To Howells, August 22 (1883), he wrote:
+
+     I have written eight or nine hundred manuscript pages in such a
+     brief space of time that I mustn't name the number of days; I
+     shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't expect you to. 
+     I used to restrict myself to four and five hours a day and five days
+     in the week, but this time I have wrought from breakfast till 5.15
+     P.M.  six days in the week, and once or twice I smouched a Sunday
+     when the boss wasn't looking.  Nothing is half so good as literature
+     hooked on Sunday, on the sly.
+
+He refers to the game, though rather indifferently.
+
+     When I wrote you I thought I had it; whereas I was merely entering
+     upon the initiatory difficulties of it.  I might have known it
+     wouldn't be an easy job or somebody would have invented a decent
+     historical game long ago--a thing which nobody has done.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that he was working at Huck with enthusiasm, he
+seems to have been in no hurry to revise it for publication, either as a
+serial or as a book.  But the fact that he persevered until Huck Finn at
+last found complete utterance was of itself a sufficient matter for
+congratulation.
+
+
+
+
+CXLV
+
+HOWELLS AND CLEMENS WRITE A PLAY
+
+Before Howells went abroad Clemens had written:
+
+     Now I think that the play for you to write would be one entitled,
+     "Colonel Mulberry Sellers in Age" (75), with Lafayette Hawkins (at
+     50) still sticking to him and believing in him and calling him "My
+     lord."  He [Sellers] is a specialist and a scientist in various
+     ways.  Your refined people and purity of speech would make the best
+     possible background, and when you are done, I could take your
+     manuscript and rewrite the Colonel's speeches, and make him properly
+     extravagant, and I would let the play go to Raymond, and bind him up
+     with a contract that would give him the bellyache every time he read
+     it.  Shall we think this over, or drop it as being nonsense?
+
+Howells, returned and settled in Boston once more, had revived an
+interest in the play idea,.  He corresponded with Clemens concerning it
+and agreed that the American Claimant, Leathers, should furnish the
+initial impulse of the drama.
+
+They decided to revive Colonel Sellers and make him the heir; Colonel
+Sellers in old age, more wildly extravagant than ever, with new schemes,
+new patents, new methods of ameliorating the ills of mankind.
+
+Howells came down to Hartford from Boston full of enthusiasm.  He found
+Clemens with some ideas of the plan jotted down: certain effects and
+situations which seemed to him amusing, but there was no general scheme
+of action.  Howells, telling of it, says:
+
+     I felt authorized to make him observe that his scheme was as nearly
+     nothing as chaos could be.  He agreed hilariously with me, and was
+     willing to let it stand in proof of his entire dramatic inability.
+
+Howells, in turn, proposed a plan which Clemens approved, and they set to
+work.  Howells could imitate Clemens's literary manner, and they had a
+riotously jubilant fortnight working out their humors.  Howells has told
+about it in his book, and he once related it to the writer of this
+memoir.  He said:
+
+"Clemens took one scene and I another.  We had loads and loads of fun
+about it.  We cracked our sides laughing over it as it went along.  We
+thought it mighty good, and I think to this day that it was mighty good. 
+We called the play 'Colonel Sellers.'  We revived him.  Clemens had a
+notion of Sellers as a spiritual medium-there was a good deal of
+excitement about spiritualism then; he also had a notion of Sellers
+leading a women's temperance crusade.  We conceived the idea of Sellers
+wanting to try, in the presence of the audience, how a man felt who had
+fallen, through drink.  Sellers was to end with a sort of corkscrew
+performance on the stage.  He always wore a marvelous fire extinguisher,
+one of his inventions, strapped on his back, so in any sudden emergency,
+he could give proof of its effectiveness."
+
+In connection with the extinguisher, Howells provided Sellers with a pair
+of wings, which Sellers declared would enable him to float around in any
+altitude where the flames might break out.  The extinguisher, was not to
+be charged with water or any sort of liquid, but with Greek fire, on the
+principle that like cures like; in other words, the building was to be
+inoculated with Greek fire against the ordinary conflagration.  Of course
+the whole thing was as absurd as possible, and, reading the old
+manuscript to-day, one is impressed with the roaring humor of some of the
+scenes, and with the wild extravagance of the farce motive, not wholly
+warranted by the previous character of Sellers, unless, indeed, he had
+gone stark mad.  It is, in fact, Sellers caricatured.  The gentle, tender
+side of Sellers--the best side--the side which Clemens and Howells
+themselves cared for most, is not there.  Chapter III of Mark Twain's
+novel, The American Claimant, contains a scene between Colonel Sellers
+and Washington Hawkins which presents the extravagance of the Colonel's
+materialization scheme.  It is a modified version of one of the scenes in
+the play, and is as amusing and unoffending as any.
+
+The authors' rollicking joy in their work convinced them that they had
+produced a masterpiece for which the public in general, and the actors in
+particular, were waiting.  Howells went back to Boston tired out, but
+elate in the prospect of imminent fortune.
+
+
+
+
+CXLVI
+
+DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
+
+Meantime, while Howells had been in Hartford working at the play with
+Clemens, Matthew Arnold had arrived in Boston.  On inquiring for Howells,
+at his home, the visitor was told that he had gone to see Mark Twain. 
+Arnold was perhaps the only literary Englishman left who had not accepted
+Mark Twain at his larger value.  He seemed surprised and said:
+
+"Oh, but he doesn't like that sort of thing, does he?"
+
+To which Mrs. Howells replied:
+
+"He likes Mr. Clemens very much, and he thinks him one of the greatest
+men he ever knew."
+
+Arnold proceeded to Hartford to lecture, and one night Howells and
+Clemens went to meet him at a reception.  Says Howells:
+
+     While his hand laxly held mine in greeting I saw his eyes fixed
+     intensely on the other side of the room.  "Who--who in the world is
+     that?"  I looked and said, "Oh, that is Mark Twain."  I do not
+     remember just how their instant encounter was contrived by Arnold's
+     wish; but I have the impression that they were not parted for long
+     during the evening, and the next night Arnold, as if still under the
+     glamour of that potent presence, was at Clemens's house.
+
+He came there to dine with the Twichells and the Rev. Dr. Edwin P. 
+Parker.  Dr. Parker and Arnold left together, and, walking quietly
+homeward, discussed the remarkable creature whose presence they had just
+left.  Clemens had been at his best that night--at his humorous best.  He
+had kept a perpetual gale of laughter going, with a string of comment and
+anecdote of a kind which Twichell once declared the world had never
+before seen and would never see again.  Arnold seemed dazed by it, unable
+to come out from under its influence.  He repeated some of the things 
+Mark Twain had said; thoughtfully, as if trying to analyze their magic. 
+Then he asked solemnly:
+
+"And is he never serious?"
+
+And Dr. Parker as solemnly answered:
+
+"Mr. Arnold, he is the most serious man in the world."  Dr. Parker,
+recalling this incident, remembered also that Protap Chunder Mazoomdar, a
+Hindoo Christian prelate of high rank, visited Hartford in 1883, and that
+his one desire was to meet Mark Twain.  In some memoranda of this visit
+Dr. Parker has written:
+
+     I said that Mark Twain was a friend of mine, and we would
+     immediately go to his house.  He was all eagerness, and I perceived
+     that I had risen greatly in this most refined and cultivated
+     gentleman's estimation.  Arriving at Mr. Clemens's residence, I
+     promptly sought a brief private interview with my friend for his
+     enlightenment concerning the distinguished visitor, after which they
+     were introduced and spent a long while together.  In due time
+     Mazoomdar came forth with Mark's likeness and autograph, and as we
+     walked away his whole air and manner seemed to say, with Simeon of
+     old, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!"
+     
+
+
+
+CXLVII
+
+THE FORTUNES OF A PLAY
+
+Howells is of the impression that the "Claimant" play had been offered to
+other actors before Raymond was made aware of it; but there are letters 
+(to Webster) which indicate that Raymond was to see the play first,
+though Clemens declares, in a letter of instruction, that he hopes
+Raymond will not take it.  Then he says:
+
+     Why do I offer him the play at all?  For these reasons: he plays
+     that character well; there are not thirty actors in the country who
+     can do it better; and, too, he has a sort of sentimental right to be
+     offered the piece, though no moral, or legal, or other kind of
+     right.
+
+     Therefore we do offer it to him; but only once, not twice.  Let us
+     have no hemming and hawing; make short, sharp work of the business. 
+     I decline to have any correspondence with R. myself in any way.
+
+This was at the end of November, 1883, while the play was still being
+revised.  Negotiations with Raymond had already begun, though he does not
+appear to have actually seen the play during that theatrical season, and
+many and various were the attempts made to place it elsewhere; always
+with one result--that each actor or manager, in the end, declared it to
+be strictly a Raymond play.  The thing was hanging fire for nearly a
+year, altogether, while they were waiting on Raymond, who had a
+profitable play, and was in no hurry for the recrudescence of Sellers. 
+Howells tells how he eventually took the manuscript to Raymond, whom he
+found "in a mood of sweet reasonableness" at one of Osgood's luncheons. 
+Raymond said he could not do the play then, but was sure he would like it
+for the coming season, and in any case would be glad to read it.
+
+In due time Raymond reported favorably on the play, at least so far as
+the first act was concerned, but he objected to the materialization
+feature and to Sellers as claimant for the English earldom.  He asked
+that these features be eliminated, or at least much ameliorated; but as
+these constituted the backbone and purpose of the whole play, Clemens and
+Howells decided that what was left would be hardly worth while.  Raymond
+finally agreed to try the play as it was in one of the larger towns -
+Howells thinks in Buffalo.  A week later the manuscript came back to
+Webster, who had general charge of the business negotiations, as indeed
+he had of all Mark Twain's affairs at this time, and with it a brief
+line:
+
+     DEAR SIR,--I have just finished rereading the play, and am convinced
+     that in its present form it would not prove successful.  I return
+     the manuscript by express to your address.
+
+     Thanking you for your courtesy, I am,
+
+     Yours truly, JOHN T.  RAYMOND.
+
+     P.S.--If the play is altered and made longer I will be pleased to
+     read it again.
+
+
+In his former letter Raymond had declared that "Sellers, while a very
+sanguine man, was not a lunatic, and no one but a lunatic could for a
+moment imagine that he had done such a work" (meaning the
+materialization).  Clearly Raymond wanted a more serious presentation,
+something akin to his earlier success, and on the whole we can hardly
+blame him.  But the authors had faith in their performance as it stood,
+and agreed they would make no change.
+
+Finally a well-known elocutionist, named Burbank, conceived the notion of
+impersonating Raymond as well as Sellers, making of it a sort of double
+burlesque, and agreed to take the play on those terms.  Burbank came to
+Hartford and showed what he could do.  Howells and Clemens agreed to give
+him the play, and they hired the old Lyceum Theater for a week, at seven
+hundred dollars, for its trial presentation.  Daniel Frohman promoted it. 
+Clemens and Howells went over the play and made some changes, but they
+were not as hilarious over it or as full of enthusiasm as they had been
+in the beginning.  Howells put in a night of suffering--long, dark hours
+of hot and cold waves of fear--and rising next morning from a tossing
+bed, wrote: "Here's a play which every manager has put out-of-doors and
+which every actor known to us has refused, and now we go and give it to
+an elocutioner.  We are fools."
+
+Clemens hurried over to Boston to consult with Howells, and in the end
+they agreed to pay the seven hundred dollars for the theater, take the
+play off and give Burbank his freedom.  But Clemens's faith in it did not
+immediately die.  Howells relinquished all right and title in it, and
+Clemens started it out with Burbank and a traveling company, doing one-
+night stands, and kept it going for a week or more at his own expense. 
+It never reached New York.
+
+"And yet," says Howells, "I think now that if it had come it would have
+been successful.  So hard does the faith of the unsuccessful dramatist
+die." --[This was as late as the spring of 1886, at which time Howells's
+faith in the play was exceedingly shaky.  In one letter he wrote: "It is
+a lunatic that we have created, and while a lunatic in one act might
+amuse, I'm afraid that in three he would simply bore."
+And again:
+
+"As it stands, I believe the thing will fail, and it would be a disgrace
+to have it succeed."]
+
+
+
+
+CXLVIII
+
+CABLE AND HIS GREAT JOKE
+
+Meanwhile, with the completion of the Sellers play Clemens had flung
+himself into dramatic writing once more with a new and more violent
+impetuosity than ever.  Howells had hardly returned to Boston when he
+wrote:
+
+Now let's write a tragedy.
+
+The inclosed is not fancy, it is history; except that the little girl was
+a passing stranger, and not kin to any of the parties.  I read the
+incident in Carlyle's Cromwell a year ago, and made a note in my note-
+book; stumbled on the note to-day, and wrote up the closing scene of a
+possible tragedy, to see how it might work.
+
+If we made this colonel a grand fellow, and gave him a wife to suit--hey? 
+It's right in the big historical times--war; Cromwell in big, picturesque
+power, and all that.
+
+Come, let's do this tragedy, and do it well.  Curious, but didn't
+Florence want a Cromwell?  But Cromwell would not be the chief figure
+here.
+
+It was the closing scene of that pathetic passage in history from which
+he would later make his story, "The Death Disc."  Howells was too tired
+and too occupied to undertake immediately a new dramatic labor, so
+Clemens went steaming ahead alone.
+
+     My billiard-table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich
+     Islands; the walls are upholstered with scraps of paper penciled
+     with notes drawn from them.  I have saturated myself with knowledge
+     of that unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and
+     fascinating people.  And I have begun a story.  Its hidden motive
+     will illustrate a but-little considered fact in human nature: that
+     the religious folly you are born in you will die in, no matter what
+     apparently reasonabler religious folly may seem to have taken its
+     place; meanwhile abolished and obliterated it.  I start Bill
+     Ragsdale at eleven years of age, and the heroine at four, in the
+     midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque and
+     amazing customs and superstitions, three months before the arrival
+     of the missionaries and--the erection of a shallow Christianity upon
+     the ruins of the old paganism.
+
+     Then these two will become educated Christians and highly civilized.
+
+     And then I will jump fifteen years and do Ragsdale's leper business. 
+     When we come to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the
+     story, all ready to our hand.
+
+He made elaborate preparations for the Sandwich Islands story, which he
+and Howells would dramatize later, and within the space of a few weeks he
+actually did dramatize 'The Prince and the Pauper' and 'Tom Sawyer', and
+was prodding Webster to find proper actors or managers; stipulating at
+first severe and arbitrary terms, which were gradually modified, as one
+after another of the prospective customers found these dramatic wares
+unsuited to their needs.  Mark Twain was one of the most dramatic
+creatures that ever lived, but he lacked the faculty of stage arrangement
+of the dramatic idea.  It is one of the commonest defects in the literary
+make-up; also one of the hardest to realize and to explain.
+
+The winter of 1883-84 was a gay one in the Clemens home.  Henry Irving
+was among those entertained, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Aldrich and his
+wife, Howells of course, and George W. Cable.  Cable had now permanently
+left the South for the promised land which all authors of the South and
+West seek eventually, and had in due course made his way to Hartford. 
+Clemens took Cable's fortunes in hand, as he had done with many another,
+invited him to his home, and undertook to open negotiations with the
+American Publishing Company, of which Frank Bliss was now the manager,
+for the improvement of his fortunes.
+
+Cable had been giving readings from his stories and had somewhere picked
+up the measles.  He suddenly came down with the complaint during his
+visit to Clemens, and his case was a violent one.  It required the
+constant attendance of a trained nurse and one or two members of the
+household to pull him through.
+
+In the course of time he was convalescent, and when contagion was no
+longer to be feared guests were invited in for his entertainment.  At one
+of these gatherings, Cable produced a curious book, which he said had
+been lent to him by Prof. Francis Bacon, of New Haven, as a great rarity. 
+It was a little privately printed pamphlet written by a Southern youth,
+named S. Watson Wolston, a Yale student of 1845, and was an absurd
+romance of the hyperflorid, grandiloquent sort, entitled, "Love
+Triumphant, or the Enemy Conquered."  Its heroine's name was Ambulinia,
+and its flowery, half-meaningless periods and impossible situations
+delighted Clemens beyond measure.  He begged Cable to lend it to him, to
+read at the Saturday Morning Club, declaring that he certainly must own
+the book, at whatever cost.  Henry C. Robinson, who was present,
+remembered having seen a copy in his youth, and Twichell thought he
+recalled such a book on sale in New Haven during his college days. 
+Twichell said nothing as to any purpose in the matter; but somewhat
+later, being in New Haven, he stepped into the old book-store and found
+the same proprietor, who remembered very well the book and its author. 
+Twichell rather fearfully asked if by any chance a copy of it might still
+be obtained.
+
+"Well," was the answer, "I undertook to put my cellar in order the other
+day, and found about a cord of them down there.  I think I can supply
+you."
+
+Twichell took home six of the books at ten cents each, and on their first
+spring walk to Talcott's Tower casually mentioned to Clemens the quest
+for the rare Ambulinia.  But Clemens had given up the pursuit.  New York
+dealers had reported no success in the matter.  The book was no longer in
+existence.
+
+"What would you give for a copy?" asked.  Twichell.
+
+Clemens became excited.
+
+"It isn't a question of price," he said; "that would be for the owner to
+set if I could find him."
+
+Twichell drew a little package from his pocket.
+
+"Well, Mark," he said, "here are six copies of that book, to begin with. 
+If that isn't enough, I can get you a wagon-load."
+
+It was enough.  But it did not deter Clemens in his purpose, which was to
+immortalize the little book by pointing out its peculiar charms.  He did
+this later, and eventually included the entire story, with comments, in
+one of his own volumes.
+
+Clemens and Twichell did not always walk that spring.  The early form of
+bicycle, the prehistoric high-wheel, had come into vogue, and they each
+got one and attempted its conquest.  They practised in the early morning
+hours on Farmington Avenue, which was wide and smooth, and they had an
+instructor, a young German, who, after a morning or two, regarded Mark
+Twain helplessly and said:
+
+"Mr. Clemens, it's remarkable--you can fall off of a bicycle more
+different ways than the man that invented it."
+
+They were curious things, those old high-wheel machines.  You were
+perched away up in the air, with the feeling that you were likely at any
+moment to strike a pebble or something that would fling you forward with
+damaging results.  Frequently that is what happened.  The word "header"
+seems to have grown out of that early bicycling period.  Perhaps Mark
+Twain invented it.  He had enough experience to do it.  He always
+declared afterward that he invented all the new bicycle profanity that
+has since come into general use.  Once he wrote:
+
+     There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street,
+     a measured yard apart.  Even after I got so I could steer pretty
+     fairly I was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them.  They
+     gave me the worst falls I ever got in that street, except those
+     which I got from dogs.  I have seen it stated that no expert is
+     quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip
+     out of his way.  I think that that may be true; but I think that the
+     reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to.  I
+     did not try to run over any dog.  But I ran over every dog that came
+     along.  I think it makes a great deal of difference.  If you try to
+     run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to
+     miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump
+     the wrong way every time.  It was always so in my experience.  Even
+     when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me
+     practise.  They all liked to see me practise, and they all came, for
+     there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a
+     dog.
+
+He conquered, measurably, that old, discouraging thing, and he and
+Twichell would go on excursions, sometimes as far as Wethersfield or to
+the tower.  It was a pleasant change, at least it was an interesting one;
+but bicycling on the high wheel was never a popular diversion with Mark
+Twain, and his enthusiasm in the sport had died before the "safety" came
+along.
+
+He had his machine sent out to Elmira, but there were too many hills in
+Chemung County, and after one brief excursion he came in, limping and
+pushing his wheel, and did not try it again.
+
+To return to Cable.  When the 1st of April (1884) approached he concluded
+it would be a good time to pay off his debt of gratitude for his recent
+entertainment in the Clemens's home.  He went to work at it
+systematically.  He had a "private and confidential" circular letter
+printed, and he mailed it to one hundred and fifty of Mark Twain's
+literary friends in Boston, Hartford, Springfield, New York, Brooklyn,
+Washington, and elsewhere, suggesting that they write to him, so that
+their letters would reach him simultaneously April 1st, asking for his
+autograph.  No stamps or cards were to be inclosed for reply, and it was
+requested that "no stranger to Mr. Clemens and no minor" should take
+part.  Mrs. Clemens was let into the secret, so that she would see to it
+that her husband did not reject his mail or commit it to the flames
+unopened.
+
+It would seem that every one receiving the invitation must have responded
+to it, for on the morning of April 1st a stupefying mass of letters was
+unloaded on Mark Twain's table.  He did not know what to make of it, and
+Mrs. Clemens stood off to watch the results.  The first one he opened was
+from Dean Sage, a friend whom he valued highly.  Sage wrote from
+Brooklyn:
+
+     DEAR CLEMENS,--I have recently been asked by a young lady who
+     unfortunately has a mania for autograph-collecting, but otherwise is
+     a charming character, and comely enough to suit your fastidious
+     taste, to secure for her the sign manual of the few distinguished
+     persons fortunate enough to have my acquaintance.  In enumerating
+     them to her, after mentioning the names of Geo. Shepard Page, Joe
+     Michell, Capt. Isaiah Ryndus, Mr. Willard, Dan Mace, and J. L.
+     Sullivan, I came to yours.  "Oh!" said she, "I have read all his
+     works--Little Breeches, The Heathen Chinee, and the rest--and think
+     them delightful.  Do oblige me by asking him for his autograph,
+     preceded by any little sentiment that may occur to him, provided it
+     is not too short."
+
+     Of course I promised, and hope you will oblige me by sending some
+     little thing addressed to Miss Oakes.
+
+     We are all pretty well at home just now, though indisposition has
+     been among us for the past fortnight.  With regards to Mrs. Clemens
+     and the children, in which my wife joins,
+
+                                   Yours truly,   DEAN SAGE.
+
+
+It amused and rather surprised him, and it fooled him completely; but
+when he picked up a letter from Brander Matthews, asking, in some absurd
+fashion, for his signature, and another from Ellen Terry, and from
+Irving, and from Stedman, and from Warner, and Waring, and H. C. Bunner,
+and Sarony, and Laurence Hutton, and John Hay, and R. U.  Johnson, and
+Modjeska, the size and quality of the joke began to overawe him.  He was
+delighted, of course; for really it was a fine compliment, in its way,
+and most of the letters were distinctly amusing.  Some of them asked for
+autographs by the yard, some by the pound.  Henry Irving said:
+
+     I have just got back from a very late rehearsal-five o'clock--very
+     tired--but there will be no rest till I get your autograph.
+
+Some requested him to sit down and copy a few chapters from The Innocents
+Abroad for them or to send an original manuscript.  Others requested that
+his autograph be attached to a check of interesting size.  John Hay
+suggested that he copy a hymn, a few hundred lines of Young's "Night
+Thoughts," and an equal amount of Pollak's "Course of Time."
+
+     I want my boy to form a taste for serious and elevated poetry, and
+     it will add considerable commercial value to have them in your
+     handwriting.
+
+Altogether the reading of the letters gave him a delightful day, and his
+admiration for Cable grew accordingly.  Cable, too, was pleased with the
+success of his joke, though he declared he would never risk such a thing
+again.  A newspaper of the time reports him as saying:
+
+     I never suffered so much agony as for a few days previous to the 1st
+     of April.  I was afraid the letters would reach Mark when he was in
+     affliction, in which case all of us would never have ceased flying
+     to make it up to him.
+     When I visited Mark we used to open our budgets of letters together
+     at breakfast.  We used to sing out whenever we struck an autograph-
+     hunter.  I think the idea came from that.  The first person I spoke
+     to about it was Robert Underwood Johnson, of the Century.  My most
+     enthusiastic ally was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.  We never thought
+     it would get into the papers.  I never played a practical joke
+     before.  I never will again, certainly.
+
+Mark Twain in those days did not encourage the regular autograph-
+collectors, and seldom paid any attention to their requests for his
+signature.  He changed all this in later years, and kept a supply always
+on hand to satisfy every request; but in those earlier days he had no
+patience with collecting fads, and it required a particularly pleasing
+application to obtain his signature.
+
+
+
+
+CXLIX
+
+MARK TWAIN IN BUSINESS
+
+Samuel Clemens by this time was definitely engaged in the publishing
+business.  Webster had a complete office with assistants at 658 Broadway,
+and had acquired a pretty thorough and practical knowledge of
+subscription publishing.  He was a busy, industrious young man,
+tirelessly energetic, and with a good deal of confidence, by no means
+unnecessary to commercial success.  He placed this mental and physical
+capital against Mark Twain's inspiration and financial backing, and the
+combination of Charles L. Webster & Co.  seemed likely to be a strong
+one.
+
+Already, in the spring of 1884., Webster had the new Mark Twain book,
+'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', well in hand, and was on the watch
+for promising subscription books by other authors.  Clemens, with his
+usual business vision and eye for results, with a generous disregard of
+detail, was supervising the larger preliminaries, and fulminating at the
+petty distractions and difficulties as they came along.  Certain plays he
+was trying to place were enough to keep him pretty thoroughly upset
+during this period, and proof-reading never added to his happiness.  To
+Howells he wrote:
+
+     My days are given up to cursings, both loud and deep, for I am
+     reading the 'Huck Finn' proofs.  They don't make a very great many
+     mistakes, but those that do occur are of a nature that make a man
+     swear his teeth loose.
+
+Whereupon Howells promptly wrote him that he would help him out with the
+Huck Finn proofs for the pleasure of reading the story.  Clemens, among
+other things, was trying to place a patent grape-scissors, invented by
+Howells's father, so that there was, in some degree, an equivalent for
+the heavy obligation.  That it was a heavy one we gather from his fervent
+acknowledgment:
+
+     It took my breath away, and I haven't recovered it yet, entirely--I
+     mean the generosity of your proposal to read the proofs of Huck
+     Finn.
+
+     Now, if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest-proceed, in
+     God's name, and be by me forever blessed.  I can't conceive of a
+     rational man deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself. 
+     But if there be such a man, and you be that man, pile it on.  The
+     proof-reading of 'The Prince and the Pauper' cost me the last rags
+     of my religion.
+
+Clemens decided to have the Huckleberry Finn book illustrated after his
+own ideas.  He looked through the various comic papers to see if he could
+find the work of some new man that appealed to his fancy.  In the pages
+of Life he discovered some comic pictures illustrating the possibility of
+applying electrical burners to messenger boys, waiters, etc.  The style
+and the spirit of these things amused him.  He instructed Webster to look
+up the artist, who proved to be a young man, E. W. Kemble by name, later
+one of our foremost cartoonists.  Webster engaged Kemble and put the
+manuscript in his hands.  Through the publication of certain chapters of
+Huck Finn in the Century Magazine, Kemble was brought to the notice of
+its editors, who wrote Clemens that they were profoundly indebted to him
+for unearthing "such a gem of an illustrator."
+
+Clemens, encouraged and full of enthusiasm, now endeavored to interest
+himself in the practical details of manufacture, but his stock of
+patience was light and the details were many.  His early business period
+resembles, in some of its features, his mining experience in Esmeralda,
+his letters to Webster being not unlike those to Orion in that former
+day.  They are much oftener gentle, considerate, even apologetic, but
+they are occasionally terse, arbitrary, and profane.  It required effort
+for him to be entirely calm in his business correspondence.  A criticism
+of one of Webster's assistants will serve as an example of his less quiet
+method:
+
+     Charley, your proof-reader, is an idiot; and not only an idiot, but
+     blind; and not only blind, but partly dead.
+
+Of course, one must regard many of Mark Twain's business aspects
+humorously.  To consider them otherwise is to place him in a false light
+altogether.  He wore himself out with his anxieties and irritations; but
+that even he, in the midst of his furies, saw the humor of it all is
+sufficiently evidenced by the form of his savage phrasing.  There were
+few things that did not amuse him, and certainly nothing amused more, or
+oftener, than himself.
+
+It is proper to add a detail in evidence of a business soundness which he
+sometimes manifested.  He had observed the methods of Bliss and Osgood,
+and had drawn his conclusions.  In the beginning of the Huck Finn canvass
+he wrote Webster:
+
+     Keep it diligently in mind that we don't issue till we have made a
+     big sale.
+
+     Get at your canvassing early and drive it with all your might, with
+     an intent and purpose of issuing on the 1oth or 15th of next
+     December (the best time in the year to tumble a big pile into the
+     trade); but if we haven't 40,000 subscriptions we simply postpone
+     publication till we've got them.  It is a plain, simple policy, and
+     would have saved both of my last books if it had been followed. 
+     [That is to say, 'The Prince and the Pauper' and the Mississippi
+     book, neither of which had sold up to his expectations on the,
+     initial canvass.]
+
+
+
+
+CL
+
+FARM PICTURES
+
+Gerhardt returned from Paris that summer, after three years of study, a
+qualified sculptor.  He was prepared to take commissions, and came to
+Elmira to model a bust of his benefactor.  The work was finished after
+four or five weeks of hard effort and pronounced admirable; but Gerhardt,
+attempting to make a cast one morning, ruined it completely.  The family
+gathered round the disaster, which to them seemed final, but the sculptor
+went immediately to work, and in an amazingly brief time executed a new
+bust even better than the first, an excellent piece of modeling and a
+fine likeness.  It was decided that a cut of it should be used as a
+frontispiece for the new book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
+
+Clemens was at this time giving the final readings to the Huck Finn
+pages, a labor in which Mrs. Clemens and the children materially
+assisted.  In the childish biography which Susy began of her father, a
+year later, she says:
+
+     Ever since papa and mama were married papa has written his books and
+     then taken them to mama in manuscript, and she has expurgated--
+     [Susy's spelling is preserved]--them.  Papa read Huckleberry Finn to
+     us in manuscript,--[Probably meaning proof.]-- just before it came
+     out, and then he would leave parts of it with mama to expurgate,
+     while he went off to the study to work, and sometimes Clara and I
+     would be sitting with mama while she was looking the manuscript
+     over, and I remember so well, with what pangs of regret we used to
+     see her turn down the leaves of the pages, which meant that some
+     delightfully terrible part must be scratched out.  And I remember
+     one part pertickularly which was perfectly fascinating it was so
+     terrible, that Clara and I used to delight in and oh, with what
+     despair we saw mama turn down the leaf on which it was written, we
+     thought the book would almost be ruined without it.  But we
+     gradually came to think as mama did.
+
+Commenting on this phase of Huck's evolution Mark Twain has since
+written:
+
+     I remember the special case mentioned by Susy, and can see the group
+     yet--two-thirds of it pleading for the life of the culprit sentence
+     that was so fascinatingly dreadful, and the other third of it
+     patiently explaining why the court could not grant the prayer of the
+     pleaders; but I do not remember what the condemned phrase was.  It
+     had much company, and they all went to the gallows; but it is
+     possible that that especially dreadful one which gave those little
+     people so much delight was cunningly devised and put into the book
+     for just that function, and not with any hope or expectation that it
+     would get by the "expergator" alive.  It is possible, for I had that
+     custom.
+
+Little Jean was probably too youthful yet to take part in that literary
+arbitration.  She was four, and had more interest in cows.  In some
+memoranda which her father kept of that period--the "Children's Book"--he
+says:
+
+     She goes out to the barn with one of us every evening toward six
+     o'clock, to look at the cows--which she adores--no weaker word can
+     express her feeling for them.  She sits rapt and contented while
+     David milks the three, making a remark now and then--always about
+     the cows.  The time passes slowly and drearily for her attendant,
+     but not for her.  She could stand a week of it.  When the milking is
+     finished, and "Blanche," "Jean," and "the cross cow" are turned into
+     the adjoining little cow-lot, we have to set Jean on a shed in that
+     lot, and stay by her half an hour, till Eliza, the German nurse,
+     comes to take her to bed.  The cows merely stand there, and do
+     nothing; yet the mere sight of them is all-sufficient for Jean.  She
+     requires nothing more.  The other evening, after contemplating them
+     a long time, as they stood in the muddy muck chewing the cud, she
+     said, with deep and reverent appreciation, "Ain't this a sweet
+     little garden?"
+
+     Yesterday evening our cows (after being inspected and worshiped by
+     Jean from the shed for an hour) wandered off down into the pasture
+     and left her bereft.  I thought I was going to get back home, now,
+     but that was an error.  Jean knew of some more cows in a field
+     somewhere, and took my hand and led me thitherward.  When we turned
+     the corner and took the right-hand road, I saw that we should
+     presently be out of range of call and sight; so I began to argue
+     against continuing the expedition, and Jean began to argue in favor
+     of it, she using English for light skirmishing and German for
+     "business."  I kept up my end with vigor, and demolished her
+     arguments in detail, one after the other, till I judged I had her
+     about cornered.  She hesitated a moment, then answered up, sharply:
+
+     "Wir werden nichts mehr daruber sprechen!" (We won't talk any more
+     about it.)
+
+     It nearly took my breath away, though I thought I might possibly
+     have misunderstood.  I said:
+
+     "Why, you little rascal!  Was hast du gesagt?"
+
+     But she said the same words over again, and in the same decided way. 
+     I suppose I ought to have been outraged, but I wasn't; I was
+     charmed.
+
+His own note-books of that summer are as full as usual, but there are
+fewer literary ideas and more philosophies.  There was an excitement,
+just then, about the trichina germ in pork, and one of his memoranda
+says:
+
+     I think we are only the microscopic trichina concealed in the blood
+     of some vast creature's veins, and that it is that vast creature
+     whom God concerns himself about and not us.
+
+And there is another which says:
+
+     People, in trying to justify eternity, say we can put it in by
+     learning all the knowledge acquired by the inhabitants of the
+     myriads of  stars.  We sha'n't need that.  We could use up two
+     eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own
+     world, and the thousands of nations that have risen, and flourished,
+     and vanished from it.  Mathematics alone would occupy me eight
+     million years.
+
+He records an incident which he related more fully in a letter to
+Howells:
+
+     Before I forget it I must tell you that Mrs. Clemens has said a
+     bright thing.  A drop-letter came to me asking me to lecture here
+     for a church debt.  I began to rage over the exceedingly cool
+     wording of the request, when Mrs. Clemens said: "I think I know that
+     church, and, if so, this preacher is a colored man; he doesn't know
+     how to write a polished letter.  How should he?"
+
+     My manner changed so suddenly and so radically that Mrs. C. said: "I
+     will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will
+     adopt it: 'Consider every man colored till he is proved white.'"
+
+It is dern good, I think.
+
+One of the note-books contains these entries:
+
+     Talking last night about home matters, I said, "I wish I had said to
+     George when we were leaving home, 'Now, George, I wish you would
+     take advantage of these three or four months' idle time while I am
+     away----'"
+
+     "To learn to let my matches alone," interrupted Livy.  The very
+     words I was going to use.  Yet George had not been mentioned before,
+     nor his peculiarities.
+
+Several years ago I said:
+
+     "Suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and just as I was dying a
+     messenger should enter and say----"
+
+     "You are become Earl of Durham," interrupted Livy.  The very words I
+     was going to utter.  Yet there had not been a word said about the
+     earl, or any other person, nor had there been any conversation
+     calculated to suggest any such subject.
+
+
+
+
+CLI
+
+MARK TWAIN MUGWUMPS
+
+The Republican Presidential nomination of James G. Blaine resulted in a
+political revolt such as the nation had not known.  Blaine was immensely
+popular, but he had many enemies in his own party.  There were strong
+suspicions of his being connected with doubtful financiering-enterprises,
+more or less sensitive to official influence, and while these scandals
+had become quieted a very large portion of the Republican constituency
+refused to believe them unjustified.  What might be termed the
+intellectual element of Republicanism was against Blame: George William
+Curtis, Charles Dudley Warner, James Russell Lowell, Henry Ward Beecher,
+Thomas Nast, the firm of Harper & Brothers, Joseph W.  Hawley, Joseph
+Twichell, Mark Twain--in fact the majority of thinking men who held
+principle above party in their choice.
+
+On the day of the Chicago nomination, Henry C. Robinson, Charles E. 
+Perkins, Edward M.  Bunce, F. G. Whitmore, and Samuel C. Dunham were
+collected with Mark Twain in his billiard-room, taking turns at the game
+and discussing the political situation, with George, the colored butler,
+at the telephone down-stairs to report the returns as they came in.  As
+fast as the ballot was received at the political headquarters down-town,
+it was telephoned up to the house and George reported it through the
+speaking-tube.
+
+The opposition to Blaine in the convention was so strong that no one of
+the assembled players seriously expected his nomination.  What was their
+amazement, then, when about mid-afternoon George suddenly announced
+through the speaking-tube that Blaine was the nominee.  The butts of the
+billiard cues came down on the floor with a bump, and for a moment the
+players were speechless.  Then Henry Robinson said:
+
+"It's hard luck to have to vote for that man."
+
+Clemens looked at him under his heavy brows.
+
+"But--we don't--have to vote for him," he said.
+
+"Do you mean to say that you're not going to vote for him?"
+
+"Yes, that is what I mean to say.  I am not going to vote for him."
+
+There was a general protest.  Most of those assembled declared that when
+a party's representatives chose a man one must stand by him.  They might
+choose unwisely, but the party support must be maintained.  Clemens said:
+
+"No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote.  If
+loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot.  If there is
+any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in
+the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and
+what isn't.  I claim that difference.  I am the only person in the sixty
+millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism."
+
+There was a good deal of talk back and forth, and, in the end, most of
+those there present remained loyal to Blaine.  General Hawley and his
+paper stood by Blaine.  Warner withdrew from his editorship of the
+Courant and remained neutral.  Twichell stood with Clemens and came near
+losing his pulpit by it.  Open letters were published in the newspapers
+about him.  It was a campaign when politics divided neighbors, families,
+and congregations.  If we except the Civil War period, there never had
+been a more rancorous political warfare than that waged between the
+parties of James G. Blaine and Grover Cleveland in 1884.
+
+That Howells remained true to Blaine was a grief to Clemens.  He had gone
+to the farm with Howells on his political conscience and had written
+fervent and imploring letters on the subject.  As late as September 17th,
+he said:
+
+     Somehow I can't seem to rest quiet under the idea of your voting for
+     Blaine.  I believe you said something about the country and the
+     party.  Certainly allegiance to these is well, but certainly a man's
+     first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country
+     come second to that, and never first.  I don't ask you to vote at
+     all.  I only urge you not to soil yourself by voting for Blaine.... 
+     Don't be offended; I mean no offense.  I am not concerned about the
+     rest of the nation, but well, good-by.
+                                                  Yours ever, MARK.
+
+Beyond his prayerful letters to Howells, Clemens did not greatly concern
+himself with politics on the farm, but, returning to Hartford, he went
+vigorously into the campaign, presided, as usual, at mass-meetings, and
+made political speeches which invited the laughter of both parties, and
+were universally quoted and printed without regard to the paper's
+convictions.
+
+It was during one such speech as this that, in the course of his remarks,
+a band outside came marching by playing patriotic music so loudly as to
+drown his voice.  He waited till the band got by, but by the time he was
+well under way again another band passed, and once more he was obliged to
+wait till the music died away in the distance.  Then he said, quite
+serenely:
+
+"You will find my speech, without the music, in the morning paper."
+
+In introducing Carl Schurz at a great mugwump mass-meeting at Hartford,
+October 20, 1884., he remarked that he [Clemens] was the only
+legitimately elected officer, and was expected to read a long list of
+vice-presidents; but he had forgotten all about it, and he would ask all
+the gentlemen there, of whatever political complexion, to do him a great
+favor by acting as vice-presidents.  Then he said:
+
+     As far as my own political change of heart is concerned, I have not
+     been convinced by any Democratic means.  The opinion I hold of Mr.
+     Blaine is due to the comments of the Republican press before the
+     nomination.  Not that they have said bitter or scandalous things,
+     because Republican papers are above that, but the things they said
+     did not seem to be complimentary, and seemed to me to imply
+     editorial disapproval of Mr. Blame and the belief that he was not
+     qualified to be President of the United States.
+
+     It is just a little indelicate for me to be here on this occasion
+     before an assemblage of voters, for the reason that the ablest
+     newspaper in Colorado--the ablest newspaper in the world--has
+     recently nominated me for President.  It is hardly fit for me to
+     preside at a discussion of the brother candidate, but the best among
+     us will do the most repulsive things the moment we are smitten with
+     a Presidential madness.  If I had realized that this canvass was to
+     turn on the candidate's private character I would have started that
+     Colorado paper sooner.  I know the crimes that can be imputed and
+     proved against me can be told on the fingers of your hands.  This
+     cannot be said of any other Presidential candidate in the field.
+
+Inasmuch as the Blaine-Cleveland campaign was essentially a campaign of
+scurrility, this touch was loudly applauded.
+
+Mark Twain voted for Grover Cleveland, though up to the very eve of
+election he was ready to support a Republican nominee in whom he had
+faith, preferably Edmunds, and he tried to inaugurate a movement by which
+Edmunds might be nominated as a surprise candidate and sweep the country.
+
+It was probably Dr. Burchard's ill-advised utterance concerning the three
+alleged R's of Democracy, "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," that defeated
+Blaine, and by some strange, occult means Mark Twain's butler George got
+wind of this damning speech before it became news on the streets of
+Hartford.  George had gone with his party, and had a considerable sum of
+money wagered on Blaine's election; but he knew it was likely to be very
+close, and he had an instant and deep conviction that these three fatal
+words and Blaine's failure to repudiate them meant the candidate's
+downfall.  He immediately abandoned everything in the shape of household
+duties, and within the briefest possible time had changed enough money to
+make him safe, and leave him a good margin of winnings besides, in the
+event of Blame's defeat.  This was evening.  A very little later the news
+of Blaine's blunder, announced from the opera-house stage, was like the
+explosion of a bomb.  But it was no news to George, who went home
+rejoicing with his enemies.
+
+
+
+
+CLII
+
+PLATFORMING WITH CABLE
+
+The drain of many investments and the establishment of a publishing house
+had told heavily on Clemens's finances.  It became desirable to earn a
+large sum of money with as much expedition as possible.  Authors'
+readings had become popular, and Clemens had read in Philadelphia and
+Boston with satisfactory results.  He now conceived the idea of a grand
+tour of authors as a commercial enterprise.  He proposed to Aldrich,
+Howells, and Cable that he charter a private car for the purpose, and
+that with their own housekeeping arrangements, cooking, etc., they could
+go swinging around the circuit, reaping, a golden harvest.  He offered to
+be general manager of the expedition, the impresario as it were, and
+agreed to guarantee the others not less than seventy-five dollars a day
+apiece as their net return from the "circus," as he called it.
+
+Howells and Aldrich liked well enough to consider it as an amusing
+prospect, but only Cable was willing to realize it.  He had been scouring
+the country on his own account, and he was willing enough to join forces
+with Mark Twain.
+
+Clemens detested platforming, but the idea of reading from his books or
+manuscript for some reason seemed less objectionable, and, as already
+stated, the need of much money had become important.
+
+He arranged with J. B. Pond for the business side of the expedition,
+though in reality he was its proprietor.  The private-car idea was given
+up, but he employed Cable at a salary of four hundred and fifty dollars a
+week and expenses, and he paid Pond a commission.  Perhaps, without going
+any further, we may say that the tour was a financial success, and
+yielded a large return of the needed funds.
+
+Clemens and Cable had a pleasant enough time, and had it not been for the
+absence from home and the disagreeableness of railway travel, there would
+have been little to regret.  They were a curiously associated pair. 
+Cable was orthodox in his religion, devoted to Sunday-school, Bible
+reading, and church affairs in general.  Clemens--well, Clemens was
+different.  On the first evening of their tour, when the latter was
+comfortably settled in bed with an entertaining book, Cable appeared with
+his Bible, and proceeded to read a chapter aloud.  Clemens made no
+comment, and this went on for an evening or two more.  Then he said:
+
+"See here, Cable, we'll have to cut this part of the program out.  You
+can read the Bible as much as you please so long as you don't read it to
+me."
+
+Cable retired courteously.  He had a keen sense of humor, and most things
+that Mark Twain did, whether he approved or not, amused him.  Cable did
+not smoke, but he seemed always to prefer the smoking compartment when
+they traveled, to the more respectable portions of the car.  One day
+Clemens sand to him:
+
+"Cable, why do you sit in here?  You don't smoke, and you know I always
+smoke, and sometimes swear."
+
+Cable said, "I know, Mark, I don't do these things, but I can't help
+admiring the way you do them."
+
+When Sunday came it was Mark Twain's great happiness to stay in bed all
+day, resting after his week of labor; but Cable would rise, bright and
+chipper, dress himself in neat and suitable attire, and visit the various
+churches and Sunday-schools in town, usually making a brief address at
+each, being always invited to do so.
+
+It seems worth while to include one of the Clemens-Cable programs here--
+a most satisfactory one.  They varied it on occasion, and when they were
+two nights in a place changed it completely, but the program here given
+was the one they were likely to use after they had proved its worth:
+
+                                 PROGRAM
+
+                    Richling's visit to Kate Riley
+                                             GEO. W. CABLE
+
+                    King Sollermun
+                                             MARK TWAIN
+
+                    (a) Kate Riley and Ristofolo 
+                    (b) Narcisse in mourning for "Lady Byron" 
+                    (c) Mary's Night Ride
+                                             GEO.  W.  CABLE
+                    (a) Tragic Tale of the Fishwife 
+                    (b) A Trying Situation 
+                    (c) A Ghost Story
+                                             MARK TWAIN
+
+
+At a Mark Twain memorial meeting (November 30, 1910), where the few who
+were left of his old companions told over quaint and tender memories,
+George Cable recalled their reading days together and told of Mark
+Twain's conscientious effort to do his best, to be worthy of himself,
+regardless of all other concerns.  He told how when they had been
+traveling for a while Clemens seemed to realize that he was only giving
+the audience nonsense; making them laugh at trivialities which they would
+forget before they had left the entertainment hall.  Cable said that up
+to that time he had supposed Clemens's chief thought was the
+entertainment of the moment, and that if the audience laughed he was
+satisfied.  He told how he had sat in the wings, waiting his turn, and
+heard the tides of laughter gather and roll forward and break against the
+footlights, time and time again, and how he had believed his colleague to
+be glorying in that triumph.  What was his surprise, then, on the way to
+the hotel in the carriage, when Clemens groaned and seemed writhing in
+spirit and said:
+
+"Oh, Cable, I am demeaning myself.  I am allowing myself to be a mere
+buffoon.  It's ghastly.  I can't endure it any longer."
+
+Cable added that all that night and the next day Mark Twain devoted
+himself to the study and rehearsal of selections which were justified not
+only as humor, but as literature and art.
+
+A good many interesting and amusing things would happen on such a tour. 
+Many of these are entirely forgotten, of course, but of others certain
+memoranda have been preserved.  Grover Cleveland had been elected when
+they set out on their travels, but was still holding his position in
+Albany as Governor of New York.  When they reached Albany Cable and
+Clemens decided to call on him.  They drove to the Capitol and were shown
+into the Governor's private office.  Cleveland made them welcome, and,
+after greetings, said to Clemens:
+
+"Mr. Clemens, I was a fellow-citizen of yours in Buffalo a good many
+months some years ago, but you never called on me then.  How do you
+explain this?"
+
+Clemens said: "Oh, that is very simple to answer, your Excellency.  In
+Buffalo you were a sheriff.  I kept away from the sheriff as much as
+possible, but you're Governor now, and on the way to the Presidency. 
+It's worth while coming to see you."
+
+Clemens meantime had been resting, half sitting, on the corner of the
+Executive desk.  He leaned back a little, and suddenly about a dozen
+young men opened various doors, filed in and stood at attention, as if
+waiting for orders.
+
+No one spoke for a moment; then the Governor said to this collection of
+attendants:
+
+"You are dismissed, young gentlemen.  Your services are not required. 
+Mr. Clemens is sitting on the bells."
+
+In Buffalo, when Clemens appeared on the stage, he leisurely considered
+the audience for a moment; then he said:
+
+"I miss a good many faces.  They have gone--gone to the tomb, to the
+gallows, or to the White House.  All of us are entitled to at least one
+of these distinctions, and it behooves us to be wise and prepare for
+all."
+
+On Thanksgiving Eve the readers were in Morristown, New Jersey, where
+they were entertained by Thomas Nast.  The cartoonist prepared a quiet
+supper for them and they remained overnight in the Nast home.  They were
+to leave next morning by an early train, and Mrs. Nast had agreed to see
+that they were up in due season.  When she woke next morning there seemed
+a strange silence in the house and she grew suspicious.  Going to the
+servants' room, she found them sleeping soundly.  The alarm-clock in the
+back hall had stopped at about the hour the guests retired.  The studio
+clock was also found stopped; in fact, every timepiece on the premises
+had retired from business.  Clemens had found that the clocks interfered
+with his getting to sleep, and he had quieted them regardless of early
+trains and reading engagements.  On being accused of duplicity he said:
+
+"Well, those clocks were all overworked, anyway.  They will feel much
+better for a night's rest."
+
+A few days later Nast sent him a caricature drawing--a picture which
+showed Mark Twain getting rid of the offending clocks.
+
+At Christmas-time they took a fortnight's holiday and Clemens went home
+to Hartford.  A surprise was awaiting him there.  Mrs. Clemens had made
+an adaptation of 'The Prince and the Pauper' play, and the children of
+the neighborhood had prepared a presentation of it for his special
+delectation.  He knew, on his arrival home, that something mysterious was
+in progress, for certain rooms were forbidden him; but he had no inkling
+of their plan until just before the performance--when he was led across
+the grounds to George Warner's home, into the large room there where it
+was to be given, and placed in a seat directly in front of the stage.
+
+Gerhardt had painted the drop-curtain, and assisted in the general
+construction of scenery and effects.  The result was really imposing; but
+presently, when the curtain rose and the guest of honor realized what it
+was all about, and what they had undertaken for his pleasure, he was
+deeply moved and supremely gratified.
+
+There was but one hitch in the performance.  There is a place where the
+Prince says, "Fathers be alike, mayhap; mine hath not a doll's temper."
+
+This was Susy's part, and as she said it the audience did not fail to
+remember its literal appropriateness.  There was a moment's silence, then
+a titter, followed by a roar of laughter, in which everybody but the
+little actors joined.  They did not see the humor and were disturbed and
+grieved.  Curiously enough, Mrs Clemens herself, in arranging and casting
+the play, had not considered the possibility of this effect.  The parts
+were all daintily played.  The children wore their assumed personalities
+as if native to them.  Daisy Warner played the part of Tom Canty, Clara
+Clemens was Lady Jane Grey.
+
+It was only the beginning of The Prince and the Pauper productions.  The
+play was repeated, Clemens assisting, adding to the parts, and himself
+playing the role of Miles Hendon.  In her childish biography Susy says:
+
+     Papa had only three days to learn the part in, but still we were all
+     sure that he could do it.  The scene that he acted in was the scene
+     between Miles Hendon and the Prince, the "Prithee, pour the water"
+     scene.  I was the Prince and papa and I rehearsed together two or
+     three times a day for the three days before the appointed evening. 
+     Papa acted his part beautifully, and he added to the scene, making
+     it a good deal longer.  He was inexpressibly funny, with his great
+     slouch hat and gait----oh such a gait!  Papa made the Miles Hendon
+     scene a splendid success and every one was delighted with the scene,
+     and papa too.  We had great fun with our "Prince and Pauper," and I
+     think we none of us shall forget how immensely funny papa was in it. 
+     He certainly could have been an actor as well as an author.
+
+The holidays over, Cable and Clemens were off on the circuit again.  At
+Rochester an incident happened which led to the writing of one of Mark
+Twain's important books, 'A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court'. 
+Clemens and Cable had wandered into a book-store for the purpose of
+finding something to read.  Pulling over some volumes on one of the
+tables, Clemens happened to pick up a little green, cloth-bound book, and
+after looking at the title turned the pages rather curiously and with
+increasing interest.
+
+"Cable," he said, "do you know anything about this book, the Arthurian
+legends of Sir Thomas Malory, Morte Arthure?"
+
+Cable answered: "Mark, that is one of the most beautiful books in the
+world.  Let me buy it for you.  You will love it more than any book you
+ever read."
+
+So Clemens came to know the old chronicler's version of the rare Round
+Table legends, and from that first acquaintance with them to the last
+days of his life seldom let the book go far from him.  He read and reread
+those quaint, stately tales and reverenced their beauty, while fairly
+reveling in the absurdities of that ancient day.  Sir Ector's lament he
+regarded as one of the most simply beautiful pieces of writing in the
+English tongue, and some of the combats and quests as the most ridiculous
+absurdities in romance.  Presently he conceived the idea of linking that
+day, with its customs, costumes, and abuses, with the progress of the
+present, or carrying back into that age of magicians and armor and
+superstition and cruelties a brisk American of progressive ideas who
+would institute reforms.  His note-book began to be filled with memoranda
+of situations and possibilities for the tale he had in mind.  These were
+vague, unformed fancies as yet, and it would be a long time before the
+story would become a fact.  This was the first entry:
+
+     Dream of being a knight-errant in armor in the Middle Ages.  Have
+     the notions and habits, though, of the present day mixed with the
+     necessities of that.  No pockets in the armor.  No way to manage
+     certain requirements of nature.  Can't scratch.  Cold in the head
+     and can't blow.  Can't get a handkerchief; can't use iron sleeve;
+     iron gets red-hot in the sun; leaks in the rain; gets white with
+     frost and freezes me solid in winter; makes disagreeable clatter
+     when I enter church.  Can't dress or undress myself.  Always getting
+     struck by lightning.  Fall down and can't get up.
+
+Twenty-one years later, discussing the genesis of the story, he said:
+
+"As I read those quaint and curious old legends I suppose I naturally
+contrasted those days with ours, and it made me curious to fancy what
+might be the picturesque result if we could dump the nineteenth century
+down into the sixth century and observe the consequences."
+
+The reading tour continued during the first two months of the new year
+and carried them as far west as Chicago.  They read in Hannibal and
+Keokuk, and Clemens spent a day in the latter place with his mother, now
+living with Orion, brisk and active for her years and with her old-time
+force of character.  Mark Twain, arranging for her Keokuk residence, had
+written:
+
+     Ma wants to board with you, and pay her board.  She will pay you $20
+     a month (she wouldn't pay a cent more in heaven; she is obstinate on
+     this point), and as long as she remains with you and is content I
+     will add $25 a month to the sum Perkins already sends you.
+
+Jane Clemens attended the Keokuk reading, and later, at home, when her
+children asked her if she could still dance, she rose, and at eighty-one
+tripped as lightly as a girl.  It was the last time that Mark Twain ever
+saw his mother in the health and vigor which had been always so much a
+part of her personality.
+
+Clemens saw another relative on that trip; in St. Louis, James Lampton,
+the original of Colonel Sellers, called.
+
+He was become old and white-headed, but he entered to me in the same old
+breezy way of his earlier life, and he was all there, yet--not a detail
+wanting: the happy light in his eye, the abounding hope in his heart, the
+persuasive tongue, the miracle-breeding imagination--they were all there;
+and before I could turn around he was polishing up his Aladdin's lamp and
+flashing the secret riches of the world before me.  I said to myself:
+"I did not overdraw him by a shade, I set him down as he was; and he is
+the same man to-day.  Cable will recognize him."
+
+Clemens opened the door into Cable's room and allowed the golden dream-
+talk to float in.  It was of a "small venture" which the caller had
+undertaken through his son.
+
+"Only a little thing--a, mere trifle--a bagatelle.  I suppose there's a
+couple of millions in it, possibly three, but not more, I think; still,
+for a boy, you know----"
+
+It was the same old Cousin Jim.  Later, when he had royally accepted some
+tickets for the reading and bowed his exit, Cable put his head in at the
+door.
+
+"That was Colonel Sellers," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CLIII
+
+HUCK FINN COMES INTO HIS OWN
+
+In the December Century (1884) appeared a chapter from 'The Adventures of
+Huckleberry Finn', "The Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud," a piece of writing
+which Edmund Clarence Stederian, Brander Matthews, and others promptly
+ranked as among Mark Twain's very best; when this was followed, in the
+January number, by "King Sollermun," a chapter which in its way delighted
+quite as many readers, the success of the new book was accounted certain.
+--[Stedman, writing to Clemens of this instalment, said: "To my mind it
+is not only the most finished and condensed thing you have done.  but as
+dramatic and powerful an episode as I know in modern literature.]
+
+'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' was officially published in England
+and America in December, 1884, but the book was not in the canvassers'
+hands for delivery until February.  By this time the orders were
+approximately for forty thousand copies, a number which had increased to 
+fifty thousand a few weeks later.  Webster's first publication venture
+was in the nature of a triumph.  Clemens wrote to him March 16th:
+
+"Your news is splendid.  Huck certainly is a success."
+
+He felt that he had demonstrated his capacity as a general director and
+Webster had proved his efficiency as an executive.  He had no further
+need of an outside publisher.
+
+The story of Huck Finn will probably stand as the best of Mark Twain's
+purely fictional writings.  A sequel to Tom Sawyer, it is greater than
+its predecessor; greater artistically, though perhaps with less immediate
+interest for the juvenile reader.  In fact, the books are so different
+that they are not to be compared--wherein lies the success of the later
+one.  Sequels are dangerous things when the story is continuous, but in
+Huckleberry Finn the story is a new one, wholly different in environment,
+atmosphere, purpose, character, everything.  The tale of Huck and Nigger
+Jim drifting down the mighty river on a raft, cross-secting the various
+primitive aspects of human existence, constitutes one of the most
+impressive examples of picaresque fiction in any language.  It has been
+ranked greater than Gil Blas, greater even than Don Quixote; certainly it
+is more convincing, more human, than either of these tales.  Robert Louis
+Stevenson once wrote, "It is a book I have read four times, and am quite
+ready to begin again to-morrow."
+
+It is by no means a flawless book, though its defects are trivial enough. 
+The illusion of Huck as narrator fails the least bit here and there; the
+"four dialects" are not always maintained; the occasional touch of broad
+burlesque detracts from the tale's reality.  We are inclined to resent
+this.  We never wish to feel that Huck is anything but a real character. 
+We want him always the Huck who was willing to go to hell if necessary,
+rather than sacrifice Nigger Jim; the Huck who watched the river through
+long nights, and, without caring to explain why, felt his soul go out to
+the sunrise.
+
+     Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum
+     by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely.  Here is the way
+     we put in the time.  It was a monstrous big river down there--
+     sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights and laid up and hid
+     daytimes; soon as the night was most gone we stopped navigating and
+     tied up--nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then
+     cut young cottonwoods and willows and hid the raft with them.  Then
+     we set out the lines.  Next we slid into the river and had a swim,
+     so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy
+     bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight
+     come.  Not a sound anywheres--perfectly still--just like the whole
+     world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. 
+     The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of
+     dull line--that was the woods on t'other side, you couldn't make
+     nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness,
+     spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn't
+     black anymore, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting
+     along, ever so far away--trading scows, and such things; and long
+     black streaks--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or
+     jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-
+     and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the
+     look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current
+     which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see
+     the mist curl up off the water, and the east reddens up, and the
+     river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away
+     on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely,
+     and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it
+     anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you
+     over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the
+     woods and the flowers....  And next you've got the full day, and
+     everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!
+
+This is the Huck we want, and this is the Huck we usually have, and that
+the world has long been thankful for.
+
+Take the story as a whole, it is a succession of startling and unique
+pictures.  The cabin in the swamp which Huck and his father used together
+in their weird, ghastly relationship; the night adventure with Jim on the
+wrecked steamboat; Huck's night among the towheads; the Grangerford-
+Shepherdson battle; the killing of Boggs--to name a few of the many vivid
+presentations--these are of no time or literary fashion and will never
+lose their flavor nor their freshness so long as humanity itself does not
+change.  The terse, unadorned Grangerford-Shepherdson episode--built out
+of the Darnell--Watson feuds--[See Life on the Mississippi, chap.  xxvi. 
+Mark Twain himself, as a cub pilot, came near witnessing the battle he
+describes.]--is simply classic in its vivid casualness, and the same may
+be said of almost every incident on that long river-drift; but this is
+the strength, the very essence of picaresque narrative.  It is the way
+things happen in reality; and the quiet, unexcited frame of mind in which
+Huck is prompted to set them down would seem to be the last word in
+literary art.  To Huck, apparently, the killing of Boggs and Colonel
+Sherburn's defiance of the mob are of about the same historical
+importance as any other incidents of the day's travel.  When Colonel
+Sherburn threw his shotgun across his arm and bade the crowd disperse
+Huck says:
+
+     The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart and went
+     tearing off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after
+     them, looking tolerable cheap.  I could a staid if I'd a wanted to,
+     but I didn't want to.
+
+     I went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the
+     watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent.
+
+That is all.  No reflections, no hysterics; a murder and a mob dispersed,
+all without a single moral comment.  And when the Shepherdsons had got
+done killing the Grangerfords, and Huck had tugged the two bodies ashore
+and covered Buck Grangerford's face with a handkerchief, crying a little
+because Buck had been good to him, he spent no time in sentimental
+reflection or sermonizing, but promptly hunted up Jim and the raft and
+sat down to a meal of corn-dodgers, buttermilk, pork and cabbage, and
+greens:
+
+     There ain't nothing in the world so good, when it is cooked right;
+     and while I eat my supper we talked, and had a good time.  I was
+     powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away
+     from the swamp.  We said there warn't no home like a raft, after
+     all.  Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft
+     don't; you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
+
+It was Huck Finn's morality that caused the book to be excluded from the
+Concord Library, and from other libraries here and there at a later day. 
+The orthodox mental attitude of certain directors of juvenile literature
+could not condone Huck's looseness in the matter of statement and
+property rights, and in spite of New England traditions, Massachusetts
+librarians did not take any too kindly to his uttered principle that,
+after thinking it over and taking due thought on the deadly sin of
+abolition, he had decided that he'd go to hell rather than give Jim over
+to slavery.  Poor vagrant Ben Blankenship, hiding his runaway negro in an
+Illinois swamp, could not dream that his humanity would one day supply
+the moral episode of an immortal book.
+
+Able critics have declared that the psychology of Huck Finn is the book's
+large feature: Huck's moral point of view--the struggle between his heart
+and his conscience concerning the sin of Jim's concealment, and his final
+decision of self-sacrifice.  Time may show that as an epic of the river,
+the picture of a vanished day, it will rank even greater.  The problems
+of conscience we have always with us, but periods once passed are gone
+forever.  Certainly Huck's loyalty to that lovely soul Nigger Jim was
+beautiful, though after all it may not have been so hard for Huck, who
+could be loyal to anything.  Huck was loyal to his father, loyal to Tom
+Sawyer of course, loyal even to those two river tramps and frauds, the
+King and the Duke, for whom he lied prodigiously, only weakening when a
+new and livelier loyalty came into view--loyalty to Mary Wilks.
+
+The King and the Duke, by the way, are not elsewhere matched in fiction. 
+The Duke was patterned after a journeyman-printer Clemens had known in
+Virginia City, but the King was created out of refuse from the whole
+human family--"all tears and flapdoodle," the very ultimate of disrepute
+and hypocrisy--so perfect a specimen that one must admire, almost love,
+him.  "Hain't we all the fools in town on our side? and ain't that a big
+enough majority in any town?" he asks in a critical moment--a remark
+which stamps him as a philosopher of classic rank.  We are full of pity
+at last when this pair of rapscallions ride out of the history on a rail,
+and feel some of Huck's inclusive loyalty and all the sorrowful truth of
+his comment: "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."
+
+The "poor old king" Huck calls him, and confesses how he felt "ornery and
+humble and to blame, somehow," for the old scamp's misfortunes.  "A
+person's conscience ain't got no sense," he says, and Huck is never more
+real to us, or more lovable, than in that moment.  Huck is what he is
+because, being made so, he cannot well be otherwise.  He is a boy
+throughout--such a boy as Mark Twain had known and in some degree had
+been.  One may pettily pick a flaw here and there in the tale's
+construction if so minded, but the moral character of Huck himself is not
+open to criticism.  And indeed any criticism of this the greatest of Mark
+Twain's tales of modern life would be as the mere scratching of the
+granite of an imperishable structure.  Huck Finn is a monument that no
+puny pecking will destroy.  It is built of indestructible blocks of human
+nature; and if the blocks do not always fit, and the ornaments do not
+always agree, we need not fear.  Time will blur the incongruities and
+moss over the mistakes.  The edifice will grow more beautiful with the
+years.
+
+
+
+
+CLIV
+
+THE MEMOIRS OF GENERAL GRANT
+
+The success of Huck Finn, though sufficiently important in itself,
+prepared the way for a publishing venture by the side of which it
+dwindled to small proportions.  One night (it was early in November,
+1884), when Cable and Clemens had finished a reading at Chickering Hall,
+Clemens, coming out into the wet blackness, happened to hear Richard
+Watson Gilder's voice say to some unseen companion:
+
+"Do you know General Grant has actually determined to write his memoirs
+and publish them.  He has said so to-day, in so many words."
+
+Of course Clemens was immediately interested.  It was the thing he had
+proposed to Grant some three years previously, during his call that day
+with Howells concerning the Toronto consulship.
+
+With Mrs. Clemens, he promptly overtook Gilder and accompanied him to his
+house, where they discussed the matter in its various particulars. 
+Gilder said that the Century Editors had endeavored to get Grant to
+contribute to their war series, but that not until his financial
+disaster, as a member of the firm of Grant & Ward, had he been willing to
+consider the matter.  He said that Grant now welcomed the idea of
+contributing three papers to the series, and that the promised payment of
+five hundred dollars each for these articles had gladdened his heart and
+relieved him of immediate anxiety.--[Somewhat later the Century Company,
+voluntarily, added liberally to this sum.]
+
+Gilder added that General Grant seemed now determined to continue his
+work until he had completed a book, though this at present was only a
+prospect.
+
+Clemens was in the habit of calling on Grant, now and then, to smoke a
+cigar with him, and he dropped in next morning to find out just how far
+the book idea had developed, and what were the plans of publication.  He
+found the General and his son, Colonel Fred Grant, discussing some
+memoranda, which turned out to be a proposition from the Century Company
+for the book publication of his memoirs.  Clemens asked to be allowed to
+look over the proposed terms, and when he had done so he said:
+
+"General, it is clear that the Century people do not realize the
+importance--the commercial magnitude of your book.  It is not strange
+that this is true, for they are comparatively new publishers and have had
+little or no experience with books of this class.  The terms they propose
+indicate that they expect to sell five, possibly ten thousand copies.  A
+book from your hand, telling the story of your life and battles, should
+sell not less than a quarter of a million, perhaps twice that sum.  It
+should be sold only by subscription, and you are entitled to double the
+royalty here proposed.  I do not believe it is to your interest to
+conclude this contract without careful thought and investigation.  Write
+to the American Publishing Company at Hartford and see what they will do
+for you."
+
+But Grant demurred.  He said that, while no arrangements had been made
+with the Century Company, he thought it only fair and right that they
+should have the book on reasonable terms; certainly on terms no greater 
+than he could obtain elsewhere.  He said that, all things being equal,
+the book ought to go to the man who had first suggested it to him.
+
+Clemens spoke up: "General, if that is so, it belongs to me."
+
+Grant did not understand until Clemens recalled to him how he had urged
+him, in that former time, to write his memoirs; had pleaded with him,
+agreeing to superintend the book's publication.  Then he said:
+
+"General, I am publishing my own book, and by the time yours is ready it
+is quite possible that I shall have the best equipped subscription
+establishment in the country.  If you will place your book with my firm--
+and I feel that I have at least an equal right in the consideration--I
+will pay you twenty per cent. of the list price, or, if you prefer, I
+will give you seventy per cent. of the net returns and I will pay all
+office expenses out of my thirty per cent."
+
+General Grant was really grieved at this proposal.  It seemed to him that
+here was a man who was offering to bankrupt himself out of pure
+philanthropy--a thing not to be permitted.  He intimated that he had
+asked the Century Company president, Roswell Smith, a careful-headed
+business man, if he thought his book would pay as well as Sherman's,
+which the Scribners had published at a profit to Sherman of twenty-five
+thousand dollars, and that Smith had been unwilling to guarantee that
+amount to the author. --[Mark Twain's note-book, under date of March,
+1885, contains this memorandum:  "Roswell Smith said to me: 'I'm glad you
+got the book, Mr. Clemens; glad there was somebody with courage enough to
+take it, under the circumstances.  What do you think the General wanted
+to require of me?'
+
+"'He wanted me to insure a sale of twenty-five thousand sets of his book. 
+I wouldn't risk such a guarantee on any book that was ever published.'"
+
+Yet Roswell Smith, not so many years later, had so far enlarged his views
+of subscription publishing that he fearlessly and successfully invested a
+million dollars or more in a dictionary, regardless of the fact that the
+market was already thought to be supplied.]
+
+Clemens said:
+
+"General, I have my check-book with me.  I will draw you a check now for
+twenty-five thousand dollars for the first volume of your memoirs, and
+will add a like amount for each volume you may write as an advance
+royalty payment, and your royalties will continue right along when this
+amount has been reached."
+
+Colonel Fred Grant now joined in urging that matters be delayed, at least
+until more careful inquiry concerning the possibilities of publishing
+could be made.
+
+Clemens left then, and set out on his trip with Cable, turning the whole
+matter over to Webster and Colonel Fred for settlement.  Meantime, the
+word that General Grant was writing his memoirs got into the newspapers
+and various publishing propositions came to him.  In the end the General
+sent over to Philadelphia for his old friend, George W. Childs, and laid
+the whole matter before him.  Childs said later it was plain that General
+Grant, on the score of friendship, if for no other reason, distinctly
+wished to give the book to Mark Twain.  It seemed not to be a question of
+how much money he would make, but of personal feeling entirely. 
+Webster's complete success with Huck Finn being now demonstrated, Colonel
+Fred Grant agreed that he believed Clemens and Webster could handle the
+book as profitably as anybody; and after investigation Childs was of the
+same opinion.  The decision was that the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. 
+should have the book, and arrangements for drawing the contract were
+made.
+
+General Grant, however, was still somewhat uneasy as to the terms.
+He thought he was taking an unfair advantage in receiving so large a
+proportion of the profits.  He wrote to Clemens, asking him which of his
+two propositions--the twenty per cent. gross-royalty or the seventy per
+cent. of the net profit--would be the best all around.  Clemens sent
+Webster to tell him that he believed the simplest, as well as the most
+profitable for the author, would be the twenty per cent. arrangement. 
+Whereupon Grant replied that he would take the alternative; as in that
+case, if the book were a failure, and there were no profits, Clemens
+would not be obliged to pay him anything.  He could not consent to the
+thought of receiving twenty per cent. on a book published at a loss.
+
+Meantime, Grant had developed a serious illness.  The humiliation of his
+business failure had undermined his health.  The papers announced his
+malady as cancer of the tongue.  In a memorandum which Clemens made,
+February 26, 1885, he states that on the 21st he called at the Grant
+home, 3 East 66th Street, and was astonished to see how thin and weak the
+General looked.  He was astonished because the newspaper, in a second
+report, had said the threatening symptoms had disappeared, that the
+cancer alarm was a false one.
+
+     I took for granted the report, and said I had been glad to see that
+     news.  He smiled and said, "Yes--if it had only been true."
+
+     One of the physicians was present, and he startled me by saying the
+     General's condition was the opposite of encouraging.
+
+     Then the talk drifted to business, and the General presently said:
+     "I mean you shall have the book--I have about made up my mind to
+     that--but I wish to write to Mr. Roswell Smith first, and tell him I
+     have so decided.  I think this is due him."
+
+     From the beginning the General has shown a fine delicacy toward
+     those people--a delicacy which was native to the character of the
+     man who put into the Appomattox terms of surrender the words,
+     "Officers may retain their side-arms," to save General Lee the
+     humiliation of giving up his sword.  [Note-book.]
+
+The physician present was Dr. Douglas, and upon Clemens assuming that the
+General's trouble was probably due to smoking, also that it was a warning
+to those who smoked to excess, himself included, Dr. Douglas said that
+General Grant's affliction could not be attributed altogether to smoking,
+but far more to his distress of mind, his year-long depression of spirit,
+the grief of his financial disaster.  Dr. Douglas's remark started
+General Grant upon the subject of his connection with Ward, which he
+discussed with great freedom and apparent relief of mind.  Never at any
+time did he betray any resentment toward Ward, but characterized him as
+one might an offending child.  He spoke as a man who has been deeply
+wronged and humiliated and betrayed, but without a venomous expression or
+one with revengeful nature.  Clemens confessed in his notes that all the
+time he himself was "inwardly boiling--scalping Ward--flaying him alive--
+breaking him on the wheel--pounding him to a jelly."
+
+While he was talking Colonel Grant said:
+
+"Father is letting you see that the Grant family are a pack of fools, Mr.
+Clemens."
+
+The General objected to this statement.  He said that the facts could be
+produced which would show that when Ward laid siege to a man he was
+pretty certain to turn out to be a fool; as much of a fool as any of the
+Grant family.  He said that nobody could call the president of the Erie
+Railroad a fool, yet Ward had beguiled him of eight hundred thousand
+dollars, robbed him of every cent of it.
+
+He cited another man that no one could call a fool who had invested in
+Ward to the extent of half a million.  He went on to recall many such
+cases.  He told of one man who had come to the office on the eve of
+departure for Europe and handed Ward a check for fifty thousand dollars,
+saying:
+
+"I have no use for it at present.  See what you can do with it for me." 
+By and by this investor, returning from Europe, dropped in and said:
+
+"Well, did anything happen?"
+
+Ward indifferently turned to his private ledger, consulted it, then drew
+a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and handed it over,
+with the casual remark:
+
+"Well, yes, something happened; not much yet--a little too soon."
+
+The man stared at the check, then thrust it back into Ward's hand. 
+"That's all right.  It's plenty good enough for me.  Set that hen again,"
+and left the place.
+
+Of course Ward made no investments.  His was the first playing on a
+colossal scale of the now worn-out "get rich quick" confidence game. 
+Such dividends as were made came out of the principal.  Ward was the
+Napoleon of that game, whether he invented it or not.  Clemens agreed
+that, as far as himself or any of his relatives were concerned, they
+would undoubtedly have trusted Ward.
+
+Colonel Grant followed him to the door when he left, and told him that
+the physicians feared his father might not live more than a few weeks
+longer, but that meantime he had been writing steadily, and that the
+first volume was complete and fully half the second.  Three days later
+the formal contract was closed, and Webster & Co.  promptly advanced. 
+General Grant ten thousand dollars for imminent demands, a welcome
+arrangement, for Grant's debts and expenses were many, and his available
+resources restricted to the Century payments for his articles.
+
+Immediately the office of Webster & Co.  was warm with affairs. 
+Reporters were running hot-foot for news of the great contract by which
+Mark Twain was to publish the life of General Grant.  No publishing
+enterprise of such vast moment had ever been undertaken, and no
+publishing event, before or since, ever received the amount of newspaper
+comment.  The names of General Grant and Mark Twain associated would
+command columns, whatever the event, and that Mark Twain was to become
+the publisher of Grant's own story of his battles was of unprecedented
+importance.
+
+The partners were sufficiently occupied.  Estimates and prices for vast
+quantities of paper were considered, all available presses were
+contracted for, binderies were pledged exclusively for the Grant book. 
+Clemens was boiling over with plans and suggestions for distribution. 
+Webster was half wild with the tumult of the great campaign. 
+Applications for agencies poured in.
+
+In those days there were general subscription agencies which divided the
+country into districts, and the heads of these agencies Webster summoned
+to New York and laid down the law to them concerning the, new book.  It
+was not a time for small dealings, and Webster rose to the occasion.  By
+the time these men returned to their homes they had practically pledged
+themselves to a quarter of a million sets of the Grant Memoirs, and this
+estimate they believed to be conservative.
+
+Webster now moved into larger and more pretentious quarters.  He took a
+store-room at 42 East 14th Street, Union Square, and surrounded himself
+with a capable force of assistants.  He had become, all at once, the most
+conspicuous publisher in the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+CLV
+
+DAYS WITH A DYING HERO
+
+The contract for the publication of the Grant Life was officially closed
+February 27, 1885.  Five days later, on the last day and at the last hour
+of President Arthur's administration, and of the Congress then sitting, a
+bill was passed placing Grant as full General, with full pay, on the
+retired army list.  The bill providing for this somewhat tardy
+acknowledgment was rushed through at the last moment, and it is said that
+the Congressional clock was set back so that this enactment might become
+a law before the administration changed.
+
+Clemens was with General Grant when the news of this action was read to
+him.  Grant had greatly desired such recognition, and it meant more to
+him than to any one present, yet Clemens in his notes records:
+
+     Every face there betrayed strong excitement and emotion except one-
+     General Grant's.  He read the telegram, but not a shade or
+     suggestion of a change exhibited itself in his iron countenance. 
+     The volume of his emotion was greater than all the other emotions
+     there present combined, but he was able to suppress all expression
+     of it and make no sign.
+
+Grant's calmness, endurance, and consideration during these final days
+astonished even those most familiar with his noble character.  One night
+Gerhardt came into the library at Hartford with the announcement that he
+wished to show his patron a small bust he had been making in clay of
+General Grant.  Clemens did not show much interest in the prospect, but
+when the work was uncovered he became enthusiastic.  He declared it was
+the first likeness he had ever seen of General Grant that approached
+reality.  He agreed that the Grant family ought to see it, and that he
+would take Gerhardt with him next day in order that he might be within
+reach in case they had any suggestions.  They went to New York next
+morning, and called at the Grant home during the afternoon.
+
+>From the note-book:
+
+     Friday, March 20, 1885.  Gerhardt and I arrived at General Grant's
+     about 2.30 P.m.  and I asked if the family would look at a small
+     clay bust of the General which Gerhardt had made from a photograph. 
+     Colonel Fred and Jesse were absent to receive their sister, Mrs.
+     Sartoris, who would arrive from Europe about 4.30; but the three
+     Mrs. Grants examined the work and expressed strong approval of it,
+     and also great gratification that Mr. Gerhardt had undertaken it. 
+     Mrs. Jesse Grant had lately dreamed that she was inquiring where the
+     maker of my bust could be found (she had seen a picture of it in
+     Huck Finn, which was published four weeks ago), for she wanted the
+     same artist to make one of General Grant.  The ladies examined the
+     bust critically and pointed out defects, while Gerhardt made the
+     necessary corrections.  Presently Mrs. General Grant suggested that
+     Gerhardt step in and look at the General.  I had been in there
+     talking with the General, but had never thought of asking him to let
+     a stranger come in.  So Gerhardt went in with the ladies and me, and
+     the inspection and cross-fire began: "There, I was sure his nose was
+     so and so," and, "I was sure his forehead was so and so," and,
+     "Don't you think his head is so and so?" And so everybody walked
+     around and about the old hero, who lay half reclining in his easy
+     chair, but well muffled up, and submitting to all this as serenely
+     as if he were used to being served so.  One marked feature of
+     General Grant's character is his exceeding gentleness, goodness,
+     sweetness.  Every time I have been in his presence--lately and
+     formerly--my mind was drawn to that feature.  I wonder it has not
+     been more spoken of.
+
+     Presently he said, let Gerhardt bring in his clay and work there, if
+     Gerhardt would not mind his reclining attitude.  Of course we were
+     glad.  A table for the bust was moved up in front of him; the ladies
+     left the room; I got a book; Gerhardt went to work; and for an hour
+     there was perfect stillness, and for the first time during the day
+     the General got a good, sound, peaceful nap.  General Badeau came
+     in, and probably interrupted that nap.  He spoke out as strongly as
+     the others concerning the great excellence of the likeness.  He had
+     some sheets of MS. in his hand, and said, "I've been reading what
+     you wrote this morning, General, and it is of the utmost value; it
+     solves a riddle that has "puzzled men's brains all these years and
+     makes the thing clear and rational."  I asked what the puzzle was,
+     and he said, "It was why Grant did not immediately lay siege to
+     Vicksburg after capturing Port Hudson" (at least that is my
+     recollection, now toward midnight, of General Badeau's answer).
+
+The little bust of Grant which Gerhardt worked on that day was widely
+reproduced in terra-cotta, and is still regarded by many as the most
+nearly correct likeness of Grant.  The original is in possession of the
+family.
+
+General Grant worked industriously on his book.  He had a superb memory
+and worked rapidly.  Webster & Co. offered to supply him with a
+stenographer, and this proved a great relief.  Sometimes he dictated ten
+thousand words at a sitting.  It was reported at the time, and it has
+been stated since, that Grant did not write the Memoirs himself, but only
+made notes, which were expanded by others.  But this is not true. 
+General Grant wrote or dictated every word of the story himself, then had
+the manuscript read aloud to him and made his own revisions.  He wrote
+against time, for he knew that his disease was fatal.  Fortunately the
+lease of life granted him was longer than he had hoped for, though the
+last chapters were written when he could no longer speak, and when
+weakness and suffering made the labor a heavy one indeed; but he never
+flinched or faltered, never at any time suggested that the work be
+finished by another hand.
+
+Early in April General Grant's condition became very alarming, and on the
+night of the 3d it was believed he could not live until morning.  But he
+was not yet ready to surrender.  He rallied and renewed his task; feebly
+at first, but more perseveringly as each day seemed to bring a little
+added strength, or perhaps it was only resolution.  Now and then he
+appeared depressed as to the quality of his product.  Once Colonel Fred
+Grant suggested to Clemens that if he could encourage the General a
+little it might be worth while.  Clemens had felt always such a reverence
+and awe for the great soldier that he had never dreamed of complimenting
+his literature.
+
+"I was as much surprised as Columbus's cook could have been to learn that
+Columbus wanted his opinion as to how Columbus was doing his navigating."
+
+He did not hesitate to give it, however, and with a clear conscience. 
+Grant wrote as he had fought; with a simple, straightforward dignity,
+with a style that is not a style at all but the very absence of it, and
+therefore the best of all literary methods.  It happened that Clemens had
+been comparing some of Grant's chapters with Caesar's Commentaries, and
+was able to say, in all sincerity, that the same high merits
+distinguished both books: clarity of statement, directness, simplicity,
+manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike,
+soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery
+speech.
+
+"I placed the two books side by side upon the same level," he said, "and
+I still think that they belong there.  I learned afterward that General
+Grant was pleased with this verdict.  It shows that he was just a man,
+just a human being, just an author."
+
+Within two months after the agents had gone to work canvassing for the
+Grant Memoirs--which is to say by the 1st of May, 1885--orders for sixty
+thousand sets had been received, and on that day Mark Twain, in his note-
+book, made a memorandum estimate of the number of books that the country
+would require, figuring the grand total at three hundred thousand sets of
+two volumes each.  Then he says:
+
+     If these chickens should really hatch according to my account,
+     General Grant's royalties will' amount to $420,000, and will make
+     the largest single check ever paid an author in the world's history. 
+     Up to the present time the largest one ever paid was to Macaulay on
+     his History of England, L20,000.  If I pay the General in silver
+     coin at $12 per pound it will weigh seventeen tons.
+
+Certainly this has a flavor in it of Colonel Sellers, but we shall see by
+and by in how far this calculation was justified.
+
+Grant found the society of Mark Twain cheering and comforting, and
+Clemens held himself in readiness to go to the dying man at call.  On the
+26th of May he makes this memorandum:
+
+     It is curious and dreadful to sit up in this way and talk cheerful
+     nonsense to General Grant, and he under sentence of death with that
+     cancer.  He says he has made the book too large by 200 pages--not a
+     bad fault.  A short time ago we were afraid we would lack 400 of
+     being enough.
+
+     To-day talked with General Grant about his and my first great
+     Missouri campaign in 1861.  He surprised an empty camp near Florida,
+     Missouri, on Salt River, which I had been occupying a day or two
+     before.  How near he came to playing the devil with his future
+     publisher.
+
+Of course Clemens would amuse the old commander with the tale of his
+soldiering, how his company had been chased through the brush and mud by
+the very announcement that Grant was coming.  Some word of this got to
+the Century editors, who immediately proposed that Mark Twain contribute
+to the magazine War Series the story of his share in the Rebellion, and
+particularly of his war relations with General Grant.  So the "Private
+History of a Campaign that Failed" was prepared as Mark Twain's side-
+light on the history of the Rebellion; and if it was not important
+history it was at least amusing, and the telling of that tale in Mark
+Twain's inimitable fashion must have gone far toward making cheerful
+those last sad days of his ancient enemy.
+
+During one of their talks General Grant spoke of the question as to
+whether he or Sherman had originated the idea of the march to the sea. 
+Grant said:
+
+"Neither of us originated the idea of that march.  The enemy did it."
+
+Reports were circulated of estrangements between General Grant and the
+Century Company, and between Mark Twain and the Century Company, as a
+result of the book decision.  Certain newspapers exploited and magnified
+these rumors--some went so far as to accuse Mark Twain of duplicity, and
+to charge him with seeking to obtain a vast fortune for himself at the
+expense of General Grant and his family.  All of which was the merest
+nonsense.  The Century Company, Webster & Co., General Grant, and Mark
+Twain individually, were all working harmoniously, and nothing but the
+most cordial relations and understanding prevailed.  As to the charge of
+unfair dealing on the part of Mark Twain, this was too absurd, even then,
+to attract more than momentary attention.  Webster & Co., somewhat later
+in the year, gave to the press a clear statement of their publishing
+arrangement, though more particularly denying the report that General
+Grant had been unable to complete his work.
+
+
+
+
+CLVI
+
+THE CLOSE OF A GREAT CAREER
+
+The Clemens household did not go to Elmira that year until the 27th of
+June.  Meantime General Grant had been taken to Mount McGregor, near the
+Adirondacks.  The day after Clemens reached Elmira there came a summons
+saying that the General had asked to see him.  He went immediately, and
+remained several days.  The resolute old commander was very feeble by
+this time.  It was three months since he had been believed to be dying,
+yet he was still alive, still at work, though he could no longer speak. 
+He was adding, here and there, a finishing touch to his manuscript,
+writing with effort on small slips of paper containing but a few words
+each.  His conversation was carried on in the same way.  Mark Twain
+brought back a little package of those precious slips, and some of them
+are still preserved.  The writing is perfectly legible, and shows no
+indication of a trembling hand.
+
+On one of these slips is written:
+
+     There is much more that I could do if I was a well man.  I do not
+     write quite as clearly as I could if well.  If I could read it over
+     myself many little matters of anecdote and incident would suggest
+     themselves to me.
+
+On another:
+
+     Have you seen any portion of the second volume?  It is up to the
+     end, or nearly so.  As much more work as I have done to-day will
+     finish it.  I have worked faster than if I had been well.  I have
+     used my three boys and a stenographer.
+
+And on still another:
+
+     If I could have two weeks of strength I could improve it very much. 
+     As I am, however, it will have to go about as it is, with
+     verifications by the boys and by suggestions which will enable me to
+     make a point clear here and there.
+
+Certainly no campaign was ever conducted with a braver heart.  As long as
+his fingers could hold a pencil he continued at his task.  Once he asked
+if any estimate could now be made of what portion would accrue to his
+family from the publication.  Clemens's prompt reply, that more than one
+hundred thousand sets had been sold, and that already the amount of his
+share, secured by safe bonds, exceeded one hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars, seemed to give him deep comfort.  Clemens told him that the
+country was as yet not one-third canvassed, and that without doubt there
+turns would be twice as much more by the end of the year.  Grant made no
+further inquiry, and probably never again mentioned the subject to any
+one.
+
+When Clemens left, General Grant was sitting, fully dressed, with a shawl
+about his shoulders, pencil and paper beside him.  It was a picture that
+would never fade from the memory.  In a later memorandum he says:
+
+     I then believed he would live several months.  He was still adding
+     little perfecting details to his book, and preface, among other
+     things.  He was entirely through a few days later.  Since then the
+     lack of any strong interest to employ his mind has enabled the
+     tedious weariness to kill him.  I think his book kept him alive
+     several months.  He was a very great man and superlatively good.
+
+This note was made July 23, 1885, at 10 A.M., on receipt of the news that
+General Grant was dead.  To Henry Ward Beecher, Clemens wrote:
+
+     One day he put his pencil aside and said there was nothing more to
+     do.  If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that struck
+     the world three days later.
+
+It can be truly said that all the nation mourned.  General Grant had no
+enemies, political or sectional, in those last days.  The old soldier
+battling with a deadly disease, yet bravely completing his task, was a
+figure at once so pathetic and so noble that no breath of animosity
+remained to utter a single word that was not kind.
+
+Memorial services were held from one end of the country to the other. 
+Those who had followed him in peace or war, those who had fought beside
+him or against him, alike paid tribute to his memory.  Twichell, from the
+mountains of Vermont, wrote:
+
+     I suppose I have said to Harmony forty times since I got up here,
+     "How I wish I could see Mark!" My notion is that between us we could
+     get ourselves expressed.  I have never known any one who could help
+     me read my own thoughts in such a case as you can and have done many
+     a time, dear old fellow.
+
+     I'd give more to sit on a log with you in the woods this after8I5
+     noon, while we twined a wreath together for Launcelot's grave, than
+     to hear any conceivable eulogy of him pronounced by mortal lips.
+
+The death of Grant so largely and so suddenly augmented the orders for
+his Memoirs that it seemed impossible to get the first volume printed in
+time for the delivery, which had been promised for December 1st.  J. J. 
+Little had the contract of manufacture, and every available press and
+bindery was running double time to complete the vast contract.
+
+In the end more than three hundred thousand sets of two volumes each were
+sold, and between four hundred and twenty and four hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars was paid to Mrs. Grant.  The first check of two hundred
+thousand dollars, drawn February 27, 1886, remains the largest single
+royalty check in history.  Mark Twain's prophecy had been almost exactly
+verified.
+
+
+
+
+CLVII
+
+MINOR MATTERS OF A GREAT YEAR
+
+The Grant episode, so important in all its phases, naturally overshadowed
+other events of 1885.  Mark Twain was so deeply absorbed in this great
+publishing enterprise that he wasted little thought or energy in other
+directions.
+
+Yet there are a few minor things that it seems worth while to remember. 
+Howells has told something of the Authors' Reading given for the
+Longfellow Memorial, an entertainment managed by George Parsons Lathrop,
+though Howells justly claims the glory of having fixed the price of
+admission at five dollars.  Then he recalls a pleasing anecdote of
+Charles Eliot Norton, who introduced the attractions.
+
+Norton presided, and when it came Clemens's turn to read he introduced
+him with such exquisite praises as he best knew how to give, but before
+he closed he fell a prey to one of those lapses of tact which are the
+peculiar peril of people of the greatest tact.  He was reminded of
+Darwin's delight in Mark Twain, and how when he came from his long day's
+exhausting study, and sank into bed at midnight, he took up a volume of
+Mark Twain, whose books he always kept on a table beside him, and
+whatever had been his tormenting problem, or excess of toil, he felt
+secure of a good night's rest from it.  A sort of blank ensued which
+Clemens filled in the only possible way.  He said he should always be
+glad he had contributed to the repose of that great man, to whom science
+owed so much, and then without waiting for the joy in every breast to
+burst forth, he began to read.
+
+Howells tells of Mark Twain's triumph on this occasion, and in a letter
+at the time he wrote: "You simply straddled down to the footlights and
+took that house up in the hollow of your hand and tickled it."
+
+Howells adds that the show netted seventeen hundred dollars.  This was
+early in May.
+
+Of literary work, beyond the war paper, the "Private History of a
+Campaign that Failed" (published December, 1885), Clemens appears to have
+done very little.  His thoughts were far too busy with plans for
+furthering the sale of the great military Memoir to follow literary
+ventures of his own.  At one time he was impelled to dictate an
+autobiography--Grant's difficulties in his dying hour suggesting this--
+and he arranged with Redpath, who was no longer a lecture agent and
+understood stenography, to co-operate with him in the work.  He dictated
+a few chapters, but he was otherwise too much occupied to continue. 
+Also, he was unused to dictation, and found it hard and the result
+unsatisfactory.
+
+Two open communications from Mark Twain that year deserve to be
+remembered.  One of these; unsigned, was published in the Century
+Magazine, and expressed the need for a "universal tinker," the man who
+can accept a job in a large household or in a community as master of all
+trades, with sufficient knowledge of each to be ready to undertake
+whatever repairs are likely to be required in the ordinary household,
+such as--"to put in windowpanes, mend gas leaks, jack-plane the edges of
+doors that won't shut, keep the waste-pipe and other water-pipe joints,
+glue and otherwise repair havoc done in furniture, etc."  The letter was
+signed X. Y. Z., and it brought replies from various parts of the world. 
+None of the applicants seemed universally qualified, but in Kansas City a
+business was founded on the idea, adopting "The Universal Tinker" as its
+firm name.
+
+The other letter mentioned was written to the 'Christian Union', inspired
+by a tale entitled, "What Ought We to Have Done?"  It was a tale
+concerning the government of children; especially concerning the
+government of one child--John Junior--a child who, as it would appear
+from the tale, had a habit of running things pretty much to his own
+notion.  The performance of John junior, and of his parents in trying to
+manage him, stirred Mark Twain considerably--it being "enough to make a
+body's blood boil," as he confesses--and it impelled him to set down
+surreptitiously his impressions of what would have happened to John
+Junior as a member of the Clemens household.  He did not dare to show the
+communication to Mrs. Clemens before he sent it, for he knew pretty well
+what its fate would be in that case.  So he took chances and printed it
+without her knowledge.  The letter was published July 16, 1885.  It is
+too long to be included entire, but it is too illuminating to be
+altogether omitted.  After relating, in considerable detail, Mrs.
+Clemens's method of dealing with an unruly child--the gentleness yet
+firmness of her discipline--he concludes:
+
+     The mother of my children adores them--there is no milder term for
+     it--and they worship her; they even worship anything which the touch
+     of her hand has made sacred.  They know her for the best and truest
+     friend they have ever had, or ever shall have; they know her for one
+     who never did them a wrong, and cannot do them a wrong; who never
+     told them a lie, nor the shadow of one; who never deceived them by
+     even an ambiguous gesture; who never gave them an unreasonable
+     command, nor ever contented herself with anything short of a perfect
+     obedience; who has always treated them as politely and considerately
+     as she would the best and oldest in the land, and has always
+     required of them gentle speech and courteous conduct toward all, of
+     whatsoever degree with whom they chanced to come in contact; they
+     know her for one whose promise, whether of reward or punishment, is
+     gold, and always worth its face, to the uttermost farthing.  In a
+     word, they know her, and I know her, for the best and dearest mother
+     that lives--and by a long, long way the wisest....
+
+     In all my life I have never made a single reference to my wife in
+     print before, as far as I can remember, except once in the
+     dedication of a book; and so, after these fifteen years of silence,
+     perhaps I may unseal my lips this one time without impropriety or
+     indelicacy.  I will institute one other novelty: I will send this
+     manuscript to the press without her knowledge and without asking her
+     to edit it.  This will save it from getting edited into the stove.
+
+Susy's biography refers to this incident at considerable length.  She
+states that her father had misgivings after he had sent it to the
+Christian Union, and that he tried to recall the manuscript, but found it
+too late.  She sets down some comments of her own on her mother's
+government, then tells us of the appearance of the article:
+
+When the Christian Union reached the farm and papa's article in it, all
+ready and waiting to be read to mama, papa hadn't the courage to show it
+to her (for he knew she wouldn't like it at all) at first, and he didn't,
+but he might have let it go and never let her see it; but finally he gave
+his consent to her seeing it, and told Clara and I we could take it to
+her, which we did with tardiness, and we all stood around mama while she
+read it, all wondering what she would say and think about it.
+
+She was too much surprised (and pleased privately too) to say much at
+first; but, as we all expected, publicly (or rather when she remembered
+that this article was to be read by every one that took the Christian
+Union) she was rather shocked and a little displeased.
+
+Susy goes on to tell that the article provoked a number of letters, most
+of them pleasant ones, but some of them of quite another sort.  One of
+the latter fell into her mother's hands, after which there was general
+regret that the article had been printed, and the subject was no longer
+discussed at Quarry Farm.
+
+Susy's biography is a unique record.  It was a sort of combined memoir
+and journal, charming in its innocent frankness and childish insight. 
+She used to keep it under her pillow, and after she was asleep the
+parents would steal it out and find a tender amusement and pathos in its
+quaint entries.  It is a faithful record so far as it goes, and the
+period it covers is an important one; for it presents a picture of Mark
+Twain in the fullness of his manhood, in the golden hour of his fortune. 
+Susy's beginning has a special value here:--[Susy's' spelling and
+punctuation are preserved.]
+
+     We are a very happy family!  We consist of papa, mama, Jean, Clara
+     and me.  It is papa I am writing about, and I shall have no trouble
+     in not knowing what to say about him, as he is a very striking
+     character.  Papa's appearance has been described many times, but
+     very incorrectly; he has beautiful curly grey hair, not any too
+     thick, or any too long, just right; a Roman nose, which greatly
+     improves the beauty of his features, kind blue eyes, and a small
+     mustache, he has a wonderfully shaped head, and profile, he has a
+     very good figure in short he is an extraordinarily fine looking man. 
+     All his features are perfect, except that he hasn't extraordinary
+     teeth.  His complexion is very fair, and he doesn't ware a beard:
+
+     He is a very good man, and a very funny one; he has got a temper but
+     we all of us have in this family.  He is the loveliest man I ever
+     saw, or ever hope to see, and oh so absent-minded!
+
+That this is a fair statement of the Clemens home, and the truest picture
+of Mark Twain at fifty that has been preserved, cannot be doubted.  His
+hair was iron-gray, not entirely white at this time, the auburn tints
+everywhere mingled with the shining white that later would mantle it like
+a silver crown.  He did not look young for his years, but he was still
+young, always young--indestructibly young in spirit and bodily vigor. 
+Susy tells how that summer he blew soap-bubbles for the children, filling
+the bubbles with tobacco smoke; how he would play with the cats, and come
+clear down from his study on the hill to see how "Sour Mash," then a
+kitten, was getting along; also how he wrote a poem for Jean's donkey,
+Cadichon (which they made Kiditchin): She quotes the poem:
+
+                         KIDITCHIN
+
+                    O du lieb' Kiditchin 
+                    Du bist ganz bewitchin,
+                    Waw- - - -he!
+
+                    In summer days Kiditchin 
+                    Thou'rt dear from nose to britchin
+                    Waw----he!
+
+                    No dought thoult get a switchin 
+                    When for mischief thou'rt itchin'
+                    Waw- - - -he!
+
+                    But when you're good Kiditchin 
+                    You shall feast in James's kitchin
+                    Waw- - - -he!
+
+                    O now lift up thy song
+                    Thy noble note prolong
+                    Thou living Chinese gong!
+                    Waw---he!  waw---he waw
+                    Sweetest donkey man ever saw.
+
+
+Clemens undertook to ride Kiditchin one day, to show the children how it
+should be done, but Kiditchin resented this interference and promptly
+flung him over her head.  He thought she might have been listening to the
+poem he had written of her.
+
+Susy's discovery that the secret of her biography was known is shown by
+the next entry, and the touch of severity in it was probably not entirely
+unconscious:
+
+     Papa said the other day, "I am a mugwump and a mugwump is pure from
+     the marrow out."  (Papa knows that I am writing this biography of
+     him, and he said this for it.) He doesn't like to go to church at
+     all, why I never understood, until just now.  He told us the other
+     day that he couldn't bear to hear anyone talk but himself, but that
+     he could listen to himself talk for hours without getting tired, of
+     course he said this in joke, but I've no doubt it was founded on
+     truth.
+
+Susy's picture of life at Quarry Farm at this period is realistic and
+valuable--too valuable to be spared from this biography:
+
+     There are eleven cats at the farm here now.  Papa's favorite is a
+     little tortoise-shell kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little
+     spotted one "Fannie."  It is very pretty to see what papa calls the
+     cat procession; it was formed in this way.  Old Minniecat headed,
+     (the mother of all the cats) next to her came aunt Susie, then Clara
+     on the donkey, accompanied by a pile of cats, then papa and Jean
+     hand in hand and a pile of cats brought up in the rear, mama and I
+     made up the audience.
+
+     Our varius occupations are as follows.  Papa rises about 1/2  past 7
+     in the morning, breakfasts at eight, writes, plays tennis with Clara
+     and me and tries to make the donkey go, in the morning; does varius
+     things in P.M., and in the evening plays tennis with Clara and me
+     and amuses Jean and the donkey.
+
+     Mama rises about 1/4 to eight, breakfasts at eight, teaches Jean
+     German reading from 9-10; reads German with me from 10-11.  Then she
+     reads studdies or visits with aunt Susie for a while, and then she
+     reads to Clara and I till lunch time things connected with English
+     history (for we hope to go to England next summer) while we sew. 
+     Then we have lunch.  She studdies for about half an hour or visits
+     with aunt Susie, then reads to us an hour or more, then studdies
+     writes reads and rests till supper time.  After supper she sits out
+     on the porch and works till eight o'clock, from eight o'clock to
+     bedtime she plays whist with papa and after she has retired she
+     reads and studdies German for a while.
+
+     Clara and I do most everything from practicing to donkey riding and
+     playing tag.  While Jean's time is spent in asking mama what she can
+     have to eat.
+
+It is impossible, at this distance, to convey all that the farm meant to
+the children during the summers of their infancy and childhood and
+girlhood which they spent there.  It was the paradise, the dreamland they
+looked forward to during all the rest of the year.  Through the long,
+happy months there they grew strong and brown, and drank deeply of the
+joy of life.  Their cousins Julia, Jervis, and Ida Langdon ranged about
+their own ages and were almost their daily companions.  Their games were
+mainly of the out-of-doors; the woods and meadows and hillside pastures
+were their playground.  Susy was thirteen when she began her diary; a
+gentle, thoughtful, romantic child.  One afternoon she discovered a
+wonderful tangle of vines and bushes between the study and the sunset--a
+rare hiding-place.  She ran breathlessly to her aunt:
+
+"Can I have it?  Can Clara and I have it all for our own?"
+
+The petition was granted, of course, and the place was named Helen's
+Bower, for they were reading Thaddeus of Warsaw and the name appealed to
+Susy's poetic fancy.  Then Mrs. Clemens conceived the idea of building a
+house for the children just beyond the bower.  It was a complete little
+cottage when finished, with a porch and with furnishings contributed by
+friends and members of the family.  There was a stove--a tiny affair, but
+practical--dishes, table, chairs, shelves, and a broom.  The little house
+was named Ellerslie, out of Grace Aguilar's Days of Robert Bruce, and
+became one of the children's most beloved possessions.  But alas for
+Helen's Bower!  A workman was sent to clear away the debris after the
+builders, and being a practical man, he cut away Helen's Bower--destroyed
+it utterly.  Susy first discovered the vandalism, and came rushing to the
+house in a torrent of sorrow.  For her the joy of life seemed ended, and
+it was long before she could be comforted.  But Ellerslie in time
+satisfied her hunger for retreat, became, in fact, the nucleus around
+which the children's summer happiness centered.
+
+To their elders the farm remained always the quiet haven.  Once to
+Orion's wife Clemens wrote:
+
+     This is a superb Sunday .  .  .  .
+
+     The city in the valley is purple with shade, as seen from up here at
+     the study.  The Cranes are reading and loafing in the canvas-
+     curtained summer-house, fifty yards away, on a higher (the highest)
+     point; the cats are loafing over at Ellerslie, which is the
+     children's estate and dwelling house in their own private grounds
+     (by deed from Susie Crane), a hundred yards from the study, among
+     the clover and young oaks and willows.  Livy is down at the house,
+     but I shall now go and bring her up to the Cranes to help us occupy
+     the lounges and hammocks, whence a great panorama of distant hills
+     and valley and city is seeable.  The children have gone on a lark
+     through the neighboring hills and woods, Susie and Clara horseback
+     and Jean, driving a buggy, with the coachman for comrade and
+     assistant at need.  It is a perfect day indeed.
+
+The ending of each year's summer brought only regret.  Clemens would
+never take away all his things.  He had an old superstition that to leave
+some article insured return.  Mrs. Clemens also left something--her
+heart's content.  The children went around bidding various objects good-
+by and kissed the gates of Ellerslie too.
+
+
+
+
+CLVIII
+
+MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY
+
+Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday was one of the pleasantly observed events
+of that year.  There was no special celebration, but friends sent kindly
+messages, and The Critic, then conducted by Jeannette and Joseph Gilder,
+made a feature of it.  Miss Gilder wrote to Oliver Wendell Holmes and
+invited some verses, which with his never-failing kindliness he sent,
+though in his accompanying note he said:
+
+"I had twenty-three letters spread out on my table for answering, all
+marked immediate, when your note came."
+
+Dr. Holmes's stanzas are full of his gentle spirit:
+
+
+                    TO MARK TWAIN
+
+                    (On his fiftieth birthday)
+
+                    Ah, Clemens, when I saw thee last,
+                    We both of us were younger;
+                    How fondly mumbling o'er the past
+                    Is Memory's toothless hunger!
+
+                    So fifty years have fled, they say,
+                    Since first you took to drinking;
+                    I mean in Nature's milky way
+                    Of course no ill I'm thinking.
+
+                    But while on life's uneven road
+                    Your track you've been pursuing,
+                    What fountains from your wit have flowed
+                    What drinks you have been brewing!
+
+                    I know whence all your magic came, 
+                    Your secret I've discovered,
+                    The source that fed your inward flame, 
+                    The dreams that round you hovered.
+
+                    Before you learned to bite or munch, 
+                    Still kicking in your cradle,
+                    The Muses mixed a bowl of punch 
+                    And Hebe seized the ladle.
+
+                    Dear babe, whose fiftieth year to-day 
+                    Your ripe half-century rounded,
+                    Your books the precious draught betray 
+                    The laughing Nine compounded.
+     
+                    So mixed the sweet, the sharp, the strong, 
+                    Each finds its faults amended,
+                    The virtues that to each belong 
+                    In happiest union blended.
+
+                    And what the flavor can surpass 
+                    Of sugar, spirit, lemons?
+                    So while one health fills every glass
+                    Mark Twain for Baby Clemens!
+
+                    OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+
+
+Frank R. Stockton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Joel Chandler Harris sent
+pleasing letters.  Warner said:
+
+     You may think it an easy thing to be fifty years old, but you will
+     find it's not so easy to stay there, and your next fifty years will
+     slip away much faster than those just accomplished.
+
+Many wrote letters privately, of course, and Andrew Lang, like Holmes,
+sent a poem that has a special charm.
+
+
+                         FOR MARK TWAIN
+
+                    To brave Mark Twain, across the sea, 
+                    The years have brought his jubilee.  
+                    One hears it, half in pain, 
+                    That fifty years have passed and gone 
+                    Since danced the merry star that shone 
+                    Above the babe Mark Twain.
+
+                    We turn his pages and we see 
+                    The Mississippi flowing free; 
+                    We turn again and grin 
+                    O'er all Tom Sawyer did and planned 
+                    With him of the ensanguined hand, 
+                    With Huckleberry Finn!
+
+                    Spirit of Mirth, whose chime of bells 
+                    Shakes on his cap, and sweetly swells 
+                    Across the Atlantic main, 
+                    Grant that Mark's laughter never die, 
+                    That men through many a century 
+                    May chuckle o'er Mark Twain!
+
+
+Assuredly Mark Twain was made happy by these attentions; to Dr. Holmes he
+wrote:
+
+DEAR DR. HOLMES,-- I shall never be able to tell you the half of how
+proud you have made me.  If I could you would say you were nearly paid
+for the trouble you took.  And then the family: If I could convey the
+electrical surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the
+children last night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had,
+with artful artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see
+what would happen--well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and
+made me feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by: and if
+you also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. 
+For I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm
+and friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do
+this thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a
+special ray and transfigure me before their faces.  I knew what that poem
+would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining
+heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus
+itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me
+while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise
+should come.
+
+Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous
+sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my
+fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow
+shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened.
+
+               With reverence and affection,
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+So Samuel Clemens had reached the half-century mark; reached it in what
+seemed the fullness of success from every viewpoint.  If he was not yet
+the foremost American man of letters, he was at least the most widely
+known he sat upon the highest mountain-top.  Furthermore, it seemed to
+him that fortune was showering her gifts into his lap.  His unfortunate
+investments were now only as the necessary experiments that had led him
+to larger successes.  As a publisher, he was already the most conspicuous
+in the world, and he contemplated still larger ventures: a type-setting
+machine patent, in which he had invested, and now largely controlled, he
+regarded as the chief invention of the age, absolutely certain to yield
+incalculable wealth.  His connection with the Grant family had associated
+him with an enterprise looking to the building of a railway from
+Constantinople to the Persian Gulf.  Charles A.  Dana, of the Sun, had
+put him in the way of obtaining for publication the life of the Pope, Leo
+XIII, officially authorized by the Pope himself, and this he regarded as
+a certain fortune.
+
+Now that the tide had turned he felt no hesitancy in reckoning a fortune
+from almost any venture.  The Grant book, even on the liberal terms
+allowed to the author, would yield a net profit of one hundred and fifty
+thousand dollars to its publishers.  Huck Finn would yield fifty thousand
+dollars more.  The sales of his other books had considerably increased. 
+Certainly, at fifty, Mark Twain's fortunes were at flood-tide; buoyant
+and jubilant, he was floating on the topmost wave.  If there were
+undercurrents and undertow they were down somewhere out of sight.  If
+there were breakers ahead, they were too far distant to be heard.  So
+sure was he of the triumphant consummation of every venture that to a
+friend at his home one night he said:
+
+"I am frightened at the proportions of my prosperity.  It seems to me
+that whatever I touch turns to gold."
+
+
+
+
+CLIX
+
+THE LIFE OF THE POPE
+
+As Mark Twain in the earlier days of his marriage had temporarily put
+aside authorship to join in a newspaper venture, so now again literature
+had dropped into the background, had become an avocation, while financial
+interests prevailed.  There were two chief ventures--the business of
+Charles L. Webster & Co.  and the promotion of the Paige type-setting
+machine.  They were closely identified in fortunes, so closely that in
+time the very existence of each depended upon the success of the other;
+yet they were quite distinct, and must be so treated in this story.
+
+The success of the Grant Life had given the Webster business an immense
+prestige.  It was no longer necessary to seek desirable features for
+publication.  They came uninvited.  Other war generals preparing their
+memoirs naturally hoped to appear with their great commander. 
+McClellan's Own Story was arranged for without difficulty.  A Genesis of
+the Civil War, by Gen. Samuel Wylie Crawford, was offered and accepted. 
+General Sheridan's Memoirs were in preparation, and negotiations with
+Webster & Co.  for their appearance were not delayed.  Probably neither
+Webster nor Clemens believed that the sale of any of these books would
+approach those of the Grant Life, but they expected them to be large, for
+the Grant book had stimulated the public taste for war literature, and
+anything bearing the stamp of personal battle experience was considered
+literary legal-tender.
+
+Moreover, these features, and even the Grant book itself, seemed likely
+to dwindle in importance by the side of The Life of Pope Leo XIII., who
+in his old and enfeebled age had consented to the preparation of a
+memoir, to be published with his sanction and blessing. --[By Bernard
+O'Reilly, D.D., LL.D.  "Written with the Encouragement, Approbation, and
+Blessings of His Holiness the Pope."]-- Clemens and Webster--every one,
+in fact, who heard of the project--united in the belief that no book,
+with the exception of the Holy Scripture itself or the Koran, would have
+a wider acceptance than the biography of the Pope.  It was agreed by good
+judges--and they included Howells and Twichell and even the shrewd
+general agents throughout the country--that every good Catholic would
+regard such a book not only as desirable, but as absolutely necessary to
+his salvation.  Howells, recalling Clemens's emotions of this time,
+writes:
+
+     He had no words in which to paint the magnificence of the project or
+     to forecast its colossal success.  It would have a currency bounded
+     only by the number of Catholics in Christendom.  It would be
+     translated into every language which was anywhere written or
+     printed; it would be circulated literally in every country of the
+     globe.
+
+The formal contract for this great undertaking was signed in Rome in
+April, 1886, and Webster immediately prepared to go over to consult with
+his Holiness in person as to certain details, also, no doubt, for the
+newspaper advertising which must result from such an interview.
+
+It was decided to carry a handsome present to the Pope in the form of a
+specially made edition of the Grant Memoirs in a rich-casket, and it was
+Clemens's idea that the binding of the book should be solid gold--this to
+be done by Tiffany at an estimated cost of about three thousand dollars. 
+In the end, however, the binding was not gold, but the handsomest that
+could be designed of less precious and more appropriate materials.
+
+Webster sailed toward the end of June, and was warmly received and highly
+honored in Rome.  The great figures of the Grant success had astonished
+Europe even more than America, where spectacular achievements were more
+common.  That any single publication should pay a profit to author and
+publisher of six hundred thousand dollars was a thing which belonged with
+the wonders of Aladdin's garden.  It was natural, therefore, that
+Webster, who had rubbed the magic lamp with this result, who was Mark
+Twain's partner, and who had now traveled across the seas to confer with
+the Pope himself, should be received with royal honors.  In letters
+written at the time, Webster relates how he found it necessary to have an
+imposing carriage and a footman to maintain the dignity of his mission,
+and how, after various impressive formalities, he was granted a private
+audience, a very special honor indeed.  Webster's letter gives us a
+picture of his Holiness which is worth preserving.
+
+     We--[Mrs. Webster, who, the reader will remember, was Annie Moffett,
+     a daughter of Pamela Clemens, was included in the invitation to the
+     Presence Chamber.]--found ourselves in a room perhaps twenty-five by
+     thirty-five feet; the furniture was gilt, upholstered in light-red
+     silk, and the side-walls were hung with the same material.  Against
+     the wall by which we entered and in the middle space was a large
+     gilt throne chair, upholstered in red plush, and upon it sat a man
+     bowed with age; his hair was silvery white and as pure as the driven
+     snow.  His head was partly covered with a white skullcap; he was
+     dressed in a long white cassock which reached to his feet, which
+     rested upon a red-plush cushion and were inclosed in red embroidered
+     slippers with a design of a cross.  A golden chain was about his
+     neck and suspended by it in his lap was a gold cross set in precious
+     stones.  Upon a finger of his right hand was a gold ring with an
+     emerald setting nearly an inch in diameter.  His countenance was
+     smiling, and beamed with benevolence.  His face at once impressed us
+     as that of a noble, pure man who could not do otherwise than good.
+
+     This was the Pope of Rome, and as we advanced, making the three
+     genuflexions prescribed by etiquette, he smiled benignly upon us. 
+     We advanced and, kneeling at his feet, kissed the seal upon his
+     ring.  He took us each by the hand repeatedly during the audience
+     and made us perfectly at our ease.
+
+They remained as much as half an hour in the Presence; and the Pope
+conversed on a variety of subjects, including the business failure of
+General Grant, his last hours, and the great success of his book.  The
+figures seemed to him hardly credible, and when Webster assured him that
+already a guaranteed sale of one hundred thousand copies of his own
+biography had been pledged by the agents he seemed even more astonished.
+"We in Italy cannot comprehend such things," he said.  "I know you do
+great work in America; I know you have done a great and noble work in
+regard to General Grant's book, but that my Life should have such a sale
+seems impossible."
+
+He asked about their home, their children, and was in every way the
+kindly, gentle-hearted man that his pictured face has shown him.  Then he
+gave them his final blessing and the audience closed.
+
+     We each again kissed the seal on his ring.  As Annie was about to
+     kiss it he suddenly withdrew his hand and said, "And will you, a
+     little Protestant, kiss the Pope's ring?"  As he said this, his face
+     was all smiles, and mischief was clearly delineated upon it.  He
+     immediately put back his hand and she kissed the ring.  We now
+     withdrew, backing out and making three genuflexions as before.  Just
+     as we reached the door he called to Dr. O'Reilly, "Now don't praise
+     me too much; tell the truth, tell the truth."
+
+
+
+
+CLX
+
+A GREAT PUBLISHER AT HOME
+
+Men are likely to be spoiled by prosperity, to be made arrogant, even
+harsh.  Success made Samuel Clemens merely elate, more kindly, more
+humanly generous.  Every day almost he wrote to Webster, suggesting some
+new book or venture, but always considerately, always deferring to
+suggestions from other points of view.  Once, when it seemed to him that
+matters were not going as well as usual, a visit from Webster showed him
+that it was because of his own continued absence from the business that
+he did not understand.  Whereupon he wrote:
+
+     DEAR CHARLEY,--Good--it's all good news.  Everything is on the
+     pleasantest possible basis now, and is going to stay so.  I blame
+     myself in not looking in on you oftener in the past--that would have
+     prevented all trouble.  I mean to stand to my duty better now.
+
+At another time, realizing the press of responsibility, and that Webster
+was not entirely well, he sent a warning from Mrs. Clemens against
+overwork.  He added:
+
+     Your letter shows that you need such a warning.  So I warn you
+     myself to look after that.  Overwork killed Mr. Langdon and it can
+     kill you.
+
+Clemens found his own cares greatly multiplied.  His connection with the
+firm was widely known, and many authors sent him their manuscripts or
+wrote him personal letters concerning them.  Furthermore, he was beset by
+all the cranks and beggars in Christendom.  His affairs became so
+numerous at length that he employed a business agent, F. G. Whitmore, to
+relieve him of a part of his burden.  Whitmore lived close by, and was a
+good billiard-player.  Almost anything from the morning mail served as an
+excuse to send for Whitmore.
+
+Clemens was fond of affairs when they were going well; he liked the game
+of business, especially when it was pretentious and showily prosperous. 
+It is probable that he was never more satisfied with his share of fortune
+than just at this time.  Certainly his home life was never happier. 
+Katie Leary, for thirty years in the family service, has set down some
+impressions of that pleasant period.
+
+     Mr. Clemens was a very affectionate father.  He seldom left the
+     house at night, but would read to the family, first to the children
+     until bedtime, afterward to Mrs. Clemens.  He usually read Browning
+     to her.  They were very fond of it.  The children played charades a
+     great deal, and he was wonderful at that game and always helped
+     them.  They were very fond of private theatricals.  Every Saturday
+     of their lives they had a temporary stage put up in the school-room
+     and we all had to help.  Gerhardt painted the scenery.  They
+     frequently played the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet" and
+     several plays they wrote themselves.  Now and then we had a big
+     general performance of "The Prince and the Pauper."  That would be
+     in the library and the dining-room with the folding-doors open.  The
+     place just held eighty-four chairs, and the stage was placed back
+     against the conservatory.  The children were crazy about acting and
+     we all enjoyed it as much as they did, especially Mr. Clemens, who
+     was the best actor of all.  I had a part, too, and George.  I have
+     never known a happier household than theirs was during those years.
+
+     Mr. Clemens spent most of his time up in the billiard-room, writing
+     or playing billiards.  One day when I went in, and he was shooting
+     the balls around the tables, I noticed smoke coming up from the
+     hearth.  I called Patrick,,and John O'Neill, the gardener, and we
+     began taking up the hearth to see what was the matter.  Mr. Clemens
+     kept on playing billiards right along and paid no attention to what
+     we were doing.  Finally, when we got the hearth up, a lot of flame
+     and smoke came out into the room.  The house was on fire.  Mr.
+     Clemens noticed then what we were about, and went over to the corner
+     where there were some bottle fire-extinguishers.  He took one down
+     and threw it into the flames.  This put them out a good deal, and he
+     took up his cue, went back to the table, and began to shoot the
+     balls around again as if nothing had happened.  Mrs. Clemens came in
+     just then and said, "Why, the house is afire!"
+
+     "Yes, I know it," he said, but went on playing.
+
+     We had a telephone and it didn't work very well.  It annoyed him a
+     good deal and sometimes he'd say:
+
+     "I'll tear it out."
+
+     One day he tried to call up Mrs. Dr. Tafft.  He could not hear
+     plainly and thought he was talking to central.  "Send down and take
+     this d--- thing out of here," he said; "I'm tired of it."  He was
+     mad, and using a good deal of bad language.  All at once he heard
+     Mrs. Dr. Tafft say, "Oh, Mr. Clemens, good morning."  He said, "Why,
+     Mrs. Tafft, I have just come to the telephone.  George, our butler,
+     was here before me and I heard him swearing as I came up.  I shall
+     have to talk to him about it."
+
+     Mrs. Tafft often told it on him. --[ Mark Twain once wrote to the
+     telephone management: "The time is coming very soon when the
+     telephone will be a perfect instrument, when proximity will no
+     longer be a hindrance to its performance, when, in fact, one will
+     hear a man who is in the next block just as easily and comfortably
+     as he would if that man were in San Francisco."]
+     Mrs. Clemens, before I went there, took care of his desk, but little
+     by little I began to look after it when she was busy at other
+     things.  Finally I took care of it altogether, but he didn't know it
+     for a long time.  One morning he caught me at it.  "What are you
+     doing here?" he asked.
+
+     "Dusting, Mr. Clemens," I said.
+
+     "You have no business here," he said, very mad.
+
+     "I've been doing it for a year, Mr. Clemens," I said.  "Mrs. Clemens
+     told me to do it."
+
+     After that, when he missed anything--and he missed things often--he
+     would ring for me.  "Katie," he would say, "you have lost that
+     manuscript."
+
+     "Oh, Mr. Clemens,", I would say, "I am sure I didn't touch it."
+
+     "Yes, you did touch it, Katie.  You put it in the fire.  It is
+     gone."
+
+     He would scold then, and fume a great deal.  Then he would go over
+     and mark out with his toe on the carpet a line which I was never to
+     cross.  "Katie," he would say, "you are never to go nearer to my
+     desk than that line.  That is the dead-line."  Often after he had
+     scolded me in the morning he would come in in the evening where I
+     was dressing Mrs. Clemens to go out and say, "Katie, I found that
+     manuscript."  And I would say, "Mr. Clemens, I felt so bad this
+     morning that I wanted to go away."
+
+     He had a pipe-cleaner which he kept on a high shelf.  It was an
+     awful old dirty one, and I didn't know that he ever used it.  I took
+     it to the balcony which was built out into the woods and threw it
+     away as far as I could throw it.  Next day he asked, "Katie, did you
+     see my pipe-cleaner?  You did see it; I can tell by your looks."
+
+     I said, "Yes, Mr. Clemens, I threw it away."
+
+     "Well," he said, "it was worth a thousand dollars," and it seemed so
+     to me, too, before he got done scolding about it.
+
+It is hard not to dwell too long on the home life of this period.  One
+would like to make a long chapter out of those play-acting evenings
+alone.  They remained always fresh in Mark Twain's memory.  Once he wrote
+of them:
+
+     We dined as we could, probably with a neighbor, and by quarter to
+     eight in the evening the hickory fire in the hall was pouring a
+     sheet of flame up the chimney, the house was in a drench of gas-
+     light from the ground floor up, the guests were arriving, and there
+     was a babble of hearty greetings, with not a voice in it that was
+     not old and familiar and affectionate; and when the curtain went up
+     we looked out from the stage upon none but faces that were dear to
+     us, none but faces that were lit up with welcome for us.
+
+
+
+
+CLXI
+
+HISTORY: MAINLY BY SUSY
+
+Suzy, in her biography, which she continued through this period, writes:
+
+     Mama and I have both been very much troubled of late because papa,
+     since he had been publishing General Grant's books, has seemed to
+     forget his own books and works entirely; and the other evening, as
+     papa and I were promonading up and down the library, he told me that
+     he didn't expect to write but one more book, and then he was ready
+     to give up work altogether, die, or, do anything; he said that he
+     had written more than he had ever expected to, and the only book
+     that he had been pertickularly anxious to write was one locked up in
+     the safe downstairs, not yet published.
+
+The book locked in the safe was Captain Stormfield, and the one he
+expected to write was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  He
+had already worked at it in a desultory way during the early months of
+1886, and once wrote of it to Webster:
+
+     I have begun a book whose scene is laid far back in the twilight of
+     tradition; I have saturated myself with the atmosphere of the day
+     and the subject and got myself into the swing of the work.  If I peg
+     away for some weeks without a break I am safe.
+
+But he could not peg away.  He had too many irons in the fire for that. 
+Matthew Arnold had criticized General Grant's English, and Clemens
+immediately put down other things to rush to his hero's defense.  He
+pointed out that in Arnold's criticism there were no less than "two
+grammatical crimes and more than several examples of very crude and
+slovenly English," and said:
+
+     There is that about the sun which makes us forget his spots, and
+     when we think of General Grant our pulses quicken and his grammar
+     vanishes; we only remember that this is the simple soldier, who, all
+     untaught of the silken phrase-makers, linked words together with an
+     art surpassing the art of the schools, and put into them a something
+     which will still bring to American ears, as long as America shall
+     last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his marching
+     hosts. --[Address to Army and Navy Club.  For full text see
+     Appendix]
+
+Clemens worked at the Yankee now and then, and Howells, when some of the
+chapters were read to him, gave it warm approval and urged its
+continuance.
+
+Howells was often in Hartford at this time.  Webster & Co.  were planning
+to publish The Library of Humor, which Howells and "Charley" Clark had
+edited several years before, and occasional conferences were desirable. 
+Howells tells us that, after he and Clark had been at great trouble to
+get the matter logically and chronologically arranged, Clemens pulled it
+all to pieces and threw it together helter-skelter, declaring that there
+ought to be no sequence in a book of that sort, any more than in the
+average reader's mind; and Howells admits that this was probably the
+truer method in a book made for the diversion rather than the instruction
+of the reader.
+
+One of the literary diversions of this time was a commentary on a
+delicious little book by Caroline B. Le Row--English as She Is Taught--
+being a compilation of genuine answers given to examination questions by
+pupils in our public schools.  Mark Twain was amused by such definitions
+as: "Aborigines, system of mountains"; "Alias--a good man in the Bible";
+"Ammonia--the food of the gods," and so on down the alphabet.
+
+Susy, in her biography, mentions that her father at this is time read to
+them a little article which he had just written, entitled "Luck," and
+that they thought it very good.  It was a story which Twichell had heard
+and told to Clemens, who set it down about as it came to him.  It was
+supposed to be true, yet Clemens seemed to think it too improbable for
+literature and laid it away for a number of years.  We shall hear of it
+again by and by.
+
+>From Susy's memoranda we gather that humanity at this time was to be
+healed of all evils and sorrows through "mind cure "
+
+     Papa has been very much interested of late in the "mind-cure"
+     theory.  And, in fact, so have we all.  A young lady in town has
+     worked wonders by using the "mind cure" upon people; she is
+     constantly busy now curing peoples' diseases in this way--and curing
+     her own, even, which to me seems the most remarkable of all.
+
+     A little while past papa was delighted with the knowledge of what he
+     thought the best way of curing a cold, which was by starving it. 
+     This starving did work beautifully, and freed him from a great many
+     severe colds.  Now he says it wasn't the starving that helped his
+     colds, but the trust in the starving, the "mind cure" connected with
+     the starving.
+
+     I shouldn't wonder if we finally became firm believers in "mind
+     cure."  The next time papa has a cold I haven't a doubt he will send
+     for Miss Holden, the young lady who is doctoring in the "mind-cure"
+     theory, to cure him of it.
+
+Again, a month later, she writes:
+
+     April 19, 1886.  Yes, the "mind cure" does seem to be working
+     wonderfully.  Papa, who has been using glasses now for more than a
+     year, has laid them off entirely.  And my near-sightedness is really
+     getting better.  It seems marvelous.  When Jean has stomack-ache
+     Clara and I have tried to divert her by telling her to lie on her
+     side and try "mind cure."  The novelty of it has made her willing to
+     try it, and then Clara and I would exclaim about how wonderful it
+     was she was getting better.  And she would think it realy was
+     finally, and stop crying, to our delight.
+
+     The other day mama went into the library and found her lying on the
+     sofa with her back toward the door.  She said, "Why, Jean, what's
+     the matter?  Don't you feel well?"  Jean said that she had a little
+     stomack-ache, and so thought she would lie down.  Mama said, "Why
+     don't you try 'mind cure'?"  "I am," Jean answered.
+
+Howells and Twichell were invited to try the "mind cure," as were all
+other friends who happened along.  To the end of his days Clemens would
+always have some panacea to offer to allay human distress.  It was a good
+trait, when all is said, for it had its root in his humanity.  The "mind
+cure" did not provide all the substance of things hoped for, though he
+always allowed for it a wide efficacy.  Once, in later years, commenting
+on Susy's record, he said:
+
+     The mind cannot heal broken bones, and doubtless there are many
+     other physical ills which it cannot heal, but it can greatly help to
+     modify the severities of all of them without exception, and there
+     are mental and nervous ailments which it can wholly heal without the
+     help of physician or surgeon.
+
+Susy records another burning interest of this time:
+
+     Clara sprained her ankle a little while ago by running into a tree
+     when coasting, and while she was unable to walk with it she played
+     solotaire with cards a great deal.  While Clara was sick and papa
+     saw her play solotaire so much he got very much interested in the
+     game, and finally began to play it himself a little; then Jean took
+     it up, and at last mama even played it occasionally; Jean's and
+     papa's love for it rapidly increased, and now Jean brings the cards
+     every night to the table and papa and mama help her play, and before
+     dinner is at an end papa has gotten a separate pack of cards and is
+     playing alone, with great interest.  Mama and Clara next are made
+     subject to the contagious solotaire, and there are four
+     solotarireans at the table, while you hear nothing but "Fill up the
+     place," etc.  It is dreadful!
+
+But a little further along Susy presents her chief subject more
+seriously.  He is not altogether absorbed with "mind cure" and solitaire,
+or even with making humorous tales.
+
+     Papa has done a great deal in his life I think that is good and very
+     remarkable, but I think if he had had the advantages with which he
+     could have developed the gifts which he has made no use of in
+     writing his books, or in any other way, for peoples' pleasure and
+     benefit outside of his own family and intimate friends, he could
+     have done more than he has, and a great deal more, even.  He is
+     known to the public as a humorist, but he has much more in him that
+     is earnest than that is humorous.  He has a keen sense of the
+     ludicrous, notices funny stories and incidents, knows how to tell
+     them, to improve upon them, and does not forget them.
+
+And again:
+
+     When we are all alone at home nine times out of ten he talks about
+     some very earnest subject (with an occasional joke thrown in), and
+     he a good deal more often talks upon such subjects than upon the
+     other kind.
+
+     He is as much of a philosopher as anything, I think.  I think he
+     could have done a great deal in this direction if he had studied
+     while young, for he seems to enjoy reasoning out things, no matter
+     what; in a great many such directions he has greater ability than in
+     the gifts which have made him famous.
+
+It was with the keen eyes and just mind of childhood that Susy estimated,
+and there is little to add to her valuation.
+
+Susy's biography came to an end that summer after starting to record a
+visit which they all made to Keokuk to see Grandma Clemens.  They went by
+way of the Lakes and down the Mississippi from St.  Paul.  A pleasant
+incident happened that first evening on the river.  Soon after nightfall
+they entered a shoal crossing.  Clemens, standing alone on the hurricane-
+deck, heard the big bell forward boom out the call for leads.  Then came
+the leadsman's long-drawn chant, once so familiar, the monotonous
+repeating in river parlance of the depths of water.  Presently the lead
+had found that depth of water signified by his nom de plume and the call
+of "Mark Twain, Mark Twain" floated up to him like a summons from the
+past.  All at once a little figure came running down the deck, and Clara
+confronted him, reprovingly:
+
+"Papa," she said, "I have hunted all over the boat for you.  Don't you
+know they are calling for you?"
+
+They remained in Keokuk a week, and Susy starts to tell something of
+their visit there.  She begins:
+
+"We have arrived in Keokuk after a very pleasant----"
+
+The sentence remains unfinished.  We cannot know what was the
+interruption or what new interest kept her from her task.  We can only
+regret that the loving little hand did not continue its pleasant history. 
+Years later, when Susy had passed from among the things we know, her
+father, commenting, said:
+
+     When I look at the arrested sentence that ends the little book it
+     seems as if the hand that traced it cannot be far--it is gone for a
+     moment only, and will come again and finish it.  But that is a
+     dream; a creature of the heart, not of the mind--a feeling, a
+     longing, not a mental product; the same that lured Aaron Burr, old,
+     gray, forlorn, forsaken, to the pier day after day, week after week,
+     there to stand in the gloom and the chill of the dawn, gazing
+     seaward through veiling mists and sleet and snow for the ship which
+     he knew was gone down, the ship that bore all his treasure--his
+     daughter.
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Volume 2, Part 1 of MARK TWAIN,
+A BIOGRAPHY 1875-1886 by Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+