initial commit of ebook 2987HEADmain

1 files changed, 11080 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/2987.txt b/2987.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d96b791
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2987.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11080 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 3, Part 2,
+1907-1910, by Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 3, Part 2, 1907-1910
+       The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
+
+Author: Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #2987]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY
+
+By Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+
+
+VOLUME III, Part 2: 1907-1910
+
+
+
+CCLVI
+
+
+HONORS FROM OXFORD
+
+Clemens made a brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twichell
+along; their first return to the island since the trip when they had
+promised to come back so soon-nearly thirty years before. They had been
+comparatively young men then. They were old now, but they found the
+green island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not find their
+old landlady; they could not even remember her name at first, and then
+Twichell recalled that it was the same as an author of certain
+schoolbooks in his youth, and Clemens promptly said, "Kirkham's Grammar."
+Kirkham was truly the name, and they went to find her; but she was dead,
+and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier time, reigned
+in her stead and entertained the successors of her mother's guests. They
+walked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up again a
+long-discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale. It
+gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allow
+to fade again.
+
+Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having been
+agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific
+coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly
+passing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal
+schoolmates; also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the
+early pioneers--all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work as
+I had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted; but whatever
+reluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put aside
+in view of prospective benefits. Clemens, in fact, seemed to derive joy
+from the thought that he was commissioning a kind of personal emissary to
+his old comrades, and provided me with a letter of credentials.
+
+It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken none
+too soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering the
+valley of the shadow as he talked to me by his fire one memorable
+afternoon, and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and in
+the cave and on Holliday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that he
+died; and there were others of that scattering procession who did not
+reach the end of the year. Joe Goodman, still full of vigor (in 1912),
+journeyed with me to the green and dreamy solitudes of Jackass Hill to
+see Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an unforgetable Sunday when Steve
+Gillis, an invalid, but with the fire still in his eyes and speech, sat
+up on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian stillness and told
+old tales and adventures. When I left he said:
+
+"Tell Sam I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him; that I've
+loved him all my life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the last
+word I'll ever send to him." Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was already
+lying at the point of death, and so for him the visit was too late,
+though he was able to receive a message from his ancient mining partner,
+and to send back a parting word.
+
+I returned by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wished
+to follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its presiding
+genius, Horace Bixby,--[He died August 2, 1912, at the age of 86]--still
+alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, his
+headquarters at St. Louis.
+
+Coming up the river on one of the old passenger steam boats that still
+exist, I noticed in a paper which came aboard that Mark Twain was to
+receive from Oxford University the literary doctor's degree. There had
+been no hint of this when I came away, and it seemed rather too sudden
+and too good to be true. That the little barefoot lad that had played
+along the river-banks at Hannibal, and received such meager advantages in
+the way of schooling--whose highest ambition had been to pilot such a
+craft as this one--was about to be crowned by the world's greatest
+institution of learning, to receive the highest recognition for
+achievement in the world of letters, was a thing which would not be
+likely to happen outside of a fairy tale.
+
+Returning to New York, I ran out to Tuxedo, where he had taken a home for
+the summer (for it was already May), and walking along the shaded paths
+of that beautiful suburban park, he told me what he knew of the Oxford
+matter.
+
+Moberly Bell, of the London Times, had been over in April, and soon after
+his return to England there had come word of the proposed honor. Clemens
+privately and openly (to Bell) attributed it largely to his influence. He
+wrote to him:
+
+    DEAR MR. BELL,--Your hand is in it & you have my best thanks.
+    Although I wouldn't cross an ocean again for the price of the ship
+    that carried me I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall
+    plan to sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that
+    I can have a few days in London before the 26th.
+
+A day or two later, when the time for sailing had been arranged, he
+overtook his letter with a cable:
+
+    I perceive your hand in it. You have my best thanks. Sail on
+    Minneapolis June 8th. Due in Southampton ten days later.
+
+Clemens said that his first word of the matter had been a newspaper
+cablegram, and that he had been doubtful concerning it until a cablegram
+to himself had confirmed it.
+
+"I never expected to cross the water again," he said; "but I would be
+willing to journey to Mars for that Oxford degree."
+
+He put the matter aside then, and fell to talking of Jim Gillis and the
+others I had visited, dwelling especially on Gillis's astonishing faculty
+for improvising romances, recalling how he had stood with his back to the
+fire weaving his endless, grotesque yarns, with no other guide than his
+fancy. It was a long, happy walk we had, though rather a sad one in its
+memories; and he seemed that day, in a sense, to close the gate of those
+early scenes behind him, for he seldom referred to them afterward.
+
+He was back at 21 Fifth Avenue presently, arranging for his voyage.
+Meantime, cable invitations of every sort were pouring in, from this and
+that society and dignitary; invitations to dinners and ceremonials, and
+what not, and it was clear enough that his English sojourn was to be a
+busy one. He had hoped to avoid this, and began by declining all but two
+invitations--a dinner-party given by Ambassador Whitelaw Reid and a
+luncheon proposed by the "Pilgrims." But it became clear that this would
+not do. England was not going to confer its greatest collegiate honor
+without being permitted to pay its wider and more popular tribute.
+
+Clemens engaged a special secretary for the trip--Mr. Ralph W. Ashcroft,
+a young Englishman familiar with London life. They sailed on the 8th of
+June, by a curious coincidence exactly forty years from the day he had
+sailed on the Quaker City to win his great fame. I went with him to the
+ship. His first elation had passed by this time, and he seemed a little
+sad, remembering, I think, the wife who would have enjoyed this honor
+with him but could not share it now.
+
+
+
+
+CCLVII
+
+A TRUE ENGLISH WELCOME
+
+Mark Twain's trip across the Atlantic would seem to have been a pleasant
+one. The Minneapolis is a fine, big ship, and there was plenty of
+company. Prof. Archibald Henderson, Bernard Shaw's biographer, was
+aboard;--[Professor Henderson has since then published a volume on Mark
+Twain-an interesting commentary on his writings--mainly from the
+sociological point of view.]--also President Patton, of the Princeton
+Theological Seminary; a well-known cartoonist, Richards, and some very
+attractive young people--school-girls in particular, such as all through
+his life had appealed to Mark Twain. Indeed, in his later life they made
+a stronger appeal than ever. The years had robbed him of his own little
+flock, and always he was trying to replace them. Once he said:
+
+"During those years after my wife's death I was washing about on a
+forlorn sea of banquets and speech-making in high and holy causes, and
+these things furnished me intellectual cheer, and entertainment; but they
+got at my heart for an evening only, then left it dry and dusty. I had
+reached the grandfather stage of life without grandchildren, so I began
+to adopt some."
+
+He adopted several on that journey to England and on the return voyage,
+and he kept on adopting others during the rest of his life. These
+companionships became one of the happiest aspects of his final days, as
+we shall see by and by.
+
+There were entertainments on the ship, one of them given for the benefit
+of the Seamen's Orphanage. One of his adopted granddaughters--"Charley"
+he called her--played a violin solo and Clemens made a speech. Later his
+autographs were sold at auction. Dr. Patton was auctioneer, and one
+autographed postal card brought twenty-five dollars, which is perhaps the
+record price for a single Mark Twain signature. He wore his white suit
+on this occasion, and in the course of his speech referred to it. He
+told first of the many defects in his behavior, and how members of his
+household had always tried to keep him straight. The children, he said,
+had fallen into the habit of calling it "dusting papa off." Then he went
+on:
+
+    When my daughter came to see me off last Saturday at the boat she
+    slipped a note in my hand and said, "Read it when you get aboard the
+    ship." I didn't think of it again until day before yesterday, and
+    it was a "dusting off." And if I carry out all the instructions
+    that I got there I shall be more celebrated in England for my
+    behavior than for anything else. I got instructions how to act on
+    every occasion. She underscored "Now, don't you wear white clothes
+    on ship or on shore until you get back," and I intended to obey. I
+    have been used to obeying my family all my life, but I wore the
+    white clothes to-night because the trunk that has the dark clothes
+    in it is in the cellar. I am not apologizing for the white clothes;
+    I am only apologizing to my daughter for not obeying her.
+
+He received a great welcome when the ship arrived at Tilbury. A throng
+of rapid-fire reporters and photographers immediately surrounded him, and
+when he left the ship the stevedores gave him a round of cheers. It was
+the beginning of that almost unheard-of demonstration of affection and
+honor which never for a moment ceased, but augmented from day to day
+during the four weeks of his English sojourn.
+
+In a dictation following his return, Mark Twain said:
+
+    Who began it? The very people of all people in the world whom I
+    would have chosen: a hundred men of my own class--grimy sons of
+    labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations, the
+    stevedores! They stood in a body on the dock and charged their
+    masculine lungs, and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of
+    me.
+
+J. Y. W. MacAlister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him,
+and among others on the platform was Bernard Shaw, who had come down to
+meet Professor Henderson. Clemens and Shaw were presented, and met
+eagerly, for each greatly admired the other. A throng gathered. Mark
+Twain was extricated at last, and hurried away to his apartments at
+Brown's Hotel, "a placid, subdued, homelike, old-fashioned English inn,"
+he called it, "well known to me years ago, a blessed retreat of a sort
+now rare in England, and becoming rarer every year."
+
+But Brown's was not placid and subdued during his stay. The London
+newspapers declared that Mark Twain's arrival had turned Brown's not only
+into a royal court, but a post-office--that the procession of visitors
+and the bundles of mail fully warranted this statement. It was, in fact,
+an experience which surpassed in general magnitude and magnificence
+anything he had hitherto known. His former London visits, beginning with
+that of 1872, had been distinguished by high attentions, but all of them
+combined could not equal this. When England decides to get up an
+ovation, her people are not to be outdone even by the lavish Americans.
+An assistant secretary had to be engaged immediately, and it sometimes
+required from sixteen to twenty hours a day for two skilled and busy men
+to receive callers and reduce the pile of correspondence.
+
+A pile of invitations had already accumulated, and others flowed in. Lady
+Stanley, widow of Henry M. Stanley, wrote:
+
+    You know I want to see you and join right hand to right hand. I
+    must see your dear face again . . . . You will have no peace,
+    rest, or leisure during your stay in London, and you will end by
+    hating human beings. Let me come before you feel that way.
+
+Mary Cholmondeley, the author of Red Pottage, niece of that lovable
+Reginald Cholmondeley, and herself an old friend, sent greetings and
+urgent invitations. Archdeacon Wilberforce wrote:
+
+    I have just been preaching about your indictment of that scoundrel
+    king of the Belgians and telling my people to buy the book. I am
+    only a humble item among the very many who offer you a cordial
+    welcome in England, but we long to see you again, and I should like
+    to change hats with you again. Do you remember?
+
+The Athenaeum, the Garrick, and a dozen other London clubs had
+anticipated his arrival with cards of honorary membership for the period
+of his stay. Every leading photographer had put in a claim for sittings.
+It was such a reception as Charles Dickens had received in America in
+1842, and again in 1867. A London paper likened it to Voltaire's return
+to Paris in 1778, when France went mad over him. There is simply no
+limit to English affection and, hospitality once aroused. Clemens wrote:
+
+    Surely such weeks as this must be very rare in this world: I had
+    seen nothing like them before; I shall see nothing approaching them
+    again!
+
+Sir Thomas Lipton and Bram Stoker, old friends, were among the first to
+present themselves, and there was no break in the line of callers.
+
+Clemens's resolutions for secluding himself were swept away. On the very
+next morning following his arrival he breakfasted with J. Henniker
+Heaton, father of International Penny Postage, at the Bath Club, just
+across Dover Street from Brown's. He lunched at the Ritz with Marjorie
+Bowen and Miss Bisland. In the afternoon he sat for photographs at
+Barnett's, and made one or two calls. He could no more resist these
+things than a debutante in her first season.
+
+He was breakfasting again with Heaton next morning; lunching with "Toby,
+M.P.," and Mrs. Lucy; and having tea with Lady Stanley in the afternoon,
+and being elaborately dined next day at Dorchester House by Ambassador
+and Mrs. Reid. These were all old and tried friends. He was not a
+stranger among them, he said; he was at home. Alfred Austin, Conan
+Doyle, Anthony Hope, Alma Tadema, E. A. Abbey, Edmund Goss, George
+Smalley, Sir Norman Lockyer, Henry W. Lucy, Sidney Brooks, and Bram
+Stoker were among those at Dorchester House--all old comrades, as were
+many of the other guests.
+
+"I knew fully half of those present," he said afterward.
+
+Mark Twain's bursting upon London society naturally was made the most of
+by the London papers, and all his movements were tabulated and
+elaborated, and when there was any opportunity for humor in the situation
+it was not left unimproved. The celebrated Ascot racing-cup was stolen
+just at the time of his arrival, and the papers suggestively mingled
+their head-lines, "Mark Twain Arrives: Ascot Cup Stolen," and kept the
+joke going in one form or another. Certain state jewels and other
+regalia also disappeared during his stay, and the news of these
+burglaries was reported in suspicious juxtaposition with the news of Mark
+Twain's doings.
+
+English reporters adopted American habits for the occasion, and invented
+or embellished when the demand for a new sensation was urgent. Once,
+when following the custom of the place, he descended the hotel elevator
+in a perfectly proper and heavy brown bath robe, and stepped across
+narrow Dover Street to the Bath Club, the papers flamed next day with the
+story that Mark Twain had wandered about the lobby of Brown's and
+promenaded Dover Street in a sky-blue bath robe attracting wide
+attention.
+
+Clara Clemens, across the ocean, was naturally a trifle disturbed by such
+reports, and cabled this delicate "dusting off":
+
+"Much worried. Remember proprieties."
+
+To which he answered:
+
+"They all pattern after me," a reply to the last degree characteristic.
+
+It was on the fourth day after his arrival, June 22d, that he attended
+the King's garden-party at Windsor Castle. There were eighty-five
+hundred guests at the King's party, and if we may judge from the London
+newspapers, Mark Twain was quite as much a figure in that great throng as
+any member of the royal family. His presentation to the King and the
+Queen is set down as an especially notable incident, and their
+conversation is quite fully given. Clemens himself reported:
+
+    His Majesty was very courteous. In the course of the conversation
+    I reminded him of an episode of fifteen years ago, when I had the
+    honor to walk a mile with him when he was taking the waters at
+    Homburg, in Germany. I said that I had often told about that
+    episode, and that whenever I was the historian I made good history
+    of it and it was worth listening to, but that it had found its way
+    into print once or twice in unauthentic ways and was badly damaged
+    thereby. I said I should like to go on repeating this history, but
+    that I should be quite fair and reasonably honest, and while I
+    should probably never tell it twice in the same way I should at
+    least never allow it to deteriorate in my hands. His Majesty
+    intimated his willingness that I should continue to disseminate that
+    piece of history; and he added a compliment, saying that he knew
+    good and sound history would not suffer at my hands, and that if
+    this good and sound history needed any improvement beyond the facts
+    he would trust me to furnish that improvement.
+
+    I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the Queen looked as
+    young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago when I saw her
+    first. I did not say this to her, because I learned long ago never
+    to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace
+    and inexperienced people to say. That she still looked to me as
+    young and beautiful as she did thirty-five years ago is good
+    evidence that ten thousand people have already noticed this and have
+    mentioned it to her. I could have said it and spoken the truth, but
+    I was too wise for that. I kept the remark unuttered and saved her
+    Majesty the vexation of hearing it the ten-thousand-and-oneth time.
+
+    All that report about my proposal to buy Windsor Castle and its
+    grounds was a false rumor. I started it myself.
+
+    One newspaper said I patted his Majesty on the shoulder--an
+    impertinence of which I was not guilty; I was reared in the most
+    exclusive circles of Missouri and I know how to behave. The King
+    rested his hand upon my arm a moment or two while we were chatting,
+    but he did it of his own accord. The newspaper which said I talked
+    with her Majesty with my hat on spoke the truth, but my reasons for
+    doing it were good and sufficient--in fact unassailable. Rain was
+    threatening, the temperature had cooled, and the Queen said, "Please
+    put your hat on, Mr. Clemens." I begged her pardon and excused
+    myself from doing it. After a moment or two she said, "Mr. Clemens,
+    put your hat on"--with a slight emphasis on the word "on" "I can't
+    allow you to catch cold here." When a beautiful queen commands it
+    is a pleasure to obey, and this time I obeyed--but I had already
+    disobeyed once, which is more than a subject would have felt
+    justified in doing; and so it is true, as charged; I did talk with
+    the Queen of England with my hat on, but it wasn't fair in the
+    newspaper man to charge it upon me as an impoliteness, since there
+    were reasons for it which he could not know of.
+
+Nearly all the members of the British royal family were there, and there
+were foreign visitors which included the King of Siam and a party of
+India princes in their gorgeous court costumes, which Clemens admired
+openly and said he would like to wear himself.
+
+The English papers spoke of it as one of the largest and most
+distinguished parties ever given at Windsor. Clemens attended it in
+company with Mr. and Mrs. J. Henniker Heaton, and when it was over Sir
+Thomas Lipton joined them and motored with them back to Brown's.
+
+He was at Archdeacon Wilberforce's next day, where a curious circumstance
+developed. When he arrived Wilberforce said to him, in an undertone:
+
+"Come into my library. I have something to show you."
+
+In the library Clemens was presented to a Mr. Pole, a plain-looking man,
+suggesting in dress and appearance the English tradesman. Wilberforce
+said:
+
+"Mr. Pole, show to Mr. Clemens what you have brought here."
+
+Mr. Pole unrolled a long strip of white linen and brought to view at last
+a curious, saucer-looking vessel of silver, very ancient in appearance,
+and cunningly overlaid with green glass. The archdeacon took it and
+handed it to Clemens as some precious jewel. Clemens said:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Wilberforce impressively answered:
+
+"It is the Holy Grail."
+
+Clemens naturally started with surprise.
+
+"You may well start," said Wilberforce; "but it's the truth. That is the
+Holy Grail."
+
+Then he gave this explanation: Mr. Pole, a grain merchant of Bristol, had
+developed some sort of clairvoyant power, or at all events he had dreamed
+several times with great vividness the location of the true Grail.
+Another dreamer, a Dr. Goodchild, of Bath, was mixed up in the matter,
+and between them this peculiar vessel, which was not a cup, or a goblet,
+or any of the traditional things, had been discovered. Mr. Pole seemed a
+man of integrity, and it was clear that the churchman believed the
+discovery to be genuine and authentic. Of course there could be no
+positive proof. It was a thing that must be taken on trust. That the
+vessel itself was wholly different from anything that the generations had
+conceived, and was apparently of very ancient make, was opposed to the
+natural suggestion of fraud.
+
+Clemens, to whom the whole idea of the Holy Grail was simply a poetic
+legend and myth, had the feeling that he had suddenly been transmigrated,
+like his own Connecticut Yankee, back into the Arthurian days; but he
+made no question, suggested no doubt. Whatever it was, it was to them
+the materialization of a symbol of faith which ranked only second to the
+cross itself, and he handled it reverently and felt the honor of having
+been one of the first permitted to see the relic. In a subsequent
+dictation he said:
+
+    I am glad I have lived to see that half-hour--that astonishing half-
+    hour. In its way it stands alone in my life's experience. In the
+    belief of two persons present this was the very vessel which was
+    brought by night and secretly delivered to Nicodemus, nearly
+    nineteen centuries ago, after the Creator of the universe had
+    delivered up His life on the cross for the redemption of the human
+    race; the very cup which the stainless Sir Galahad had sought with
+    knightly devotion in far fields of peril and adventure in Arthur's
+    time, fourteen hundred years ago; the same cup which princely
+    knights of other bygone ages had laid down their lives in long and
+    patient efforts to find, and had passed from life disappointed--and
+    here it was at last, dug up by a grain-broker at no cost of blood or
+    travel, and apparently no purity required of him above the average
+    purity of the twentieth-century dealer in cereal futures; not even a
+    stately name required--no Sir Galahad, no Sir Bors de Ganis, no Sir
+    Lancelot of the Lake--nothing but a mere Mr. Pole.--[From the New
+    York Sun somewhat later: "Mr. Pole communicated the discovery to a
+    dignitary of the Church of England, who summoned a number of eminent
+    persons, including psychologists, to see and discuss it. Forty
+    attended, including some peers with ecclesiastical interests,
+    Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, Professor Crookas, and ministers of
+    various religious bodies, including the Rev. R. J. Campbell. They
+    heard Mr. Pole's story with deep attention, but he could not prove
+    the genuineness of the relic."]
+
+Clemens saw Mr. and Mrs. Rogers at Claridge's Hotel that evening; lunched
+with his old friends Sir Norman and Lady Lockyer next day; took tea with
+T. P. O'Connor at the House of Commons, and on the day following, which
+was June a 5th, he was the guest of honor at one of the most elaborate
+occasions of his visit--a luncheon given by the Pilgrims at the Savoy
+Hotel. It would be impossible to set down here a report of the doings,
+or even a list of the guests, of that gathering. The Pilgrims is a club
+with branches on both sides of the ocean, and Mark Twain, on either side,
+was a favorite associate. At this luncheon the picture on the bill of
+fare represented him as a robed pilgrim, with a great pen for his staff,
+turning his back on the Mississippi River and being led along his
+literary way by a huge jumping frog, to which he is attached by a string.
+On a guest-card was printed:
+
+    Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout
+    "Mark Twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign
+    --On Mississippi's waterway rang out
+    Over the plummet's line--
+    Still where the countless ripples laugh above
+    The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep
+    Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love
+    Ten thousand fathoms deep!
+
+                       --O. S. [OWEN SEAMAN].
+
+Augustine Birrell made the speech of introduction, closing with this
+paragraph:
+
+    Mark Twain is a man whom Englishmen and Americans do well to honor.
+    He is a true consolidator of nations. His delightful humor is of
+    the kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices. His
+    truth and his honor--his love of truth and his love of honor
+    --overflow all boundaries. He has made the world better by his
+    presence, and we rejoice to see him here. Long may he live to reap
+    a plentiful harvest of hearty honest human affection.
+
+The toast was drunk standing. Then Clemens rose and made a speech which
+delighted all England. In his introduction Mr. Birrell had happened to
+say, "How I came here I will not ask!" Clemens remembered this, and
+looking down into Mr. Birrell's wine-glass, which was apparently unused,
+he said:
+
+"Mr. Birrell doesn't know how he got here. But he will be able to get
+away all right--he has not drunk anything since he came."
+
+He told stories about Howells and Twichell, and how Darwin had gone to
+sleep reading his books, and then he came down to personal things and
+company, and told them how, on the day of his arrival, he had been
+shocked to read on a great placard, "Mark Twain Arrives: Ascot Cup
+Stolen."
+
+    No doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together
+    in that unkind way. I have no doubt my character has suffered from
+    it. I suppose I ought to defend my character, but how can I defend
+    it? I can say here and now that anybody can see by my face that I
+    am sincere--that I speak the truth, and that I have never seen that
+    Cup. I have not got the Cup, I did not have a chance to get it. I
+    have always had a good character in that way. I have hardly ever
+    stolen anything, and if I did steal anything I had discretion enough
+    to know about the value of it first. I do not steal things that are
+    likely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of us do
+    that. I know we all take things--that is to be expected; but really
+    I have never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts to
+    any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago
+    I stole a hat--but that did not amount to anything. It was not a
+    good hat it was only a clergyman's hat, anyway. I was at a
+    luncheon-party and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I dare say
+    he is archdeacon now--he was a canon then--and he was serving in the
+    Westminster Battery, if that is the proper term. I do not know, as
+    you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much.
+
+He recounted the incident of the exchanged hats; then he spoke of graver
+things. He closed:
+
+    I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing. I
+    must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside and recognize that I am
+    of the human race. I have my cares and griefs, and I therefore
+    noticed what Mr. Birrell said--I was so glad to hear him say it
+    --something that was in the nature of these verses here at the top
+    of the program:
+
+           He lit our life with shafts of sun
+           And vanquished pain.
+           Thus two great nations stand as one
+           In honoring Twain.
+
+I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very grateful
+for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since I
+have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions
+of people in England, men, women, and children, and there is compliment,
+praise, and, above all, and better than all, there is in them a note of
+affection.
+
+Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection--that is the last and
+final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character
+or achievement, and I am very grateful to have that reward. All these
+letters make me feel that here in England, as in America, when I stand
+under the English or the American flag I am not a stranger, I am not an
+alien, but at home.
+
+
+
+
+CCLVIII
+
+DOCTOR OF LITERATURE, OXFORD
+
+He left, immediately following the Pilgrim luncheon, with Hon. Robert P.
+Porter, of the London Times, for Oxford, to remain his guest there during
+the various ceremonies. The encenia--the ceremony of conferring the
+degrees--occurred at the Sheldonian Theater the following morning, June
+26, 1907.
+
+It was a memorable affair. Among those who were to receive degrees that
+morning besides Samuel Clemens were: Prince Arthur of Connaught; Prime
+Minister Campbell-Bannerman; Whitelaw Reid; Rudyard Kipling; Sidney Lee;
+Sidney Colvin; Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland; Sir Norman
+Lockyer; Auguste Rodin, the sculptor; Saint-Saens, and Gen. William
+Booth, of the Salvation Army-something more than thirty, in all, of the
+world's distinguished citizens.
+
+The candidates assembled at Magdalen College, and led by Lord Curzon, the
+Chancellor, and clad in their academic plumage, filed in radiant
+procession to the Sheldonian Theater, a group of men such as the world
+seldom sees collected together. The London Standard said of it:
+    So brilliant and so interesting was the list of those who had been
+    selected by Oxford University on Convocation to receive degrees,
+    'honoris causa', in this first year of Lord Curzon's chancellorship,
+    that it is small wonder that the Sheldonian Theater was besieged
+    today at an early hour.
+
+    Shortly after 11 o'clock the organ started playing the strains of
+    "God Save the King," and at once a great volume of sound arose as
+    the anthem was taken up by the undergraduates and the rest of the
+    assemblage. Every one stood up as, headed by the mace of office,
+    the procession slowly filed into the theater, under the leadership
+    of Lord Curzon, in all the glory of his robes of office, the long
+    black gown heavily embroidered with gold, the gold-tasseled mortar-
+    board, and the medals on his breast forming an admirable setting,
+    thoroughly in keeping with the dignity and bearing of the late
+    Viceroy of India. Following him came the members of Convocation, a
+    goodly number consisting of doctors of divinity, whose robes of
+    scarlet and black enhanced the brilliance of the scene. Robes of
+    salmon and scarlet-which proclaim the wearer to be a doctor of civil
+    law--were also seen in numbers, while here and there was a gown of
+    gray and scarlet, emblematic of the doctorate of science or of
+    letters.
+
+The encenia is an impressive occasion; but it is not a silent one. There
+is a splendid dignity about it; but there goes with it all a sort of
+Greek chorus of hilarity, the time-honored prerogative of the Oxford
+undergraduate, who insists on having his joke and his merriment at the
+expense of those honored guests. The degrees of doctor of law were
+conferred first. Prince Arthur was treated with proper dignity by the
+gallery; but when Whitelaw Reid stepped forth a voice shouted, "Where's
+your Star-spangled Banner?" and when England's Prime
+Minister-Campbell-Bannerman--came forward some one shouted, "What about
+the House of Lords?" and so they kept it up, cheering and chaffing, until
+General Booth was introduced as the "Passionate advocate of the dregs of
+the people, leader of the submerged tenth," and "general of the Salvation
+Army," when the place broke into a perfect storm of applause, a storm
+that a few minutes later became, according to the Daily News, "a
+veritable cyclone," for Mark Twain, clad in his robe of scarlet and gray,
+had been summoned forward to receive the highest academic honors which
+the world has to give. The undergraduates went wild then. There was
+such a mingling of yells and calls and questions, such as, "Have you
+brought the jumping Frog with you?" "Where is the Ascot Cup?" "Where are
+the rest of the Innocents?" that it seemed as if it would not be possible
+to present him at all; but, finally, Chancellor Curzon addressed him (in
+Latin), "Most amiable and charming sir, you shake the sides of the whole
+world with your merriment," and the great degree was conferred. If only
+Tom Sawyer could have seen him then! If only Olivia Clemens could have
+sat among those who gave him welcome! But life is not like that. There
+is always an incompleteness somewhere, and the shadow across the path.
+
+Rudyard Kipling followed--another supreme favorite, who was hailed with
+the chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," and then came Saint-Satins.
+The prize poems and essays followed, and then the procession of newly
+created doctors left the theater with Lord Curzon at their head. So it
+was all over-that for which, as he said, he would have made the journey
+to Mars. The world had nothing more to give him now except that which he
+had already long possessed-its honor and its love.
+
+The newly made doctors were to be the guests of Lord Curzon at All Souls
+College for luncheon. As they left the theater (according to Sidney
+Lee):
+
+    The people in the streets singled out Mark Twain, formed a vast and
+    cheering body-guard around him and escorted him to the college
+    gates. But before and after the lunch it was Mark Twain again whom
+    everybody seemed most of all to want to meet. The Maharajah of
+    Bikanir, for instance, finding himself seated at lunch next to Mrs.
+    Riggs (Kate Douglas Wiggin), and hearing that she knew Mark Twain,
+    asked her to present him a ceremony duly performed later on the
+    quadrangle. At the garden-party given the same afternoon in the
+    beautiful grounds of St. John's, where the indefatigable Mark put
+    in an appearance, it was just the same--every one pressed forward
+    for an exchange of greetings and a hand-shake. On the following
+    day, when the Oxford pageant took place, it was even more so. "Mark
+    Twain's Pageant," it was called by one of the papers.--[There was a
+    dinner that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistaken
+    information, Clemens wore black evening dress when he should have
+    worn his scarlet gown. "When I arrived," he said, "the place was
+    just a conflagration--a kind of human prairie-fire. I looked as out
+    of place as a Presbyterian in hell."]
+
+Clemens remained the guest of Robert Porter, whose house was besieged
+with those desiring a glimpse of their new doctor of letters. If he went
+on the streets he was instantly recognized by some newsboy or cabman or
+butcher-boy, and the word ran along like a cry of fire, while the crowds
+assembled.
+
+At a luncheon which the Porters gave him the proprietor of the catering
+establishment garbed himself as a waiter in order to have the distinction
+of serving Mark Twain, and declared it to have been the greatest moment
+of his life. This gentleman--for he was no less than that--was a man
+well-read, and his tribute was not inspired by mere snobbery. Clemens,
+learning of the situation, later withdrew from the drawing-room for a
+talk with him.
+
+"I found," he said, "that he knew about ten or fifteen times as much
+about my books as I knew about them myself."
+
+Mark Twain viewed the Oxford pageant from a box with Rudyard Kipling and
+Lord Curzon, and as they sat there some one passed up a folded slip of
+paper, on the outside of which was written, "Not true." Opening it, they
+read:
+
+       East is East and West is West,
+       And never the Twain shall meet,
+
+         --a quotation from Kipling.
+
+They saw the panorama of history file by, a wonderful spectacle which
+made Oxford a veritable dream of the Middle Ages. The lanes and streets
+and meadows were thronged with such costumes as Oxford had seen in its
+long history. History was realized in a manner which no one could
+appreciate more fully than Mark Twain.
+
+"I was particularly anxious to see this pageant," he said, "so that I
+could get ideas for my funeral procession, which I am planning on a large
+scale."
+
+He was not disappointed; it was a realization to him of all the gorgeous
+spectacles that his soul had dreamed from youth up.
+
+He easily recognized the great characters of history as they passed by,
+and he was recognized by them in turn; for they waved to him and bowed
+and sometimes called his name, and when he went down out of his box, by
+and by, Henry VIII. shook hands with him, a monarch he had always
+detested, though he was full of friendship for him now; and Charles I.
+took off his broad, velvet-plumed hat when they met, and Henry II. and
+Rosamond and Queen Elizabeth all saluted him--ghosts of the dead
+centuries.
+
+
+
+
+CCLIX
+
+LONDON SOCIAL HONORS
+
+We may not detail all the story of that English visit; even the path of
+glory leads to monotony at last. We may only mention a few more of the
+great honors paid to our unofficial ambassador to the world: among them a
+dinner given to members of the Savage Club by the Lord Mayor of London at
+the Mansion House, also a dinner given by the American Society at the
+Hotel Cecil in honor of the Fourth of July. Clemens was the guest of
+honor, and responded to the toast given by Ambassador Reid, "The Day we
+Celebrate." He made an amusing and not altogether unserious reference to
+the American habit of exploding enthusiasm in dangerous fireworks.
+
+To English colonists he gave credit for having established American
+independence, and closed:
+
+    We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own,
+    and that is the memorable proclamation issued forty years ago by
+    that great American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and
+    beautiful tribute--Abraham Lincoln: a proclamation which not only
+    set the black slave free, but set his white owner free also. The
+    owner was set free from that burden and offense, that sad condition
+    of things where he was in so many instances a master and owner of
+    slaves when he did not want to be. That proclamation set them all
+    free. But even in this matter England led the way, for she had set
+    her slaves free thirty years before, and we but followed her
+    example. We always follow her example, whether it is good or bad.
+    And it was an English judge, a century ago, that issued that other
+    great proclamation, and established that great principle, that when
+    a slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he
+    may, sets his foot upon English soil his fetters, by that act, fall
+    away and he is a free man before the world!
+
+    It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of
+    them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
+    Emancipation Proclamation; and let us not forget that we owe this
+    debt to her. Let us be able to say to old England, this great-
+    hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our Fourths
+    of July, that we love and that we honor and revere; you gave us the
+    Declaration of Independence, which is the charter of our rights;
+    you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Champion and Protector
+    of Anglo-Saxon Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most
+    honestly thank you for them.
+
+It was at this dinner that he characteristically confessed, at last, to
+having stolen the Ascot Cup.
+
+He lunched one day with Bernard Shaw, and the two discussed the
+philosophies in which they were mutually interested. Shaw regarded
+Clemens as a sociologist before all else, and gave it out with great
+frankness that America had produced just two great geniuses--Edgar Allan
+Poe and Mark Twain. Later Shaw wrote him a note, in which he said:
+
+I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works
+as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts
+of Voltaire. I tell you so because I am the author of a play in which a
+priest says, "Telling the truth's the funniest joke in the world," a
+piece of wisdom which you helped to teach me.
+
+Clemens saw a great deal of Moberly Bell. The two lunched and dined
+privately together when there was opportunity, and often met at the
+public gatherings.
+
+The bare memorandum of the week following July Fourth will convey
+something of Mark Twain's London activities:
+
+    Friday, July 5. Dined with Lord and Lady Portsmouth.
+
+    Saturday, July 6. Breakfasted at Lord Avebury's. Lord Kelvin, Sir
+    Charles Lyell, and Sir Archibald Geikie were there. Sat 22 times
+    for photos, 16 at Histed's. Savage Club dinner in the evening.
+    White suit. Ascot Cup.
+
+    Sunday, July 7. Called on Lady Langattock and others. Lunched with
+    Sir Norman Lockyer.
+
+    Monday, July 8. Lunched with Plasmon directors at Bath Club. Dined
+    privately at C. F. Moberly Bell's.
+
+    Tuesday, July 9. Lunched at the House with Sir Benjamin Stone.
+    Balfour and Komura were the other guests of honor. Punch dinner in
+    the evening. Joy Agnew and the cartoon.
+
+    Wednesday, July 10. Went to Liverpool with Tay Pay. Attended
+    banquet in the Town Hall in the evening.
+
+    Thursday, July 11. Returned to London with Tay Pay. Calls in the
+    afternoon.
+
+The Savage Club would inevitably want to entertain him on its own
+account, and their dinner of July 6th was a handsome, affair. He felt at
+home with the Savages, and put on white for the only time publicly in
+England. He made them one of his reminiscent speeches, recalling his
+association with them on his first visit to London, thirty-seven years
+before. Then he said:
+
+    That is a long time ago, and as I had come into a very strange land,
+    and was with friends, as I could see, that has always remained in my
+    mind as a peculiarly blessed evening, since it brought me into
+    contact with men of my own kind and my own feelings. I am glad to
+    be here, and to see you all, because it is very likely that I shall
+    not see you again. I have been received, as you know, in the most
+    delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It
+    keeps me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they
+    do seem to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can
+    appreciate it higher than I do.
+
+The club gave him a surprise in the course of the evening. A note was
+sent to him accompanied by a parcel, which, when opened, proved to
+contain a gilded plaster replica of the Ascot Gold Cup. The note said:
+
+    Dere Mark, i return the Cup. You couldn't keep your mouth shut
+    about it. 'Tis 2 pretty 2 melt, as you want me 2; nest time I work
+    a pinch ile have a pard who don't make after-dinner speeches.
+
+There was a postcript which said: "I changed the acorn atop for another
+nut with my knife." The acorn was, in fact, replaced by a well-modeled
+head of Mark Twain.
+
+So, after all, the Ascot Cup would be one of the trophies which he would
+bear home with him across the Atlantic.
+
+Probably the most valued of his London honors was the dinner given to him
+by the staff of Punch. Punch had already saluted him with a front-page
+cartoon by Bernard Partridge, a picture in which the presiding genius of
+that paper, Mr. Punch himself, presents him with a glass of the
+patronymic beverage with the words, "Sir, I honor myself by drinking your
+health. Long life to you--and happiness--and perpetual youth!"
+
+Mr. Agnew, chief editor; Linley Sambourne, Francis Burnand, Henry Lucy,
+and others of the staff welcomed him at the Punch offices at 10 Bouverie
+Street, in the historic Punch dining-room where Thackeray had sat, and
+Douglas Jerrold, and so many of the great departed. Mark Twain was the
+first foreign visitor to be so honored--in fifty years the first stranger
+to sit at the sacred board--a mighty distinction. In the course of the
+dinner they gave him a pretty surprise, when little joy Agnew presented
+him with the original drawing of Partridge's cartoon.
+
+Nothing could have appealed to him more, and the Punch dinner, with its
+associations and that dainty presentation, remained apart in his memory
+from all other feastings.
+
+Clemens had intended to return early in July, but so much was happening
+that he postponed his sailing until the 13th. Before leaving America, he
+had declined a dinner offered by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool.
+
+Repeatedly urged to let Liverpool share in his visit, he had reconsidered
+now, and on the day following the Punch dinner, on July 10th, they
+carried him, with T. P. O'Connor (Tay Pay) in the Prince of Wales's
+special coach to Liverpool, to be guest of honor at the reception and
+banquet which Lord Mayor Japp tendered him at the Town Hall. Clemens was
+too tired to be present while the courses were being served, but arrived
+rested and fresh to respond to his toast. Perhaps because it was his
+farewell speech in England, he made that night the most effective address
+of his four weeks' visit--one of the most effective of his whole career:
+He began by some light reference to the Ascot Cup and the Dublin Jewels
+and the State Regalia, and other disappearances that had been laid to his
+charge, to amuse his hearers, and spoke at greater length than usual, and
+with even greater variety. Then laying all levity aside, he told them,
+like the Queen of Sheba, all that was in his heart.
+
+    . . . Home is dear to us all, and now I am departing to my own
+    home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest
+    honor that has ever fallen to my share of this life's prizes. It is
+    the very one I would have chosen, as outranking all and any others,
+    the one more precious to me than any and all others within the gift
+    of man or state. During my four weeks' sojourn in England I have
+    had another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which has
+    flowed serenely along, without halt or obstruction, through all
+    these twenty-six days, a most moving and pulse-stirring honor--the
+    heartfelt grip of the hand, and the welcome that does not descend
+    from the pale-gray matter of the brain, but rushes up with the red
+    blood from the heart. It makes me proud and sometimes it makes me
+    humble, too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident from
+    Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was a
+    presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop
+    engaged in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he was
+    always hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just to
+    hear himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One day a majestic
+    Indiaman came plowing by with course on course of canvas towering
+    into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors, her hull
+    burdened to the Plimsoll line with a rich freightage of precious
+    spices, lading the breezes with gracious and mysterious odors of the
+    Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of course
+    the little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail,
+    "Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence and whither?" In a deep
+    and thunderous bass the answer came back through the speaking-
+    trumpet, "The Begum, of Bengal--142 days out from Canton--homeward
+    bound! What ship is that?" Well, it just crushed that poor little
+    creature's vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, "Only the
+    Mary Ann, fourteen hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point
+    --with nothing to speak of!" Oh, what an eloquent word that "only,"
+    to express the depths of his humbleness! That is just my case.
+    During just one hour in the twenty-four--not more--I pause and
+    reflect in the stillness of the night with the echoes of your
+    English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble.
+    Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the
+    Mary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware;
+    but during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency
+    rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am a
+    stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas and
+    laden with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to any
+    wandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunate
+    days on this old mother soil seem to be multiplied by six, and I am
+    the Begum, of Bengal, 142 days out from Canton--homeward bound!
+
+He returned to London, and with one of his young acquaintances, an
+American--he called her Francesca--paid many calls. It took the
+dreariness out of that social function to perform it in that way. With a
+list of the calls they were to make they drove forth each day to cancel
+the social debt. They paid calls in every walk of life. His young
+companion was privileged to see the inside of London homes of almost
+every class, for he showed no partiality; he went to the homes of the
+poor and the rich alike. One day they visited the home of an old
+bookkeeper whom he had known in 1872 as a clerk in a large establishment,
+earning a salary of perhaps a pound a week, who now had risen mightily,
+for he had become head bookkeeper in that establishment on a salary of
+six pounds a week, and thought it great prosperity and fortune for his
+old age.
+
+He sailed on July 13th for home, besought to the last moment by a crowd
+of autograph-seekers and reporters and photographers, and a multitude who
+only wished to see him and to shout and wave good-by. He was sailing
+away from them for the last time. They hoped he would make a speech, but
+that would not have been possible. To the reporters he gave a farewell
+message: "It has been the most enjoyable holiday I have ever had, and I
+am sorry the end of it has come. I have met a hundred, old friends, and
+I have made a hundred new ones. It is a good kind of riches to have;
+there is none better, I think." And the London Tribune declared that
+"the ship that bore him away had difficulty in getting clear, so thickly
+was the water strewn with the bay-leaves of his triumph. For Mark Twain
+has triumphed, and in his all-too-brief stay of a month has done more for
+the cause of the world's peace than will be accomplished by the Hague
+Conference. He has made the world laugh again."
+
+His ship was the Minnetonka, and there were some little folks aboard to
+be adopted as grandchildren. On July 5th, in a fog, the Minnetonka
+collided with the bark Sterling, and narrowly escaped sinking her. On
+the whole, however, the homeward way was clear, and the vessel reached
+New York nearly a day in advance of their schedule. Some ceremonies of
+welcome had been prepared for him; but they were upset by the early
+arrival, so that when he descended the gang-plank to his native soil only
+a few who had received special information were there to greet him. But
+perhaps he did not notice it. He seldom took account of the absence of
+such things. By early afternoon, however, the papers rang with the
+announcement that Mark Twain was home again.
+
+It is a sorrow to me that I was not at the dock to welcome him. I had
+been visiting in Elmira, and timed my return for the evening of the a 2d,
+to be on hand the following morning, when the ship was due. When I saw
+the announcement that he had already arrived I called a greeting over the
+telephone, and was told to come down and play billiards. I confess I
+went with a certain degree of awe, for one could not but be overwhelmed
+with the echoes of the great splendor he had so recently achieved, and I
+prepared to sit a good way off in silence, and hear something of the tale
+of this returning conqueror; but when I arrived he was already in the
+billiard-room knocking the balls about--his coat off, for it was a hot
+night. As I entered he said:
+
+"Get your cue. I have been inventing a new game." And I think there
+were scarcely ten words exchanged before we were at it. The pageant was
+over; the curtain was rung down. Business was resumed at the old stand.
+
+
+
+
+CCLX
+
+MATTERS PSYCHIC AND OTHERWISE
+
+He returned to Tuxedo and took up his dictations, and mingled freely with
+the social life; but the contrast between his recent London experience
+and his semi-retirement must have been very great. When I visited him
+now and then, he seemed to me lonely--not especially for companionship,
+but rather for the life that lay behind him--the great career which in a
+sense now had been completed since he had touched its highest point.
+There was no billiard-table at Tuxedo, and he spoke expectantly of
+getting back to town and the games there, also of the new home which was
+then building in Redding, and which would have a billiard-room where we
+could assemble daily--my own habitation being not far away. Various
+diversions were planned for Redding; among them was discussed a possible
+school of philosophy, such as Hawthorne and Emerson and Alcott had
+established at Concord.
+
+He spoke quite freely of his English experiences, but usually of the more
+amusing phases. He almost never referred to the honors that had been
+paid to him, yet he must have thought of them sometimes, and cherished
+them, for it had been the greatest national tribute ever paid to a
+private citizen; he must have known that in his heart. He spoke
+amusingly of his visit to Marie Corelli, in Stratford, and of the Holy
+Grail incident, ending the latter by questioning--in words at least--all
+psychic manifestations. I said to him:
+
+"But remember your own dream, Mr. Clemens, which presaged the death of
+your brother."
+
+He answered: "I ask nobody to believe that it ever happened. To me it is
+true; but it has no logical right to be true, and I do not expect belief
+in it." Which I thought a peculiar point of view, but on the whole
+characteristic.
+
+He was invited to be a special guest at the Jamestown Exposition on
+Fulton Day, in September, and Mr. Rogers lent him his yacht in which to
+make the trip. It was a break in the summer's monotonies, and the
+Jamestown honors must have reminded him of those in London. When he
+entered the auditorium where the services were to be held there was a
+demonstration which lasted more than five minutes. Every person in the
+hall rose and cheered, waving handkerchiefs and umbrellas. He made them
+a brief, amusing talk on Fulton and other matters, then introduced
+Admiral Harrington, who delivered a masterly address and was followed by
+Martin W. Littleton, the real orator of the day. Littleton acquitted
+himself so notably that Mark Twain conceived for him a deep admiration,
+and the two men quickly became friends. They saw each other often during
+the remainder of the Jamestown stay, and Clemens, learning that Littleton
+lived just across Ninth Street from him in New York, invited him to come
+over when he had an evening to spare and join the billiard games.
+
+So it happened, somewhat later, when every one was back in town, Mr. and
+Mrs. Littleton frequently came over for billiards, and the games became
+three-handed with an audience--very pleasant games played in that way.
+Clemens sometimes set himself up as umpire, and became critic and gave
+advice, while Littleton and I played. He had a favorite shot that he
+frequently used himself and was always wanting us to try, which was to
+drive the ball to the cushion at the beginning of the shot.
+
+He played it with a good deal of success, and achieved unexpected results
+with it. He was even inspired to write a poem on the subject.
+
+              "CUSHION FIRST"
+
+       When all your days are dark with doubt,
+       And dying hope is at its worst;
+       When all life's balls are scattered wide,
+       With not a shot in sight, to left or right,
+       Don't give it up;
+       Advance your cue and shut your eyes,
+       And take the cushion first.
+
+The Harry Thaw trial was in progress just then, and Littleton was Thaw's
+chief attorney. It was most interesting to hear from him direct the
+day's proceedings and his views of the situation and of Thaw.
+
+Littleton and billiards recall a curious thing which happened one
+afternoon. I had been absent the evening before, and Littleton had been
+over. It was after luncheon now, and Clemens and I began preparing for
+the customary games. We were playing then a game with four balls, two
+white and two red. I began by placing the red balls on the table, and
+then went around looking in the pockets for the two white cue-balls. When
+I had made the round of the table I had found but one white ball. I
+thought I must have overlooked the other, and made the round again. Then
+I said:
+
+"There is one white ball missing."
+
+Clemens, to satisfy himself, also made the round of the pockets, and
+said:
+
+"It was here last night." He felt in the pockets of the little
+white-silk coat which he usually wore, thinking that he might
+unconsciously have placed it there at the end of the last game, but his
+coat pockets were empty.
+
+He said: "I'll bet Littleton carried that ball home with him."
+
+Then I suggested that near the end of the game it might have jumped off
+the table, and I looked carefully under the furniture and in the various
+corners, but without success. There was another set of balls, and out of
+it I selected a white one for our play, and the game began. It went
+along in the usual way, the balls constantly falling into the pockets,
+and as constantly being replaced on the table. This had continued for
+perhaps half an hour, there being no pocket that had not been frequently
+occupied and emptied during that time; but then it happened that Clemens
+reached into the middle pocket, and taking out a white ball laid it in
+place, whereupon we made the discovery that three white balls lay upon
+the table. The one just taken from the pocket was the missing ball. We
+looked at each other, both at first too astonished to say anything at
+all. No one had been in the room since we began to play, and at no time
+during the play had there been more than two white balls in evidence,
+though the pockets had been emptied at the end of each shot. The pocket
+from which the missing ball had been taken had been filled and emptied
+again and again. Then Clemens said:
+
+"We must be dreaming."
+
+We stopped the game for a while to discuss it, but we could devise no
+material explanation. I suggested the kobold--that mischievous invisible
+which is supposed to play pranks by carrying off such things as pencils,
+letters, and the like, and suddenly restoring them almost before one's
+eyes. Clemens, who, in spite of his material logic, was always a mystic
+at heart, said:
+
+"But that, so far as I know, has never happened to more than one person
+at a time, and has been explained by a sort of temporary mental
+blindness. This thing has happened to two of us, and there can be no
+question as to the positive absence of the object."
+
+"How about dematerialization?"
+
+"Yes, if one of us were a medium that might be considered an
+explanation."
+
+He went on to recall that Sir Alfred Russel Wallace had written of such
+things, and cited instances which Wallace had recorded. In the end he
+said:
+
+"Well, it happened, that's all we can say, and nobody can ever convince
+me that it didn't."
+
+We went on playing, and the ball remained solid and substantial ever
+after, so far as I know.
+
+I am reminded of two more or less related incidents of this period.
+Clemens was, one morning, dictating something about his Christian Union
+article concerning Mrs. Clemens's government of children, published in
+1885. I had discovered no copy of it among the materials, and he was
+wishing very much that he could see one. Somewhat later, as he was
+walking down Fifth Avenue, the thought of this article and his desire for
+it suddenly entered his mind. Reaching the corner of Forty-second
+Street, he stopped a moment to let a jam of vehicles pass. As he did so
+a stranger crossed the street, noticed him, and came dodging his way
+through the blockade and thrust some clippings into his hand.
+
+"Mr. Clemens," he said, "you don't know me, but here is something you may
+wish to have. I have been saving them for more than twenty years, and
+this morning it occurred to me to send them to you. I was going to mail
+them from my office, but now I will give them to you," and with a word or
+two he disappeared. The clippings were from the Christian Union of 1885,
+and were the much-desired article. Clemens regarded it as a remarkable
+case of mental telegraphy.
+
+"Or, if it wasn't that," he said, "it was a most remarkable coincidence."
+
+The other circumstance has been thought amusing. I had gone to Redding
+for a few days, and while there, one afternoon about five o'clock, fell
+over a coal-scuttle and scarified myself a good deal between the ankle
+and the knee. I mention the hour because it seems important. Next
+morning I received a note, prompted by Mr. Clemens, in which he said:
+
+Tell Paine I am sorry he fell and skinned his shin at five o'clock
+yesterday afternoon.
+
+I was naturally astonished, and immediately wrote:
+
+I did fall and skin my shin at five o'clock yesterday afternoon, but how
+did you find it out?
+
+I followed the letter in person next day, and learned that at the same
+hour on the same afternoon Clemens himself had fallen up the front steps
+and, as he said, peeled off from his "starboard shin a ribbon of skin
+three inches long." The disaster was still uppermost in his mind at the
+time of writing, and the suggestion of my own mishap had flashed out for
+no particular reason.
+
+Clemens was always having his fortune told, in one way or another, being
+superstitious, as he readily confessed, though at times professing little
+faith in these prognostics. Once when a clairvoyant, of whom he had
+never even heard, and whom he had reason to believe was ignorant of his
+family history, told him more about it than he knew himself, besides
+reading a list of names from a piece of paper which Clemens had concealed
+in his vest pocket he came home deeply impressed. The clairvoyant added
+that he would probably live to a great age and die in a foreign land--a
+prophecy which did not comfort him.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXI
+
+MINOR EVENTS AND DIVERSIONS
+
+Mark Twain was deeply interested during the autumn of 1907 in the
+Children's Theater of the Jewish Educational Alliance, on the lower East
+Side--a most worthy institution which ought to have survived. A Miss
+Alice M. Herts, who developed and directed it, gave her strength and
+health to build up an institution through which the interest of the
+children could be diverted from less fortunate amusements. She had
+interested a great body of Jewish children in the plays of Shakespeare,
+and of more modern dramatists, and these they had performed from time to
+time with great success. The admission fee to the performance was ten
+cents, and the theater was always crowded with other children--certainly
+a better diversion for them than the amusements of the street, though of
+course, as a business enterprise, the theater could not pay. It required
+patrons. Miss Herts obtained permission to play "The Prince and the
+Pauper," and Mark Twain agreed to become a sort of chief patron in using
+his influence to bring together an audience who might be willing to
+assist financially in this worthy work.
+
+"The Prince and the Pauper" evening turned out a distinguished affair. On
+the night of November 19, 1907, the hall of the Educational Alliance was
+crowded with such an audience as perhaps never before assembled on the
+East Side; the finance and the fashion of New York were there. It was a
+gala night for the little East Side performers. Behind the curtain they
+whispered to each other that they were to play before queens. The
+performance they gave was an astonishing one. So fully did they enter
+into the spirit of Tom Canty's rise to royalty that they seemed
+absolutely to forget that they were lowly-born children of the Ghetto.
+They had become little princesses and lords and maids-in-waiting, and
+they moved through their pretty tinsel parts as if all their ornaments
+were gems and their raiment cloth of gold. There was no hesitation, no
+awkwardness of speech or gesture, and they rose really to sublime heights
+in the barn scene where the little Prince is in the hands of the mob.
+Never in the history of the stage has there been assembled a mob more
+wonderful than that. These children knew mobs! A mob to them was a
+daily sight, and their reproduction of it was a thing to startle you with
+its realism. Never was it absurd; never was there a single note of
+artificiality in it. It was Hogarthian in its bigness.
+
+Both Mark Twain and Miss Herts made brief addresses, and the audience
+shouted approval of their words. It seems a pity that such a project as
+that must fail, and I do not know why it happened. Wealthy men and women
+manifested an interest; but there was some hitch somewhere, and the
+Children's Theater exists to-day only as history.--[In a letter to a Mrs.
+Amelia Dunne Hookway, who had conducted some children's plays at the
+Howland School, Chicago, Mark Twain once wrote: "If I were going to begin
+life over again I would have a children's theater and watch it, and work
+for it, and see it grow and blossom and bear its rich moral and
+intellectual fruitage; and I should get more pleasure and a saner and
+healthier profit out of my vocation than I should ever be able to get out
+of any other, constituted as I am. Yes, you are easily the most
+fortunate of women, I think."]
+
+It was at a dinner at The Players--a small, private dinner given by Mr.
+George C. Riggs-that I saw Edward L. Burlingame and Mark Twain for the
+only time together. They had often met during the forty-two years that
+had passed since their long-ago Sandwich Island friendship; but only
+incidentally, for Mr. Burlingame cared not much for great public
+occasions, and as editor of Scribner's Magazine he had been somewhat out
+of the line of Mark Twain's literary doings.
+
+Howells was there, and Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, and David Bispham, John
+Finley, Evan Shipman, Nicholas Biddle, and David Munro. Clemens told
+that night, for the first time, the story of General Miles and the
+three-dollar dog, inventing it, I believe, as he went along, though for
+the moment it certainly did sound like history. He told it often after
+that, and it has been included in his book of speeches.
+
+Later, in the cab, he said:
+
+"That was a mighty good dinner. Riggs knows how to do that sort of
+thing. I enjoyed it ever so much. Now we'll go home and play
+billiards."
+
+We began about eleven o'clock, and played until after midnight. I
+happened to be too strong for him, and he swore amazingly. He vowed that
+it was not a gentleman's game at all, that Riggs's wine had demoralized
+the play. But at the end, when we were putting up the cues, he said:
+
+"Well, those were good games. There is nothing like billiards after
+all."
+
+We did not play billiards on his birthday that year. He went to the
+theater in the afternoon; and it happened that, with Jesse Lynch
+Williams, I attended the same performance--the "Toy-Maker of Nuremberg"
+--written by Austin Strong. It proved to be a charming play, and I could
+see that Clemens was enjoying it. He sat in a box next to the stage, and
+the actors clearly were doing their very prettiest for his benefit.
+
+When later I mentioned having seen him at the play, he spoke freely of
+his pleasure in it.
+
+"It is a fine, delicate piece of work," he said. "I wish I could do such
+things as that."
+
+"I believe you are too literary for play-writing."
+
+"Yes, no doubt. There was never any question with the managers about my
+plays. They always said they wouldn't act. Howells has come pretty near
+to something once or twice. I judge the trouble is that the literary man
+is thinking of the style and quality of the thing, while the playwright
+thinks only of how it will play. One is thinking of how it will sound,
+the other of how it will look."
+
+"I suppose," I said, "the literary man should have a collaborator with a
+genius for stage mechanism. John Luther Long's exquisite plays would
+hardly have been successful without David Belasco to stage them. Belasco
+cannot write a play himself, but in the matter of acting construction his
+genius is supreme."
+
+"Yes, so it is; it was Belasco who made it possible to play 'The Prince
+and the Pauper'--a collection of literary garbage before he got hold of
+it."
+
+Clemens attended few public functions now. He was beset with
+invitations, but he declined most of them. He told the dog story one
+night to the Pleiades Club, assembled at the Brevoort; but that was only
+a step away, and we went in after the dining was ended and came away
+before the exercises were concluded.
+
+He also spoke at a banquet given to Andrew Carnegie--Saint Andrew, as he
+called him--by the Engineers Club, and had his usual fun at the chief
+guest's expense.
+
+    I have been chief guest at a good many banquets myself, and I know
+    what brother Andrew is feeling like now. He has been receiving
+    compliments and nothing but compliments, but he knows that there is
+    another side to him that needs censure.
+
+    I am going to vary the complimentary monotony. While we have all
+    been listening to the complimentary talk Mr. Carnegie's face has
+    scintillated with fictitious innocence. You'd think he never
+    committed a crime in his life. But he has.
+
+    Look at his pestiferous simplified spelling. Imagine the calamity
+    on two sides of the ocean when he foisted his simplified spelling on
+    the whole human race. We've got it all now so that nobody could
+    spell . . . .
+
+    If Mr. Carnegie had left spelling alone we wouldn't have had any
+    spots on the sun, or any San Francisco quake, or any business
+    depression.
+
+    There, I trust he feels better now and that he has enjoyed my abuse
+    more than he did his compliments. And now that I think I have him
+    smoothed down and feeling comfortable I just want to say one thing
+    more--that his simplified spelling is all right enough, but, like
+    chastity, you can carry it too far.
+
+As he was about to go, Carnegie called his attention to the beautiful
+souvenir bronze and gold-plated goblets that stood at each guest's plate.
+Carnegie said:
+
+"The club had those especially made at Tiffany's for this occasion. They
+cost ten dollars apiece."
+
+Clemens sand: "Is that so? Well, I only meant to take my own; but if
+that's the case I'll load my cab with them."
+
+We made an attempt to reform on the matter of billiards. The continued
+strain of late hours was doing neither of us any particular good. More
+than once I journeyed into the country on one errand and another, mainly
+for rest; but a card saying that he was lonely and upset, for lack of his
+evening games, quickly brought me back again. It was my wish only to
+serve him; it was a privilege and an honor to give him happiness.
+
+Billiards, however, was not his only recreation just then. He walked out
+a good deal, and especially of a pleasant Sunday morning he liked the
+stroll up Fifth Avenue. Sometimes we went as high as Carnegie's, on
+Ninety-second Street, and rode home on top of the electric stage--always
+one of Mark Twain's favorite diversions.
+
+From that high seat he liked to look down on the panorama of the streets,
+and in that free, open air he could smoke without interference. Oftener,
+however, we turned at Fifty-ninth Street, walking both ways.
+
+When it was pleasant we sometimes sat on a bench in Central Park; and
+once he must have left a handkerchief there, for a few days later one of
+his handkerchiefs came to him accompanied by a note. Its finder, a Mr.
+Lockwood, received a reward, for Mark Twain wrote him:
+
+    There is more rejoicing in this house over that one handkerchief
+    that was lost and is found again than over the ninety and nine that
+    never went to the wash at all. Heaven will reward you, I know it
+    will.
+
+On Sunday mornings the return walk would be timed for about the hour that
+the churches would be dismissed. On the first Sunday morning we had
+started a little early, and I thoughtlessly suggested, when we reached
+Fifty-ninth Street, that if we returned at once we would avoid the
+throng. He said, quietly:
+
+"I like the throng."
+
+So we rested in the Plaza Hotel until the appointed hour. Men and women
+noticed him, and came over to shake his hand. The gigantic man in
+uniform; in charge of the carriages at the door, came in for a word. He
+had opened carriages for Mr. Clemens at the Twenty-third Street station,
+and now wanted to claim that honor. I think he received the most cordial
+welcome of any one who came. I am sure he did. It was Mark Twain's way
+to warm to the man of the lower social rank. He was never too busy,
+never too preoccupied, to grasp the hand of such a man; to listen to his
+story, and to say just the words that would make that man happy
+remembering them.
+
+We left the Plaza Hotel and presently were amid the throng of outpouring
+congregations. Of course he was the object on which every passing eye
+turned; the presence to which every hat was lifted. I realized that this
+open and eagerly paid homage of the multitude was still dear to him, not
+in any small and petty way, but as the tribute of a nation, the
+expression of that affection which in his London and Liverpool speeches
+he had declared to be the last and final and most precious reward that
+any man can win, whether by character or achievement. It was his final
+harvest, and he had the courage to claim it--the aftermath of all his
+years of honorable labor and noble living.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXII
+
+FROM MARK TWAIN's MAIL
+
+If the reader has any curiosity as to some of the less usual letters
+which a man of wide public note may inspire, perhaps he will find a
+certain interest in a few selected from the thousands which yearly came
+to Mark Twain.
+
+For one thing, he was constantly receiving prescriptions and remedies
+whenever the papers reported one of his bronchial or rheumatic attacks.
+It is hardly necessary to quote examples of these, but only a form of his
+occasional reply, which was likely to be in this wise:
+
+    DEAR SIR [or MADAM],--I try every remedy sent to me. I am now on
+    No. 87. Yours is 2,653. I am looking forward to its beneficial
+    results.
+
+Of course a large number of the nostrums and palliatives offered were
+preparations made by the wildest and longest-haired medical cranks. One
+of these sent an advertisement of a certain Elixir of Life, which was
+guaranteed to cure everything--to "wash and cleanse the human molecules,
+and so restore youth and preserve life everlasting."
+
+Anonymous letters are not usually popular or to be encouraged, but Mark
+Twain had an especial weakness for compliments that came in that way.
+They were not mercenary compliments. The writer had nothing to gain. Two
+such letters follow--both written in England just at the time of his
+return.
+
+    MARK TWAIN.
+
+    DEAR SIR,--Please accept a poor widow's good-by and kindest wishes.
+    I have had some of your books sent to me; have enjoyed them very
+    much--only wish I could afford to buy some.
+
+    I should very much like to have seen you. I have many photos of you
+    which I have cut from several papers which I read. I have one where
+    you are writing in bed, which I cut from the Daily News. Like
+    myself, you believe in lots of sleep and rest. I am 70 and I find I
+    need plenty. Please forgive the liberty I have taken in writing to
+    you. If I can't come to your funeral may we meet beyond the river.
+
+    May God guard you, is the wish of a lonely old widow.
+                  Yours sincerely,
+
+The other letter also tells its own story:
+
+    DEAR, KIND MARK TWAIN,--For years I have wanted to write and thank
+    you for the comfort you were to me once, only I never quite knew
+    where you were, and besides I did not want to bother you; but to-day
+    I was told by some one who saw you going into the lift at the Savoy
+    that you looked sad and I thought it might cheer you a little tiny
+    bit to hear how you kept a poor lonely girl from ruining her eyes
+    with crying every night for long months.
+
+    Ten years ago I had to leave home and earn my living as a governess
+    and Fate sent me to spend a winter with a very dull old country
+    family in the depths of Staffordshire. According to the genial
+    English custom, after my five charges had gone to bed, I took my
+    evening meal alone in the school-room, where "Henry Tudor had supped
+    the night before Bosworth," and there I had to stay without a soul
+    to speak to till I went to bed. At first I used to cry every night,
+    but a friend sent me a copy of your Huckleberry Finn and I never
+    cried any more. I kept him handy under the copy-books and maps, and
+    when Henry Tudor commenced to stretch out his chilly hands toward me
+    I grabbed my dear Huck and he never once failed me; I opened him at
+    random and in two minutes I was in another world. That's why I am
+    so grateful to you and so fond of you, and I thought you might like
+    to know; for it is yourself that has the kind heart, as is easily
+    seen from the way you wrote about the poor old nigger. I am a
+    stenographer now and live at home, but I shall never forget how you
+    helped me. God bless you and spare you long to those you are dear
+    to.
+
+A letter which came to him soon after his return from England contained a
+clipping which reported the good work done by Christian missionaries in
+the Congo, especially among natives afflicted by the terrible sleeping
+sickness. The letter itself consisted merely of a line, which said:
+
+    Won't you give your friends, the missionaries, a good mark for this?
+
+The writer's name was signed, and Mark Twain answered:
+
+    In China the missionaries are not wanted, & so they ought to be
+    decent & go away. But I have not heard that in the Congo the
+    missionary servants of God are unwelcome to the native.
+
+    Evidently those missionaries axe pitying, compassionate, kind. How
+    it would improve God to take a lesson from them! He invented &
+    distributed the germ of that awful disease among those helpless,
+    poor savages, & now He sits with His elbows on the balusters & looks
+    down & enjoys this wanton crime. Confidently, & between you & me
+    --well, never mind, I might get struck by lightning if I said it.
+
+    Those are good and kindly men, those missionaries, but they are a
+    measureless satire upon their Master.
+
+To which the writer answered:
+
+    O wicked Mr. Clemens! I have to ask Saint Joan of Arc to pray for
+    you; then one of these days, when we all stand before the Golden
+    Gates and we no longer "see through a glass darkly and know only in
+    part," there will be a struggle at the heavenly portals between Joan
+    of Arc and St. Peter, but your blessed Joan will conquer and she'll
+    lead Mr. Clemens through the gates of pearl and apologize and plead
+    for him.
+
+Of the letters that irritated him, perhaps the following is as fair a
+sample as any, and it has additional interest in its sequel.
+
+    DEAR SIR,--I have written a book--naturally--which fact, however,
+    since I am not your enemy, need give you no occasion to rejoice.
+    Nor need you grieve, though I am sending you a copy. If I knew of
+    any way of compelling you to read it I would do so, but unless the
+    first few pages have that effect I can do nothing. Try the first
+    few pages. I have done a great deal more than that with your books,
+    so perhaps you owe me some thing--say ten pages. If after that
+    attempt you put it aside I shall be sorry--for you.
+
+    I am afraid that the above looks flippant--but think of the
+    twitterings of the soul of him who brings in his hand an unbidden
+    book, written by himself. To such a one much is due in the way of
+    indulgence. Will you remember that? Have you forgotten early
+    twitterings of your own?
+
+In a memorandum made on this letter Mark Twain wrote:
+
+    Another one of those peculiarly depressing letters--a letter cast in
+    artificially humorous form, whilst no art could make the subject
+    humorous--to me.
+
+Commenting further, he said:
+
+    As I have remarked before about one thousand times the coat of arms
+    of the human race ought to consist of a man with an ax on his
+    shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to represent
+    the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one
+    another; for we are all beggars, each in his own way. One beggar is
+    too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction into
+    society; another does not care for society, but he wants a
+    postmastership; another will inveigle a lawyer into conversation and
+    then sponge on him for free advice. The man who wouldn't do any of
+    these things will beg for the Presidency. Each admires his own
+    dignity and greatly guards it, but in his opinion the others haven't
+    any.
+
+    Mendicancy is a matter of taste and temperament, no doubt, but no
+    human being is without some form of it. I know my own form, you
+    know yours. Let us conceal them from view and abuse the others.
+    There is no man so poor but what at intervals some man comes to him
+    with an ax to grind. By and by the ax's aspect becomes familiar to
+    the proprietor of the grindstone. He perceives that it is the same
+    old ax. If you are a governor you know that the stranger wants an
+    office. The first time he arrives you are deceived; he pours out
+    such noble praises of you and your political record that you are
+    moved to tears; there's a lump in your throat and you are thankful
+    that you have lived for this happiness. Then the stranger discloses
+    his ax, and you are ashamed of yourself and your race. Six
+    repetitions will cure you. After that you interrupt the compliments
+    and say, "Yes, yes, that's all right; never mind about that. What
+    is it you want?"
+
+    But you and I are in the business ourselves. Every now and then we
+    carry our ax to somebody and ask a whet. I don't carry mine to
+    strangers--I draw the line there; perhaps that is your way. This is
+    bound to set us up on a high and holy pinnacle and make us look down
+    in cold rebuke on persons who carry their axes to strangers.
+
+    I do not know how to answer that stranger's letter. I wish he had
+    spared me. Never mind about him--I am thinking about myself. I
+    wish he had spared me. The book has not arrived yet; but no matter,
+    I am prejudiced against it.
+
+It was a few days later that he added:
+
+    I wrote to that man. I fell back upon the old Overworked, polite
+    lie, and thanked him for his book and said I was promising myself
+    the pleasure of reading it. Of course that set me free; I was not
+    obliged to read it now at all, and, being free, my prejudice was
+    gone, and as soon as the book came I opened it to see what it was
+    like. I was not able to put it down until I had finished. It was
+    an embarrassing thing to have to write to that man and confess that
+    fact, but I had to do it. That first letter was merely a lie. Do
+    you think I wrote the second one to give that man pleasure? Well, I
+    did, but it was second-hand pleasure. I wrote it first to give
+    myself comfort, to make myself forget the original lie.
+
+Mark Twain's interest was once aroused by the following:
+
+    DEAR SIR,--I have had more or less of your works on my shelves for
+    years, and believe I have practically a complete set now. This is
+    nothing unusual, of course, but I presume it will seem to you
+    unusual for any one to keep books constantly in sight which the
+    owner regrets ever having read.
+
+    Every time my glance rests on the books I do regret having read
+    them, and do not hesitate to tell you so to your face, and care not
+    who may know my feelings. You, who must be kept busy attending to
+    your correspondence, will probably pay little or no attention to
+    this small fraction of it, yet my reasons, I believe, are sound and
+    are probably shared by more people than you are aware of.
+
+    Probably you will not read far enough through this to see who has
+    signed it, but if you do, and care to know why I wish I had left
+    your work unread, I will tell you as briefly as possible if you will
+    ask me.
+                            GEORGE B. LAUDER.
+
+Clemens did not answer the letter, but put it in his pocket, perhaps
+intending to do so, and a few days later, in Boston, when a reporter
+called, he happened to remember it. The reporter asked permission to
+print the queer document, and it appeared in his Mark Twain interview
+next morning. A few days later the writer of it sent a second letter,
+this time explaining:
+
+    MY DEAR SIR,--I saw in to-day's paper a copy of the letter which I
+    wrote you October 26th.
+
+    I have read and re-read your works until I can almost recall some of
+    them word for word. My familiarity with them is a constant source
+    of pleasure which I would not have missed, and therefore the regret
+    which I have expressed is more than offset by thankfulness.
+
+    Believe me, the regret which I feel for having read your works is
+    entirely due to the unalterable fact that I can never again have the
+    pleasure of reading them for the first time.
+
+                  Your sincere admirer,
+                            GEORGE B. LADDER.
+
+Mark Twain promptly replied this time:
+    DEAR SIR, You fooled me completely; I didn't divine what the letter
+    was concealing, neither did the newspaper men, so you are a very
+    competent deceiver.
+                     Truly yours,
+                                S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+It was about the end of 1907 that the new St. Louis Harbor boat, was
+completed. The editor of the St. Louis Republic reported that it has
+been christened "Mark Twain," and asked for a word of comment. Clemens
+sent this line:
+
+    May my namesake follow in my righteous footsteps, then neither of us
+    will need any fire insurance.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXIII
+
+SOME LITERARY LUNCHEONS
+
+Howells, in his book, refers to the Human Race Luncheon Club, which
+Clemens once organized for the particular purpose of damning the species
+in concert. It was to consist, beside Clemens himself, of Howells,
+Colonel Harvey, and Peter Dunne; but it somehow never happened that even
+this small membership could be assembled while the idea was still fresh,
+and therefore potent.
+
+Out of it, however, grew a number of those private social gatherings
+which Clemens so dearly loved--small luncheons and dinners given at his
+own table. The first of these came along toward the end of 1907, when
+Howells was planning to spend the winter in Italy.
+
+"Howells is going away," he said, "and I should like to give him a
+stag-party. We'll enlarge the Human Race Club for the occasion."
+
+So Howells, Colonel Harvey, Martin Littleton, Augustus Thomas, Robert
+Porter, and Paderewski were invited. Paderewski was unable to come, and
+seven in all assembled.
+
+Howells was first to arrive.
+
+"Here comes Howells," Clemens said. "Old Howells a thousand years old."
+
+But Howells didn't look it. His face was full of good-nature and
+apparent health, and he was by no means venerable, either in speech or
+action. Thomas, Porter, Littleton, and Harvey drifted in. Cocktails
+were served and luncheon was announced.
+
+Claude, the butler, had prepared the table with fine artistry--its center
+a mass of roses. There was to be no woman in the neighborhood--Clemens
+announced this fact as a sort of warrant for general freedom of
+expression.
+
+Thomas's play, "The Witching Hour," was then at the height of its great
+acceptance, and the talk naturally began there. Thomas told something of
+the difficulty which he found in being able to convince a manager that it
+would succeed, and declared it to be his own favorite work. I believe
+there was no dissenting opinion as to its artistic value, or concerning
+its purpose and psychology, though these had been the stumbling-blocks
+from a managerial point of view.
+
+When the subject was concluded, and there had come a lull, Colonel
+Harvey, who was seated at Clemens's left, said:
+
+"Uncle Mark"--he often called him that--"Major Leigh handed me a report
+of the year's sales just as I was leaving. It shows your royalty returns
+this year to be very close to fifty thousand dollars. I don't believe
+there is another such return from old books on record."
+
+This was said in an undertone, to Clemens only, but was overheard by one
+or two of those who sat nearest. Clemens was not unwilling to repeat it
+for the benefit of all, and did so. Howells said:
+
+"A statement like that arouses my basest passions. The books are no
+good; it's just the advertising they get."
+
+Clemens said: "Yes, my contract compels the publisher to advertise. It
+costs them two hundred dollars every time they leave the advertisement
+out of the magazines."
+
+"And three hundred every time we put it in," said Harvey. "We often
+debate whether it is more profitable to put in the advertisement or to
+leave it out."
+
+The talk switched back to plays and acting. Thomas recalled an incident
+of Beerbohm Tree's performance of "Hamlet." W. S. Gilbert, of
+light-opera celebrity, was present at a performance, and when the play
+ended Mrs. Tree hurried over to him and said:
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gilbert, what did you think of Mr. Tree's rendition of Hamlet?"
+"Remarkable," said Gilbert. "Funny without being vulgar."
+
+It was with such idle tales and talk-play that the afternoon passed. Not
+much of it all is left to me, but I remember Howells saying, "Did it ever
+occur to you that the newspapers abolished hell? Well, they did--it was
+never done by the church. There was a consensus of newspaper opinion
+that the old hell with its lake of fire and brimstone was an antiquated
+institution; in fact a dead letter." And again, "I was coming down
+Broadway last night, and I stopped to look at one of the street-venders
+selling those little toy fighting roosters. It was a bleak, desolate
+evening; nobody was buying anything, and as he pulled the string and kept
+those little roosters dancing and fighting his remarks grew more and more
+cheerless and sardonic.
+
+"'Japanese game chickens,' he said; 'pretty toys, amuse the children with
+their antics. Child of three can operate it. Take them home for
+Christmas. Chicken-fight at your own fireside.' I tried to catch his eye
+to show him that I understood his desolation and sorrow, but it was no
+use. He went on dancing his toy chickens, and saying, over and over,
+'Chicken-fight at your own fireside.'"
+
+The luncheon over, we wandered back into the drawing-room, and presently
+all left but Colonel Harvey. Clemens and the Colonel went up to the
+billiard-room and engaged in a game of cushion caroms, at twenty-five
+cents a game. I was umpire and stakeholder, and it was a most
+interesting occupation, for the series was close and a very cheerful one.
+It ended the day much to Mark Twain's satisfaction, for he was oftenest
+winner. That evening he said:
+
+"We will repeat that luncheon; we ought to repeat it once a month.
+Howells will be gone, but we must have the others. We cannot have a
+thing like that too often."
+
+There was, in fact, a second stag-luncheon very soon after, at which
+George Riggs was present and that rare Irish musician, Denis O'Sullivan.
+It was another choice afternoon, with a mystical quality which came of
+the music made by O'Sullivan on some Hindu reeds-pipes of Pan. But we
+shall have more of O'Sullivan presently--all too little, for his days
+were few and fleeting.
+
+Howells could not get away just yet. Colonel Harvey, who, like James
+Osgood, would not fail to find excuse for entertainment, chartered two
+drawing-room cars, and with Mrs. Harvey took a party of fifty-five or
+sixty congenial men and women to Lakewood for a good-by luncheon to
+Howells. It was a day borrowed from June, warm and beautiful.
+
+The trip down was a sort of reception. Most of the guests were
+acquainted, but many of them did not often meet. There was constant
+visiting back and forth the full length of the two coaches. Denis
+O'Sullivan was among the guests. He looked in the bloom of health, and
+he had his pipes and played his mystic airs; then he brought out the
+tin-whistle of Ireland, and blew such rollicking melodies as capering
+fairies invented a long time ago. This was on the train going down.
+
+There was a brief program following the light-hearted feasting--an
+informal program fitting to that sunny day. It opened with some
+recitations by Miss Kitty Cheatham; then Colonel Harvey introduced
+Howells, with mention of his coming journey. As a rule, Howells does not
+enjoy speaking. He is willing to read an address on occasion, but he has
+owned that the prospect of talking without his notes terrifies him. This
+time, however, there was no reluctance, though he had prepared no speech.
+He was among friends. He looked even happy when he got on his feet, and
+he spoke like a happy man. He talked about Mark Twain. It was all
+delicate, delicious chaffing which showed Howells at his very best--all
+too short for his listeners.
+
+Clemens, replying, returned the chaff, and rambled amusingly among his
+fancies, closing with a few beautiful words of "Godspeed and safe return"
+to his old comrade and friend.
+
+Then once more came Denis and his pipes. No one will ever forget his
+part of the program. The little samples we had heard on the train were
+expanded and multiplied and elaborated in a way that fairly swept his
+listeners out of themselves into that land where perhaps Denis himself
+wanders playing now; for a month later, strong and lusty and beautiful as
+he seemed that day, he suddenly vanished from among us and his reeds were
+silent. It never occurred to us then that Denis could die; and as he
+finished each melody and song there was a shout for a repetition, and I
+think we could have sat there and let the days and years slip away
+unheeded, for time is banished by music like that, and one wonders if it
+might not even divert death.
+
+It was dark when we crossed the river homeward; the myriad lights from
+heaven-climbing windows made an enchanted city in the sky. The evening,
+like the day, was warm, and some of the party left the ferry-cabin to
+lean over and watch the magic spectacle, the like of which is not to be
+found elsewhere on the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXIV
+
+"CAPTAIN STORMFIELD" IN PRINT
+
+During the forty years or so that had elapsed since the publication of
+the "Gates Ajar" and the perpetration of Mark Twain's intended burlesque,
+built on Captain Ned Wakeman's dream, the Christian religion in its more
+orthodox aspects had undergone some large modifications. It was no
+longer regarded as dangerous to speak lightly of hell, or even to suggest
+that the golden streets and jeweled architecture of the sky might be
+regarded as symbols of hope rather than exhibits of actual bullion and
+lapidary construction. Clemens re-read his extravaganza, Captain
+Stormfields Visit to Heaven, gave it a modernizing touch here and there,
+and handed it to his publishers, who must have agreed that it was no
+longer dangerous, for it was promptly accepted and appeared in the
+December and January numbers (1907-8) of Harper's Magazine, and was also
+issued as a small book. If there were any readers who still found it
+blasphemous, or even irreverent, they did not say so; the letters that
+came--and they were a good many--expressed enjoyment and approval, also
+(some of them) a good deal of satisfaction that Mark Twain "had returned
+to his earlier form."
+
+The publication of this story recalled to Clemens's mind another heresy
+somewhat similar which he had written during the winter of 1891 and 1892
+in Berlin. This was a dream of his own, in which he had set out on a
+train with the evangelist Sam Jones and the Archbishop of Canterbury for
+the other world. He had noticed that his ticket was to a different
+destination than the Archbishop's, and so, when the prelate nodded and
+finally went to sleep, he changed the tickets in their hats with
+disturbing results. Clemens thought a good deal of this fancy when he
+wrote it, and when Mrs. Clemens had refused to allow it to be printed he
+had laboriously translated it into German, with some idea of publishing
+it surreptitiously; but his conscience had been too much for him. He had
+confessed, and even the German version had been suppressed.
+
+Clemens often allowed his fancy to play with the idea of the orthodox
+heaven, its curiosities of architecture, and its employments of
+continuous prayer, psalm-singing, and harpistry.
+
+"What a childish notion it was," he said, "and how curious that only a
+little while ago human beings were so willing to accept such fragile
+evidences about a place of so much importance. If we should find
+somewhere to-day an ancient book containing an account of a beautiful and
+blooming tropical Paradise secreted in the center of eternal icebergs--an
+account written by men who did not even claim to have seen it themselves
+--no geographical society on earth would take any stock in that book, yet
+that account would be quite as authentic as any we have of heaven. If
+God has such a place prepared for us, and really wanted us to know it, He
+could have found some better way than a book so liable to alterations and
+misinterpretation. God has had no trouble to prove to man the laws of
+the constellations and the construction of the world, and such things as
+that, none of which agree with His so-called book. As to a hereafter, we
+have not the slightest evidence that there is any--no evidence that
+appeals to logic and reason. I have never seen what to me seemed an atom
+of proof that there is a future life."
+
+Then, after a long pause, he added:
+
+"And yet--I am strongly inclined to expect one."
+
+
+
+
+CCLXV
+
+LOTOS CLUB HONORS
+
+It was on January 11, 1908, that Mark Twain was given his last great
+banquet by the Lotos Club. The club was about to move again, into
+splendid new quarters, and it wished to entertain him once more in its
+old rooms.
+
+He wore white, and amid the throng of black-clad men was like a white
+moth among a horde of beetles. The room fairly swarmed with them, and
+they seemed likely to overwhelm him.
+
+President Lawrence was toast-master of the evening, and he ended his
+customary address by introducing Robert Porter, who had been Mark Twain's
+host at Oxford. Porter told something of the great Oxford week, and
+ended by introducing Mark Twain. It had been expected that Clemens would
+tell of his London experiences. Instead of doing this, he said he had
+started a new kind of collection, a collection of compliments. He had
+picked up a number of valuable ones abroad and some at home. He read
+selections from them, and kept the company going with cheers and
+merriment until just before the close of his speech. Then he repeated,
+in his most impressive manner, that stately conclusion of his Liverpool
+speech, and the room became still and the eyes of his hearers grew dim.
+It may have been even more moving than when originally given, for now the
+closing words, "homeward bound," had only the deeper meaning.
+
+Dr. John MacArthur followed with a speech that was as good a sermon as
+any he ever delivered, and closed it by saying:
+
+"I do not want men to prepare for heaven, but to prepare to remain on
+earth, and it is such men as Mark Twain who make other men not fit to
+die, but fit to live."
+
+Andrew Carnegie also spoke, and Colonel Harvey, and as the speaking ended
+Robert Porter stepped up behind Clemens and threw over his shoulders the
+scarlet Oxford robe which had been surreptitiously brought, and placed
+the mortar-board cap upon his head, while the diners vociferated their
+approval. Clemens was quite calm.
+
+"I like this," he said, when the noise had subsided. "I like its
+splendid color. I would dress that way all the time, if I dared."
+
+In the cab going home I mentioned the success of his speech, how well it
+had been received.
+
+"Yes," he said; "but then I have the advantage of knowing now that I am
+likely to be favorably received, whatever I say. I know that my
+audiences are warm and responseful. It is an immense advantage to feel
+that. There are cold places in almost every speech, and if your audience
+notices them and becomes cool, you get a chill yourself in those zones,
+and it is hard to warm up again. Perhaps there haven't been so many
+lately; but I have been acquainted with them more than once." And then I
+could not help remembering that deadly Whittier birthday speech of more
+than thirty years before--that bleak, arctic experience from beginning to
+end.
+
+"We have just time for four games," he said, as we reached the
+billiard-room; but there was no sign of stopping when the four games were
+over. We were winning alternately, and neither noted the time. I was
+leaving by an early train, and was willing to play all night. The
+milk-wagons were rattling outside when he said:
+
+"Well, perhaps we'd better quit now. It seems pretty early, though." I
+looked at my watch. It was quarter to four, and we said good night.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXVI
+
+A WINTER IN BERMUDA
+
+Edmund Clarence Stedman died suddenly at his desk, January 18, 1908, and
+Clemens, in response to telegrams, sent this message:
+
+I do not wish to talk about it. He was a valued friend from days that
+date back thirty-five years. His loss stuns me and unfits me to speak.
+
+He recalled the New England dinners which he used to attend, and where he
+had often met Stedman.
+
+"Those were great affairs," he said. "They began early, and they ended
+early. I used to go down from Hartford with the feeling that it wasn't
+an all-night supper, and that it was going to be an enjoyable time.
+Choate and Depew and Stedman were in their prime then--we were all young
+men together. Their speeches were always worth listening to. Stedman
+was a prominent figure there. There don't seem to be any such men now
+--or any such occasions."
+
+Stedman was one of the last of the old literary group. Aldrich had died
+the year before. Howells and Clemens were the lingering "last leaves."
+
+Clemens gave some further luncheon entertainments to his friends, and
+added the feature of "doe" luncheons--pretty affairs where, with Clara
+Clemens as hostess, were entertained a group of brilliant women, such as
+Mrs. Kate Douglas Riggs, Geraldine Farrax, Mrs. Robert Collier, Mrs.
+Frank Doubleday, and others. I cannot report those luncheons, for I was
+not present, and the drift of the proceedings came to me later in too
+fragmentary a form to be used as history; but I gathered from Clemens
+himself that he had done all of the talking, and I think they must have
+been very pleasant afternoons. Among the acknowledgments that followed
+one of these affairs is this characteristic word-play from Mrs. Riggs:
+
+    N. B.--A lady who is invited to and attends a doe luncheon is, of
+    course, a doe. The question is, if she attends two doe luncheons in
+    succession is she a doe-doe? If so is she extinct and can never
+    attend a third?
+
+Luncheons and billiards, however, failed to give sufficient brightness to
+the dull winter days, or to insure him against an impending bronchial
+attack, and toward the end of January he sailed away to Bermuda, where
+skies were bluer and roadsides gay with bloom. His sojourn was brief
+this time, but long enough to cure him, he said, and he came back full of
+happiness. He had been driving about over the island with a newly
+adopted granddaughter, little Margaret Blackmer, whom he had met one
+morning in the hotel dining-room. A part of his dictated story will
+convey here this pretty experience.
+
+    My first day in Bermuda paid a dividend--in fact a double dividend:
+    it broke the back of my cold and it added a jewel to my collection.
+    As I entered the breakfast-room the first object I saw in that
+    spacious and far-reaching place was a little girl seated solitary at
+    a table for two. I bent down over her and patted her cheek and
+    said:
+
+    "I don't seem to remember your name; what is it?"
+
+    By the sparkle in her brown eyes it amused her. She said:
+
+    "Why, you've never known it, Mr. Clemens, because you've never seen
+    me before."
+
+    "Why, that is true, now that I come to think; it certainly is true,
+    and it must be one of the reasons why I have forgotten your name.
+    But I remember it now perfectly--it's Mary."
+
+    She was amused again; amused beyond smiling; amused to a chuckle,
+    and she said:
+
+    "Oh no, it isn't; it's Margaret."
+
+    I feigned to be ashamed of my mistake and said:
+
+    "Ah, well, I couldn't have made that mistake a few years ago; but I
+    am old, and one of age's earliest infirmities is a damaged memory;
+    but I am clearer now--clearer-headed--it all comes back to me just
+    as if it were yesterday. It's Margaret Holcomb."
+
+    She was surprised into a laugh this time, the rippling laugh that a
+    happy brook makes when it breaks out of the shade into the sunshine,
+    and she said:
+
+    "Oh, you are wrong again; you don't get anything right. It isn't
+    Holcomb, it's Blackmer."
+
+    I was ashamed again, and confessed it; then:
+
+    "How old are you, dear?"
+
+    "Twelve; New-Year's. Twelve and a month."
+
+    We were close comrades-inseparables, in fact-for eight days. Every
+    day we made pedestrian excursions--called them that anyway, and
+    honestly they were intended for that, and that is what they would
+    have been but for the persistent intrusion of a gray and grave and
+    rough-coated donkey by the name of Maud. Maud was four feet long;
+    she was mounted on four slender little stilts, and had ears that
+    doubled her altitude when she stood them up straight. Her tender
+    was a little bit of a cart with seat room for two in it, and you
+    could fall out of it without knowing it, it was so close to the
+    ground. This battery was in command of a nice, grave, dignified,
+    gentlefaced little black boy whose age was about twelve, and whose
+    name, for some reason or other, was Reginald. Reginald and Maud--I
+    shall not easily forget those names, nor the combination they stood
+    for. The trips going and coming were five or six miles, and it
+    generally took us three hours to make it. This was because Maud set
+    the pace. Whenever she detected an ascending grade she respected
+    it; she stopped and said with her ears:
+
+    "This is getting unsatisfactory. We will camp here."
+
+    The whole idea of these excursions was that Margaret and I should
+    employ them for the gathering of strength, by walking, yet we were
+    oftener in the cart than out of it. She drove and I superintended.
+    In the course of the first excursions I found a beautiful little
+    shell on the beach at Spanish Point; its hinge was old and dry, and
+    the two halves came apart in my hand. I gave one of them to
+    Margaret and said:
+
+    "Now dear, sometime or other in the future I shall run across you
+    somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will
+    be some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself
+    'I know that this is a Margaret by the look of her, but I don't know
+    for sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else's'; but, no
+    matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my half shell out of
+    my pocket and say, 'I think you are my Margaret, but I am not
+    certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of
+    this shell.'"
+
+    Next morning when I entered the breakfast-room and saw the child I
+    approached and scanned her searchingly all over, then said, sadly:
+
+    "No, I am mistaken; it looks like my Margaret,--but it isn't, and I
+    am so sorry. I shall go away and cry now."
+
+    Her eyes danced triumphantly, and she cried out:
+
+    "No, you don't have to. There!" and she fetched out the identifying
+    shell.
+
+    I was beside myself with gratitude and joyful surprise, and revealed
+    it from every pore. The child could not have enjoyed this thrilling
+    little drama more if we had been playing it on the stage. Many
+    times afterward she played the chief part herself, pretending to be
+    in doubt as to my identity and challenging me to produce my half of
+    the shell. She was always hoping to catch me without it, but I
+    always defeated that game--wherefore she came to recognize at last
+    that I was not only old, but very smart.
+
+Sometimes, when they were not walking or driving, they sat on the
+veranda, and he prepared history-lessons for little Margaret by making
+grotesque figures on cards with numerous legs and arms and other
+fantastic symbols end features to fix the length of some king's reign.
+For William the Conqueror, for instance, who reigned twenty-one years, he
+drew a figure of eleven legs and ten arms. It was the proper method of
+impressing facts upon the mind of a child. It carried him back to those
+days at Elmira when he had arranged for his own little girls the game of
+kings. A Miss Wallace, a friend of Margaret's, and usually one of the
+pedestrian party, has written a dainty book of those Bermudian days.
+--[Mark Twain and the Happy Islands, by Elizabeth Wallace.]
+
+Miss Wallace says:
+
+    Margaret felt for him the deep affection that children have for an
+    older person who understands them and treats them with respect. Mr.
+    Clemens never talked down to her, but considered her opinions with a
+    sweet dignity.
+
+There were some pretty sequels to the shell incident. After Mark Twain
+had returned to New York, and Margaret was there, she called one day with
+her mother, and sent up her card. He sent back word, saying:
+
+    "I seem to remember the name; but if this is really the person whom
+    I think it is she can identify herself by a certain shell I once
+    gave her, of which I have the other half. If the two halves fit, I
+    shall know that this is the same little Margaret that I remember."
+
+The message went down, and the other half of the shell was promptly sent
+up. Mark Twain had the two half-shells incised firmly in gold, and one
+of these he wore on his watch-fob, and sent the other to Margaret.
+
+He afterward corresponded with Margaret, and once wrote her:
+
+    I'm already making mistakes. When I was in New York, six weeks ago,
+    I was on a corner of Fifth Avenue and I saw a small girl--not a big
+    one--start across from the opposite corner, and I exclaimed to
+    myself joyfully, "That is certainly my Margaret!" so I rushed to
+    meet her. But as she came nearer I began to doubt, and said to
+    myself, "It's a Margaret--that is plain enough--but I'm afraid it is
+    somebody else's." So when I was passing her I held my shell so she
+    couldn't help but see it. Dear, she only glanced at it and passed
+    on! I wondered if she could have overlooked it. It seemed best to
+    find out; so I turned and followed and caught up with her, and said,
+    deferentially; "Dear Miss, I already know your first name by the
+    look of you, but would you mind telling me your other one?" She was
+    vexed and said pretty sharply, "It's Douglas, if you're so anxious
+    to know. I know your name by your looks, and I'd advise you to shut
+    yourself up with your pen and ink and write some more rubbish. I am
+    surprised that they allow you to run' at large. You are likely to
+    get run over by a baby-carriage any time. Run along now and don't
+    let the cows bite you."
+
+    What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I didn't
+    smile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She was
+    from the country, of course, and didn't know what a comical blunder.
+    she was making.
+
+Mr. Rogers's health was very poor that winter, and Clemens urged him to
+try Bermuda, and offered to go back with him; so they sailed away to the
+summer island, and though Margaret was gone, there was other entertaining
+company--other granddaughters to be adopted, and new friends and old
+friends, and diversions of many sorts. Mr. Rogers's son-in-law, William
+Evarts Benjamin, came down and joined the little group. It was one of
+Mark Twain's real holidays. Mr. Rogers's health improved rapidly, and
+Mark Twain was in fine trim. To Mrs. Rogers, at the end of the first
+week, he wrote:
+
+    DEAR MRS. ROGERS, He is getting along splendidly! This was the very
+    place for him. He enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat.
+
+    But he will get a backset if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the
+    brightest man in these regions, & the best company. Bright? He is
+    much more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intensely
+    alive.
+
+    With love & all good wishes.
+                            S. L. C.
+
+Mark Twain and Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They
+were often referred to as "the King" and "the Rajah," and it was always a
+question whether it was "the King" who took care of "the Rajah," or vice
+versa. There was generally a group to gather around them, and Clemens
+was sure of an attentive audience, whether he wanted to air his
+philosophies, his views of the human race, or to read aloud from the
+verses of Kipling.
+
+"I am not fond of all poetry," he would say; "but there's something in
+Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just about my level."
+
+Miss Wallace recalls certain Kipling readings in his room, when his
+friends gathered to listen.
+
+    On those Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one.
+    The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose
+    windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of
+    asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the
+    hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and
+    Mark Twain in the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch)
+    still in his white serge suit, with the light from the jet shining
+    down on the crown of his silver hair, making it gleam and glisten
+    like frosted threads.
+
+In one hand he held his book, in the other he had his pipe, which he used
+principally to gesture with in the most dramatic passages.
+
+Margaret's small successors became the earliest members of the Angel Fish
+Club, which Clemens concluded to organize after a visit to the
+spectacular Bermuda aquarium. The pretty angel-fish suggested youth and
+feminine beauty to him, and his adopted granddaughters became angel-fish
+to him from that time forward. He bought little enamel angel-fish pins,
+and carried a number of them with him most of the time, so that he could
+create membership on short notice. It was just another of the harmless
+and happy diversions of his gentler side. He was always fond of youth
+and freshness. He regarded the decrepitude of old age as an unnecessary
+part of life. Often he said:
+
+"If I had been helping the Almighty when, He created man, I would have
+had Him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How
+much better it would have been to start old and have all the bitterness
+and blindness of age in the beginning! One would not mind then if he
+were looking forward to a joyful youth. Think of the joyous prospect of
+growing young instead of old! Think of looking forward to eighteen
+instead of eighty! Yes, the Almighty made a poor job of it. I wish He
+had invited my assistance."
+
+To one of the angel fish he wrote, just after his return:
+
+    I miss you, dear. I miss Bermuda, too, but not so much as I miss
+    you; for you were rare, and occasional and select, and Ltd.; whereas
+    Bermuda's charms and, graciousnesses were free and common and
+    unrestricted--like the rain, you know, which falls upon the just and
+    the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were
+    superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and
+    sweetly upon the just, but whenever I caught a sample of the unjust
+    outdoors I would drown him.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXVII
+
+VIEWS AND ADDRESSES
+
+    [As I am beginning this chapter, April 16, 1912, the news comes of
+    the loss, on her first trip, of the great White Star Line steamer
+    Titanic, with the destruction of many passengers, among whom are
+    Frank D. Millet, William T. Stead, Isadore Straus, John Jacob Astor,
+    and other distinguished men. They died as heroes, remaining with
+    the ship in order that the women and children might be saved.
+
+    It was the kind of death Frank Millet would have wished to die.
+    He was always a soldier--a knight. He has appeared from time to
+    time in these pages, for he was a dear friend of the Clemens
+    household. One of America's foremost painters; at the time of his
+    death he was head of the American Academy of Arts in Rome.]
+
+Mark Twain made a number of addresses during the spring of 1908. He spoke
+at the Cartoonists' dinner, very soon after his return from Bermuda; he
+spoke at the Booksellers' banquet, expressing his debt of obligation to
+those who had published and sold his books; he delivered a fine address
+at the dinner given by the British Schools and University Club at
+Delmonico's, May 25th, in honor of Queen Victoria's birthday. In that
+speech he paid high tribute to the Queen for her attitude toward America,
+during the crisis of the Civil Wax, and to her royal consort, Prince
+Albert.
+
+    What she did for us in America in our time of storm and stress we
+    shall not forget, and whenever we call it to mind we shall always
+    gratefully remember the wise and righteous mind that guided her in
+    it and sustained and supported her--Prince Albert's. We need not
+    talk any idle talk here to-night about either possible or impossible
+    war between two countries; there will be no war while we remain sane
+    and the son of Victoria and Albert sits upon the throne. In
+    conclusion, I believe I may justly claim to utter the voice of my
+    country in saying that we hold him in deep honor, and also in
+    cordially wishing him a long life and a happy reign.
+
+But perhaps his most impressive appearance was at the dedication of the
+great City College (May 14, 1908), where President John Finley, who had
+been struggling along with insufficient room, was to have space at last
+for his freer and fuller educational undertakings. A great number of
+honored scholars, statesmen, and diplomats assembled on the college
+campus, a spacious open court surrounded by stately college architecture
+of medieval design. These distinguished guests were clad in their
+academic robes, and the procession could not have been widely different
+from that one at Oxford of a year before. But there was something rather
+fearsome about it, too. A kind of scaffolding had been reared in the
+center of the campus for the ceremonies; and when those grave men in
+their robes of state stood grouped upon it the picture was strikingly
+suggestive of one of George Cruikshank's drawings of an execution scene
+at the Tower of London. Many of the robes were black--these would be the
+priests--and the few scarlet ones would be the cardinals who might have
+assembled for some royal martyrdom. There was a bright May sunlight over
+it all, one of those still, cool brightnesses which served to heighten
+the weird effect. I am sure that others felt it besides myself, for
+everybody seemed wordless and awed, even at times when there was no
+occasion for silence. There was something of another age about the whole
+setting, to say the least.
+
+We left the place in a motor-car, a crowd of boys following after. As
+Clemens got in they gathered around the car and gave the college yell,
+ending with "Twain! Twain! Twain!" and added three cheers for Tom
+Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. They called for a speech, but
+he only said a few words in apology for not granting their request. He
+made a speech to them that night at the Waldorf--where he proposed for
+the City College a chair of citizenship, an idea which met with hearty
+applause.
+
+In the same address he referred to the "God Trust" motto on the coins,
+and spoke approvingly of the President's order for its removal.
+
+    We do not trust in God, in the important matters of life, and not
+    even a minister of the Gospel will take any coin for a cent more
+    than its accepted value because of that motto. If cholera should
+    ever reach these shores we should probably pray to be delivered from
+    the plague, but we would put our main trust in the Board of Health.
+
+Next morning, commenting on the report of this speech, he said:
+
+"If only the reporters would not try to improve on what I say. They seem
+to miss the fact that the very art of saying a thing effectively is in
+its delicacy, and as they can't reproduce the manner and intonation in
+type they make it emphatic and clumsy in trying to convey it to the
+reader."
+
+I pleaded that the reporters were often young men, eager, and unmellowed
+in their sense of literary art.
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "they are so afraid their readers won't see my good
+points that they set up red flags to mark them and beat a gong. They
+mean well, but I wish they wouldn't do it."
+
+He referred to the portion of his speech concerning the motto on the
+coins. He had freely expressed similar sentiments on other public
+occasions, and he had received a letter criticizing him for saying that
+we do not really trust in God in any financial matter.
+
+"I wanted to answer it," he said; "but I destroyed it. It didn't seem
+worth noticing."
+
+I asked how the motto had originated.
+
+"About 1853 some idiot in Congress wanted to announce to the world that
+this was a religious nation, and proposed putting it there, and no other
+Congressman had courage enough to oppose it, of course. It took courage
+in those days to do a thing like that; but I think the same thing would
+happen to-day."
+
+"Still the country has become broader. It took a brave man before the
+Civil War to confess he had read the 'Age of Reason'."
+
+"So it did, and yet that seems a mild book now. I read it first when I
+was a cub pilot, read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its
+fearlessness and wonderful power. I read it again a year or two ago, for
+some reason, and was amazed to see how tame it had become. It seemed
+that Paine was apologizing everywhere for hurting the feelings of the
+reader."
+
+He drifted, naturally, into a discussion of the Knickerbocker Trust
+Company's suspension, which had tied up some fifty-five thousand dollars
+of his capital, and wondered how many were trusting in God for the return
+of these imperiled sums. Clemens himself, at this time, did not expect
+to come out whole from that disaster. He had said very little when the
+news came, though it meant that his immediate fortunes were locked up,
+and it came near stopping the building activities at Redding. It was
+only the smaller things of life that irritated him. He often met large
+calamities with a serenity which almost resembled indifference. In the
+Knickerbocker situation he even found humor as time passed, and wrote a
+number of gay letters, some of which found their way into print.
+
+It should be added that in the end there was no loss to any of the
+Knickerbocker depositors.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXVIII
+
+REDDING
+
+The building of the new home at Redding had been going steadily forward
+for something more than a year. John Mead Howells had made the plans; W.
+W. Sunderland and his son Philip, of Danbury, Connecticut, were the
+builders, and in the absence of Miss Clemens, then on a concert tour,
+Mark Twain's secretary, Miss I. V. Lyon, had superintended the
+furnishing.
+
+"Innocence at Home," as the place was originally named, was to be ready
+for its occupant in June, with every detail in place, as he desired. He
+had never visited Redding; he had scarcely even glanced at the plans or
+discussed any of the decorations of the new home. He had required only
+that there should be one great living-room for the orchestrelle, and
+another big room for the billiard-table, with plenty of accommodations
+for guests. He had required that the billiard-room be red, for something
+in his nature answered to the warm luxury of that color, particularly in
+moments of diversion. Besides, his other billiard-rooms had been red,
+and such association may not be lightly disregarded. His one other
+requirement was that the place should be complete.
+
+"I don't want to see it," he said, "until the cat is purring on the
+hearth."
+
+Howells says:
+
+"He had grown so weary of change, and so indifferent to it, that he was
+without interest."
+
+But it was rather, I think, that he was afraid of losing interest by
+becoming wearied with details which were likely to exasperate him; also,
+he wanted the dramatic surprise of walking into a home that had been
+conjured into existence as with a word.
+
+It was expected that the move would be made early in the month; but there
+were delays, and it was not until the 18th of June that he took
+possession.
+
+The plan, at this time, was only to use the Redding place as a summer
+residence, and the Fifth Avenue house was not dismantled. A few days
+before the 18th the servants, with one exception, were taken up to the
+new house, Clemens and myself remaining in the loneliness of No. 21,
+attending to the letters in the morning and playing billiards the rest of
+the time, waiting for the appointed day and train. It was really a
+pleasant three days. He invented a new game, and we were riotous and
+laughed as loudly as we pleased. I think he talked very little of the
+new home which he was so soon to see. It was referred to no oftener than
+once or twice a day, and then I believe only in connection with certain
+of the billiard-room arrangements. I have wondered since what picture of
+it he could have had in his mind, for he had never seen a photograph. He
+had a general idea that it was built upon a hill, and that its
+architecture was of the Italian villa order. I confess I had moments of
+anxiety, for I had selected the land for him, and had been more or less
+accessory otherwise. I did not really worry, for I knew how beautiful
+and peaceful it all was; also something of his taste and needs.
+
+It had been a dry spring, and country roads were dusty, so that those who
+were responsible had been praying for rain, to be followed by a pleasant
+day for his arrival. Both petitions were granted; June 18th would fall
+on Thursday, and Monday night there came a good, thorough, and refreshing
+shower that washed the vegetation clean and laid the dust. The morning
+of the 18th was bright and sunny and cool. Clemens was up and shaved by
+six o'clock in order to be in time, though the train did not leave until
+four in the afternoon--an express newly timed to stop at Redding--its
+first trip scheduled for the day of Mark Twain's arrival.
+
+We were still playing billiards when word was brought up that the cab was
+waiting. My daughter, Louise, whose school on Long Island had closed
+that day, was with us. Clemens wore his white flannels and a Panama hat,
+and at the station a group quickly collected, reporters and others, to
+interview him and speed him to his new home. He was cordial and
+talkative, and quite evidently full of pleasant anticipation. A reporter
+or two and a special photographer came along, to be present at his
+arrival.
+
+The new, quick train, the green, flying landscape, with glimpses of the
+Sound and white sails, the hillsides and clear streams becoming rapidly
+steeper and dearer as we turned northward: all seemed to gratify him, and
+when he spoke at all it was approvingly. The hour and a half required to
+cover the sixty miles of distance seemed very short. As the train slowed
+down for the Redding station, he said:
+
+"We'll leave this box of candy"--he had bought a large box on the way
+--"those colored porters sometimes like candy, and we can get some more."
+
+He drew out a great handful of silver.
+
+"Give them something--give everybody liberally that does any service."
+
+There was a sort of open-air reception in waiting. Redding had
+recognized the occasion as historic. A varied assemblage of vehicles
+festooned with flowers had gathered to offer a gallant country welcome.
+
+It was now a little before six o'clock of that long June day, still and
+dreamlike; and to the people assembled there may have been something
+which was not quite reality in the scene. There was a tendency to be
+very still. They nodded, waved their hands to him, smiled, and looked
+their fill; but a spell lay upon them, and they did not cheer. It would
+have been a pity if they had done so. A noise, and the illusion would
+have been shattered.
+
+His carriage led away on the three-mile drive to the house on the
+hilltop, and the floral turnout fell in behind. No first impression of a
+fair land could have come at a sweeter time. Hillsides were green,
+fields were white with daisies, dog-wood and laurel shone among the
+trees. And over all was the blue sky, and everywhere the fragrance of
+June.
+
+He was very quiet as we drove along. Once with gentle humor, looking
+over a white daisy field, he said:
+
+"That is buckwheat. I always recognize buckwheat when I see it. I wish
+I knew as much about other things as I know about buckwheat. It seems to
+be very plentiful here; it even grows by the roadside." And a little
+later: "This is the kind of a road I like; a good country road through
+the woods."
+
+The water was flowing over the mill-dam where the road crosses the
+Saugatuck, and he expressed approval of that clear, picturesque little
+river, one of those charming Connecticut streams. A little farther on a
+brook cascaded down the hillside, and he compared it with some of the
+tiny streams of Switzerland, I believe the Giessbach. The lane that led
+to the new home opened just above, and as he entered the leafy way he
+said, "This is just the kind of a lane I like," thus completing his
+acceptance of everything but the house and the location.
+
+The last of the procession had dropped away at the entrance of the lane,
+and he was alone with those who had most anxiety for his verdict. They
+had not long to wait. As the carriage ascended higher to the open view
+he looked away, across the Saugatuck Valley to the nestling village and
+church-spire and farm-houses, and to the distant hills, and declared the
+land to be a good land and beautiful--a spot to satisfy one's soul. Then
+came the house--simple and severe in its architecture--an Italian villa,
+such as he had known in Florence, adapted now to American climate and
+needs. The scars of building had not all healed yet, but close to the
+house waved green grass and blooming flowers that might have been there
+always. Neither did the house itself look new. The soft, gray stucco
+had taken on a tone that melted into the sky and foliage of its
+background. At the entrance his domestic staff waited to greet him, and
+then he stepped across the threshold into the wide hall and stood in his
+own home for the first time in seventeen years. It was an anxious
+moment, and no one spoke immediately. But presently his eye had taken in
+the satisfying harmony of the place and followed on through the wide
+doors that led to the dining-room--on through the open French windows to
+an enchanting vista of tree-tops and distant farmside and blue hills. He
+said, very gently:
+
+"How beautiful it all is? I did not think it could be as beautiful as
+this."
+
+He was taken through the rooms; the great living-room at one end of the
+hall--a room on the walls of which there was no picture, but only
+color-harmony--and at the other end of the hall, the splendid, glowing
+billiard-room, where hung all the pictures in which he took delight. Then
+to the floor above, with its spacious apartments and a continuation of
+color--welcome and concord, the windows open to the pleasant evening
+hills. When he had seen it all--the natural Italian garden below the
+terraces; the loggia, whose arches framed landscape vistas and formed a
+rare picture-gallery; when he had completed the round and stood in the
+billiard-room--his especial domain--once more he said, as a final
+verdict:
+
+"It is a perfect house--perfect, so far as I can see, in every detail. It
+might have been here always."
+
+He was at home there from that moment--absolutely, marvelously at home,
+for he fitted the setting perfectly, and there was not a hitch or flaw in
+his adaptation. To see him over the billiard-table, five minutes later,
+one could easily fancy that Mark Twain, as well as the house, had "been
+there always." Only the presence of his daughters was needed now to
+complete his satisfaction in everything.
+
+There were guests that first evening--a small home dinner-party--and so
+perfect were the appointments and service, that one not knowing would
+scarcely have imagined it to be the first dinner served in that lovely
+room. A little later; at the foot of the garden of bay and cedar,
+neighbors, inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located near by, set
+off some fireworks. Clemens stepped out on the terrace and saw rockets
+climbing through the summer sky to announce his arrival.
+
+"I wonder why they all go to so much trouble for me," he said, softly. "I
+never go to any trouble for anybody"--a statement which all who heard it,
+and all his multitude of readers in every land, stood ready to deny.
+
+That first evening closed with billiards--boisterous, triumphant
+billiards--and when with midnight the day ended and the cues were set in
+the rack, there was none to say that Mark Twain's first day in his new
+home had not been a happy one.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXIX
+
+FIRST DAYS AT STORMFIELD
+
+I went up next afternoon, for I knew how he dreaded loneliness. We
+played billiards for a time, then set out for a walk, following the long
+drive to the leafy lane that led to my own property. Presently he said:
+
+"In one way I am sorry I did not see this place sooner. I never want to
+leave it again. If I had known it was so beautiful I should have vacated
+the house in town and moved up here permanently."
+
+I suggested that he could still do so, if he chose, and he entered
+immediately into the idea. By and by we turned down a deserted road,
+grassy and beautiful, that ran along his land. At one side was a slope
+facing the west, and dotted with the slender, cypress-like cedars of New
+England. He had asked if that were part of his land, and on being told
+it was he said:
+
+"I would like Howells to have a house there. We must try to give that to
+Howells."
+
+At the foot of the hill we came to a brook and followed it into a meadow.
+I told him that I had often caught fine trout there, and that soon I
+would bring in some for breakfast. He answered:
+
+"Yes, I should like that. I don't care to catch them any more myself. I
+like them very hot."
+
+We passed through some woods and came out near my own ancient little
+house. He noticed it and said:
+
+"The man who built that had some memory of Greece in his mind when he put
+on that little porch with those columns."
+
+My second daughter, Frances, was coming from a distant school on the
+evening train, and the carriage was starting just then to bring her. I
+suggested that perhaps he would find it pleasant to make the drive.
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "I should enjoy that."
+
+So I took the reins, and he picked up little Joy, who came running out
+just then, and climbed into the back seat. It was another beautiful
+evening, and he was in a talkative humor. Joy pointed out a small turtle
+in the road, and he said:
+
+"That is a wild turtle. Do you think you could teach it arithmetic?"
+
+Joy was uncertain.
+
+"Well," he went on, "you ought to get an arithmetic--a little ten-cent
+arithmetic--and teach that turtle."
+
+We passed some swampy woods, rather dim and junglelike.
+
+"Those," he said, "are elephant woods."
+
+But Joy answered:
+
+"They are fairy woods. The fairies are there, but you can't see them
+because they wear magic cloaks."
+
+He said: "I wish I had one of those magic cloaks, sometimes. I had one
+once, but it is worn out now."
+
+Joy looked at him reverently, as one who had once been the owner of a
+piece of fairyland.
+
+It was a sweet drive to and from the village. There are none too many
+such evenings in a lifetime. Colonel Harvey's little daughter, Dorothy,
+came up a day or two later, and with my daughter Louise spent the first
+week with him in the new home. They were created "Angel-Fishes"--the
+first in the new aquarium; that is to say, the billiard-room, where he
+followed out the idea by hanging a row of colored prints of Bermuda
+fishes in a sort of frieze around the walls. Each visiting member was
+required to select one as her particular patron fish and he wrote her
+name upon it. It was his delight to gather his juvenile guests in this
+room and teach them the science of billiard angles; but it was so
+difficult to resist taking the cue and making plays himself that he was
+required to stand on a little platform and give instruction just out of
+reach. His snowy flannels and gleaming white hair, against those rich
+red walls, with those small, summer-clad players, made a pretty picture.
+
+The place did not retain its original name. He declared that it would
+always be "Innocence at Home" to the angel-fish visitors, but that the
+title didn't remain continuously appropriate. The money which he had
+derived from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven had been used to build
+the loggia wing, and he considered the name of "Stormfield" as a
+substitute. When, presently, the summer storms gathered on that
+rock-bound, open hill, with its wide reaches of vine and shrub-wild,
+fierce storms that bent the birch and cedar, and strained at the bay and
+huckleberry, with lightning and turbulent wind and thunder, followed by
+the charging rain--the name seemed to become peculiarly appropriate.
+Standing with his head bared to the tumult, his white hair tossing in the
+blast, and looking out upon the wide splendor of the spectacle, he
+rechristened the place, and "Stormfield" it became and remained.
+
+The last day of Mark Twain's first week in Redding, June 25th, was
+saddened by the news of the death of Grover Cleveland at his home in
+Princeton, New Jersey. Clemens had always been an ardent Cleveland
+admirer, and to Mrs. Cleveland now he sent this word of condolence--
+
+    Your husband was a man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five
+    years. I mourn with you.
+
+And once during the evening he said:
+
+"He was one of our two or three real Presidents. There is none to take
+his place."
+
+
+
+
+CCLXX
+
+THE ALDRICH MEMORIAL
+
+At the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of
+the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum, which the poet's wife had
+established there in the old Aldrich homestead. It was hot weather. We
+were obliged to take a rather poor train from South Norwalk, and Clemens
+was silent and gloomy most of the way to Boston. Once there, however,
+lodged in a cool and comfortable hotel, matters improved. He had brought
+along for reading the old copy of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur Tales, and
+after dinner he took off his clothes and climbed into bed and sat up and
+read aloud from those stately legends, with comments that I wish I could
+remember now, only stopping at last when overpowered with sleep.
+
+We went on a special train to Portsmouth next morning through the summer
+heat, and assembled, with those who were to speak, in the back portion of
+the opera-house, behind the scenes: Clemens was genial and good-natured
+with all the discomfort of it; and he liked to fancy, with Howells, who
+had come over from Kittery Point, how Aldrich must be amused at the whole
+circumstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honor to his
+memory. Richard Watson Gilder was there, and Hamilton Mabie; also
+Governor Floyd of New Hampshire; Colonel Higginson, Robert Bridges, and
+other distinguished men. We got to the more open atmosphere of the stage
+presently, and the exercises began. Clemens was last on the program.
+
+The others had all said handsome, serious things, and Clemens himself had
+mentally prepared something of the sort; but when his turn came, and he
+rose to speak, a sudden reaction must have set in, for he delivered an
+address that certainly would have delighted Aldrich living, and must have
+delighted him dead, if he could hear it. It was full of the most
+charming humor, delicate, refreshing, and spontaneous. The audience,
+that had been maintaining a proper gravity throughout, showed its
+appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew presently into genuine
+waves of laughter. He spoke out his regret for having worn black
+clothes. It was a mistake, he said, to consider this a solemn time
+--Aldrich would not have wished it to be so considered. He had been a
+man who loved humor and brightness and wit, and had helped to make life
+merry and delightful. Certainly, if he could know, he would not wish
+this dedication of his own home to be a lugubrious, smileless occasion.
+Outside, when the services were ended, the venerable juvenile writer, J.
+T. Trowbridge, came up to Clemens with extended hand. Clemens said:
+"Trowbridge, are you still alive? You must be a thousand years old. Why,
+I listened to your stories while I was being rocked in the cradle."
+Trowbridge said:
+
+"Mark, there's some mistake. My earliest infant smile was wakened with
+one of your jokes."
+
+They stood side by side against a fence in the blazing sun and were
+photographed--an interesting picture.
+
+We returned to Boston that evening. Clemens did not wish to hurry in the
+summer heat, and we remained another day quietly sight-seeing, and
+driving around and around Commonwealth Avenue in a victoria in the cool
+of the evening. Once, remembering Aldrich, he said:
+
+"I was just planning Tom Sawyer when he was beginning the 'Story of a Bad
+Boy'. When I heard that he was writing that I thought of giving up mine,
+but Aldrich insisted that it would be a foolish thing to do. He thought
+my Missouri boy could not by any chance conflict with his boy of New
+England, and of course he was right."
+
+He spoke of how great literary minds usually came along in company. He
+said:
+
+"Now and then, on the stream of time, small gobs of that thing which we
+call genius drift down, and a few of these lodge at some particular
+point, and others collect about them and make a sort of intellectual
+island--a towhead, as they say on the river--such an accumulation of
+intellect we call a group, or school, and name it.
+
+"Thirty years ago there was the Cambridge group. Now there's been still
+another, which included Aldrich and Howells and Stedman and Cable. It
+will soon be gone. I suppose they will have to name it by and by."
+
+He pointed out houses here and there of people he had known and visited
+in other days. The driver was very anxious to go farther, to other and
+more distinguished sights. Clemens mildly but firmly refused any
+variation of the program, and so we kept on driving around and around the
+shaded loop of Beacon Street until dusk fell and the lights began to
+twinkle among the trees.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXI
+
+DEATH OF "SAM" MOFFETT
+
+Clemens' next absence from Redding came on August 1, 1908, when the
+sudden and shocking news was received of the drowning of his nephew,
+Samuel E. Moffett, in the surf of the Jersey shore. Moffett was his
+nearest male relative, and a man of fine intellect and talents. He was
+superior in those qualities which men love--he was large-minded and
+large-hearted, and of noble ideals. With much of the same sense of humor
+which had made his uncle's fame, he had what was really an abnormal
+faculty of acquiring and retaining encyclopedic data. Once as a child he
+had visited Hartford when Clemens was laboring over his history game. The
+boy was much interested, and asked permission to help. His uncle
+willingly consented, and referred him to the library for his facts. But
+he did not need to consult the books; he already had English history
+stored away, and knew where to find every detail of it. At the time of
+his death Moffett held an important editorial position on Collier's
+Weekly.
+
+Clemens was fond and proud of his nephew. Returning from the funeral, he
+was much depressed, and a day or two later became really ill. He was in
+bed for a few days, resting, he said, after the intense heat of the
+journey. Then he was about again and proposed billiards as a diversion.
+We were all alone one very still, warm August afternoon playing, when he
+suddenly said:
+
+"I feel a little dizzy; I will sit down a moment."
+
+I brought him a glass of water and he seemed to recover, but when he rose
+and started to play I thought he had a dazed look. He said:
+
+"I have lost my memory. I don't know which is my ball. I don't know
+what game we are playing."
+
+But immediately this condition passed, and we thought little of it,
+considering it merely a phase of biliousness due to his recent journey. I
+have been told since, by eminent practitioners, that it was the first
+indication of a more serious malady.
+
+He became apparently quite himself again and showed his usual vigor-light
+of step and movement, able to skip up and down stairs as heretofore. In
+a letter to Mrs. Crane, August 12th, he spoke of recent happenings:
+
+    DEAR AUNT SUE,--It was a most moving, a most heartbreaking sight,
+    the spectacle of that stunned & crushed & inconsolable family. I
+    came back here in bad shape, & had a bilious collapse, but I am all
+    right again, though the doctor from New York has given peremptory
+    orders that I am not to stir from here before frost. O fortunate
+    Sam Moffett! fortunate Livy Clemens! doubly fortunate Susy! Those
+    swords go through & through my heart, but there is never a moment
+    that I am not glad, for the sake of the dead, that they have
+    escaped.
+
+    How Livy would love this place! How her very soul would steep
+    itself thankfully in this peace, this tranquillity, this deep
+    stillness, this dreamy expanse of woodsy hill & valley! You must
+    come, Aunt Sue, & stay with us a real good visit. Since June 26 we
+    have had 21 guests, & they have all liked it and said they would
+    come again.
+
+To Howells, on the same day, he wrote:
+
+    Won't you & Mrs. Howells & Mildred come & give us as many days as
+    you can spare & examine John's triumph? It is the most satisfactory
+    house I am acquainted with, & the most satisfactorily situated . .
+    . . I have dismissed my stenographer, & have entered upon a
+    holiday whose other end is the cemetery.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXII
+
+STORMFIELD ADVENTURES
+
+Clemens had fully decided, by this time, to live the year round in the
+retirement at Stormfield, and the house at 21 Fifth Avenue was being
+dismantled. He had also, as he said, given up his dictations for the
+time, at least, after continuing them, with more or less regularity, for
+a period of two and a half years, during which he had piled up about half
+a million words of comment and reminiscence. His general idea had been
+to add portions of this matter to his earlier books as the copyrights
+expired, to give them new life and interest, and he felt that he had
+plenty now for any such purpose.
+
+He gave his time mainly to his guests, his billiards, and his reading,
+though of course he could not keep from writing on this subject and that
+as the fancy moved him, and a drawer in one of his dressers began to
+accumulate fresh though usually fragmentary manuscripts. . . He read the
+daily paper, but he no longer took the keen, restless interest in public
+affairs. New York politics did not concern him any more, and national
+politics not much. When the Evening Post wrote him concerning the
+advisability of renominating Governor Hughes he replied:
+
+    If you had asked me two months ago my answer would have been prompt
+    & loud & strong: yes, I want Governor Hughes renominated. But it is
+    too late, & my mouth is closed. I have become a citizen & taxpayer
+    of Connecticut, & could not now, without impertinence, meddle in
+    matters which are none of my business. I could not do it with
+    impertinence without trespassing on the monopoly of another.
+
+Howells speaks of Mark Twain's "absolute content" with his new home, and
+these are the proper words' to express it. He was like a storm-beaten
+ship that had drifted at last into a serene South Sea haven.
+
+The days began and ended in tranquillity. There were no special morning
+regulations: One could have his breakfast at any time and at almost any
+place. He could have it in bed if he liked, or in the loggia or
+livingroom, or billiard-room. He might even have it in the diningroom,
+or on the terrace, just outside. Guests--there were usually guests
+--might suit their convenience in this matter--also as to the forenoons.
+The afternoon brought games--that is, billiards, provided the guest knew
+billiards, otherwise hearts. Those two games were his safety-valves, and
+while there were no printed requirements relating to them the unwritten
+code of Stormfield provided that guests, of whatever age or previous
+faith, should engage in one or both of these diversions.
+
+Clemens, who usually spent his forenoon in bed with his reading and his
+letters, came to the green table of skill and chance eager for the onset;
+if the fates were kindly, he approved of them openly. If not--well, the
+fates were old enough to know better, and, as heretofore, had to take the
+consequences. Sometimes, when the weather was fine and there were no
+games (this was likely to be on Sunday afternoons), there were drives
+among the hills and along the Saugatuck through the Bedding Glen.
+
+The cat was always "purring on the hearth" at Stormfield--several cats
+--for Mark Twain's fondness for this clean, intelligent domestic animal
+remained, to the end, one of his happiest characteristics. There were
+never too many cats at Stormfield, and the "hearth" included the entire
+house, even the billiard-table. When, as was likely to happen at any
+time during the game, the kittens Sinbad, or Danbury, or Billiards would
+decide to hop up and play with the balls, or sit in the pockets and grab
+at them as they went by, the game simply added this element of chance,
+and the uninvited player was not disturbed. The cats really owned
+Stormfield; any one could tell that from their deportment. Mark Twain
+held the title deeds; but it was Danbury and Sinbad and the others that
+possessed the premises. They occupied any portion of the house or its
+furnishings at will, and they never failed to attract attention. Mark
+Twain might be preoccupied and indifferent to the comings and goings of
+other members of the household; but no matter what he was doing, let
+Danbury appear in the offing and he was observed and greeted with due
+deference, and complimented and made comfortable. Clemens would arise
+from the table and carry certain choice food out on the terrace to
+Tammany, and be satisfied with almost no acknowledgment by way of
+appreciation. One could not imagine any home of Mark Twain where the
+cats were not supreme. In the evening, as at 21 Fifth Avenue, there was
+music--the stately measures of the orchestrelle--while Mark Twain smoked
+and mingled unusual speculation with long, long backward dreams.
+
+It was three months from the day of arrival in Redding that some guests
+came to Stormfield without invitation--two burglars, who were carrying
+off some bundles of silver when they were discovered. Claude, the
+butler, fired a pistol after them to hasten their departure, and Clemens,
+wakened by the shots, thought the family was opening champagne and went
+to sleep again.
+
+It was far in the night; but neighbor H. A. Lounsbury and Deputy-Sheriff
+Banks were notified, and by morning the thieves were captured, though
+only after a pretty desperate encounter, during which the officer
+received a bullet-wound. Lounsbury and a Stormfield guest had tracked
+them in the dark with a lantern to Bethel, a distance of some seven
+miles. The thieves, also their pursuers, had boarded the train there.
+Sheriff Banks was waiting at the West Redding station when the train came
+down, and there the capture was made. It was a remarkably prompt and
+shrewd piece of work. Clemens gave credit for its success chiefly to
+Lounsbury, whose talents in many fields always impressed him. The
+thieves were taken to the Redding Town Hall for a preliminary healing.
+Subsequently they received severe sentences.
+
+Clemens tacked this notice on his front door:
+
+                       NOTICE
+
+                   TO THE NEXT BURGLAR
+
+    There is nothing but plated ware in this house now and henceforth.
+
+    You will find it in that brass thing in the dining-room over in the
+    corner by the basket of kittens.
+
+    If you want the basket put the kittens in the brass thing. Do not
+    make a noise--it disturbs the family.
+
+    You will find rubbers in the front hall by that thing which has the
+    umbrellas in it, chiffonnier, I think they call it, or pergola, or
+    something like that.
+
+    Please close the door when you go away!
+
+                  Very truly yours,
+                                S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXIII
+
+STORMFIELD PHILOSOPHIES
+
+Now came the tranquil days of the Connecticut autumn. The change of the
+landscape colors was a constant delight to Mark Twain. There were
+several large windows in his room, and he called them his
+picture-gallery. The window-panes were small, and each formed a separate
+picture of its own that was changing almost hourly. The red tones that
+began to run through the foliage; the red berry bushes; the fading grass,
+and the little touches of sparkling frost that came every now and then at
+early morning; the background of distant blue hills and changing
+skies-these things gave his gallery a multitude of variation that no
+art-museums could furnish. He loved it all, and he loved to walk out in
+it, pacing up and down the terrace, or the long path that led to the
+pergola at the foot of a natural garden. If a friend came, he was
+willing to walk much farther; and we often descended the hill in one
+direction or another, though usually going toward the "gorge," a romantic
+spot where a clear brook found its way through a deep and rather
+dangerous-looking chasm. Once he was persuaded to descend into this
+fairy-like place, for it was well worth exploring; but his footing was no
+longer sure and he did not go far.
+
+He liked better to sit on the grass-grown, rocky arch above and look down
+into it, and let his talk follow his mood. He liked to contemplate the
+geology of his surroundings, the record of the ageless periods of
+construction required to build the world. The marvels of science always
+appealed to him. He reveled in the thought of the almost limitless
+stretches of time, the millions upon millions of years that had been
+required for this stratum and that--he liked to amaze himself with the
+sounding figures. I remember him expressing a wish to see the Grand
+Canon of Arizona, where, on perpendicular walls six thousand feet high,
+the long story of geological creation is written. I had stopped there
+during my Western trip of the previous year, and I told him something of
+its wonders. I urged him to see them for himself, offering to go with
+him. He said:
+
+"I should enjoy that; but the railroad journey is so far and I should
+have no peace. The papers would get hold of it, and I would have to make
+speeches and be interviewed, and I never want to do any of those things
+again."
+
+I suggested that the railroads would probably be glad to place a private
+car at his service, so that he might travel in comfort; but he shook his
+head.
+
+"That would only make me more conspicuous."
+
+"How about a disguise?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I might put on a red wig and false whiskers and change
+my name, but I couldn't disguise my drawling speech and they'd find me
+out."
+
+It was amusing, but it was rather sad, too. His fame had deprived him of
+valued privileges.
+
+He talked of many things during these little excursions. Once he told
+how he had successively advised his nephew, Moffett, in the matter of
+obtaining a desirable position. Moffett had wanted to become a reporter.
+Clemens devised a characteristic scheme. He said:
+
+"I will get you a place on any newspaper you may select if you promise
+faithfully to follow out my instructions."
+
+The applicant agreed, eagerly enough. Clemens said:
+
+"Go to the newspaper of your choice. Say that you are idle and want
+work, that you are pining for work--longing for it, and that you ask no
+wages, and will support yourself. All that you ask is work. That you
+will do anything, sweep, fill the inkstands, mucilage-bottles, run
+errands, and be generally useful. You must never ask for wages. You
+must wait until the offer of wages comes to you. You must work just as
+faithfully and just as eagerly as if you were being paid for it. Then
+see what happens."
+
+The scheme had worked perfectly. Young Moffett had followed his
+instructions to the letter. By and by he attracted attention. He was
+employed in a variety of ways that earned him the gratitude and the
+confidence of the office. In obedience to further instructions, he began
+to make short, brief, unadorned notices of small news matters that came
+under his eye and laid them on the city editor's desk. No pay was asked;
+none was expected. Occasionally one of the items was used. Then, of
+course, it happened, as it must sooner or later at a busy time, that he
+was given a small news assignment. There was no trouble about his
+progress after that. He had won the confidence of the management and
+shown that he was not afraid to work.
+
+The plan had been variously tried since, Clemens said, and he could not
+remember any case in which it had failed. The idea may have grown out of
+his own pilot apprenticeship on the river, when cub pilots not only
+received no salary, but paid for the privilege of learning.
+
+Clemens discussed public matters less often than formerly, but they were
+not altogether out of his mind. He thought our republic was in a fair
+way to become a monarchy--that the signs were already evident. He
+referred to the letter which he had written so long ago in Boston, with
+its amusing fancy of the Archbishop of Dublin and his Grace of Ponkapog,
+and declared that, after all, it contained something of prophecy.--[See
+chap. xcvii; also Appendix M.]--He would not live to see the actual
+monarchy, he said, but it was coming.
+
+"I'm not expecting it in my time nor in my children's time, though it may
+be sooner than we think. There are two special reasons for it and one
+condition. The first reason is, that it is in the nature of man to want
+a definite something to love, honor, reverently look up to and obey; a
+God and King, for example. The second reason is, that while little
+republics have lasted long, protected by their poverty and
+insignificance, great ones have not. And the condition is, vast power
+and wealth, which breed commercial and political corruptions, and incite
+public favorites to dangerous ambitions."
+
+He repeated what I had heard him say before, that in one sense we already
+had a monarchy; that is to say, a ruling public and political aristocracy
+which could create a Presidential succession. He did not say these
+things bitterly now, but reflectively and rather indifferently.
+
+He was inclined to speak unhopefully of the international plans for
+universal peace, which were being agitated rather persistently.
+
+"The gospel of peace," he said, "is always making a deal of noise, always
+rejoicing in its progress but always neglecting to furnish statistics.
+There are no peaceful nations now. All Christendom is a soldier-camp.
+The poor have been taxed in some nations to the starvation point to
+support the giant armaments which Christian governments have built up,
+each to protect itself from the rest of the Christian brotherhood, and
+incidentally to snatch any scrap of real estate left exposed by a weaker
+owner. King Leopold II. of Belgium, the most intensely Christian
+monarch, except Alexander VI., that has escaped hell thus far, has stolen
+an entire kingdom in Africa, and in fourteen years of Christian endeavor
+there has reduced the population from thirty millions to fifteen by
+murder and mutilation and overwork, confiscating the labor of the
+helpless natives, and giving them nothing in return but salvation and a
+home in heaven, furnished at the last moment by the Christian priest.
+
+"Within the last generation each Christian power has turned the bulk of
+its attention to finding out newer and still newer and more and more
+effective ways of killing Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and
+then; and the surest way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom
+is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than
+any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more
+advanced they are, the bigger and more destructive engines of war they
+create."
+
+Once, speaking of battles great and small, and how important even a small
+battle must seem to a soldier who had fought in no other, he said:
+
+"To him it is a mighty achievement, an achievement with a big A, when to
+a wax-worn veteran it would be a mere incident. For instance, to the
+soldier of one battle, San Juan Hill was an Achievement with an A as big
+as the Pyramids of Cheops; whereas, if Napoleon had fought it, he would
+have set it down on his cuff at the time to keep from forgetting it had
+happened. But that is all natural and human enough. We are all like
+that."
+
+The curiosities and absurdities of religious superstitions never failed
+to furnish him with themes more or less amusing. I remember one Sunday,
+when he walked down to have luncheon at my house, he sat under the shade
+and fell to talking of Herod's slaughter of the innocents, which he said
+could not have happened.
+
+"Tacitus makes no mention of it," he said, "and he would hardly have
+overlooked a sweeping order like that, issued by a petty ruler like
+Herod. Just consider a little king of a corner of the Roman Empire
+ordering the slaughter of the first-born of a lot of Roman subjects. Why,
+the Emperor would have reached out that long arm of his and dismissed
+Herod. That tradition is probably about as authentic as those connected
+with a number of old bridges in Europe which are said to have been built
+by Satan. The inhabitants used to go to Satan to build bridges for them,
+promising him the soul of the first one that crossed the bridge; then,
+when Satan had the bridge done, they would send over a rooster or a
+jackass--a cheap jackass; that was for Satan, and of course they could
+fool him that way every time. Satan must have been pretty simple, even
+according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't have led Christ up on a
+high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and worship
+him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the
+Son of God, already owned the world; and, besides, what Satan showed him
+was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one
+should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company,
+with a gallon of kerosene."
+
+He often spoke of the unseen forces of creation, the immutable laws that
+hold the planet in exact course and bring the years and the seasons
+always exactly on schedule time. "The Great Law" was a phrase often on
+his lips. The exquisite foliage, the cloud shapes, the varieties of
+color everywhere: these were for him outward manifestations of the Great
+Law, whose principle I understood to be unity--exact relations throughout
+all nature; and in this I failed to find any suggestion of pessimism, but
+only of justice. Once he wrote on a card for preservation:
+
+    From everlasting to everlasting, this is the law: the sum of wrong &
+    misery shall always keep exact step with the sum of human
+    blessedness.
+
+    No "civilization," no "advance," has ever modified these proportions
+    by even the shadow of a shade, nor ever can, while our race endures.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXIV
+
+CITIZEN AND FARMER
+
+The procession of guests at Stormfield continued pretty steadily. Clemens
+kept a book in which visitors set down their names and the dates of
+arrival and departure, and when they failed to attend to these matters he
+diligently did it himself after they were gone.
+
+Members of the Harper Company came up with their wives; "angel-fish" swam
+in and out of the aquarium; Bermuda friends came to see the new home;
+Robert Collier, the publisher, and his wife--"Mrs. Sally," as Clemens
+liked to call her--paid their visits; Lord Northcliffe, who was visiting
+America, came with Colonel Harvey, and was so impressed with the
+architecture of Stormfield that he adopted its plans for a country-place
+he was about to build in Newfoundland. Helen Keller, with Mr. and Mrs.
+Macy, came up for a week-end visit. Mrs. Crane came over from Elmira;
+and, behold! one day came the long-ago sweetheart of his childhood,
+little Laura Hawkins--Laura Frazer now, widowed and in the seventies,
+with a granddaughter already a young lady quite grown up.
+
+That Mark Twain was not wearying of the new conditions we may gather from
+a letter written to Mrs. Rogers in October:
+
+    I've grown young in these months of dissipation here. And I have
+    left off drinking--it isn't necessary now. Society & theology are
+    sufficient for me.
+
+To Helen Allen, a Bermuda "Angel-Fish," he wrote:
+
+    We have good times here in this soundless solitude on the hilltop.
+    The moment I saw the house I was glad I built it, & now I am gladder
+    & gladder all the time. I was not dreaming of living here except in
+    the summer-time--that was before I saw this region & the house, you
+    see--but that is all changed now; I shall stay here winter & summer
+    both & not go back to New York at all. My child, it's as tranquil &
+    contenting as Bermuda. You will be very welcome here, dear.
+
+He interested himself in the affairs and in the people of Redding. Not
+long after his arrival he had gathered in all the inhabitants of the
+country-side, neighbors of every quality, for closer acquaintance, and
+threw open to them for inspection every part of the new house. He
+appointed Mrs. Lounsbury, whose acquaintance was very wide; a sort of
+committee on reception, and stood at the entrance with her to welcome
+each visitor in person.
+
+It was a sort of gala day, and the rooms and the grounds were filled with
+the visitors. In the dining-room there were generous refreshments.
+Again, not long afterward, he issued a special invitation to all of
+those-architects, builders, and workmen who had taken any part, however
+great or small, in the building of his home. Mr. and Mrs. Littleton were
+visiting Stormfield at this time, and both Clemens and Littleton spoke to
+these assembled guests from the terrace, and made them feel that their
+efforts had been worth while.
+
+Presently the idea developed to establish something that would be of
+benefit to his neighbors, especially to those who did not have access to
+much reading-matter. He had been for years flooded with books by authors
+and publishers, and there was a heavy surplus at his home in the city.
+When these began to arrive he had a large number of volumes set aside as
+the nucleus of a public library. An unused chapel not far away--it could
+be seen from one of his windows--was obtained for the purpose; officers
+were elected; a librarian was appointed, and so the Mark Twain Library of
+Redding was duly established. Clemens himself was elected its first
+president, with the resident physician, Dr. Ernest H. Smith,
+vice-president, and another resident, William E. Grumman, librarian. On
+the afternoon of its opening the president made a brief address. He
+said:
+
+    I am here to speak a few instructive words to my fellow-farmers.
+    I suppose you are all farmers: I am going to put in a crop next
+    year, when I have been here long enough and know how. I couldn't
+    make a turnip stay on a tree now after I had grown it. I like to
+    talk. It would take more than the Redding air to make me keep
+    still, and I like to instruct people. It's noble to be good, and
+    it's nobler to teach others to be good, and less trouble. I am glad
+    to help this library. We get our morals from books. I didn't get
+    mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books
+    --theoretically at least. Mr. Beard or Mr. Adams will give some
+    land, and by and by we are going to have a building of our own.
+
+This statement was news to both Mr. Beard and Mr. Adams and an
+inspiration of the moment; but Mr. Theodore Adams, who owned a most
+desirable site, did in fact promptly resolve to donate it for library
+purposes. Clemens continued:
+
+    I am going to help build that library with contributions from my
+    visitors. Every male guest who comes to my house will have to
+    contribute a dollar or go away without his baggage.
+
+    --[A characteristic notice to guests requiring them to contribute a
+    dollar to the Library Building Fund was later placed on the
+    billiard-room mantel at Stormfield with good results.]--If those
+    burglars that broke into my house recently had done that they would
+    have been happier now, or if they'd have broken into this library
+    they would have read a few books and led a better life. Now they
+    are in jail, and if they keep on they will go to Congress. When a
+    person starts downhill you can never tell where he's going to stop.
+    I am sorry for those burglars. They got nothing that they wanted
+    and scared away most of my servants. Now we are putting in a
+    burglar-alarm instead of a dog. Some advised the dog, but it costs
+    even more to entertain a dog than a burglar. I am having the ground
+    electrified, so that for a mile around any one who puts his foot
+    across the line sets off an alarm that will be heard in Europe. Now
+    I will introduce the real president to you, a man whom you know
+    already--Dr. Smith.
+
+So a new and important benefit was conferred upon the community, and
+there was a feeling that Redding, besides having a literary colony, was
+to be literary in fact.
+
+It might have been mentioned earlier that Redding already had literary
+associations when Mark Twain arrived. As far back as Revolutionary days
+Joel Barlow, a poet of distinction, and once Minister to France, had been
+a resident of Redding, and there were still Barlow descendants in the
+township.
+
+William Edgar Grumman, the librarian, had written the story of Redding's
+share in the Revolutionary War--no small share, for Gen. Israel Putnam's
+army had been quartered there during at least one long, trying winter.
+Charles Burr Todd, of one of the oldest Redding families, himself--still
+a resident, was also the author of a Redding history.
+
+Of literary folk not native to Redding, Dora Reed Goodale and her sister
+Elaine, the wife of Dr. Charles A. Eastman, had, long been residents of
+Redding Center; Jeanette L. Gilder and Ida M. Tarbell had summer homes on
+Redding Ridge; Dan Beard, as already mentioned, owned a place near the
+banks of the Saugatuck, while Kate V. St. Maur, also two of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne's granddaughters had recently located adjoining the Stormfield
+lands. By which it will be seen that Redding was in no way unsuitable as
+a home for Mark Twain.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXV
+
+A MANTEL AND A BABY ELEPHANT
+
+Mark Twain was the receiver of two notable presents that year. The first
+of these, a mantel from Hawaii, presented to him by the Hawaiian
+Promotion Committee, was set in place in the billiard-room on the morning
+of his seventy-third birthday. This committee had written, proposing to
+build for his new home either a mantel or a chair, as he might prefer,
+the same to be carved from the native woods. Clemens decided on a
+billiard-room mantel, and John Howells forwarded the proper measurements.
+So, in due time, the mantel arrived, a beautiful piece of work and in
+fine condition, with the Hawaiian word, "Aloha," one of the sweetest
+forms of greeting in any tongue, carved as its central ornament.
+
+To the donors of the gift Clemens wrote:
+
+    The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, & its
+    friendly "Aloha" was the first uttered greeting received on my 73d
+    birthday. It is rich in color, rich in quality, & rich in
+    decoration; therefore it exactly harmonized with the taste for such
+    things which was born in me & which I have seldom been able to
+    indulge to my content. It will be a great pleasure to me, daily
+    renewed, to have under my eye this lovely reminder of the loveliest
+    fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, & I beg to thank
+    the committee for providing me that pleasure.
+
+To F. N. Otremba, who had carved the mantel, he sent this word:
+
+    I am grateful to you for the valued compliment to me in the labor of
+    heart and hand and brain which you have put upon it. It is worthy
+    of the choicest place in the house and it has it.
+
+It was the second beautiful mantel in Stormfield--the Hartford library
+mantel, removed when that house was sold, having been installed in the
+Stormfield living-room.
+
+Altogether the seventy-third birthday was a pleasant one. Clemens, in
+the morning, drove down to see the library lot which Mr. Theodore Adams
+had presented, and the rest of the day there were fine, close billiard
+games, during which he was in the gentlest and happiest moods. He
+recalled the games of two years before, and as we stopped playing I said:
+
+"I hope a year from now we shall be here, still playing the great game."
+
+And he answered, as then:
+
+"Yes, it is a great game--the best game on earth." And he held out his
+hand and thanked me for coming, as he never failed to do when we parted,
+though it always hurt me a little, for the debt was so largely mine.
+
+Mark Twain's second present came at Christmas-time. About ten days
+earlier, a letter came from Robert J. Collier, saying that he had bought
+a baby elephant which he intended to present to Mark Twain as a Christmas
+gift. He added that it would be sent as soon as he could get a car for
+it, and the loan of a keeper from Barnum & Bailey's headquarters at
+Bridgeport.
+
+The news created a disturbance in Stormfield. One could not refuse,
+discourteously and abruptly, a costly present like that; but it seemed a
+disaster to accept it. An elephant would require a roomy and warm place,
+also a variety of attention which Stormfield was not prepared to supply.
+The telephone was set going and certain timid excuses were offered by the
+secretary. There was no good place to put an elephant in Stormfield, but
+Mr. Collier said, quite confidently:
+
+"Oh, put him in the garage."
+
+"But there's no heat in the garage."
+
+"Well, put him in the loggia, then. That's closed in, isn't it, for the
+winter? Plenty of sunlight--just the place for a young elephant."
+
+"But we play cards in the loggia. We use it for a sort of sun-parlor."
+
+"But that wouldn't matter. He's a kindly, playful little thing. He'll
+be just like a kitten. I'll send the man up to look over the place and
+tell you just how to take care of him, and I'll send up several bales of
+hay in advance. It isn't a large elephant, you know: just a little one
+--a regular plaything."
+
+There was nothing further to be done; only to wait and dread until the
+Christmas present's arrival.
+
+A few days before Christmas ten bales of hay arrived and several bushels
+of carrots. This store of provender aroused no enthusiasm at Stormfield.
+It would seem there was no escape now.
+
+On Christmas morning Mr. Lounsbury telephoned up that there was a man at
+the station who said he was an elephant-trainer from Barnum & Bailey's,
+sent by Mr. Collier to look at the elephant's quarters and get him
+settled when he should arrive. Orders were given to bring the man over.
+The day of doom was at hand.
+
+But Lounsbury's detective instinct came once more into play. He had seen
+a good many elephant-trainers at Bridgeport, and he thought this one had
+a doubtful look.
+
+"Where is the elephant?" he asked, as they drove along.
+
+"He will arrive at noon."
+
+"Where are you going to put him?"
+
+"In the loggia."
+
+"How big is he?"
+
+"About the size of a cow."
+
+"How long have you been with Barnum and Bailey?"
+
+"Six years."
+
+"Then you must know some friends of mine" (naming two that had no
+existence until that moment).
+
+"Oh yes, indeed. I know them well."
+
+Lounsbury didn't say any more just then, but he had a feeling that
+perhaps the dread at Stormfield had grown unnecessarily large. Something
+told him that this man seemed rather more like a butler, or a valet, than
+an elephant-trainer. They drove to Stormfield, and the trainer looked
+over the place. It would do perfectly, he said. He gave a few
+instructions as to the care of this new household feature, and was driven
+back to the station to bring it.
+
+Lounsbury came back by and by, bringing the elephant but not the trainer.
+It didn't need a trainer. It was a beautiful specimen, with soft, smooth
+coat and handsome trappings, perfectly quiet, well-behaved and small
+--suited to the loggia, as Collier had said--for it was only two feet
+long and beautifully made of cloth and cotton--one of the forest toy
+elephants ever seen anywhere.
+
+It was a good joke, such as Mark Twain loved--a carefully prepared,
+harmless bit of foolery. He wrote Robert Collier, threatening him with
+all sorts of revenge, declaring that the elephant was devastating
+Stormfield.
+
+"To send an elephant in a trance, under pretense that it was dead or
+stuffed!" he said. "The animal came to life, as you knew it would, and
+began to observe Christmas, and we now have no furniture left and no
+servants and no visitors, no friends, no photographs, no burglars
+--nothing but the elephant. Be kind, be merciful, be generous; take him
+away and send us what is left of the earthquake."
+
+Collier wrote that he thought it unkind of him to look a gift-elephant in
+the trunk. And with such chaffing and gaiety the year came to an end.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXVI
+
+SHAKESPEARE-BACON TALK
+
+When the bad weather came there was not much company at Stormfield, and I
+went up regularly each afternoon, for it was lonely on that bleak hill,
+and after his forenoon of reading or writing he craved diversion. My own
+home was a little more than a half mile away, and I enjoyed the walk,
+whatever the weather. I usually managed to arrive about three o'clock.
+He would watch from his high windows until he saw me raise the hilltop,
+and he would be at the door when I arrived, so that there might be no
+delay in getting at the games. Or, if it happened that he wished to show
+me something in his room, I would hear his rich voice sounding down the
+stair. Once, when I arrived, I heard him calling, and going up I found
+him highly pleased with the arrangement of two pictures on a chair,
+placed so that the glasses of them reflected the sunlight on the ceiling.
+He said:
+
+"They seem to catch the reflection of the sky and the winter colors.
+Sometimes the hues are wonderfully iridescent."
+
+He pointed to a bunch of wild red berries on the mantel with the sun on
+them.
+
+"How beautifully they light up!" he said; "some of them in the sunlight,
+some still in the shadow."
+
+He walked to the window and stood looking out on the somber fields.
+
+"The lights and colors are always changing there," he said. "I never
+tire of it."
+
+To see him then so full of the interest and delight of the moment, one
+might easily believe he had never known tragedy and shipwreck. More than
+any one I ever knew, he lived in the present. Most of us are either
+dreaming of the past or anticipating the future--forever beating the
+dirge of yesterday or the tattoo of to-morrow. Mark Twain's step was
+timed to the march of the moment. There were days when he recalled the
+past and grieved over it, and when he speculated concerning the future;
+but his greater interest was always of the now, and of the particular
+locality where he found it. The thing which caught his fancy, however
+slight or however important, possessed him fully for the time, even if
+never afterward.
+
+He was especially interested that winter in the Shakespeare-Bacon
+problem. He had long been unable to believe that the actor-manager from
+Stratford had written those great plays, and now a book just published,
+'The Shakespeare Problem Restated', by George Greenwood, and another one
+in press, 'Some Characteristic Signatures of Francis Bacon', by William
+Stone Booth, had added the last touch of conviction that Francis Bacon,
+and Bacon only, had written the Shakespeare dramas. I was ardently
+opposed to this idea. The romance of the boy, Will Shakespeare, who had
+come up to London and began, by holding horses outside of the theater,
+and ended by winning the proudest place in the world of letters, was
+something I did not wish to let perish. I produced all the stock
+testimony--Ben Jonson's sonnet, the internal evidence of the plays
+themselves, the actors who had published them--but he refused to accept
+any of it. He declared that there was not a single proof to show that
+Shakespeare had written one of them.
+
+"Is there any evidence that he didn't?" I asked.
+
+"There's evidence that he couldn't," he said. "It required a man with
+the fullest legal equipment to have written them. When you have read
+Greenwood's book you will see how untenable is any argument for
+Shakespeare's authorship."
+
+I was willing to concede something, and offered a compromise.
+
+"Perhaps," I said, "Shakespeare was the Belasoo of that day--the
+managerial genius, unable to write plays himself, but with the supreme
+gift of making effective drama from the plays of others. In that case it
+is not unlikely that the plays would be known as Shakespeare's. Even in
+this day John Luther Long's 'Madam Butterfly' is sometimes called
+Belasco's play; though it is doubtful if Belasco ever wrote a line of
+it."
+
+He considered this view, but not very favorably. The Booth book was at
+this time a secret, and he had not told me anything concerning it; but he
+had it in his mind when he said, with an air of the greatest conviction:
+
+"I know that Shakespeare did not write those plays, and I have reason to
+believe he did not touch the text in any way."
+
+"How can you be so positive?" I asked.
+
+He replied:
+
+"I have private knowledge from a source that cannot be questioned."
+
+I now suspected that he was joking, and asked if he had been consulting a
+spiritual medium; but he was clearly in earnest.
+
+"It is the great discovery of the age," he said, quite seriously. "The
+world will soon ring with it. I wish I could tell you about it, but I
+have passed my word. You will not have long to wait."
+
+I was going to sail for the Mediterranean in February, and I asked if it
+would be likely that I would know this great secret before I sailed. He
+thought not; but he said that more than likely the startling news would
+be given to the world while I was on the water, and it might come to me
+on the ship by wireless. I confess I was amazed and intensely curious by
+this time. I conjectured the discovery of some document--some Bacon or
+Shakespeare private paper which dispelled all the mystery of the
+authorship. I hinted that he might write me a letter which I could open
+on the ship; but he was firm in his refusal. He had passed his word, he
+repeated, and the news might not be given out as soon as that; but he
+assured me more than once that wherever I might be, in whatever remote
+locality, it would come by cable, and the world would quake with it. I
+was tempted to give up my trip, to be with him at Stormfield at the time
+of the upheaval.
+
+Naturally the Shakespeare theme was uppermost during the remaining days
+that we were together. He had engaged another stenographer, and was now
+dictating, forenoons, his own views on the subject--views coordinated
+with those of Mr. Greenwood, whom he liberally quoted, but embellished
+and decorated in his own gay manner. These were chapters for his
+autobiography, he said, and I think he had then no intention of making a
+book of them. I could not quite see why he should take all this
+argumentary trouble if he had, as he said, positive evidence that Bacon,
+and not Shakespeare, had written the plays. I thought the whole matter
+very curious.
+
+The Shakespeare interest had diverging by-paths. One evening, when we
+were alone at dinner, he said:
+
+"There is only one other illustrious man in history about whom there is
+so little known," and he added, "Jesus Christ."
+
+He reviewed the statements of the Gospels concerning Christ, though he
+declared them to be mainly traditional and of no value. I agreed that
+they contained confusing statements, and inflicted more or less with
+justice and reason; but I said I thought there was truth in them, too.
+
+"Why do you think so?" he asked.
+
+"Because they contain matters that are self-evident--things eternally and
+essentially just."
+
+"Then you make your own Bible?"
+
+"Yes, from those materials combined with human reason."
+
+"Then it does not matter where the truth, as you call it, comes from?"
+
+I admitted that the source did not matter; that truth from Shakespeare,
+Epictetus, or Aristotle was quite as valuable as from the Scriptures. We
+were on common ground now. He mentioned Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics, and
+their blameless lives. I, still pursuing the thought of Jesus, asked:
+
+"Do you not think it strange that in that day when Christ came, admitting
+that there was a Christ, such a character could have come at all--in the
+time of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when all was ceremony and
+unbelief?"
+
+"I remember," he said, "the Sadducees didn't believe in hell. He brought
+them one."
+
+"Nor the resurrection. He brought them that, also."
+
+He did not admit that there had been a Christ with the character and
+mission related by the Gospels.
+
+"It is all a myth," he said. "There have been Saviours in every age of
+the world. It is all just a fairy tale, like the idea of Santa Claus."
+
+"But," I argued, "even the spirit of Christmas is real when it is
+genuine. Suppose that we admit there was no physical Saviour--that it is
+only an idea--a spiritual embodiment which humanity has made for itself
+and is willing to improve upon as its own spirituality improves, wouldn't
+that make it worthy?"
+
+"But then the fairy story of the atonement dissolves, and with it
+crumbles the very foundations of any established church. You can create
+your own Testament, your own Scripture, and your own Christ, but you've
+got to give up your atonement."
+
+"As related to the crucifixion, yes, and good riddance to it; but the
+death of the old order and the growth of spirituality comes to a sort of
+atonement, doesn't it?"
+
+He said:
+
+"A conclusion like that has about as much to do with the Gospels and
+Christianity as Shakespeare had to do with Bacon's plays. You are
+preaching a doctrine that would have sent a man to the stake a few
+centuries ago. I have preached that in my own Gospel."
+
+I remembered then, and realized that, by my own clumsy ladder, I had
+merely mounted from dogma, and superstition to his platform of training
+the ideals to a higher contentment of soul.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXVII
+
+"IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?"
+
+I set out on my long journey with much reluctance. However, a series of
+guests with various diversions had been planned, and it seemed a good
+time to go. Clemens gave me letters of introduction, and bade me
+Godspeed. It would be near the end of April before I should see him
+again.
+
+Now and then on the ship, and in the course of my travels, I remembered
+the great news I was to hear concerning Shakespeare. In Cairo, at
+Shepheard's, I looked eagerly through English newspapers, expecting any
+moment to come upon great head-lines; but I was always disappointed. Even
+on the return voyage there was no one I could find who had heard any
+particular Shakespeare news.
+
+Arriving in New York, I found that Clemens himself had published his
+Shakespeare dictations in a little volume of his own, entitled, 'Is
+Shakespeare Dead?' The title certainly suggested spiritistic matters,
+and I got a volume at Harpers', and read it going up on the train, hoping
+to find somewhere in it a solution of the great mystery. But it was only
+matter I had already known; the secret was still unrevealed.
+
+At Redding I lost not much time in getting up to Stormfield. There had
+been changes in my absence. Clara Clemens had returned from her travels,
+and Jean, whose health seemed improved, was coming home to be her
+father's secretary. He was greatly pleased with these things, and
+declared he was going to have a home once more with his children about
+him.
+
+He was quite alone that day, and we walked up and down the great
+living-room for an hour, perhaps, while he discussed his new plans. For
+one thing, he had incorporated his pen-name, Mark Twain, in order that
+the protection of his copyrights and the conduct of his literary business
+in general should not require his personal attention. He seemed to find
+a relief in this, as he always did in dismissing any kind of
+responsibility. When we went in for billiards I spoke of his book, which
+I had read on the way up, and of the great Shakespearian secret which was
+to astonish the world. Then he told me that the matter had been delayed,
+but that he was no longer required to suppress it; that the revelation
+was in the form of a book--a book which revealed conclusively to any one
+who would take the trouble to follow the directions that the acrostic
+name of Francis Bacon in a great variety of forms ran through many
+--probably through all of the so-called Shakespeare plays. He said it
+was far and away beyond anything of the kind ever published; that
+Ignatius Donnelly and others had merely glimpsed the truth, but that the
+author of this book, William Stone Booth, had demonstrated, beyond any
+doubt or question, that the Bacon signatures were there. The book would
+be issued in a few days, he said. He had seen a set of proofs of it, and
+while it had not been published in the best way to clearly demonstrate
+its great revelation, it must settle the matter with every reasoning
+mind. He confessed that his faculties had been more or less defeated in,
+attempting to follow the ciphers, and he complained bitterly that the
+evidence had not been set forth so that he who merely skims a book might
+grasp it.
+
+He had failed on the acrostics at first; but more recently he had
+understood the rule, and had been able to work out several Bacon
+signatures. He complimented me by saying that he felt sure that when the
+book came I would have no trouble with it.
+
+Without going further with this matter, I may say here that the book
+arrived presently, and between us we did work out a considerable number
+of the claimed acrostics by following the rules laid down. It was
+certainly an interesting if not wholly convincing occupation, and it
+would be a difficult task for any one to prove that the ciphers are not
+there. Just why this pretentious volume created so little agitation it
+would be hard to say. Certainly it did not cause any great upheaval in
+the literary world, and the name of William Shakespeare still continues
+to be printed on the title-page of those marvelous dramas so long
+associated with his name.
+
+Mark Twain's own book on the subject--'Is Shakespeare Dead?'--found a
+wide acceptance, and probably convinced as many readers. It contained no
+new arguments; but it gave a convincing touch to the old ones, and it was
+certainly readable.--[Mark Twain had the fullest conviction as to the
+Bacon authorship of the Shakespeare plays. One evening, with Mr. Edward
+Loomis, we attended a fine performance of "Romeo and Juliet" given by
+Sothern and Marlowe. At the close of one splendid scene he said, quite
+earnestly, "That is about the best play that Lord Bacon ever wrote."]
+
+Among the visitors who had come to Stormfield was Howells. Clemens had
+called a meeting of the Human Race Club, but only Howells was able to
+attend. We will let him tell of his visit:
+
+    We got on very well without the absentees, after finding them in the
+    wrong, as usual, and the visit was like those I used to have with
+    him so many years before in Hartford, but there was not the old
+    ferment of subjects. Many things had been discussed and put away
+    for good, but we had our old fondness for nature and for each other,
+    who were so differently parts of it. He showed his absolute content
+    with his house, and that was the greater pleasure for me because it
+    was my son who designed it. The architect had been so fortunate as
+    to be able to plan it where a natural avenue of savins, the close-
+    knit, slender, cypress-like cedars of New England, led away from the
+    rear of the villa to the little level of a pergola, meant some day
+    to be wreathed and roofed with vines. But in the early spring days
+    all the landscape was in the beautiful nakedness of the Northern
+    winter. It opened in the surpassing loveliness of wooded and
+    meadowed uplands, under skies that were the first days blue, and the
+    last gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked up and
+    down, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, and
+    talked with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age for
+    the sort of men and things that used to excite us or enrage us; now
+    we were far past turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk together
+    across the yellow pastures to a chasmal creek on his grounds, where
+    the ice still knit the clayey banks together like crystal mosses;
+    and the stream far down clashed through and over the stones and the
+    shards of ice. Clemens pointed out the scenery he had bought to
+    give himself elbowroom, and showed me the lot he was going to have
+    me build on. The next day we came again with the geologist he had
+    asked up to Stormfield to analyze its rocks. Truly he loved the
+    place . . . .
+
+    My visit at Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on his
+    part and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard him
+    sounding my name through the house for the fun of it and I know for
+    the fondness, and if I looked out of my door there he was in his
+    long nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and wagging his
+    great white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in the
+    hope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugar-snow
+    had fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to the
+    station in the carriage which had been given him by his wife's
+    father when they were first married, and had been kept all those
+    intervening years in honorable retirement for this final use.--[This
+    carriage--a finely built coup--had been presented to Mrs. Crane when
+    the Hartford house was closed. When Stormfield was built she
+    returned it to its original owner.]--Its springs had not grown
+    yielding with time, it had rather the stiffness and severity of age;
+    but for him it must have swung low like the sweet chariot of the
+    negro "spiritual" which I heard him sing with such fervor when those
+    wonderful hymns of the slaves began to make their way northward.
+
+Howells's visit resulted in a new inspiration. Clemens started to write
+him one night when he could not sleep, and had been reading the volume of
+letters of James Russell Lowell. Then, next morning, he was seized with
+the notion of writing a series of letters to such friends as Howells,
+Twichell, and Rogers--letters not to be mailed, but to be laid away for
+some future public. He wrote two of these immediately--to Howells and to
+Twichell. The Howells letter (or letters, for it was really double) is
+both pathetic and amusing. The first part ran:
+                         3 in the morning, April 17, 1909.
+
+    My pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, did you
+    write me day-before-day-before yesterday or did I dream it? In my
+    mind's eye I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blue
+    envelope in the mail-pile. I have hunted the house over, but there
+    is no such letter. Was it an illusion?
+
+    I am reading Lowell's letters & smoking. I woke an hour ago & am
+    reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, Vol. I, I have
+    just margined a note:
+
+    "Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now."
+
+    It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It
+    was a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah
+    me, the pathos of it is that we were young then. And he--why, so
+    was he, but he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years
+    later, when we saw him approaching and you warned me, saying:
+
+    "Don't say anything about age--he has just turned 50 & thinks he is
+    old, & broods over it."
+
+    Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.
+
+    Time to go to sleep.
+
+                     Yours ever,
+                                MARK
+
+The second letter, begun at 10 A.M., outlines the plan by which he is to
+write on the subject uppermost in his mind without restraint, knowing
+that the letter is not to be mailed.
+
+    . . .The scheme furnishes a definite target for each letter, & you
+    can choose the target that's going to be the most sympathetic for
+    what you are hungering & thirsting to say at that particular moment.
+    And you can talk with a quite unallowable frankness & freedom
+    because you are not going to send the letter. When you are on fire
+    with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an
+    inspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make him
+    writhe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with
+    a good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'll
+    save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it you
+    can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is
+    done, yet a vast advantage is gained.
+
+The letter was not finished, and the scheme perished there. The Twichell
+letter concerned missionaries, and added nothing to what he had already
+said on the subject.
+
+He wrote no letter to Mr. Rogers--perhaps never wrote to him again.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXVIII
+
+THE DEATH OF HENRY ROGERS
+
+Clemens, a little before my return, had been on a trip to Norfolk,
+Virginia, to attend the opening ceremonies of the Virginia Railway. He
+had made a speech on that occasion, in which he had paid a public tribute
+to Henry Rogers, and told something of his personal obligation to the
+financier.
+
+He began by telling what Mr. Rogers had done for Helen Keller, whom he
+called "the most marvelous person of her sex that has existed on this
+earth since Joan of Arc." Then he said:
+
+    That is not all Mr. Rogers has done, but you never see that side of
+    his character because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping
+    hand daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it.
+    He is supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other
+    bright. But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark;
+    it is bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are
+    not God.
+    I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never
+    been allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print,
+    and if I don't look at him I can tell it now.
+
+    In 1894, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which
+    I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you
+    will remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that
+    you could not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was
+    on my back; my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not
+    give away my copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long-enough vision ahead to
+    say, "Your books have supported you before, and after the panic is
+    over they will support you again," and that was a correct
+    proposition. He saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial
+    ruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roam
+    the face of the earth and persecute the nations thereof with
+    lectures, promising at the end of four years I would pay dollar for
+    dollar. That arrangement was made, otherwise I would now be living
+    out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that.
+
+    You see his white mustache and his hair trying to get white (he is
+    always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These
+    are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say,
+    without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever
+    known.
+
+This had been early in April. Something more than a month later Clemens
+was making a business trip to New York to see Mr. Rogers. I was
+telephoned early to go up and look over some matters with him before he
+started. I do not remember why I was not to go along that day, for I
+usually made such trips with him. I think it was planned that Miss
+Clemens, who was in the city, was to meet him at the Grand Central
+Station. At all events, she did meet him there, with the news that
+during the night Mr. Rogers had suddenly died. This was May 20, 1909.
+The news had already come to the house, and I had lost no time in
+preparations to follow by the next train. I joined him at the Grosvenor
+Hotel, on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. He was upset and deeply
+troubled by the loss of his stanch adviser and friend. He had a helpless
+look, and he said his friends were dying away from him and leaving him
+adrift.
+
+"And how I hate to do anything," he added, "that requires the least
+modicum of intelligence!"
+
+We remained at the Grosvenor for Mr. Rogers's funeral. Clemens served as
+one of the pall-bearers, but he did not feel equal to the trip to
+Fairhaven. He wanted to be very quiet, he said. He could not undertake
+to travel that distance among those whom he knew so well, and with whom
+he must of necessity join in conversation; so we remained in the hotel
+apartment, reading and saying very little until bedtime. Once he asked
+me to write a letter to Jean: "Say, 'Your father says every little while,
+"How glad I am that Jean is at home again!"' for that is true and I think
+of it all the time."
+
+But by and by, after a long period of silence, he said:
+
+"Mr. Rogers is under the ground now."
+
+And so passed out of earthly affairs the man who had contributed so
+largely to the comfort of Mark Twain's old age. He was a man of fine
+sensibilities and generous impulses; withal a keen sense of humor.
+
+One Christmas, when he presented Mark Twain with a watch and a
+match-case, he wrote:
+
+    MY DEAR CLEMENS,--For many years your friends have been complaining
+    of your use of tobacco, both as to quantity and quality. Complaints
+    are now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends think
+    that you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chief
+    complaint is in regard to the quality.
+
+    I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have concluded that it
+    is impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-box.
+
+    Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine that
+    will furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes of
+                     Yours truly,
+                                H. H. ROGERS.
+
+    P. S.--Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows you
+    make in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrow
+    on the bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Compliments
+    of the season to the family.
+
+He was a man too busy to write many letters, but when he did write (to
+Clemens at least) they were always playful and unhurried. One reading
+them would not find it easy to believe that the writer was a man on whose
+shoulders lay the burdens of stupendous finance-burdens so heavy that at
+last he was crushed beneath their weight.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXIX
+
+AN EXTENSION OF COPYRIGHT
+
+One of the pleasant things that came to Mark Twain that year was the
+passage of a copyright bill, which added to the royalty period an
+extension of fourteen years. Champ Clark had been largely instrumental
+in the success of this measure, and had been fighting for it steadily
+since Mark Twain's visit to Washington in 1906. Following that visit,
+Clark wrote:
+
+    . . . It [the original bill] would never pass because the bill
+    had literature and music all mixed together. Being a Missourian of
+    course it would give me great pleasure to be of service to you.
+    What I want to say is this: you have prepared a simple bill relating
+    only to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to have
+    it passed.
+
+Clemens replied that he might have something more to say on the copyright
+question by and by--that he had in hand a dialogue--[Similar to the "Open
+Letter to the Register of Copyrights," North American Review, January,
+1905.]--which would instruct Congress, but this he did not complete.
+Meantime a simple bill was proposed and early in 1909 it became a law. In
+June Clark wrote:
+
+    DR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS,
+    Stormfield, Redding, Conn.
+
+    MY DEAR DOCTOR,--I am gradually becoming myself again, after a
+    period of exhaustion that almost approximated prostration. After a
+    long lecture tour last summer I went immediately into a hard
+    campaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had recovered my
+    disposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings, which
+    began shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted until
+    midnight. Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying of
+    tariff barons for many days and nights was followed by the work of
+    the long session; that was followed by a hot campaign to take Uncle
+    Joe's rules away from him; on the heels of that "Campaign that
+    Failed" came the tariff fight in the House. I am now getting time
+    to breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you if the copyright
+    law is acceptable to you. If it is not acceptable to you I want to
+    ask you to write and tell me how it should be changed and I will
+    give my best endeavors to the work. I believe that your ideas and
+    wishes in the matter constitute the best guide we have as to what
+    should be done in the case.
+              Your friend,
+                            CHAMP CLARK.
+
+To this Clemens replied:
+
+                     STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN, June 5, 1909.
+
+    DEAR CHAMP CLARK,--Is the new copyright law acceptable to me?
+    Emphatically yes! Clark, it is the only sane & clearly defined &
+    just & righteous copyright law that has ever existed in the United
+    States. Whosoever will compare it with its predecessors will have
+    no trouble in arriving at that decision.
+
+    The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I was
+    down there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting &
+    apparently irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all
+    said "the case is hopeless, absolutely hopeless--out of this chaos
+    nothing can be built." But we were in error; out of that chaotic
+    mass this excellent bill has been constructed, the warring interests
+    have been reconciled, and the result is as comely and substantial a
+    legislative edifice as lifts its domes and towers and protective
+    lightning-rods out of the statute book I think. When I think of
+    that other bill, which even the Deity couldn't understand, and of
+    this one, which even I can understand, I take off my hat to the man
+    or men who devised this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was it the
+    Authors' League? Was it both together? I don't know, but I take
+    off my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a valuable article about
+    the new law--I inclose it.
+
+    At last--at last and for the first time in copyright history--we are
+    ahead of England! Ahead of her in two ways: by length of time and
+    by fairness to all interests concerned. Does this sound like
+    shouting? Then I must modify it: all we possessed of copyright
+    justice before the 4th of last March we owed to England's
+    initiative.
+                     Truly yours,
+                                S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+Clemens had prepared what was the final word an the subject of copyright
+just before this bill was passed--a petition for a law which he believed
+would regulate the whole matter. It was a generous, even if a somewhat
+Utopian, plan, eminently characteristic of its author. The new
+fourteen-year extension, with the prospect of more, made this or any
+other compromise seem inadvisable.--[The reader may consider this last
+copyright document by Mark Twain under Appendix N, at the end of this
+volume.]
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXX
+
+A WARNING
+
+Clemens had promised to go to Baltimore for the graduation of "Francesca"
+of his London visit in 1907--and to make a short address to her class.
+
+It was the eighth of June when we set out on this journey,--[The reader
+may remember that it was the 8th of June, 1867, that Mark Twain sailed
+for the Holy Land. It was the 8th of June, 1907, that he sailed for
+England to take his Oxford degree. This 8th of June, 1909, was at least
+slightly connected with both events, for he was keeping an engagement
+made with Francesca in London, and my notes show that he discussed, on
+the way to the station, some incidents of his Holy Land trip and his
+attitude at that time toward Christian traditions. As he rarely
+mentioned the Quaker City trip, the coincidence seems rather curious. It
+is most unlikely that Clemens himself in any way associated the two
+dates.]--but the day was rather bleak and there was a chilly rain.
+Clemens had a number of errands to do in New York, and we drove from one
+place to another, attending to them. Finally, in the afternoon, the rain
+ceased, and while I was arranging some matters for him he concluded to
+take a ride on the top of a Fifth Avenue stage. It was fine and pleasant
+when he started, but the weather thickened again and when he returned he
+complained that he had felt a little chilly. He seemed in fine
+condition, however, next morning and was in good spirits all the way to
+Baltimore. Chauncey Depew was on the train and they met in the
+dining-car--the last time, I think, they ever saw each other. He was
+tired when we reached the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore and did not wish
+to see the newspaper men. It happened that the reporters had a special
+purpose in coming just at this time, for it had suddenly developed that
+in his Shakespeare book, through an oversight, due to haste in
+publication, full credit had not been given to Mr. Greenwood for the long
+extracts quoted from his work. The sensational head-lines in a morning
+paper, "Is Mark Twain a Plagiarist?" had naturally prompted the newspaper
+men to see what he would have to say on the subject. It was a simple
+matter, easily explained, and Clemens himself was less disturbed about it
+than anybody. He felt no sense of guilt, he said; and the fact that he
+had been stealing and caught at it would give Mr. Greenwood's book far
+more advertising than if he had given him the full credit which he had
+intended. He found a good deal of amusement in the situation, his only
+worry being that Clara and Jean would see the paper and be troubled.
+
+He had taken off his clothes and was lying down, reading. After a little
+he got up and began walking up and down the room. Presently he stopped
+and, facing me, placed his hand upon his breast. He said:
+
+"I think I must have caught a little cold yesterday on that Fifth Avenue
+stage. I have a curious pain in my breast."
+
+I suggested that he lie down again and I would fill his hot-water bag.
+The pain passed away presently, and he seemed to be dozing. I stepped
+into the next room and busied myself with some writing. By and by I
+heard him stirring again and went in where he was. He was walking up and
+down and began talking of some recent ethnological discoveries
+--something relating to prehistoric man.
+
+"What a fine boy that prehistoric man must have been," he said--"the
+very first one! Think of the gaudy style of him, how he must have lorded
+it over those other creatures, walking on his hind legs, waving his arms,
+practising and getting ready for the pulpit."
+
+The fancy amused him, but presently he paused in his walk and again put
+his hand on his breast, saying:
+
+"That pain has come back. It's a curious, sickening, deadly kind of
+pain. I never had anything just like it."
+
+It seemed to me that his face had become rather gray. I said:
+
+"Where is it, exactly, Mr. Clemens?"
+
+He laid his hand in the center of his breast and said:
+
+"It is here, and it is very peculiar indeed."
+
+Remotely in my mind occurred the thought that he had located his heart,
+and the "peculiar deadly pain" he had mentioned seemed ominous. I
+suggested, however, that it was probably some rheumatic touch, and this
+opinion seemed warranted when, a few moments later, the hot water had
+again relieved it. This time the pain had apparently gone to stay, for
+it did not return while we were in Baltimore. It was the first positive
+manifestation of the angina which eventually would take him from us.
+
+The weather was pleasant in Baltimore, and his visit to St. Timothy's
+School and his address there were the kind of diversions that meant most
+to him. The flock of girls, all in their pretty commencement dresses,
+assembled and rejoicing at his playfully given advice: not to smoke--to
+excess; not to drink--to excess; not to marry--to excess; he standing
+there in a garb as white as their own--it made a rare picture--a sweet
+memory--and it was the last time he ever gave advice from the platform to
+any one.
+
+Edward S. Martin also spoke to the school, and then there was a great
+feasting in the big assembly-hall.
+
+It was on the lawn that a reporter approached him with the news of the
+death of Edward Everett Hale--another of the old group. Clemens said
+thoughtfully, after a moment:
+
+"I had the greatest respect and esteem for Edward Everett Hale, the
+greatest admiration for his work. I am as grieved to hear of his death
+as I can ever be to hear of the death of any friend, though my grief is
+always tempered with the satisfaction of knowing that for the one that
+goes, the hard, bitter struggle of life is ended."
+
+We were leaving the Belvedere next morning, and when the subject of
+breakfast came up for discussion he said:
+
+"That was the most delicious Baltimore fried chicken we had yesterday
+morning. I think we'll just repeat that order. It reminds me of John
+Quarles's farm."
+
+We had been having our meals served in the rooms, but we had breakfast
+that morning down in the diningroom, and "Francesca" and her mother were
+there.
+
+As he stood on the railway platform waiting for the train, he told me how
+once, fifty-five years before, as a boy of eighteen, he had changed cars
+there for Washington and had barely caught his train--the crowd yelling
+at him as he ran.
+
+We remained overnight in New York, and that evening, at the Grosvenor, he
+read aloud a poem of his own which I had not seen before. He had brought
+it along with some intention of reading it at St. Timothy's, he said,
+but had not found the occasion suitable.
+
+"I wrote it a long time ago in Paris. I'd been reading aloud to Mrs.
+Clemens and Susy--in '93, I think--about Lord Clive and Warren Hastings,
+from Macaulay--how great they were and how far they fell. Then I took an
+imaginary case--that of some old demented man mumbling of his former
+state. I described him, and repeated some of his mumblings. Susy and
+Mrs. Clemens said, 'Write it'--so I did, by and by, and this is it. I
+call it 'The Derelict.'"
+
+He read in his effective manner that fine poem, the opening stanza of
+which follows:
+
+           You sneer, you ships that pass me by,
+           Your snow-pure canvas towering proud!
+           You traders base!--why, once such fry
+           Paid reverence, when like a cloud
+           Storm-swept I drove along,
+           My Admiral at post, his pennon blue
+           Faint in the wilderness of sky, my long
+           Yards bristling with my gallant crew,
+           My ports flung wide, my guns displayed,
+           My tall spars hid in bellying sail!
+           --You struck your topsails then, and made
+           Obeisance--now your manners fail.
+
+He had employed rhyme with more facility than was usual for him, and the
+figure and phrasing were full of vigor.
+
+"It is strong and fine," I said, when he had finished.
+
+"Yes," he assented. "It seems so as I read it now. It is so long since
+I have seen it that it is like reading another man's work. I should call
+it good, I believe."
+
+He put the manuscript in his bag and walked up and down the floor
+talking.
+
+"There is no figure for the human being like the ship," he said; "no such
+figure for the storm-beaten human drift as the derelict--such men as
+Clive and Hastings could only be imagined as derelicts adrift, helpless,
+tossed by every wind and tide."
+
+We returned to Redding next day. On the train going home he fell to
+talking of books and authors, mainly of the things he had never been able
+to read.
+
+"When I take up one of Jane Austen's books," he said, "such as Pride and
+Prejudice, I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I
+know, what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not
+find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so."
+
+He recalled again how Stepniak had come to Hartford, and how humiliated
+Mrs. Clemens had been to confess that her husband was not familiar with
+the writings of Thackeray and others.
+
+"I don't know anything about anything," he said, mournfully, "and never
+did. My brother used to try to get me to read Dickens, long ago. I
+couldn't do it--I was ashamed; but I couldn't do it. Yes, I have read
+The Tale of Two Cities, and could do it again. I have read it a good
+many times; but I never could stand Meredith and most of the other
+celebrities."
+
+By and by he handed me the Saturday Times Review, saying:
+
+"Here is a fine poem, a great poem, I think. I can stand that."
+
+It was "The Palatine (in the 'Dark Ages')," by Willa Sibert Cather,
+reprinted from McClure's. The reader will understand better than I can
+express why these lofty opening stanzas appealed to Mark Twain:
+
+                      THE PALATINE
+
+              "Have you been with the King to Rome,
+              Brother, big brother?"
+              "I've been there and I've come home,
+              Back to your play, little brother."
+
+              "Oh, how high is Caesar's house,
+              Brother, big brother?"
+              "Goats about the doorways browse;
+              Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree,
+              Home of the wild bird and home of the bee.
+              A thousand chambers of marble lie
+              Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky.
+              Poppies we find amongst our wheat
+              Grow on Caesar's banquet seat.
+              Cattle crop and neatherds drowse
+              On the floors of Caesar's house."
+
+              "But what has become of Caesar's gold,
+              Brother, big brother?"
+              "The times are bad and the world is old
+              --Who knows the where of the Caesar's gold?
+              Night comes black on the Caesar's hill;
+              The wells are deep and the tales are ill.
+              Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold,
+              All that is left of the Caesar's gold.
+              Back to your play, little brother."
+
+Farther along in our journey he handed me the paper again, pointing to
+these lines of Kipling:
+
+           How is it not good for the Christian's health
+           To hurry the Aryan brown,
+           For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,
+           And he weareth the Christian down;
+           And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
+           And the name of the late deceased:
+           And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here
+           Who tried to hustle the East."
+
+"I could stand any amount of that," he said, and presently: "Life is too
+long and too short. Too long for the weariness of it; too short for the
+work to be done. At the very most, the average mind can only master a
+few languages and a little history."
+
+I said: "Still, we need not worry. If death ends all it does not matter;
+and if life is eternal there will be time enough."
+
+"Yes," he assented, rather grimly, "that optimism of yours is always
+ready to turn hell's back yard into a playground."
+
+I said that, old as I was, I had taken up the study of French, and
+mentioned Bayard Taylor's having begun Greek at fifty, expecting to need
+it in heaven.
+
+Clemens said, reflectively: "Yes--but you see that was Greek."
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXI
+
+THE LAST SUMMER AT STORMFIELD
+
+I was at Stormfield pretty constantly during the rest of that year. At
+first I went up only for the day; but later, when his health did not
+improve, and when he expressed a wish for companionship evenings, I
+remained most of the nights as well. Our rooms were separated only by a
+bath-room; and as neither of us was much given to sleep, there was likely
+to be talk or reading aloud at almost any hour when both were awake. In
+the very early morning I would usually slip in, softly, sometimes to find
+him propped up against his pillows sound asleep, his glasses on, the
+reading-lamp blazing away as it usually did, day or night; but as often
+as not he was awake, and would have some new plan or idea of which he was
+eager to be delivered, and there was always interest, and nearly always
+amusement in it, even if it happened to be three in the morning or
+earlier.
+
+Sometimes, when he thought it time for me to be stirring, he would call
+softly, but loudly enough for me to hear if awake; and I would go in, and
+we would settle again problems of life and death and science, or, rather,
+he would settle them while I dropped in a remark here and there, merely
+to hold the matter a little longer in solution.
+
+The pains in his breast came back, and with a good deal of frequency as
+the summer advanced; also, they became more severe. Dr. Edward Quintard
+came up from New York, and did not hesitate to say that the trouble
+proceeded chiefly from the heart, and counseled diminished smoking, with
+less active exercise, advising particularly against Clemens's lifetime
+habit of lightly skipping up and down stairs.
+
+There was no prohibition as to billiards, however, or leisurely walking,
+and we played pretty steadily through those peaceful summer days, and
+often took a walk down into the meadows or perhaps in the other
+direction, when it was not too warm or windy. Once we went as far as the
+river, and I showed him a part of his land he had not seen before--a
+beautiful cedar hillside, remote and secluded, a place of enchantment. On
+the way I pointed out a little corner of land which earlier he had given
+me to straighten our division line. I told him I was going to build a
+study on it, and call it "Markland." He thought it an admirable
+building-site, and I think he was pleased with the name. Later he said:
+
+"If you had a place for that extra billiard-table of mine [the Rogers
+table, which had been left in New York] I would turn it over to you."
+
+I replied that I could adapt the size of my proposed study to fit a
+billiard-table, and he said:
+
+"Now that will be very good. Then, when I want exercise, I can walk down
+and play billiards with you, and when you want exercise you can walk up
+and play billiards with me. You must build that study."
+
+So it was we planned, and by and by Mr. Lounsbury had undertaken the
+work.
+
+During the walks Clemens rested a good deal. There were the New England
+hills to climb, and then he found that he tired easily, and that
+weariness sometimes brought on the pain. As I remember now, I think how
+bravely he bore it. It must have been a deadly, sickening, numbing pain,
+for I have seen it crumple him, and his face become colorless while his
+hand dug at his breast; but he never complained, he never bewailed, and
+at billiards he would persist in going on and playing in his turn, even
+while he was bowed with the anguish of the attack.
+
+We had found that a glass of very hot water relieved it, and we kept
+always a thermos bottle or two filled and ready. At the first hint from
+him I would pour out a glass and another, and sometimes the relief came
+quickly; but there were times, and alas! they came oftener, when that
+deadly gripping did not soon release him. Yet there would come a week or
+a fortnight when he was apparently perfectly well, and at such times we
+dismissed the thought of any heart malady, and attributed the whole
+trouble to acute indigestion, from which he had always suffered more or
+less.
+
+We were alone together most of the time. He did not appear to care for
+company that summer. Clara Clemens had a concert tour in prospect, and
+her father, eager for her success, encouraged her to devote a large part
+of her time to study. For Jean, who was in love with every form of
+outdoor and animal life, he had established headquarters in a vacant
+farm-house on one corner of the estate, where she had collected some
+stock and poultry, and was over-flowingly happy. Ossip Gabrilowitsch was
+a guest in the house a good portion of the summer, but had been invalided
+through severe surgical operations, and for a long time rarely appeared,
+even at meal-times. So it came about that there could hardly have been a
+closer daily companionship than was ours during this the last year of
+Mark Twain's life. For me, of course, nothing can ever be like it again
+in this world. One is not likely to associate twice with a being from
+another star.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXII
+
+PERSONAL MEMORANDA
+
+In the notes I made of this period I caught a little drift of personality
+and utterance, and I do not know better how to preserve these things than
+to give them here as nearly as may be in the sequence and in the forth in
+which they were set down.
+
+One of the first of these entries occurs in June, when Clemens was
+rereading with great interest and relish Andrew D. White's Science and
+Theology, which he called a lovely book.--['A History of the Warfare of
+Science with Theology in Christendom'.]
+    June 21. A peaceful afternoon, and we walked farther than usual,
+    resting at last in the shade of a tree in the lane that leads to
+    Jean's farm-house. I picked a dandelion-ball, with some remark
+    about its being one of the evidences of the intelligent principle in
+    nature--the seeds winged for a wider distribution.
+
+    "Yes," he said, "those are the great evidences; no one who reasons
+    can doubt them."
+
+    And presently he added:
+
+    "That is a most amusing book of White's. When you read it you see
+    how those old theologians never reasoned at all. White tells of an
+    old bishop who figured out that God created the world in an instant
+    on a certain day in October exactly so many years before Christ, and
+    proved it. And I knew a preacher myself once who declared that the
+    fossils in the rocks proved nothing as to the age of the world. He
+    said that God could create the rocks with those fossils in them for
+    ornaments if He wanted to. Why, it takes twenty years to build a
+    little island in the Mississippi River, and that man actually
+    believed that God created the whole world and all that's in it in
+    six days. White tells of another bishop who gave two new reasons
+    for thunder; one being that God wanted to show the world His power,
+    and another that He wished to frighten sinners to repent. Now
+    consider the proportions of that conception, even in the pettiest
+    way you can think of it. Consider the idea of God thinking of all
+    that. Consider the President of the United States wanting to
+    impress the flies and fleas and mosquitoes, getting up on the dome
+    of the Capitol and beating a bass-drum and setting off red fire."
+
+He followed the theme a little further, then we made our way slowly back
+up the long hill, he holding to my arm, and resting here and there, but
+arriving at the house seemingly fresh and ready for billiards.
+
+    June 23. I came up this morning with a basket of strawberries. He
+    was walking up and down, looking like an ancient Roman. He said:
+
+    "Consider the case of Elsie Sigel--[Granddaughter of Gen. Franz
+    Sigel. She was mysteriously murdered while engaged in settlement
+    work among the Chinese.]--what a ghastly ending to any life!"
+
+    Then turning upon me fiercely, he continued:
+
+    "Anybody that knows anything knows that there was not a single life
+    that was ever lived that was worth living. Not a single child ever
+    begotten that the begetting of it was not a crime. Suppose a
+    community of people to be living on the slope of a volcano, directly
+    under the crater and in the path of lava-flow; that volcano has been
+    breaking out right along for ages and is certain to break out again.
+    They do not know when it will break out, but they know it will do
+    it--that much can be counted on. Suppose those people go to a
+    community in a far neighborhood and say, 'We'd like to change places
+    with you. Come take our homes and let us have yours.' Those people
+    would say, 'Never mind, we are not interested in your country. We
+    know what has happened there, and what will happen again.' We don't
+    care to live under the blow that is likely to fall at any moment;
+    and yet every time we bring a child into the world we are bringing
+    it to a country, to a community gathered under the crater of a
+    volcano, knowing that sooner or later death will come, and that
+    before death there will be catastrophes infinitely worse. Formerly
+    it was much worse than now, for before the ministers abolished hell
+    a man knew, when he was begetting a child, that he was begetting a
+    soul that had only one chance in a hundred of escaping the eternal
+    fires of damnation. He knew that in all probability that child
+    would be brought to damnation--one of the ninety-nine black sheep.
+    But since hell has been abolished death has become more welcome.
+    I wrote a fairy story once. It was published somewhere. I don't
+    remember just what it was now, but the substance of it was that a
+    fairy gave a man the customary wishes. I was interested in seeing
+    what he would take. First he chose wealth and went away with it,
+    but it did not bring him happiness. Then he came back for the
+    second selection, and chose fame, and that did not bring happiness
+    either. Finally he went to the fairy and chose death, and the fairy
+    said, in substance, 'If you hadn't been a fool you'd have chosen
+    that in the first place.'
+
+    "The papers called me a pessimist for writing that story.
+    Pessimist--the man who isn't a pessimist is a d---d fool."
+
+But this was one of his savage humors, stirred by tragic circumstance.
+Under date of July 5th I find this happier entry:
+
+    We have invented a new game, three-ball carom billiards, each player
+    continuing until he has made five, counting the number of his shots
+    as in golf, the one who finishes in the fewer shots wins. It is a
+    game we play with almost exactly equal skill, and he is highly
+    pleased with it. He said this afternoon:
+
+    "I have never enjoyed billiards as I do now. I look forward to it
+    every afternoon as my reward at the end of a good day's work."--[His
+    work at this time was an article on Marjorie Fleming, the "wonder
+    child," whose quaint writings and brief little life had been
+    published to the world by Dr. John Brown. Clemens always adored the
+    thought of Marjorie, and in this article one can see that she ranked
+    almost next to Joan of Arc in his affections.]
+
+We went out in the loggia by and by and Clemens read aloud from a book
+which Professor Zubelin left here a few days ago--'The Religion of a
+Democrat'. Something in it must have suggested to Clemens his favorite
+science, for presently he said:
+
+    "I have been reading an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect line
+    of curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I
+    have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a
+    ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand.
+    It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn it
+    over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he rubbed over
+    the mountain ranges he might say, 'There seems to be some slight
+    roughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye; it seems
+    perfectly smooth to look at.' The Himalayas to him, the highest
+    peak, would be one-sixty-thousandth of his height, or about the one-
+    thousandth part of an inch as compared with the average man."
+
+I spoke of having somewhere read of some very tiny satellites, one as
+small, perhaps, as six miles in diameter, yet a genuine world.
+
+"Could a man live on a world so small as that?" I asked.
+
+    "Oh yes," he said. "The gravitation that holds it together would
+    hold him on, and he would always seem upright, the same as here.
+    His horizon would be smaller, but even if he were six feet tall he
+    would only have one foot for each mile of that world's diameter, so
+    you see he would be little enough, even for a world that he could
+    walk around in half a day."
+
+He talked astronomy a great deal--marvel astronomy. He had no real
+knowledge of the subject, and I had none of any kind, which made its
+ungraspable facts all the more thrilling. He was always thrown into a
+sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space--the supreme drama
+of the universe. The fact that Alpha Centauri was twenty-five trillions
+of miles away--two hundred and fifty thousand times the distance of our
+own remote sun, and that our solar system was traveling, as a whole,
+toward the bright star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra, at the rate of
+forty-four miles a second, yet would be thousands upon thousands of years
+reaching its destination, fairly enraptured him.
+
+The astronomical light-year--that is to say, the distance which light
+travels in a year--was one of the things which he loved to contemplate;
+but he declared that no two authorities ever figured it alike, and that
+he was going to figure it for himself. I came in one morning, to find
+that he had covered several sheets of paper with almost interminable rows
+of ciphers, and with a result, to him at least, entirely satisfactory. I
+am quite certain that he was prouder of those figures and their enormous
+aggregate than if he had just completed an immortal tale; and when he
+added that the nearest fixed star--Alpha Centauri--was between four and
+five light-years distant from the earth, and that there was no possible
+way to think that distance in miles or even any calculable fraction of
+it, his glasses shone and his hair was roached up as with the stimulation
+of these stupendous facts.
+
+By and by he said:
+
+"I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year,
+and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment
+of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said,
+no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in
+together, they must go out together.' Oh! I am looking forward to
+that." And a little later he added:
+
+"I've got some kind of a heart disease, and Quintard won't tell me
+whether it is the kind that carries a man off in an instant or keeps him
+lingering along and suffering for twenty years or so. I was in hopes
+that Quintard would tell me that I was likely to drop dead any minute;
+but he didn't. He only told me that my blood-pressure was too strong. He
+didn't give me any schedule; but I expect to go with Halley's comet."
+
+I seem to have omitted making any entries for a few days; but among his
+notes I find this entry, which seems to refer to some discussion of a
+favorite philosophy, and has a special interest of its own:
+
+    July 14, 1909. Yesterday's dispute resumed, I still maintaining
+    that, whereas we can think, we generally don't do it. Don't do it,
+    & don't have to do it: we are automatic machines which act
+    unconsciously. From morning till sleeping-time, all day long. All
+    day long our machinery is doing things from habit & instinct, &
+    without requiring any help or attention from our poor little 7-by-9
+    thinking apparatus. This reminded me of something: thirty years
+    ago, in Hartford, the billiard-room was my study, & I wrote my
+    letters there the first thing every morning. My table lay two
+    points off the starboard bow of the billiard-table, & the door of
+    exit and entrance bore northeast&-by-east-half-east from that
+    position, consequently you could see the door across the length of
+    the billiard-table, but you couldn't see the floor by the said
+    table. I found I was always forgetting to ask intruders to carry my
+    letters down-stairs for the mail, so I concluded to lay them on the
+    floor by the door; then the intruder would have to walk over them, &
+    that would indicate to him what they were there for. Did it? No,
+    it didn't. He was a machine, & had habits. Habits take precedence
+    of thought.
+
+    Now consider this: a stamped & addressed letter lying on the floor
+    --lying aggressively & conspicuously on the floor--is an unusual
+    spectacle; so unusual a spectacle that you would think an intruder
+    couldn't see it there without immediately divining that it was not
+    there by accident, but had been deliberately placed there & for a
+    definite purpose. Very well--it may surprise you to learn that that
+    most simple & most natural & obvious thought would never occur to
+    any intruder on this planet, whether he be fool, half-fool, or the
+    most brilliant of thinkers. For he is always an automatic machine &
+    has habits, & his habits will act before his thinking apparatus can
+    get a chance to exert its powers. My scheme failed because every
+    human being has the habit of picking up any apparently misplaced
+    thing & placing it where it won't be stepped on.
+
+    My first intruder was George. He went and came without saying
+    anything. Presently I found the letters neatly piled up on the
+    billiard-table. I was astonished. I put them on the floor again.
+    The next intruder piled them on the billiard-table without a word.
+    I was profoundly moved, profoundly interested. So I set the trap
+    again. Also again, & again, & yet again--all day long. I caught
+    every member of the family, & every servant; also I caught the three
+    finest intellects in the town. In every instance old, time-worn
+    automatic habit got in its work so promptly that the thinking
+    apparatus never got a chance.
+
+I do not remember this particular discussion, but I do distinctly recall
+being one of those whose intelligence was not sufficient to prevent my
+picking up the letter he had thrown on the floor in front of his bed, and
+being properly classified for doing it.
+
+Clemens no longer kept note-books, as in an earlier time, but set down
+innumerable memoranda-comments, stray reminders, and the like--on small
+pads, and bunches of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about
+his room. I gathered up many of them then and afterward, and a few of
+these characteristic bits may be offered here.
+
+                         KNEE
+
+It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest & truest & highest
+ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.
+
+                       JEHOVAH
+
+He is all-good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other
+--take your choice. He made it hard to get into heaven and easy to get
+into hell. He commended man to multiply & replenish-what? Hell.
+
+                MODESTY ANTEDATES CLOTHES
+
+& will be resumed when clothes are no more. [The latter part of this
+aphorism is erased and underneath it he adds:]
+
+                      MODESTY DIED
+
+when clothes were born.
+
+                      MODESTY DIED
+when false modesty was born.
+
+                       HISTORY
+
+A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must
+enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to
+see it.
+
+                       MORALS
+
+are not the important thing--nor enlightenment--nor civilization. A man
+can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to
+eat. The supremest thing is the needs of the body, not of the mind &
+spirit.
+
+                      SUGGESTION
+
+There is conscious suggestion & there is unconscious suggestion--both
+come from outside--whence all ideas come.
+
+
+                       DUELS
+
+I think I could wipe out a dishonor by crippling the other man, but I
+don't see how I could do it by letting him cripple me.
+
+I have no feeling of animosity toward people who do not believe as I do;
+I merely do not respect 'em. In some serious matters (relig.) I would
+have them burnt.
+
+I am old now and once was a sinner. I often think of it with a kind of
+soft regret. I trust my days are numbered. I would not have that detail
+overlooked.
+
+She was always a girl, she was always young because her heart was young;
+& I was young because she lived in my heart & preserved its youth from
+decay.
+
+He often busied himself working out more extensively some of the ideas
+that came to him--moral ideas, he called them. One fancy which he
+followed in several forms (some of them not within the privilege of
+print) was that of an inquisitive little girl, Bessie, who pursues her
+mother with difficult questionings.--[Under Appendix w, at the end of
+this volume, the reader will find one of the "Bessie" dialogues.]--He
+read these aloud as he finished them, and it is certain that they lacked
+neither logic nor humor.
+
+Sometimes he went to a big drawer in his dresser, where he kept his
+finished manuscripts, and took them out and looked over them, and read
+parts of them aloud, and talked of the plans he had had for them, and how
+one idea after another had been followed for a time and had failed to
+satisfy him in the end.
+
+Two fiction schemes that had always possessed him he had been unable to
+bring to any conclusion. Both of these have been mentioned in former
+chapters; one being the notion of a long period of dream-existence during
+a brief moment of sleep, and the other being the story of a mysterious
+visitant from another realm. He had experimented with each of these
+ideas in no less than three forms, and there was fine writing and
+dramatic narrative in all; but his literary architecture had somehow
+fallen short of his conception. "The Mysterious Stranger" in one of its
+forms I thought might be satisfactorily concluded, and he admitted that
+he could probably end it without much labor. He discussed something of
+his plans, and later I found the notes for its conclusion. But I suppose
+he was beyond the place where he could take up those old threads, though
+he contemplated, fondly enough, the possibility, and recalled how he had
+read at least one form of the dream tale to Howells, who had urged him to
+complete it.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXIII
+
+ASTRONOMY AND DREAMS
+
+August 5, 1909. This morning I noticed on a chair a copy of Flaubert's
+Salammbo which I recently lent him. I asked if he liked it.
+
+"No," he said, "I didn't like any of it."
+
+"But you read it?"
+
+"Yes, I read every line of it."
+
+"You admitted its literary art?"
+
+"Well, it's like this: If I should go to the Chicago stockyards and they
+should kill a beef and cut it up and the blood should splash all over
+everything, and then they should take me to another pen and kill another
+beef and the blood should splash over everything again, and so on to pen
+after pen, I should care for it about as much as I do for that book."
+
+"But those were bloody days, and you care very much for that period in
+history."
+
+"Yes, that is so. But when I read Tacitus and know that I am reading
+history I can accept it as such and supply the imaginary details and
+enjoy it, but this thing is such a continuous procession of blood and
+slaughter and stench it worries me. It has great art--I can see that.
+That scene of the crucified lions and the death canon and the tent scene
+are marvelous, but I wouldn't read that book again without a salary."
+
+August 16. He is reading Suetonius, which he already knows by heart--so
+full of the cruelties and licentiousness of imperial Rome.
+
+This afternoon he began talking about Claudius.
+
+"They called Claudius a lunatic," he said, "but just see what nice
+fancies he had. He would go to the arena between times and have captives
+and wild beasts brought out and turned in together for his special
+enjoyment. Sometimes when there were no captives on hand he would say,
+'Well, never mind; bring out a carpenter.' Carpentering around the arena
+wasn't a popular job in those days. He went visiting once to a province
+and thought it would be pleasant to see how they disposed of criminals
+and captives in their crude, old-fashioned way, but there was no
+executioner on hand. No matter; the Emperor of Rome was in no hurry--he
+would wait. So he sat down and stayed there until an executioner came."
+
+I said, "How do you account for the changed attitude toward these things?
+We are filled with pity to-day at the thought of torture and suffering."
+
+"Ah! but that is because we have drifted that way and exercised the
+quality of compassion. Relax a muscle and it soon loses its vigor; relax
+that quality and in two generations--in one generation--we should be
+gloating over the spectacle of blood and torture just the same. Why, I
+read somewhere a letter written just before the Lisbon catastrophe in
+1755 about a scene on the public square of Lisbon: A lot of stakes with
+the fagots piled for burning and heretics chained for burning. The
+square was crowded with men and women and children, and when those fires
+were lighted, and the heretics began to shriek and writhe, those men and
+women and children laughed so they were fairly beside themselves with the
+enjoyment of the scene. The Greeks don't seem to have done these things.
+I suppose that indicates earlier advancement in compassion."
+
+Colonel Harvey and Mr. Duneka came up to spend the night. Mr. Clemens
+had one of his seizures during the evening. They come oftener and last
+longer. One last night continued for an hour and a half. I slept there.
+
+September 7. To-day news of the North Pole discovered by Peary. Five
+days ago the same discovery was reported by Cook. Clemens's comment:
+"It's the greatest joke of the ages." But a moment later he referred to
+the stupendous fact of Arcturus being fifty thousand times as big as the
+sun.
+
+September 21. This morning he told me, with great glee, the dream he had
+had just before wakening. He said:
+
+    "I was in an automobile going slowly, with 'a little girl beside me,
+    and some uniformed person walking along by us. I said, 'I'll get
+    out and walk, too'; but the officer replied, 'This is only one of
+    the smallest of our fleet.'
+
+    "Then I noticed that the automobile had no front, and there were two
+    cannons mounted where the front should be. I noticed, too, that we
+    were traveling very low, almost down on the ground. Presently we
+    got to the bottom of a hill and started up another, and I found
+    myself walking ahead of the 'mobile. I turned around to look for
+    the little girl, and instead of her I found a kitten capering beside
+    me, and when we reached the top of the hill we were looking out over
+    a most barren and desolate waste of sand-heaps without a speck of
+    vegetation anywhere, and the kitten said, 'This view beggars all
+    admiration.' Then all at once we were in a great group of people
+    and I undertook to repeat to them the kitten's remark, but when I
+    tried to do it the words were so touching that I broke down and
+    cried, and all the group cried, too, over the kitten's moving
+    remark."
+
+    The joy with which he told this absurd sleep fancy made it supremely
+    ridiculous and we laughed until tears really came.
+
+One morning he said: "I was awake a good deal in the night, and I tried
+to think of interesting things. I got to working out geological periods,
+trying to think of some way to comprehend them, and then astronomical
+periods. Of course it's impossible, but I thought of a plan that seemed
+to mean something to me. I remembered that Neptune is two billion eight
+hundred million miles away. That, of course, is incomprehensible, but
+then there is the nearest fixed star with its twenty-five trillion miles
+--twenty-five trillion--or nearly a thousand times as far, and then I
+took this book and counted the lines on a page and I found that there was
+an average of thirty-two lines to the page and two hundred and forty
+pages, and I figured out that, counting the distance to Neptune as one
+line, there were still not enough lines in the book by nearly two
+thousand to reach the nearest fixed star, and somehow that gave me a sort
+of dim idea of the vastness of the distance and kind of a journey into
+space."
+
+Later I figured out another method of comprehending a little of that
+great distance by estimating the existence of the human race at thirty
+thousand years (Lord Kelvin's figures) and the average generation to have
+been thirty-three years with a world population of 1,500,000,000 souls. I
+assumed the nearest fixed star to be the first station in Paradise and
+the first soul to have started thirty thousand years ago. Traveling at
+the rate of about thirty miles a second, it would just now be arriving in
+Alpha Centauri with all the rest of that buried multitude stringing out
+behind at an average distance of twenty miles apart.
+
+Few things gave him more pleasure than the contemplation of such figures
+as these. We made occasional business trips to New York, and during one
+of them visited the Museum of Natural History to look at the brontosaur
+and the meteorites and the astronomical model in the entrance hall. To
+him these were the most fascinating things in the world. He contemplated
+the meteorites and the brontosaur, and lost himself in strange and
+marvelous imaginings concerning the far reaches of time and space whence
+they had come down to us.
+
+Mark Twain lived curiously apart from the actualities of life. Dwelling
+mainly among his philosophies and speculations, he observed vaguely, or
+minutely, what went on about him; but in either case the fact took a
+place, not in the actual world, but in a world within his consciousness,
+or subconsciousness, a place where facts were likely to assume new and
+altogether different relations from those they had borne in the physical
+occurrence. It not infrequently happened, therefore, when he recounted
+some incident, even the most recent, that history took on fresh and
+startling forms. More than once I have known him to relate an occurrence
+of the day before with a reality of circumstance that carried absolute
+conviction, when the details themselves were precisely reversed. If his
+attention were called to the discrepancy, his face would take on a blank
+look, as of one suddenly aroused from dreamland, to be followed by an
+almost childish interest in your revelation and ready acknowledgment of
+his mistake. I do not think such mistakes humiliated him; but they often
+surprised and, I think, amused him.
+
+Insubstantial and deceptive as was this inner world of his, to him it
+must have been much more real than the world of flitting physical shapes
+about him. He would fix you keenly with his attention, but you realized,
+at last, that he was placing you and seeing you not as a part of the
+material landscape, but as an item of his own inner world--a world in
+which philosophies and morals stood upright--a very good world indeed,
+but certainly a topsy-turvy world when viewed with the eye of mere
+literal scrutiny. And this was, mainly, of course, because the routine
+of life did not appeal to him. Even members of his household did not
+always stir his consciousness.
+
+He knew they were there; he could call them by name; he relied upon them;
+but his knowledge of them always suggested the knowledge that Mount
+Everest might have of the forests and caves and boulders upon its slopes,
+useful, perhaps, but hardly necessary to the giant's existence, and in no
+important matter a part of its greater life.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXIV
+
+A LIBRARY CONCERT
+
+In a letter which Clemens wrote to Miss Wallace at this time, he tells of
+a concert given at Stormfield on September 21st for the benefit of the
+new Redding Library. Gabrilowitsch had so far recovered that he was up
+and about and able to play. David Bispham, the great barytone, always
+genial and generous, agreed to take part, and Clara Clemens, already
+accustomed to public singing, was to join in the program. The letter to
+Miss Wallace supplies the rest of the history.
+
+    We had a grand time here yesterday. Concert in aid of the little
+    library.
+
+                     TEAM
+
+              Gabrilowitsch, pianist.
+              David Bispham, vocalist.
+              Clara Clemens, ditto.
+              Mark Twain, introduces of team.
+
+    Detachments and squads and groups and singles came from everywhere
+    --Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Redding, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield,
+    and even from New York: some in 60-h.p. motor-cars, some in
+    buggies and carriages, and a swarm of farmer-young-folk on foot
+    from miles around--525 altogether.
+
+    If we hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the
+    performance we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the
+    library (not quite all had seats), we filled the loggia, the dining-
+    room, the hall, clear into the billiard-room, the stairs, and the
+    brick-paved square outside the dining-room door.
+
+    The artists were received with a great welcome, and it woke them up,
+    and I tell you they performed to the Queen's taste! The program was
+    an hour and three-quarters long and the encores added a half-hour to
+    it. The enthusiasm of the house was hair-lifting. They all stayed
+    an hour after the close to shake hands and congratulate.
+
+    We had no dollar seats except in the library, but we accumulated
+    $372 for the Building Fund. We had tea at half past six for a
+    dozen--the Hawthornes, Jeannette Gilder, and her niece, etc.; and
+    after 8-o'clock dinner we had a private concert and a ball in the
+    bare-stripped library until 10; nobody present but the team and Mr.
+    and Mrs. Paine and Jean and her dog. And me. Bispham did "Danny
+    Deever" and the "Erlkonig" in his majestic, great organ-tones and
+    artillery, and Gabrilowitsch played the accompaniments as they were
+    never played before, I do suppose.
+
+There is not much to add to that account. Clemens, introducing the
+performers, was the gay feature of the occasion. He spoke of the great
+reputation of Bispham and Gabrilowitsch; then he said:
+
+"My daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen, but she is ever so much
+better-looking."
+
+The music of the evening that followed, with Gabrilowitsch at the piano
+and David Bispham to sing, was something not likely ever to be repeated.
+Bispham sang the "Erlkonig" and "Killiecrankie" and the "Grenadiers" and
+several other songs. He spoke of having sung Wagner's arrangement of the
+"Grenadiers" at the composer's home following his death, and how none of
+the family had heard it before.
+
+There followed dancing, and Jean Clemens, fine and handsome, apparently
+full of life and health, danced down that great living-room as care-free
+as if there was no shadow upon her life. And the evening was
+distinguished in another way, for before it ended Clara Clemens had
+promised Ossip Gabrilowitsch to become his wife.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXV
+
+A WEDDING AT STORMFIELD
+
+The wedding of Ossip Gabrilowitsch and Clara Clemens was not delayed.
+Gabrilowitsch had signed for a concert tour in Europe, and unless the
+marriage took place forthwith it must be postponed many months. It
+followed, therefore, fifteen days after the engagement. They were busy
+days. Clemens, enormously excited and pleased over the prospect of the
+first wedding in his family, personally attended to the selection of
+those who were to have announcement-cards, employing a stenographer to
+make the list.
+
+October 6th was a perfect wedding-day. It was one of those quiet, lovely
+fall days when the whole world seems at peace. Claude, the butler, with
+his usual skill in such matters, had decorated the great living-room with
+gay autumn foliage and flowers, brought in mainly from the woods and
+fields. They blended perfectly with the warm tones of the walls and
+furnishings, and I do not remember ever having seen a more beautiful
+room. Only relatives and a few of the nearest friends were invited to
+the ceremony. The Twichells came over a day ahead, for Twichell, who had
+assisted in the marriage rites between Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon,
+was to perform that ceremony for their daughter now. A fellow-student of
+the bride and groom when they had been pupils of Leschetizky, in Vienna
+--Miss Ethel Newcomb--was at the piano and played softly the Wedding
+March from "Taunhauser." Jean Clemens was the only bridesmaid, and she
+was stately and classically beautiful, with a proud dignity in her
+office. Jervis Langdon, the bride's cousin and childhood playmate, acted
+as best man, and Clemens, of course, gave the bride away. By request he
+wore his scarlet Oxford gown over his snowy flannels, and was splendid
+beyond words. I do not write of the appearance of the bride and groom,
+for brides and grooms are always handsome and always happy, and certainly
+these were no exception. It was all so soon over, the feasting ended,
+and the principals whirling away into the future. I have a picture in my
+mind of them seated together in the automobile, with Richard Watson
+Gilder standing on the step for a last good-by, and before them a wide
+expanse of autumn foliage and distant hills. I remember Gilder's voice
+saying, when the car was on the turn, and they were waving back to us:
+
+          "Over the hills and far away,
+           Beyond the utmost purple rim,
+           Beyond the night, beyond the day,
+           Through all the world she followed him."
+
+The matter of the wedding had been kept from the newspapers until the eve
+of the wedding, when the Associated Press had been notified. A
+representative was there; but Clemens had characteristically interviewed
+himself on the subject, and it was only necessary to hand the reporter a
+typewritten copy. Replying to the question (put to himself), "Are you
+pleased with the marriage?" he answered:
+
+    Yes, fully as much as any marriage could please me or any other
+    father. There are two or three solemn things in life and a happy
+    marriage is one of them, for the terrors of life are all to come.
+    I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad, for she
+    always had a warm affection for Gabrilowitsch.
+
+There was another wedding at Stormfield on the following afternoon--an
+imitation wedding. Little Joy came up with me, and wished she could
+stand in just the spot where she had seen the bride stand, and she
+expressed a wish that she could get married like that. Clemens said:
+
+"Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it."
+
+Then he happened to remember a ridiculous boy-doll--a white-haired
+creature with red coat and green trousers, a souvenir imitation of
+himself from one of the Rogerses' Christmas trees. He knew where it was,
+and he got it out. Then he said:
+
+"Now, Joy, we will have another wedding. This is Mr. Colonel Williams,
+and you are to become his wedded wife."
+
+So Joy stood up very gravely and Clemens performed the ceremony, and I
+gave the bride away, and Joy to him became Mrs. Colonel Williams
+thereafter, and entered happily into her new estate.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXVI
+
+AUTUMN DAYS
+
+A harvest of letters followed the wedding: a general congratulatory
+expression, mingled with admiration, affection, and good-will. In his
+interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his breast; and many begged
+him to deny that there was anything serious the matter with him, urging
+him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his continued life
+and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-weary
+humanity and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he
+should live. Such letters could not fail to cheer him.
+
+A letter of this period, from John Bigelow, gave him a pleasure of its
+own. Clemens had written Bigelow, apropos of some adverse expression on
+the tariff:
+
+    Thank you for any hard word you can say about the tariff. I guess
+    the government that robs its own people earns the future it is
+    preparing for itself.
+
+Bigelow was just then declining an invitation to the annual dinner of the
+Chamber of Commerce. In sending his regrets he said:
+
+    The sentiment I would propose if I dared to be present would be the
+    words of Mark Twain, the statesman:
+
+    "The government that robs its own people earns the future it is
+    preparing for itself."
+
+Now to Clemens himself he wrote:
+
+    Rochefoucault never said a cleverer thing, nor Dr. Franklin a wiser
+    one . . . . Be careful, or the Demos will be running you for
+    President when you are not on your guard.
+
+    Yours more than ever,
+                     JOHN BIGELOW.
+
+Among the tributes that came, was a sermon by the Rev. Fred Window Adams,
+of Schenectady, New York, with Mark Twain as its subject. Mr. Adams
+chose for his text, "Take Mark and bring him with thee; for he is
+profitable for the ministry," and he placed the two Marks, St. Mark and
+Mark Twain, side by side as ministers to humanity, and characterized him
+as "a fearless knight of righteousness." A few weeks later Mr. Adams
+himself came to Stormfield, and, like all open-minded ministers of the
+Gospel, he found that he could get on very well indeed with Mark Twain.
+
+In spite of the good-will and the good wishes Clemens's malady did not
+improve. As the days grew chillier he found that he must remain closer
+indoors. The cold air seemed to bring on the pains, and they were
+gradually becoming more severe; then, too, he did not follow the doctor's
+orders in the matter of smoking, nor altogether as to exercise.
+
+To Miss Wallace he wrote:
+
+I can't walk, I can't drive, I'm not down-stairs much, and I don't see
+company, but I drink barrels of water to keep the pain quiet; I read, and
+read, and read, and smoke, and smoke, and smoke all the time (as
+formerly), and it's a contented and comfortable life.
+
+But this was not altogether accurate as to details. He did come
+down-stairs many times daily, and he persisted in billiards regardless of
+the paroxysms. We found, too, that the seizures were induced by mental
+agitation. One night he read aloud to Jean and myself the first chapter
+of an article, "The Turning-Point in My Life," which he was preparing for
+Harper's Bazar. He had begun it with one of his impossible burlesque
+fancies, and he felt our attitude of disappointment even before any word
+had been said. Suddenly he rose, and laying his hand on his breast said,
+"I must lie down," and started toward the stair. I supported him to his
+room and hurriedly poured out the hot water. He drank it and dropped
+back on the bed.
+
+"Don't speak to me," he said; "don't make me talk."
+
+Jean came in, and we sat there several moments in silence. I think we
+both wondered if this might not be the end; but presently he spoke of his
+own accord, declaring he was better, and ready for billiards.
+
+We played for at least an hour afterward, and he seemed no worse for the
+attack. It is a curious malady--that angina; even the doctors are
+acquainted with its manifestations, rather than its cause. Clemens's
+general habits of body and mind were probably not such as to delay its
+progress; furthermore, there had befallen him that year one of those
+misfortunes which his confiding nature peculiarly invited--a betrayal of
+trust by those in whom it had been boundlessly placed--and it seems
+likely that the resulting humiliation aggravated his complaint. The
+writing of a detailed history of this episode afforded him occupation and
+a certain amusement, but probably did not contribute to his health. One
+day he sent for his attorney, Mr. Charles T. Lark, and made some final
+revisions in his will.--[Mark Twain's estate, later appraised at
+something more than $600,000 was left in the hands of trustees for his
+daughters. The trustees were Edward E. Loomis, Jervis Langdon, and
+Zoheth S. Freeman. The direction of his literary affairs was left to his
+daughter Clara and the writer of this history.]
+
+To see him you would never have suspected that he was ill. He was in
+good flesh, and his movement was as airy and his eye as bright and his
+face as full of bloom as at any time during the period I had known him;
+also, he was as light-hearted and full of ideas and plans, and he was
+even gentler--having grown mellow with age and retirement, like good
+wine.
+
+And of course he would find amusement in his condition. He said:
+
+"I have always pretended to be sick to escape visitors; now, for the
+first time, I have got a genuine excuse. It makes me feel so honest."
+
+And once, when Jean reported a caller in the livingroom, he said:
+
+"Jean, I can't see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead any minute and
+it would be most embarrassing."
+
+But he did see her, for it was a poet--Angela Morgan--and he read her
+poem, "God's Man," aloud with great feeling, and later he sold it for her
+to Collier's Weekly.
+
+He still had violent rages now and then, remembering some of the most
+notable of his mistakes; and once, after denouncing himself, rather
+inclusively, as an idiot, he said:
+
+"I wish to God the lightning would strike me; but I've wished that fifty
+thousand times and never got anything out of it yet. I have missed
+several good chances. Mrs. Clemens was afraid of lightning, and would
+never let me bare my head to the storm."
+
+The element of humor was never lacking, and the rages became less violent
+and less frequent.
+
+I was at Stormfield steadily now, and there was a regular routine of
+afternoon sessions of billiards or reading, in which we were generally
+alone; for Jean, occupied with her farming and her secretary labors,
+seldom appeared except at meal-times. Occasionally she joined in the
+billiard games; but it was difficult learning and her interest was not
+great. She would have made a fine player, for she had a natural talent
+for games, as she had for languages, and she could have mastered the
+science of angles as she had mastered tennis and French and German and
+Italian. She had naturally a fine intellect, with many of her father's
+characteristics, and a tender heart that made every dumb creature her
+friend.
+
+Katie Leary, who had been Jean's nurse, once told how, as a little child,
+Jean had not been particularly interested in a picture of the Lisbon
+earthquake, where the people were being swallowed up; but on looking at
+the next page, which showed a number of animals being overwhelmed, she
+had said:
+
+"Poor things!"
+
+Katie said:
+
+"Why, you didn't say that about the people!"
+
+But Jean answered:
+
+"Oh, they could speak."
+
+One night at the dinner-table her father was saying how difficult it must
+be for a man who had led a busy life to give up the habit of work.
+
+"That is why the Rogerses kill themselves," he said. "They would rather
+kill themselves in the old treadmill than stop and try to kill time. They
+have forgotten how to rest. They know nothing but to keep on till they
+drop."
+
+I told of something I had read not long before. It was about an aged
+lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island. He had not
+offered to hurt any one; but after wandering about a little, rather
+aimlessly, he had come to a picket-fence, and a moment later began pacing
+up and down in front of it, just the length of his cage. They had come
+and led him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly
+into it. I noticed that Jean was listening anxiously, and when I
+finished she said:
+
+"Is that a true story?"
+
+She had forgotten altogether the point in illustration. She was
+concerned only with the poor old beast that had found no joy in his
+liberty.
+
+Among the letters that Clemens wrote just then was one to Miss Wallace,
+in which he described the glory of the fall colors as seen from his
+windows.
+
+    The autumn splendors passed you by? What a pity! I wish you had
+    been here. It was beyond words! It was heaven & hell & sunset &
+    rainbows & the aurora all fused into one divine harmony, & you
+    couldn't look at it and keep the tears back.
+
+    Such a singing together, & such a whispering together, & such a
+    snuggling together of cozy, soft colors, & such kissing & caressing,
+    & such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out & catches those
+    dainty weeds at it--you remember that weed-garden of mine?--& then
+    --then the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance--oh, hearing
+    about it is nothing, you should be here to see it!
+
+In the same letter he refers to some work that he was writing for his own
+satisfaction--'Letters from the Earth'; said letters supposed to have
+been written by an immortal visitant and addressed to other immortals in
+some remote sphere.
+
+    I'll read passages to you. This book will never be published
+    --in fact it couldn't be, because it would be felony . . . Paine
+    enjoys it, but Paine is going to be damned one of these days, I
+    suppose.
+
+I very well remember his writing those 'Letters from the Earth'. He read
+them to me from time to time as he wrote them, and they were fairly
+overflowing with humor and philosophy and satire concerning the human
+race. The immortal visitor pointed out, one after another, the
+absurdities of mankind, his ridiculous conception of heaven, and his
+special conceit in believing that he was the Creator's pet--the
+particular form of life for which all the universe was created. Clemens
+allowed his exuberant fancy free rein, being under no restrictions as to
+the possibility of print or public offense. He enjoyed them himself,
+too, as he read them aloud, and we laughed ourselves weak over his bold
+imaginings.
+
+One admissible extract will carry something of the flavor of these
+chapters. It is where the celestial correspondent describes man's
+religion.
+
+    His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing,
+    grotesque. I give you my word it has not a single feature in it
+    that he actually values. It consists--utterly and entirely--of
+    diversions which he cares next to nothing about here in the earth,
+    yet he is quite sure he will like in heaven. Isn't it curious?
+    Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it
+    is not so. I will give you the details.
+
+    Most, men do not sing, most men cannot sing, most men will not stay
+    where others are singing if it be continued more than two hours.
+    Note that.
+
+    Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument,
+    and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set that
+    down.
+
+    Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the
+    others make a short-cut.
+
+    More men go to church than want to.
+
+    To forty-nine men in fifty the Sabbath day is a dreary, dreary bore.
+
+    Further, all sane people detest noise.
+
+    All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their lives.
+    Monotony quickly wearies them.
+
+    Now then, you have the facts. You know what men don't enjoy. Well,
+    they have invented a heaven, out of their own heads, all by
+    themselves; guess what it is like? In fifteen hundred years you
+    couldn't do it. They have left out the very things they care for
+    most their dearest pleasures--and replaced them with prayer!
+
+    In man's heaven everybody sings. There are no exceptions. The man
+    who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on
+    earth sings there. Thus universal singing is not casual, not
+    occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on all day
+    long and every day during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody
+    stays where on earth the place would be empty in two hours. The
+    singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is one hymn alone. The words
+    are always the same in number--they are only about a dozen--there is
+    no rhyme--there is no poetry. "Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna unto the
+    highest!" and a few such phrases constitute the whole service.
+
+    Meantime, every person is playing on a harp! Consider the deafening
+    hurricane of sound. Consider, further, it is a praise service--a
+    service of compliment, flattery, adulation. Do you ask who it is
+    that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane
+    compliment, and who not only endures it but likes it, enjoys it,
+    requires it, commands it? Hold your breath: It is God! This race's
+    God I mean--their own pet invention.
+
+Most of the ideas presented in this his last commentary on human
+absurdities were new only as to phrasing. He had exhausted the topic
+long ago, in one way or another; but it was one of the themes in which he
+never lost interest. Many subjects became stale to him at last; but the
+curious invention called man remained a novelty to him to the end.
+
+From my note-book:
+
+    October 25. I am constantly amazed at his knowledge of history--all
+    history--religious, political, military. He seems to have read
+    everything in the world concerning Rome, France, and England
+    particularly.
+
+    Last night we stopped playing billiards while he reviewed, in the
+    most vivid and picturesque phrasing, the reasons of Rome's decline.
+    Such a presentation would have enthralled any audience--I could not
+    help feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some of his public
+    effort to work of that sort. No one could have equaled him at it.
+    He concluded with some comments on the possibility of America
+    following Rome's example, though he thought the vote of the people
+    would always, or at least for a long period, prevent imperialism.
+
+    November 1. To-day he has been absorbed in his old interest in
+    shorthand. "It is the only rational alphabet," he declared. "All
+    this spelling reform is nonsense. What we need is alphabet reform,
+    and shorthand is the thing. Take the letter M, for instance; it is
+    made with one stroke in shorthand, while in longhand it requires at
+    least three. The word Mephistopheles can be written in shorthand
+    with one-sixth the number of strokes that is required in longhand.
+    I tell you shorthand should be adopted as the alphabet."
+
+    I said: "There is this objection: the characters are so slightly
+    different that each writer soon forms a system of his own and it is
+    seldom that two can read each other's notes."
+
+    "You are talking of stenographic reporting," he said, rather warmly.
+    "Nothing of the kind is true in the case of the regular alphabet.
+    It is perfectly clear and legible."
+
+    "Would you have it in the schools, then?"
+
+    "Yes, it should be taught in the schools, not for stenographic
+    purposes, but only for use in writing to save time."
+
+    He was very much in earnest, and said he had undertaken an article
+    on the subject.
+
+    November 3. He said he could not sleep last night, for thinking
+    what a fool he had been in his various investments.
+
+    "I have always been the victim of somebody," he said, "and always an
+    idiot myself, doing things that even a child would not do. Never
+    asking anybody's advice--never taking it when it was offered. I
+    can't see how anybody could do the things I have done and have kept
+    right on doing."
+    I could see that the thought agitated him, and I suggested that we
+    go to his room and read, which we did, and had a riotous time over
+    the most recent chapters of the 'Letters from the Earth', and some
+    notes he had made for future chapters on infant damnation and other
+    distinctive features of orthodox creeds. He told an anecdote of an
+    old minister who declared that Presbyterianism without infant
+    damnation would be like the dog on the train that couldn't be
+    identified because it had lost its tag.
+
+    Somewhat on the defensive I said, "But we must admit that the so-
+    called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive."
+
+    He answered, "Yes, but in spite of their religion, not because of
+    it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the
+    day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in
+    child-birth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical
+    curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and
+    geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition.
+    The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five
+    hundred years before the Christian religion was born.
+
+    "I have been reading Gibbon's celebrated Fifteenth Chapter," he said
+    later, "and I don't see what Christians found against it. It is so
+    mild--so gentle in its sarcasm." He added that he had been reading
+    also a little book of brief biographies and had found in it the
+    saying of Darwin's father, "Unitarianism is a featherbed to catch
+    falling Christians."
+
+    "I was glad to find and identify that saying," he said; "it is so
+    good."
+
+    He finished the evening by reading a chapter from Carlyle's French
+    Revolution--a fine pyrotechnic passage--the gathering at Versailles.
+    I said that Carlyle somehow reminded me of a fervid stump-speaker
+    who pounded his fists and went at his audience fiercely, determined
+    to convince them.
+
+    "Yes," he said, "but he is the best one that ever lived."
+
+    November 10. This morning early he heard me stirring and called. I
+    went in and found him propped up with a book, as usual. He said:
+
+    "I seldom read Christmas stories, but this is very beautiful. It
+    has made me cry. I want you to read it." (It was Booth
+    Tarkington's 'Beasley's Christmas Party'.) "Tarkington has the true
+    touch," he said; "his work always satisfies me." Another book he
+    has been reading with great enjoyment is James Branch Cabell's
+    Chivalry. He cannot say enough of the subtle poetic art with which
+    Cabell has flung the light of romance about dark and sordid chapters
+    of history.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXVII
+
+MARK TWAIN'S READING
+
+Perhaps here one may speak of Mark Twain's reading in general. On the
+table by him, and on his bed, and in the billiard-room shelves he kept
+the books he read most. They were not many--not more than a dozen--but
+they were manifestly of familiar and frequent usage. All, or nearly all,
+had annotations--spontaneously uttered marginal notes, title prefatories,
+or concluding comments. They were the books he had read again and again,
+and it was seldom that he had not had something to say with each fresh
+reading.
+
+There were the three big volumes by Saint-Simon--'The Memoirs'--which he
+once told me he had read no less than twenty times. On the fly-leaf of
+the first volume he wrote--
+
+This, & Casanova & Pepys, set in parallel columns, could afford a good
+coup d'oeil of French & English high life of that epoch.
+
+All through those finely printed volumes are his commentaries, sometimes
+no more than a word, sometimes a filled, closely written margin. He
+found little to admire in the human nature of Saint-Simon's period
+--little to approve in Saint-Simon himself beyond his unrestrained
+frankness, which he admired without stint, and in one paragraph where the
+details of that early period are set down with startling fidelity he
+wrote: "Oh, incomparable Saint-Simon!"
+
+Saint-Simon is always frank, and Mark Twain was equally so. Where the
+former tells one of the unspeakable compulsions of Louis XIV., the latter
+has commented:
+
+We have to grant that God made this royal hog; we may also be permitted
+to believe that it was a crime to do so.
+
+And on another page:
+
+In her memories of this period the Duchesse de St. Clair makes this
+striking remark: "Sometimes one could tell a gentleman, but it was only
+by his manner of using his fork."
+
+His comments on the orthodox religion of Saint-Simon's period are not
+marked by gentleness. Of the author's reference to the Edict of Nantes,
+which he says depopulated half of the realm, ruined its commerce, and
+"authorized torments and punishments by which so many innocent people of
+both sexes were killed by thousands," Clemens writes:
+
+So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the
+Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is."
+Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed
+for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to
+add that new law to its code.
+
+In the place where Saint-Simon describes the death of Monseigneur, son of
+the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their extravagantly
+pretended sorrow, Clemens wrote:
+
+It is all so true, all so human. God made these animals. He must have
+noticed this scene; I wish I knew how it struck Him.
+
+There were not many notes in the Suetonius, nor in the Carlyle
+Revolution, though these were among the volumes he read oftenest. Perhaps
+they expressed for him too completely and too richly their subject-matter
+to require anything at his hand. Here and there are marked passages and
+occasional cross-references to related history and circumstance.
+
+There was not much room for comment on the narrow margins of the old copy
+of Pepys, which he had read steadily since the early seventies; but here
+and there a few crisp words, and the underscoring and marked passages are
+plentiful enough to convey his devotion to that quaint record which,
+perhaps next to Suetonius, was the book he read and quoted most.
+
+Francis Parkman's Canadian Histories he had read periodically, especially
+the story of the Old Regime and of the Jesuits in North America. As late
+as January, 1908, he wrote on the title-page of the Old Regime:
+
+Very interesting. It tells how people religiously and otherwise insane
+came over from France and colonized Canada.
+
+He was not always complimentary to those who undertook to Christianize
+the Indians; but he did not fail to write his admiration of their
+courage--their very willingness to endure privation and even the fiendish
+savage tortures for the sake of their faith. "What manner of men are
+these?" he wrote, apropos of the account of Bressani, who had undergone
+the most devilish inflictions which savage ingenuity could devise, and
+yet returned maimed and disfigured the following spring to "dare again
+the knives and fiery brand of the Iroquois." Clemens was likely to be on
+the side of the Indians, but hardly in their barbarism. In one place he
+wrote:
+
+    That men should be willing to leave their happy homes and endure
+    what the missionaries endured in order to teach these Indians the
+    road to hell would be rational, understandable, but why they should
+    want to teach them a way to heaven is a thing which the mind somehow
+    cannot grasp.
+
+Other histories, mainly English and French, showed how he had read them
+--read and digested every word and line. There were two volumes of
+Lecky, much worn; Andrew D. White's 'Science and Theology'--a chief
+interest for at least one summer--and among the collection a well-worn
+copy of 'Modern English Literature--Its Blemishes and Defects', by Henry
+H. Breen. On the title-page of this book Clemens had written:
+
+    HARTFORD, 1876. Use with care, for it is a scarce book. England
+    had to be ransacked in order to get it--or the bookseller speaketh
+    falsely.
+
+He once wrote a paper for the Saturday Morning Club, using for his text
+examples of slipshod English which Breen had noted.
+
+Clemens had a passion for biography, and especially for autobiography,
+diaries, letters, and such intimate human history. Greville's 'Journal
+of the Reigns of George IV. and William IV.' he had read much and
+annotated freely. Greville, while he admired Byron's talents, abhorred
+the poet's personality, and in one place condemns him as a vicious person
+and a debauchee. He adds:
+
+Then he despises pretenders and charlatans of all sorts, while he is
+himself a pretender, as all men are who assume a character which does not
+belong to them and affect to be something which they are all the time
+conscious they are not in reality.
+
+Clemens wrote on the margin:
+
+    But, dear sir, you are forgetting that what a man sees in the human
+    race is merely himself in the deep and honest privacy of his own
+    heart. Byron despised the race because he despised himself. I feel
+    as Byron did, and for the same reason. Do you admire the race (&
+    consequently yourself)?
+
+A little further along--where Greville laments that Byron can take no
+profit to himself from the sinful characters he depicts so faithfully,
+Clemens commented:
+
+    If Byron--if any man--draws 50 characters, they are all himself--50
+    shades, 50 moods, of his own character. And when the man draws them
+    well why do they stir my admiration? Because they are me--I
+    recognize myself.
+
+A volume of Plutarch was among the biographies that showed usage, and the
+Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself. Two Years Before the Mast he
+loved, and never tired of. The more recent Memoirs of Andrew D. White
+and Moncure D. Conway both, I remember, gave him enjoyment, as did the
+Letters of Lowell. A volume of the Letters of Madame de Sevigne had some
+annotated margins which were not complimentary to the translator, or for
+that matter to Sevigne herself, whom he once designates as a "nauseating"
+person, many of whose letters had been uselessly translated, as well as
+poorly arranged for reading. But he would read any volume of letters or
+personal memoirs; none were too poor that had the throb of life in them,
+however slight.
+
+Of such sort were the books that Mark Twain had loved best, and such were
+a few of his words concerning them. Some of them belong to his earlier
+reading, and among these is Darwin's 'Descent of Man', a book whose
+influence was always present, though I believe he did not read it any
+more in later years. In the days I knew him he read steadily not much
+besides Suetonius and Pepys and Carlyle. These and his simple
+astronomies and geologies and the Morte Arthure and the poems of Kipling
+were seldom far from his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXVIII
+
+A BERMUDA BIRTHDAY
+
+It was the middle of November, 1909, when Clemens decided to take another
+Bermuda vacation, and it was the 19th that we sailed. I went to New York
+a day ahead and arranged matters, and on the evening of the 18th received
+the news that Richard Watson Gilder had suddenly died.
+
+Next morning there was other news. Clemens's old friend, William M.
+Laffan, of the Sun, had died while undergoing a surgical operation. I
+met Clemens at the train. He had already heard about Gilder; but he had
+not yet learned of Laffan's death. He said:
+
+"That's just it. Gilder and Laffan get all the good things that come
+along and I never get anything."
+
+Then, suddenly remembering, he added:
+
+"How curious it is! I have been thinking of Laffan coming down on the
+train, and mentally writing a letter to him on this Stetson-Eddy affair."
+
+I asked when he had begun thinking of Laffan.
+
+He said: "Within the hour."
+
+It was within the hour that I had received the news, and naturally in my
+mind had carried it instantly to him. Perhaps there was something
+telepathic in it.
+
+He was not at all ill going down to Bermuda, which was a fortunate thing,
+for the water was rough and I was quite disqualified. We did not even
+discuss astronomy, though there was what seemed most important news--the
+reported discovery of a new planet.
+
+But there was plenty of talk on the subject as soon as we got settled in
+the Hamilton Hotel. It was windy and rainy out-of-doors, and we looked
+out on the drenched semi-tropical foliage with a great bamboo swaying and
+bending in the foreground, while he speculated on the vast distance that
+the new planet must lie from our sun, to which it was still a satellite.
+The report had said that it was probably four hundred billions of miles
+distant, and that on this far frontier of the solar system the sun could
+not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was
+wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true
+to the central force and follow at a snail-pace, yet with unvarying
+exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune,
+the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the
+skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its motion, and had become
+a near neighbor. He was a good deal excited at first, having somehow the
+impression that this new planet traveled out beyond the nearest fixed
+star; but then he remembered that the distance to that first solar
+neighbor was estimated in trillions, not billions, and that our little
+system, even with its new additions, was a child's handbreadth on the
+plane of the sky. He had brought along a small book called The Pith of
+Astronomy--a fascinating little volume--and he read from it about the
+great tempest of fire in the sun, where the waves of flame roll up two
+thousand miles high, though the sun itself is such a tiny star in the
+deeps of the universe.
+
+If I dwell unwarrantably on this phase of Mark Twain's character, it is
+because it was always so fascinating to me, and the contemplation of the
+drama of the skies always meant so much to him, and somehow always seemed
+akin to him in its proportions. He had been born under a flaming star, a
+wanderer of the skies. He was himself, to me, always a comet rushing
+through space, from mystery to mystery, regardless of sun and systems. It
+is not likely to rain long in Bermuda, and when the sun comes back it
+brings summer, whatever the season. Within a day after our arrival we
+were driving about those coral roads along the beaches, and by that
+marvelously variegated water. We went often to the south shore,
+especially to Devonshire Bay, where the reefs and the sea coloring seem
+more beautiful than elsewhere. Usually, when we reached the bay, we got
+out to walk along the indurated shore, stopping here and there to look
+out over the jeweled water liquid turquoise, emerald lapis-lazuli, jade,
+the imperial garment of the Lord.
+
+At first we went alone with only the colored driver, Clifford Trott,
+whose name Clemens could not recollect, though he was always attempting
+resemblances with ludicrous results. A little later Helen Allen, an
+early angel-fish member already mentioned, was with us and directed the
+drives, for she had been born on the island and knew every attractive
+locality, though, for that matter, it would be hard to find there a place
+that was not attractive.
+
+Clemens, in fact, remained not many days regularly at the hotel. He kept
+a room and his wardrobe there; but he paid a visit to Bay House--the
+lovely and quiet home of Helen's parents--and prolonged it from day to
+day, and from week to week, because it was a quiet and peaceful place
+with affectionate attention and limitless welcome. Clifford Trott had
+orders to come with the carriage each afternoon, and we drove down to Bay
+House for Mark Twain and his playmate, and then went wandering at will
+among the labyrinth of blossom-bordered, perfectly kept roadways of a
+dainty paradise, that never, I believe, becomes quite a reality even to
+those who know it best.
+
+Clemens had an occasional paroxysm during these weeks, but they were not
+likely to be severe or protracted; and I have no doubt the peace of his
+surroundings, the remoteness from disturbing events, as well as the balmy
+temperature, all contributed to his improved condition.
+
+He talked pretty continuously during these drives, and he by no means
+restricted his subjects to juvenile matters. He discussed history and
+his favorite sciences and philosophies, and I am sure that his drift was
+rarely beyond the understanding of his young companion, for it was Mark
+Twain's gift to phrase his thought so that it commanded not only the
+respect of age, but the comprehension and the interest of youth. I
+remember that once he talked, during an afternoon's drive, on the French
+Revolution and the ridiculous episode of Anacharsis Cloots, "orator and
+advocate of the human race," collecting the vast populace of France to
+swear allegiance to a king even then doomed to the block. The very name
+of Cloots suggested humor, and nothing could have been more delightful
+and graphic than the whole episode as he related it. Helen asked if he
+thought such a thing as that could ever happen in America.
+
+"No," he said, "the American sense of humor would have laughed it out of
+court in a week; and the Frenchman dreads ridicule, too, though he never
+seems to realize how ridiculous he is--the most ridiculous creature in
+the world."
+
+On the morning of his seventy-fourth birthday he was looking wonderfully
+well after a night of sound sleep, his face full of color and freshness,
+his eyes bright and keen and full of good-humor. I presented him with a
+pair of cuff-buttons silver-enameled with the Bermuda lily, and I thought
+he seemed pleased with them.
+
+It was rather gloomy outside, so we remained indoors by the fire and
+played cards, game after game of hearts, at which he excelled, and he was
+usually kept happy by winning. There were no visitors, and after dinner
+Helen asked him to read some of her favorite episodes from Tom Sawyer, so
+he read the whitewashing scene, Peter and the Pain-killer, and such
+chapters until tea-time. Then there was a birthday cake, and afterward
+cigars and talk and a quiet fireside evening.
+
+Once, in the course of his talk, he forgot a word and denounced his poor
+memory:
+
+"I'll forget the Lord's middle name some time," he declared, "right in
+the midst of a storm, when I need all the help I can get."
+
+Later he said:
+
+"Nobody dreamed, seventy-four years ago to-day, that I would be in
+Bermuda now." And I thought he meant a good deal more than the words
+conveyed.
+
+It was during this Bermuda visit that Mark Twain added the finishing
+paragraph to his article, "The Turning-Point in My Life," which, at
+Howells's suggestion, he had been preparing for Harper's Bazar. It was a
+characteristic touch, and, as the last summary of his philosophy of human
+life, may be repeated here.
+
+    Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of
+    yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was
+    forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of
+    me into the literary guild. Adam's temperament was the first
+    command the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And
+    it was the only command Adam would never be able to disobey. It
+    said, "Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable."
+    The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to be
+    disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his temperament--which he
+    did not create and had no authority over. For the temperament is
+    the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named Man is merely
+    its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's temperament is,
+    Thou shaft kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is, Thou shalt
+    not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the
+    fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbrue its hands in
+    the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands can't
+    be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of
+    temperament, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other
+    authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve.
+    That is, in their temperaments. Not in them, poor helpless young
+    creatures--afflicted with temperaments made out of butter, which
+    butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and be melted.
+    What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had been postponed,
+    and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that splendid
+    pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos.
+    By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell-fire could Satan have
+    beguiled them to eat the apple.
+
+    There would have been results! Indeed yes. The apple would be
+    intact to-day; there would be no human race; there would be no you;
+    there would be no me. And the old, old creation-dawn scheme of
+    ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been
+    defeated.
+
+
+
+
+CCLXXXIX
+
+THE DEATH OF JEAN
+
+He decided to go home for the holidays, and how fortunate it seems now
+that he did so! We sailed for America on the 18th of December, arriving
+the 21st. Jean was at the wharf to meet us, blue and shivering with the
+cold, for it was wretchedly bleak there, and I had the feeling that she
+should not have come.
+
+She went directly, I think, to Stormfield, he following a day or two
+later. On the 23d I was lunching with Jean alone. She was full of
+interest in her Christmas preparations. She had a handsome tree set up
+in the loggia, and the packages were piled about it, with new ones
+constantly arriving. With her farm management, her housekeeping, her
+secretary work, and her Christmas preparations, it seemed to me that she
+had her hands overfull. Such a mental pressure could not be good for
+her. I suggested that for a time at least I might assume a part of her
+burden.
+
+I was to remain at my own home that night, and I think it was as I left
+Stormfield that I passed jean on the stair. She said, cheerfully, that
+she felt a little tired and was going up to lie down, so that she would
+be fresh for the evening. I did not go back, and I never saw her alive
+again.
+
+I was at breakfast next morning when word was brought in that one of the
+men from Stormfield was outside and wished to see me immediately. When I
+went out he said: "Miss Jean is dead. They have just found her in her
+bath-room. Mr. Clemens sent me to bring you."
+
+It was as incomprehensible as such things always are. I could not
+realize at all that Jean, so full of plans and industries and action less
+than a day before, had passed into that voiceless mystery which we call
+death.
+
+Harry Iles drove me rapidly up the hill. As I entered Clemens's room he
+looked at me helplessly and said:
+
+"Well, I suppose you have heard of this final disaster."
+
+He was not violent or broken down with grief. He had come to that place
+where, whatever the shock or the ill-turn of fortune, he could accept it,
+and even in that first moment of loss he realized that, for Jean at
+least, the fortune was not ill. Her malady had never been cured, and it
+had been one of his deepest dreads that he would leave her behind him. It
+was believed, at first; that Jean had drowned, and Dr. Smith tried
+methods of resuscitation; but then he found that it was simply a case of
+heart cessation caused by the cold shock of her bath.
+
+The Gabrilowitsches were by this time in Europe, and Clemens cabled them
+not to come. Later in the day he asked me if we would be willing to
+close our home for the winter and come to Stormfield. He said that he
+should probably go back to Bermuda before long; but that he wished to
+keep the house open so that it would be there for him to come to at any
+time that he might need it.
+
+We came, of course, for there was no thought among any of his friends but
+for his comfort and peace of mind. Jervis Langdon was summoned from
+Elmira, for Jean would lie there with the others.
+
+In the loggia stood the half-trimmed Christmas tree, and all about lay
+the packages of gifts, and in Jean's room, on the chairs and upon her
+desk, were piled other packages. Nobody had been forgotten. For her
+father she had bought a handsome globe; he had always wanted one. Once
+when I went into his room he said:
+
+"I have been looking in at Jean and envying her. I have never greatly
+envied any one but the dead. I always envy the dead."
+
+He told me how the night before they had dined together alone; how he had
+urged her to turn over a part of her work to me; how she had clung to
+every duty as if now, after all the years, she was determined to make up
+for lost time.
+
+While they were at dinner a telephone inquiry had come concerning his
+health, for the papers had reported him as returning from Bermuda in a
+critical condition. He had written this playful answer:
+
+    MANAGER ASSOCIATED PRESS,
+    New York.
+
+    I hear the newspapers say I am dying. The charge is not true. I
+    would not do such a thing at my time of life. I am behaving as good
+    as I can.
+
+    Merry Christmas to everybody!     MARK TWAIN.
+
+Jean telephoned it for him to the press. It had been the last secretary
+service she had ever rendered.
+
+She had kissed his hand, he said, when they parted, for she had a severe
+cold and would not wish to impart it to him; then happily she had said
+good night, and he had not seen her again. The reciting of this was good
+to him, for it brought the comfort of tears.
+
+Later, when I went in again, he was writing:
+
+"I am setting it down," he said--"everything. It is a relief to me to
+write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking."
+
+He continued writing most of the day, and at intervals during the next
+day, and the next.
+
+It was on Christmas Day that they went with Jean on her last journey.
+Katie Leary, her baby nurse, had dressed her in the dainty gown which she
+had worn for Clara's wedding, and they had pinned on it a pretty buckle
+which her father had brought her from Bermuda, and which she had not
+seen. No Greek statue was ever more classically beautiful than she was,
+lying there in the great living-room, which in its brief history had seen
+so much of the round of life.
+
+They were to start with jean at about six o'clock, and a little before
+that time Clemens (he was unable to make the journey) asked me what had
+been her favorite music. I said that she seemed always to care most for
+the Schubert Impromptu.--[Op. 142, No. 2.]--Then he said:
+
+"Play it when they get ready to leave with her, and add the Intermezzo
+for Susy and the Largo for Mrs. Clemens. When I hear the music I shall
+know that they are starting. Tell them to set lanterns at the door, so I
+can look down and see them go."
+
+So I sat at the organ and began playing as they lifted and bore her away.
+A soft, heavy snow was falling, and the gloom of those shortest days was
+closing in. There was not the least wind or noise, the whole world was
+muffled. The lanterns at the door threw their light out on the thickly
+falling flakes. I remained at the organ; but the little group at the
+door saw him come to the window above--the light on his white hair as he
+stood mournfully gazing down, watching Jean going away from him for the
+last time. I played steadily on as he had instructed, the Impromptu, the
+Intermezzo from "Cavalleria," and Handel's Largo. When I had finished I
+went up and found him.
+
+"Poor little Jean," he said; "but for her it is so good to go."
+
+In his own story of it he wrote:
+
+    From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the
+    road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and
+    presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not
+    come back any more. The cousin she had played with when they were
+    babies together--he and her beloved old Katie--Were conducting her
+    to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's
+    side once more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.
+
+He did not come down to dinner, and when I went up afterward I found him
+curiously agitated. He said:
+
+"For one who does not believe in spirits I have had a most peculiar
+experience. I went into the bath-room just now and closed the door. You
+know how warm it always is in there, and there are no draughts. All at
+once I felt a cold current of air about me. I thought the door must be
+open; but it was closed. I said, 'Jean, is this you trying to let me
+know you have found the others?' Then the cold air was gone."
+
+I saw that the incident had made a very great impression upon him; but I
+don't remember that he ever mentioned it afterward.
+
+Next day the storm had turned into a fearful blizzard; the whole hilltop
+was a raging, driving mass of white. He wrote most of the day, but
+stopped now and then to read some of the telegrams or letters of
+condolence which came flooding in. Sometimes he walked over to the
+window to look out on the furious tempest. Once, during the afternoon,
+he said:
+
+"Jean always so loved to see a storm like this, and just now at Elmira
+they are burying her."
+
+Later he read aloud some lines by Alfred Austin, which Mrs. Crane had
+sent him lines which he had remembered in the sorrow for Susy:
+
+       When last came sorrow, around barn and byre
+       Wind-careen snow, the year's white sepulchre, lay.
+       "Come in," I said, "and warm you by the fire";
+       And there she sits and never goes away.
+
+It was that evening that he came into the room where Mrs. Paine and I sat
+by the fire, bringing his manuscript.
+
+"I have finished my story of Jean's death," he said. "It is the end of
+my autobiography. I shall never write any more. I can't judge it myself
+at all. One of you read it aloud to the other, and let me know what you
+think of it. If it is worthy, perhaps some day it may be published."
+
+It was, in fact, one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing
+in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect
+thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his
+soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he
+should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph
+which he omitted may be printed now:
+
+    December 27. Did I know jean's value? No, I only thought I did.
+    I knew a ten-thousandth fraction of it, that was all. It is always
+    so, with us, it has always been so. We are like the poor ignorant
+    private soldier-dead, now, four hundred years--who picked up the
+    great Sancy diamond on the field of the lost battle and sold it for
+    a franc. Later he knew what he had done.
+
+    Shall I ever be cheerful again, happy again? Yes. And soon. For
+    I know my temperament. And I know that the temperament is master of
+    the man, and that he is its fettered and helpless slave and must in
+    all things do as it commands. A man's temperament is born in him,
+    and no circumstances can ever change it.
+
+    My temperament has never allowed my spirits to remain depressed long
+    at a time.
+
+    That was a feature of Jean's temperament, too. She inherited it
+    from me. I think she got the rest of it from her mother.
+
+Jean Clemens had two natural endowments: the gift of justice and a
+genuine passion for all nature. In a little paper found in her desk she
+had written:
+
+    I know a few people who love the country as I do, but not many.
+    Most of my acquaintances are enthusiastic over the spring and summer
+    months, but very few care much for it the year round. A few people
+    are interested in the spring foliage and the development of the wild
+    flowers--nearly all enjoy the autumn colors--while comparatively few
+    pay much attention to the coming and going of the birds, the changes
+    in their plumage and songs, the apparent springing into life on some
+    warm April day of the chipmunks and woodchucks, the skurrying of
+    baby rabbits, and again in the fall the equally sudden disappearance
+    of some of the animals and the growing shyness of others. To me it
+    is all as fascinating as a book--more so, since I have never lost
+    interest in it.
+
+It is simple and frank, like Thoreau. Perhaps, had she exercised it,
+there was a third gift--the gift of written thought.
+
+Clemens remained at Stormfield ten days after Jean was gone. The weather
+was fiercely cold, the landscape desolate, the house full of tragedy. He
+kept pretty closely to his room, where he had me bring the heaps of
+letters, a few of which he answered personally; for the others he
+prepared a simple card of acknowledgment. He was for the most part in
+gentle mood during these days, though he would break out now and then,
+and rage at the hardness of a fate that had laid an unearned burden of
+illness on Jean and shadowed her life.
+
+They were days not wholly without humor--none of his days could be
+altogether without that, though it was likely to be of a melancholy sort.
+
+Many of the letters offered orthodox comfort, saying, in effect: "God
+does not willingly punish us."
+
+When he had read a number of these he said:
+
+"Well, why does He do it then? We don't invite it. Why does He give
+Himself the trouble?"
+
+I suggested that it was a sentiment that probably gave comfort to the
+writer of it.
+
+"So it does," he said, "and I am glad of it--glad of anything that gives
+comfort to anybody."
+
+He spoke of the larger God--the God of the great unvarying laws, and by
+and by dropped off to sleep, quite peacefully, and indeed peace came more
+and more to him each day with the thought that Jean and Susy and their
+mother could not be troubled any more. To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch he wrote:
+
+                     REDDING, CONN, December 29, 1909.
+
+    O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she is out of it & safe--safe!
+
+    I am not melancholy; I shall never be melancholy again, I think.
+
+    You see, I was in such distress when I came to realize that you were
+    gone far away & no one stood between her & danger but me--& I could
+    die at any moment, & then--oh then what would become of her! For
+    she was wilful, you know, & would not have been governable.
+
+    You can't imagine what a darling she was that last two or three
+    days; & how fine, & good, & sweet, & noble--& joyful, thank Heaven!
+    --& how intellectually brilliant. I had never been acquainted with
+    Jean before. I recognized that.
+
+    But I mustn't try to write about her--I can't. I have already
+    poured my heart out with the pen, recording that last day or two.
+    I will send you that--& you must let no one but Ossip read it.
+
+    Good-by. I love you so! And Ossip.
+                                FATHER.
+
+
+
+
+CCXC
+
+THE RETURN TO BERMUDA
+
+I don't think he attempted any further writing for print. His mind was
+busy with ideas, but he was willing to talk, rather than to write, rather
+even than to play billiards, it seemed, although we had a few quiet
+games--the last we should ever play together. Evenings he asked for
+music, preferring the Scotch airs, such as "Bonnie Doon" and "The
+Campbells are Coming." I remember that once, after playing the latter
+for him, he told, with great feeling, how the Highlanders, led by Gen.
+Colin Campbell, had charged at Lucknow, inspired by that stirring air.
+When he had retired I usually sat with him, and he drifted into
+literature, or theology, or science, or history--the story of the
+universe and man.
+
+One evening he spoke of those who had written but one immortal thing and
+stopped there. He mentioned "Ben Bolt."
+
+"I met that man once," he said. "In my childhood I sang 'Sweet Alice,
+Ben Bolt,' and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote
+it. His name was Brown.--[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently
+remembered only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan
+Poe, "Thomas Dunn Brown."]--He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I
+remember how it thrilled me to realize that this was the very author of
+'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.' He was just an accident. He had a vision and
+echoed it. A good many persons do that--the thing they do is to put in
+compact form the thing which we have all vaguely felt. 'Twenty Years
+Ago' is just like it 'I have wandered through the village, Tom, and sat
+beneath the tree'--and Holmes's 'Last Leaf' is another: the memory of the
+hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is all so
+beautiful--the past is always beautiful."
+
+He quoted, with great feeling and effect:
+
+           The massy marbles rest
+           On the lips that we have pressed
+           In their bloom,
+           And the names we love to hear
+           Have been carved for many a year
+           On the tomb.
+
+He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and
+thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants
+and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their
+characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes.
+
+"Why," he said, "humor is mankind's greatest blessing."
+
+"Your own case is an example," I answered. "Without it, whatever your
+reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-spread
+affection that is shown by the writers of that great heap of letters."
+
+"Yes," he said, gently, "they have liked to be amused."
+
+I tucked him in for the night, promising to send him to Bermuda, with
+Claude to take care of him, if he felt he could undertake the journey in
+two days more.
+
+He was able, and he was eager to go, for he longed for that sunny island,
+and for the quiet peace of the Allen home. His niece, Mrs. Loomis, came
+up to spend the last evening in Stormfield, a happy evening full of quiet
+talk, and next morning, in the old closed carriage that had been his
+wedding-gift, he was driven to the railway station. This was on January
+4, 1910.
+
+He was to sail next day, and that night, at Mr. Loomis's, Howells came
+in, and for an hour or two they reviewed some of the questions they had
+so long ago settled, or left forever unsettled, and laid away. I
+remember that at dinner Clemens spoke of his old Hartford butler, George,
+and how he had once brought George to New York and introduced him at the
+various publishing houses as his friend, with curious and sometimes
+rather embarrassing results.
+
+The talk drifted to sociology and to the labor-unions, which Clemens
+defended as being the only means by which the workman could obtain
+recognition of his rights.
+
+Howells in his book mentions this evening, which he says "was made
+memorable to me by the kind, clear, judicial sense with which he
+explained and justified the labor-unions as the sole present help of the
+weak against the strong."
+
+They discussed dreams, and then in a little while Howells rose to go. I
+went also, and as we walked to his near-by apartment he spoke of Mark
+Twain's supremacy. He said:
+
+"I turn to his books for cheer when I am down-hearted. There was never
+anybody like him; there never will be."
+
+Clemens sailed next morning. They did not meet again.
+
+
+
+
+CCXCI
+
+LETTERS FROM BERMUDA
+
+Stormfield was solemn and empty without Mark Twain; but he wrote by every
+steamer, at first with his own hand, and during the last week by the hand
+of one of his enlisted secretaries--some member of the Allen family
+usually Helen. His letters were full of brightness and pleasantry
+--always concerned more or less with business matters, though he was no
+longer disturbed by them, for Bermuda was too peaceful and too far away,
+and, besides, he had faith in the Mark Twain Company's ability to look
+after his affairs. I cannot do better, I believe, than to offer some
+portions of these letters here.
+
+He reached Bermuda on the 7th of January, 1910, and on the 12th he wrote:
+
+    Again I am living the ideal life. There is nothing to mar it but
+    the bloody-minded bandit Arthur,--[A small playmate of Helen's of
+    whom Clemens pretended to be fiercely jealous. Once he wrote a
+    memorandum to Helen: "Let Arthur read this book. There is a page in
+    it that is poisoned."]--who still fetches and carries Helen.
+    Presently he will be found drowned. Claude comes to Bay House twice
+    a day to see if I need any service. He is invaluable. There was a
+    military lecture last night at the Officers' Mess Prospect; as the
+    lecturer honored me with a special urgent invitation, and said he
+    wanted to lecture to me particularly, I naturally took Helen and her
+    mother into the private carriage and went.
+
+    As soon as we landed at the door with the crowd the Governor came to
+    me& was very cordial. I "met up" with that charming Colonel Chapman
+    [we had known him on the previous visit] and other officers of the
+    regiment & had a good time.
+
+A few days later he wrote:
+
+    Thanks for your letter & for its contenting news of the situation in
+    that foreign & far-off & vaguely remembered country where you &
+    Loomis & Lark and other beloved friends are.
+
+    I had a letter from Clara this morning. She is solicitous & wants
+    me well & watchfully taken care of. My, my, she ought to see Helen
+    & her parents & Claude administer that trust. Also she says, "I
+    hope to hear from you or Mr. Paine very soon."
+
+    I am writing her & I know you will respond to your part of her
+    prayer. She is pretty desolate now after Jean's emancipation--the
+    only kindness that God ever did that poor, unoffending child in all
+    her hard life.
+
+    Send Clara a copy of Howells's gorgeous letter.
+
+The "gorgeous letter" mentioned was an appreciation of his recent Bazar
+article, "The Turning-Point in My Life," and here follows:
+
+    January 18, 1910.
+
+    DEAR CLEMENS,--While your wonderful words are warm in my mind yet I
+    want to tell you what you know already: that you never wrote
+    anything greater, finer, than that turning-point paper of yours.
+
+    I shall feel it honor enough if they put on my tombstone "He was
+    born in the same century and general section of Middle Western
+    country with Dr. S. L. Clemens, Oxon., and had his degree three
+    years before him through a mistake of the University."
+
+    I hope you are worse. You will never be riper for a purely
+    intellectual life, and it is a pity to have you lagging along with a
+    worn-out material body on top of your soul.
+
+                  Yours ever,
+                            W. D. HOWELLS.
+
+On the margin of this letter Clemens had written:
+
+    I reckon this spontaneous outburst from the first critic of the day
+    is good to keep, ain't it, Paine?
+
+January 24th he wrote again of his contentment:
+
+    Life continues here the same as usual. There isn't a fault in it
+    --good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day & every day
+    without a break. I know familiarly several very satisfactory people
+    & meet them frequently: Mr. Hamilton, the Sloanes, Mr. & Mrs. Fells,
+    Miss Waterman, & so on. I shouldn't know how to go about bettering
+    my situation.
+
+On February 5th he wrote that the climate and condition of his health
+might require him to stay in Bermuda pretty continuously, but that he
+wished Stormfield kept open so that he might come to it at any time. And
+he added:
+
+    Yesterday Mr. Allen took us on an excursion in Mr. Hamilton's big
+    motor-boat. Present: Mrs. Allen, Mr. & Mrs. & Miss Sloane, Helen,
+    Mildred Howells, Claude, & me. Several hours' swift skimming over
+    ravishing blue seas, a brilliant sun; also a couple of hours of
+    picnicking & lazying under the cedars in a secluded place.
+
+    The Orotava is arriving with 260 passengers--I shall get letters by
+    her, no doubt.
+
+    P. S.--Please send me the Standard Unabridged that is on the table in
+    my bedroom. I have no dictionary here.
+
+There is no mention in any of these letters of his trouble; but he was
+having occasional spasms of pain, though in that soft climate they would
+seem to have come with less frequency, and there was so little to disturb
+him, and much that contributed to his peace. Among the callers at the
+Bay House to see him was Woodrow Wilson, and the two put in some pleasant
+hours at miniature golf, "putting" on the Allen lawn. Of course a
+catastrophe would come along now and then--such things could not always
+be guarded against. In a letter toward the end of February he wrote:
+    It is 2.30 in the morning & I am writing because I can't sleep.
+    I can't sleep because a professional pianist is coming to-morrow
+    afternoon to play for me. My God! I wouldn't allow Paderewski or
+    Gabrilowitsch to do that. I would rather have a leg amputated.
+    I knew he was coming, but I never dreamed it was to play for me.
+    When I heard the horrible news 4 hours ago, be d---d if I didn't
+    come near screaming. I meant to slip out and be absent, but now I
+    can't. Don't pray for me. The thing is just as d---d bad as it can
+    be already.
+
+Clemens's love for music did not include the piano, except for very
+gentle melodies, and he probably did not anticipate these from a
+professional player. He did not report the sequel of the matter; but it
+is likely that his imagination had discounted its tortures. Sometimes
+his letters were pure nonsense. Once he sent a sheet, on one side of
+which was written:
+
+                            BAY HOUSE,
+                            March s, 1910.
+       Received of S. L. C.
+       Two Dollars and Forty Cents
+       in return for my promise to believe everything he says
+       hereafter.
+                            HELEN S. ALLEN.
+
+and on the reverse:
+
+                       FOR SALE
+
+    The proprietor of the hereinbefore mentioned Promise desires to part
+    with it on account of ill health and obliged to go away somewheres
+    so as to let it recipricate, and will take any reasonable amount for
+    it above 2 percent of its face because experienced parties think it
+    will not keep but only a little while in this kind of weather & is a
+    kind of proppity that don't give a cuss for cold storage nohow.
+
+Clearly, however serious Mark Twain regarded his physical condition, he
+did not allow it to make him gloomy. He wrote that matters were going
+everywhere to his satisfaction; that Clara was happy; that his household
+and business affairs no longer troubled him; that his personal
+surroundings were of the pleasantest sort. Sometimes he wrote of what he
+was reading, and once spoke particularly of Prof. William Lyon Phelps's
+Literary Essays, which he said he had been unable to lay down until he
+had finished the book.--[To Phelps himself he wrote: "I thank you ever so
+much for the book, which I find charming--so charming, indeed, that I
+read it through in a single night, & did not regret the lost night's
+sleep. I am glad if I deserve what you have said about me; & even if I
+don't I am proud & well contented, since you think I deserve it."]
+
+So his days seemed full of comfort. But in March I noticed that he
+generally dictated his letters, and once when he sent some small
+photographs I thought he looked thinner and older. Still he kept up his
+merriment. In one letter he said:
+
+    While the matter is in my mind I will remark that if you ever send
+    me another letter which is not paged at the top I will write you
+    with my own hand, so that I may use with utter freedom & without
+    embarrassment the kind of words which alone can describe such a
+    criminal, to wit, - - - -; you will have to put into words those
+    dashes because propriety will not allow me to do it myself in my
+    secretary's hearing. You are forgiven, but don't let it occur
+    again.
+
+He had still made no mention of his illness; but on the 25th of March he
+wrote something of his plans for coming home. He had engaged passage on
+the Bermudian for April 23d, he said; and he added:
+
+    But don't tell anybody. I don't want it known. I may have to go
+    sooner if the pain in my breast does not mend its ways pretty
+    considerable. I don't want to die here, for this is an unkind place
+    for a person in that condition. I should have to lie in the
+    undertaker's cellar until the ship would remove me & it is dark down
+    there & unpleasant.
+
+    The Colliers will meet me on the pier, & I may stay with them a week
+    or two before going home. It all depends on the breast pain. I
+    don't want to die there. I am growing more and more particular
+    about the place.
+
+But in the same letter he spoke of plans for the summer, suggesting that
+we must look into the magic-lantern possibilities, so that library
+entertainments could be given at Stormfield. I confess that this letter,
+in spite of its light tone, made me uneasy, and I was tempted to sail for
+Bermuda to bring him home. Three days later he wrote again:
+
+    I have been having a most uncomfortable time for the past four days
+    with that breast pain, which turns out to be an affection of the
+    heart, just as I originally suspected. The news from New York is to
+    the effect that non-bronchial weather has arrived there at last;
+    therefore, if I can get my breast trouble in traveling condition I
+    may sail for home a week or two earlier than has been proposed.
+
+The same mail that brought this brought a letter from Mr. Allen, who
+frankly stated that matters had become very serious indeed. Mr. Clemens
+had had some dangerous attacks, and the physicians considered his
+condition critical.
+
+These letters arrived April 1st. I went to New York at once and sailed
+next morning. Before sailing I consulted with Dr. Quintard, who provided
+me with some opiates and instructed me in the use of the hypodermic
+needle. He also joined me in a cablegram to the Gabrilowitsches, then in
+Italy, advising them to sail without delay.
+
+
+
+
+CCXCII
+
+THE VOYAGE HOME
+
+I sent no word to Bermuda that I was coming, and when on the second
+morning I arrived at Hamilton, I stepped quickly ashore from the tender
+and hurried to Bay House. The doors were all open, as they usually are
+in that summer island, and no one was visible. I was familiar with the
+place, and, without knocking, I went through to the room occupied by Mark
+Twain. As I entered I saw that he was alone, sitting in a large chair,
+clad in the familiar dressing-gown.
+
+Bay House stands upon the water, and the morning light, reflected in at
+the window, had an unusual quality. He was not yet shaven, and he seemed
+unnaturally pale and gray; certainly he was much thinner. I was too
+startled, for the moment, to say anything. When he turned and saw me he
+seemed a little dazed.
+
+"Why," he said, holding out his hand, "you didn't tell us you were
+coming."
+
+"No," I said, "it is rather sudden. I didn't quite like the sound of
+your last letters."
+
+"But those were not serious," he protested. "You shouldn't have come on
+my account."
+
+I said then that I had come on my own account; that I had felt the need
+of recreation, and had decided to run down and come home with him.
+
+"That's--very--good," he said, in his slow, gentle fashion. "Now I'm
+glad to see you."
+
+His breakfast came in and he ate with an appetite.
+
+When he had been shaved and freshly propped tip in his pillows it seemed
+to me, after all, that I must have been mistaken in thinking him so
+changed. Certainly he was thinner, but his color was fine, his eyes were
+bright; he had no appearance of a man whose life was believed to be in
+danger. He told me then of the fierce attacks he had gone through, how
+the pains had torn at him, and how it had been necessary for him to have
+hypodermic injections, which he amusingly termed "hypnotic injunctions"
+and "subcutaneous applications," and he had his humor out of it, as of
+course he must have, even though Death should stand there in person.
+
+From Mr. and Mrs. Allen and from the physician I learned how slender had
+been his chances and how uncertain were the days ahead. Mr. Allen had
+already engaged passage on the Oceana for the 12th, and the one purpose
+now was to get him physically in condition for the trip.
+
+How devoted those kind friends had been to him! They had devised every
+imaginable thing for his comfort. Mr. Allen had rigged an electric bell
+which connected with his own room, so that he could be aroused instantly
+at any hour of the night. Clemens had refused to have a nurse, for it
+was only during the period of his extreme suffering that he needed any
+one, and he did not wish to have a nurse always around. When the pains
+were gone he was as bright and cheerful, and, seemingly, as well as ever.
+
+On the afternoon of my arrival we drove out, as formerly, and he
+discussed some of the old subjects in quite the old way. He had been
+rereading Macaulay, he said, and spoke at considerable length of the
+hypocrisy and intrigue of the English court under James II. He spoke,
+too, of the Redding Library. I had sold for him that portion of the land
+where Jean's farm-house had stood, and it was in his mind to use the
+money for some sort of a memorial to Jean. I had written, suggesting
+that perhaps he would like to put up a small library building, as the
+Adams lot faced the corner where Jean had passed every day when she rode
+to the station for the mail. He had been thinking this over, he said,
+and wished the idea carried out. He asked me to write at once to his
+lawyer, Mr. Lark, and have a paper prepared appointing trustees for a
+memorial library fund.
+
+The pain did not trouble him that afternoon, nor during several
+succeeding days. He was gay and quite himself, and he often went out on
+the lawn; but we did not drive out again. For the most part, he sat
+propped up in his bed, reading or smoking, or talking in the old way; and
+as I looked at him he seemed so full of vigor and the joy of life that I
+could not convince myself that he would not outlive us all. I found that
+he had been really very much alive during those three months--too much
+for his own good, sometimes--for he had not been careful of his hours or
+his diet, and had suffered in consequence.
+
+He had not been writing, though he had scribbled some playful valentines
+and he had amused himself one day by preparing a chapter of advice--for
+me it appeared--which, after reading it aloud to the Allens and receiving
+their approval, he declared he intended to have printed for my benefit.
+As it would seem to have been the last bit of continued writing he ever
+did, and because it is characteristic and amusing, a few paragraphs may
+be admitted. The "advice" is concerning deportment on reaching the Gate
+which St. Peter is supposed to guard--
+
+    Upon arrival do not speak to St. Peter until spoken to. It is not
+    your place to begin.
+
+    Do not begin any remark with "Say."
+
+    When applying for a ticket avoid trying to make conversation. If
+    you must talk let the weather alone. St. Peter cares not a damn for
+    the weather. And don't ask him what time the 4.30 train goes; there
+    aren't any trains in heaven, except through trains, and the less
+    information you get about them the better for you.
+
+    You can ask him for his autograph--there is no harm in that--but be
+    careful and don't remark that it is one of the penalties of
+    greatness. He has heard that before.
+
+    Don't try to kodak him. Hell is full of people who have made that
+    mistake.
+
+    Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit
+    you would stay out and the dog would go in.
+
+    You will be wanting to slip down at night and smuggle water to those
+    poor little chaps (the infant damned), but don't you try it. You
+    would be caught, and nobody in heaven would respect you after that.
+
+    Explain to Helen why I don't come. If you can.
+
+There were several pages of this counsel. One paragraph was written in
+shorthand. I meant to ask him to translate it; but there were many other
+things to think of, and I did not remember.
+
+I spent most of each day with him, merely sitting by the bed and reading
+while he himself read or dozed. His nights were wakeful--he found it
+easier to sleep by day--and he liked to think that some one was there. He
+became interested in Hardy's Jude, and spoke of it with high approval,
+urging me to read it. He dwelt a good deal on the morals of it, or
+rather on the lack of them. He followed the tale to the end, finishing
+it the afternoon before we sailed. It was his last continuous reading. I
+noticed, when he slept, that his breathing was difficult, and I could see
+from day to day that he did not improve; but each evening he would be gay
+and lively, and he liked the entire family to gather around, while he
+became really hilarious over the various happenings of the day. It was
+only a few days before we sailed that the very severe attacks returned.
+The night of the 8th was a hard one. The doctors were summoned, and it
+was only after repeated injections of morphine that the pain had been
+eased. When I returned in the early morning he was sitting in his chair
+trying to sing, after his old morning habit. He took my hand and said:
+
+"Well, I had a picturesque night. Every pain I had was on exhibition."
+
+He looked out the window at the sunlight on the bay and green dotted
+islands. "'Sparkling and bright in the liquid light,'" he quoted.
+"That's Hoffman. Anything left of Hoffman?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"I must watch for the Bermudian and see if she salutes," he said,
+presently. "The captain knows I am here sick, and he blows two short
+whistles just as they come up behind that little island. Those are for
+me."
+
+He said he could breathe easier if he could lean forward, and I placed a
+card-table in front of him. His breakfast came in, and a little later he
+became quite gay. He drifted to Macaulay again, and spoke of King
+James's plot to assassinate William II., and how the clergy had brought
+themselves to see that there was no difference between killing a king in
+battle and by assassination. He had taken his seat by the window to
+watch for the Bermudian. She came down the bay presently, her bright red
+stacks towering vividly above the green island. It was a brilliant
+morning, the sky and the water a marvelous blue. He watched her
+anxiously and without speaking. Suddenly there were two white puffs of
+steam, and two short, hoarse notes went up from her.
+
+"Those are for me," he said, his face full of contentment. "Captain
+Fraser does not forget me."
+
+There followed another bad night. My room was only a little distance
+away, and Claude came for me. I do not think any of us thought he would
+survive it; but he slept at last, or at least dozed. In the morning he
+said:
+
+"That breast pain stands watch all night and the short breath all day. I
+am losing enough sleep to supply a worn-out army. I want a jugful of
+that hypnotic injunction every night and every morning."
+
+We began to fear now that he would not be able to sail on the 12th; but
+by great good-fortune he had wonderfully improved by the 12th, so much so
+that I began to believe, if once he could be in Stormfield, where the air
+was more vigorous, he might easily survive the summer. The humid
+atmosphere of the season increased the difficulty of his breathing.
+
+That evening he was unusually merry. Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Helen and
+myself went in to wish him good night. He was loath to let us leave, but
+was reminded that he would sail in the morning, and that the doctor had
+insisted that he must be quiet and lie still in bed and rest. He was
+never one to be very obedient. A little later Mrs. Allen and I, in the
+sitting-room, heard some one walking softly outside on the veranda. We
+went out there, and he was marching up and down in his dressing-gown as
+unconcerned as if he were not an invalid at all. He hadn't felt sleepy,
+he said, and thought a little exercise would do him good. Perhaps it
+did, for he slept soundly that night--a great blessing.
+
+Mr. Allen had chartered a special tug to come to Bay House landing in the
+morning and take him to the ship. He was carried in a little hand-chair
+to the tug, and all the way out he seemed light-spirited, anything but an
+invalid: The sailors carried him again in the chair to his state-room,
+and he bade those dear Bermuda friends good-by, and we sailed away.
+
+As long as I remember anything I shall remember the forty-eight hours of
+that homeward voyage. It was a brief two days as time is measured; but
+as time is lived it has taken its place among those unmeasured periods by
+the side of which even years do not count.
+
+At first he seemed quite his natural self, and asked for a catalogue of
+the ship's library, and selected some memoirs of the Countess of Cardigan
+for his reading. He asked also for the second volume of Carlyle's French
+Revolution, which he had with him. But we ran immediately into the more
+humid, more oppressive air of the Gulf Stream, and his breathing became
+at first difficult, then next to impossible. There were two large
+port-holes, which I opened; but presently he suggested that it would be
+better outside. It was only a step to the main-deck, and no passengers
+were there. I had a steamer-chair brought, and with Claude supported him
+to it and bundled him with rugs; but it had grown damp and chilly, and
+his breathing did not improve. It seemed to me that the end might come
+at any moment, and this thought was in his mind, too, for once in the
+effort for breath he managed to say:
+
+"I am going--I shall be gone in a moment."
+
+Breath came; but I realized then that even his cabin was better than
+this. I steadied him back to his berth and shut out most of that deadly
+dampness. He asked for the "hypnotic 'injunction" (for his humor never
+left him), and though it was not yet the hour prescribed I could not deny
+it. It was impossible for him to lie down, even to recline, without
+great distress. The opiate made him drowsy, and he longed for the relief
+of sleep; but when it seemed about to possess him the struggle for air
+would bring him upright.
+
+During the more comfortable moments he spoke quite in the old way, and
+time and again made an effort to read, and reached for his pipe or a
+cigar which lay in the little berth hammock at his side. I held the
+match, and he would take a puff or two with satisfaction. Then the peace
+of it would bring drowsiness, and while I supported him there would come
+a few moments, perhaps, of precious sleep. Only a few moments, for the
+devil of suffocation was always lying in wait to bring him back for fresh
+tortures. Over and over again this was repeated, varied by him being
+steadied on his feet or sitting on the couch opposite the berth. In
+spite of his suffering, two dominant characteristics remained--the sense
+of humor, and tender consideration for another.
+
+Once when the ship rolled and his hat fell from the hook, and made the
+circuit of the cabin floor, he said:
+
+"The ship is passing the hat."
+
+Again he said:
+
+"I am sorry for you, Paine, but I can't help it--I can't hurry this dying
+business. Can't you give me enough of the hypnotic injunction to put an
+end to me?"
+
+He thought if I could arrange the pillows so he could sit straight up it
+would not be necessary to support him, and then I could sit on the couch
+and read while he tried to doze. He wanted me to read Jude, he said, so
+we could talk about it. I got all the pillows I could and built them up
+around him, and sat down with the book, and this seemed to give him
+contentment. He would doze off a little and then come up with a start,
+his piercing, agate eyes searching me out to see if I was still there.
+Over and over--twenty times in an hour--this was repeated. When I could
+deny him no longer I administered the opiate, but it never completely
+possessed him or gave him entire relief.
+
+As I looked at him there, so reduced in his estate, I could not but
+remember all the labor of his years, and all the splendid honor which the
+world had paid to him. Something of this may have entered his mind, too,
+for once, when I offered him some of the milder remedies which we had
+brought, he said:
+
+"After forty years of public effort I have become just a target for
+medicines."
+
+The program of change from berth to the floor, from floor to the couch,
+from the couch back to the berth among the pillows, was repeated again
+and again, he always thinking of the trouble he might be making, rarely
+uttering any complaint; but once he said:
+
+"I never guessed that I was not going to outlive John Bigelow." And
+again:
+
+"This is such a mysterious disease. If we only had a bill of particulars
+we'd have something to swear at."
+
+Time and again he picked up Carlyle or the Cardigan Memoirs, and read, or
+seemed to read, a few lines; but then the drowsiness would come and the
+book would fall. Time and again he attempted to smoke, or in his drowse
+simulated the motion of placing a cigar to his lips and puffing in the
+old way.
+
+Two dreams beset him in his momentary slumber--one of a play in which the
+title-role of the general manager was always unfilled. He spoke of this
+now and then when it had passed, and it seemed to amuse him. The other
+was a discomfort: a college assembly was attempting to confer upon him
+some degree which he did not want. Once, half roused, he looked at me
+searchingly and asked:
+
+"Isn't there something I can resign and be out of all this? They keep
+trying to confer that degree upon me and I don't want it." Then
+realizing, he said: "I am like a bird in a cage: always expecting to get
+out, and always beaten back by the wires." And, somewhat later: "Oh, it
+is such a mystery, and it takes so long."
+
+Toward the evening of the first day, when it grew dark outside, he asked:
+
+"How long have we been on this voyage?"
+
+I answered that this was the end of the first day.
+
+"How many more are there?" he asked.
+
+"Only one, and two nights."
+
+"We'll never make it," he said. "It's an eternity."
+
+"But we must on Clara's account," I told him, and I estimated that Clara
+would be more than half-way across the ocean by now.
+
+"It is a losing race," he said; "no ship can outsail death."
+
+It has been written--I do not know with what proof--that certain great
+dissenters have recanted with the approach of death--have become weak,
+and afraid to ignore old traditions in the face of the great mystery. I
+wish to write here that Mark Twain, as he neared the end, showed never a
+single tremor of fear or even of reluctance. I have dwelt upon these
+hours when suffering was upon him, and death the imminent shadow, in
+order to show that at the end he was as he had always been, neither more
+nor less, and never less than brave.
+
+Once, during a moment when he was comfortable and quite himself, he said,
+earnestly:
+
+"When I seem to be dying I don't want to be stimulated back to life. I
+want to be made comfortable to go."
+
+There was not a vestige of hesitation; there was no grasping at straws,
+no suggestion of dread.
+
+Somehow those two days and nights went by. Once, when he was partially
+relieved by the opiate, I slept, while Claude watched; and again, in the
+fading end of the last night, when we had passed at length into the cold,
+bracing northern air, and breath had come back to him, and with it sleep.
+
+Relatives, physicians, and news-gatherers were at the dock to welcome
+him. He was awake, and the northern air had brightened him, though it
+was the chill, I suppose, that brought on the pains in his breast, which,
+fortunately, he had escaped during the voyage. It was not a prolonged
+attack, and it was, blessedly, the last one.
+
+An invalid-carriage had been provided, and a compartment secured on the
+afternoon express to Redding--the same train that had taken him there two
+years before. Dr. Robert H. Halsey and Dr. Edward Quintard attended him,
+and he made the journey really in cheerful comfort, for he could breathe
+now, and in the relief came back old interests. Half reclining on the
+couch, he looked through the afternoon papers. It happened curiously
+that Charles Harvey Genung, who, something more than four years earlier,
+had been so largely responsible for my association with Mark Twain, was
+on the same train, in the same coach, bound for his country-place at New
+Hartford.
+
+Lounsbury was waiting with the carriage, and on that still, sweet April
+evening we drove him to Stormfield much as we had driven him two years
+before. Now and then he mentioned the apparent backwardness of the
+season, for only a few of the trees were beginning to show their green.
+As we drove into the lane that led to the Stormfield entrance, he said:
+
+"Can we see where you have built your billiard-room?"
+
+The gable showed above the trees, and I pointed it out to him.
+
+"It looks quite imposing," he said.
+
+I think it was the last outside interest he ever showed in anything. He
+had been carried from the ship and from the train, but when we drew up to
+Stormfield, where Mrs. Paine, with Katie Leary and others of the
+household, was waiting to greet him, he stepped from the carriage alone
+with something of his old lightness, and with all his old courtliness,
+and offered each one his hand. Then, in the canvas chair which we had
+brought, Claude and I carried him up-stairs to his room and delivered him
+to the physicians, and to the comforts and blessed air of home. This was
+Thursday evening, April 14, 1910.
+
+
+
+
+CCXCIII
+
+THE RETURN TO THE INVISIBLE
+
+There would be two days more before Ossip and Clara Gabrilowitsch could
+arrive. Clemens remained fairly bright and comfortable during this
+interval, though he clearly was not improving. The physicians denied him
+the morphine, now, as he no longer suffered acutely. But he craved it,
+and once, when I went in, he said, rather mournfully:
+
+"They won't give me the subcutaneous any more."
+
+It was Sunday morning when Clara came. He was cheerful and able to talk
+quite freely. He did not dwell upon his condition, I think, but spoke
+rather of his plans for the summer. At all events, he did not then
+suggest that he counted the end so near; but a day later it became
+evident to all that his stay was very brief. His breathing was becoming
+heavier, though it seemed not to give him much discomfort. His
+articulation also became affected. I think the last continuous talking
+he did was to Dr. Halsey on the evening of April 17th--the day of Clara's
+arrival. A mild opiate had been administered, and he said he wished to
+talk himself to sleep. He recalled one of his old subjects, Dual
+Personality, and discussed various instances that flitted through his
+mind--Jekyll and Hyde phases in literature and fact. He became drowsier
+as he talked. He said at last:
+
+"This is a peculiar kind of disease. It does not invite you to read; it
+does not invite you to be read to; it does not invite you to talk, nor to
+enjoy any of the usual sick-room methods of treatment. What kind of a
+disease is that? Some kinds of sicknesses have pleasant features about
+them. You can read and smoke and have only to lie still."
+
+And a little later he added:
+
+"It is singular, very singular, the laws of mentality--vacuity. I put
+out my hand to reach a book or newspaper which I have been reading most
+glibly, and it isn't there, not a suggestion of it."
+
+He coughed violently, and afterward commented:
+
+"If one gets to meddling with a cough it very soon gets the upper hand
+and is meddling with you. That is my opinion--of seventy-four years'
+growth."
+
+The news of his condition, everywhere published, brought great heaps of
+letters, but he could not see them. A few messages were reported to him.
+At intervals he read a little. Suetonius and Carlyle lay on the bed
+beside him, and he would pick them up as the spirit moved him and read a
+paragraph or a page. Sometimes, when I saw him thus-the high color still
+in his face, and the clear light in his eyes--I said: "It is not reality.
+He is not going to die." On Tuesday, the 19th, he asked me to tell Clara
+to come and sing to him. It was a heavy requirement, but she somehow
+found strength to sing some of the Scotch airs which he loved, and he
+seemed soothed and comforted. When she came away he bade her good-by,
+saying that he might not see her again.
+
+But he lingered through the next day and the next. His mind was
+wandering a little on Wednesday, and his speech became less and less
+articulate; but there were intervals when he was quite clear, quite
+vigorous, and he apparently suffered little. We did not know it, then,
+but the mysterious messenger of his birth-year, so long anticipated by
+him, appeared that night in the sky.--[The perihelion of Halley's Comet
+for 1835 was November 16th; for 1910 it was April 20th.]
+
+On Thursday morning, the 21st, his mind was generally clear, and it was
+said by the nurses that he read a little from one of the volumes on his
+bed, from the Suetonius, or from one of the volumes of Carlyle. Early in
+the forenoon he sent word by Clara that he wished to see me, and when I
+came in he spoke of two unfinished manuscripts which he wished me to
+"throw away," as he briefly expressed it, for he had not many words left
+now. I assured him that I would take care of them, and he pressed my
+hand. It was his last word to me.
+
+Once or twice that morning he tried to write some request which he could
+not put into intelligible words.
+
+And once he spoke to Gabrilowitsch, who, he said, could understand him
+better than the others. Most of the time he dozed.
+
+Somewhat after midday, when Clara was by him, he roused up and took her
+hand, and seemed to speak with less effort.
+
+"Good-by," he said, and Dr. Quintard, who was standing near, thought he
+added: "If we meet"--but the words were very faint. He looked at her for
+a little while, without speaking, then he sank into a doze, and from it
+passed into a deeper slumber, and did not heed us any more.
+
+Through that peaceful spring afternoon the life-wave ebbed lower and
+lower. It was about half past six, and the sun lay just on the horizon
+when Dr. Quintard noticed that the breathing, which had gradually become
+more subdued, broke a little. There was no suggestion of any struggle.
+The noble head turned a little to one side, there was a fluttering sigh,
+and the breath that had been unceasing through seventy-four tumultuous
+years had stopped forever.
+
+He had entered into the estate envied so long. In his own words--the
+words of one of his latest memoranda:
+
+"He had arrived at the dignity of death--the only earthly dignity that is
+not artificial--the only safe one. The others are traps that can beguile
+to humiliation.
+
+"Death--the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose
+peace and whose refuge are for all--the soiled and the pure--the rich and
+the poor--the loved and the unloved."
+
+
+
+
+CCXCIV
+
+THE LAST RITES
+
+It is not often that a whole world mourns. Nations have often mourned a
+hero--and races--but perhaps never before had the entire world really
+united in tender sorrow for the death of any man.
+
+In one of his aphorisms he wrote: "Let us endeavor so to live that when
+we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." And it was thus that
+Mark Twain himself had lived.
+
+No man had ever so reached the heart of the world, and one may not even
+attempt to explain just why. Let us only say that it was because he was
+so limitlessly human that every other human heart, in whatever sphere or
+circumstance, responded to his touch. From every remote corner of the
+globe the cables of condolence swept in; every printed sheet in
+Christendom was filled with lavish tribute; pulpits forgot his heresies
+and paid him honor. No king ever died that received so rich a homage as
+his. To quote or to individualize would be to cheapen this vast
+offering.
+
+We took him to New York to the Brick Church, and Dr. Henry van Dyke spoke
+only a few simple words, and Joseph Twichell came from Hartford and
+delivered brokenly a prayer from a heart wrung with double grief, for
+Harmony, his wife, was nearing the journey's end, and a telegram that
+summoned him to her death-bed came before the services ended.
+
+Mark Twain, dressed in the white he loved so well, lay there with the
+nobility of death upon him, while a multitude of those who loved him
+passed by and looked at his face for the last time. The flowers, of
+which so many had been sent, were banked around him; but on the casket
+itself lay a single laurel wreath which Dan Beard and his wife had woven
+from the laurel which grows on Stormfield hill. He was never more
+beautiful than as he lay there, and it was an impressive scene to see
+those thousands file by, regard him for a moment gravely, thoughtfully,
+and pass on. All sorts were there, rich and poor; some crossed
+themselves, some saluted, some paused a little to take a closer look; but
+no one offered even to pick a flower. Howells came, and in his book he
+says:
+
+    I looked a moment at the face I knew so well; and it was patient
+    with the patience I had so often seen in it: something of a puzzle,
+    a great silent dignity, an assent to what must be from the depths of
+    a nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the laughter which the
+    unwise took for the whole of him.
+
+That night we went with him to Elmira, and next day--a somber day of
+rain--he lay in those stately parlors that had seen his wedding-day, and
+where Susy had lain, and Mrs. Clemens, and Jean, while Dr. Eastman spoke
+the words of peace which separate us from our mortal dead. Then in the
+quiet, steady rain of that Sunday afternoon we laid him beside those
+others, where he sleeps well, though some have wished that, like De Soto,
+he might have been laid to rest in the bed of that great river which must
+always be associated with his name.
+
+
+
+
+CCXCV
+
+MARK TWAIN'S RELIGION
+
+There is such a finality about death; however interesting it may be as an
+experience, one cannot discuss it afterward with one's friends. I have
+thought it a great pity that Mark Twain could not discuss, with Howells
+say, or with Twichell, the sensations and the particulars of the change,
+supposing there be a recognizable change, in that transition of which we
+have speculated so much, with such slender returns. No one ever debated
+the undiscovered country more than he. In his whimsical, semi-serious
+fashion he had considered all the possibilities of the future state
+--orthodox and otherwise--and had drawn picturesquely original
+conclusions. He had sent Captain Stormfield in a dream to report the
+aspects of the early Christian heaven. He had examined the scientific
+aspects of the more subtle philosophies. He had considered spiritualism,
+transmigration, the various esoteric doctrines, and in the end he had
+logically made up his mind that death concludes all, while with that less
+logical hunger which survives in every human heart he had never ceased to
+expect an existence beyond the grave. His disbelief and his pessimism
+were identical in their structure. They were of his mind; never of his
+heart.
+
+Once a woman said to him:
+
+"Mr. Clemens, you are not a pessimist, you only think you are." And she
+might have added, with equal force and truth:
+
+"You are not a disbeliever in immortality; you only think you are."
+
+Nothing could have conveyed more truly his attitude toward life and
+death. His belief in God, the Creator, was absolute; but it was a God
+far removed from the Creator of his early teaching. Every man builds his
+God according to his own capacities. Mark Twain's God was of colossal
+proportions--so vast, indeed, that the constellated stars were but
+molecules in His veins--a God as big as space itself.
+
+Mark Twain had many moods, and he did not always approve of his own God;
+but when he altered his conception, it was likely to be in the direction
+of enlargement--a further removal from the human conception, and the
+problem of what we call our lives.
+
+In 1906 he wrote:--[See also 1870, chap. lxxviii; 1899, chap. ccv; and
+various talks, 1906-07, etc.]
+    Let us now consider the real God, the genuine God, the great God,
+    the sublime and supreme God, the authentic Creator of the real
+    universe, whose remotenesses are visited by comets only comets unto
+    which incredible distant Neptune is merely an out post, a Sandy Hook
+    to homeward-bound specters of the deeps of space that have not
+    glimpsed it before for generations--a universe not made with hands
+    and suited to an astronomical nursery, but spread abroad through the
+    illimitable reaches of space by the flat of the real God just
+    mentioned, by comparison with whom the gods whose myriads infest the
+    feeble imaginations of men are as a swarm of gnats scattered and
+    lost in the infinitudes of the empty sky.
+
+At an earlier period-the date is not exactly fixable, but the stationery
+used and the handwriting suggest the early eighties--he set down a few
+concisely written pages of conclusions--conclusions from which he did not
+deviate materially in after years. The document follows:
+
+    I believe in God the Almighty.
+
+    I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody, or
+    delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to
+    mortal eyes at any time in any place.
+
+    I believe that the Old and New Testaments were imagined and written
+    by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God, much less
+    inspired by Him.
+
+    I think the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are
+    manifested in His works: I perceive that they are manifested toward
+    me in this life; the logical conclusion is that they will be
+    manifested toward me in the life to come, if there should be one.
+
+    I do not believe in special providences. I believe that the
+    universe is governed by strict and immutable laws: If one man's
+    family is swept away by a pestilence and another man's spared it is
+    only the law working: God is not interfering in that small matter,
+    either against the one man or in favor of the other.
+
+    I cannot see how eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any
+    good end, therefore I am not able to believe in it. To chasten a
+    man in order to perfect him might be reasonable enough; to
+    annihilate him when he shall have proved himself incapable of
+    reaching perfection might be reasonable enough; but to roast him
+    forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him roast would not be
+    reasonable--even the atrocious God imagined by the Jews would tire
+    of the spectacle eventually.
+
+    There may be a hereafter and there may not be. I am wholly
+    indifferent about it. If I am appointed to live again I feel sure
+    it will be for some more sane and useful purpose than to flounder
+    about for ages in a lake of fire and brimstone for having violated a
+    confusion of ill-defined and contradictory rules said (but not
+    evidenced) to be of divine institution. If annihilation is to
+    follow death I shall not be aware of the annihilation, and therefore
+    shall not care a straw about it.
+
+    I believe that the world's moral laws are the outcome of the world's
+    experience. It needed no God to come down out of heaven to tell men
+    that murder and theft and the other immoralities were bad, both for
+    the individual who commits them and for society which suffers from
+    them.
+
+    If I break all these moral laws I cannot see how I injure God by it,
+    for He is beyond the reach of injury from me--I could as easily
+    injure a planet by throwing mud at it. It seems to me that my
+    misconduct could only injure me and other men. I cannot benefit God
+    by obeying these moral laws--I could as easily benefit the planet by
+    withholding my mud. (Let these sentences be read in the light of
+    the fact that I believe I have received moral laws only from man
+    --none whatever from God.) Consequently I do not see why I should be
+    either punished or rewarded hereafter for the deeds I do here.
+
+If the tragedies of life shook his faith in the goodness and justice and
+the mercy of God as manifested toward himself, he at any rate never
+questioned that the wider scheme of the universe was attuned to the
+immutable law which contemplates nothing less than absolute harmony. I
+never knew him to refer to this particular document; but he never
+destroyed it and never amended it, nor is it likely that he would have
+done either had it been presented to him for consideration even during
+the last year of his life.
+
+He was never intentionally dogmatic. In a memorandum on a fly-leaf of
+Moncure D. Conway's Sacred Anthology he wrote:
+
+                       RELIGION
+
+The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly
+teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
+                     MARK TWAIN, 19th Cent. A.D.
+
+And in another note:
+
+I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or
+to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his
+hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion maybe. But
+it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life hence it is a
+valuable possession to him.
+
+Mark Twain's religion was a faith too wide for doctrines--a benevolence
+too limitless for creeds. From the beginning he strove against
+oppression, sham, and evil in every form. He despised meanness; he
+resented with every drop of blood in him anything that savored of
+persecution or a curtailment of human liberties. It was a religion
+identified with his daily life and his work. He lived as he wrote, and
+he wrote as he believed. His favorite weapon was humor--good-humor--with
+logic behind it. A sort of glorified truth it was truth wearing a smile
+of gentleness, hence all the more quickly heeded.
+
+"He will be remembered with the great humorists of all time," says
+Howells, "with Cervantes, with Swift, or with any others worthy of his
+company; none of them was his equal in humanity."
+
+Mark Twain understood the needs of men because he was himself supremely
+human. In one of his dictations he said:
+
+I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not
+possess in either a small or a large way. When it is small, as compared
+with the same ingredient in somebody else, there is still enough of it
+for all the purposes of examination.
+
+With his strength he had inherited the weaknesses of our kind. With him,
+as with another, a myriad of dreams and schemes and purposes daily
+flitted by. With him, as with another, the spirit of desire led him
+often to a high mountain-top, and was not rudely put aside, but
+lingeringly--and often invited to return. With him, as with another, a
+crowd of jealousies and resentments, and wishes for the ill of others,
+daily went seething and scorching along the highways of the soul. With
+him, as with another, regret, remorse, and shame stood at the bedside
+during long watches of the night; and in the end, with him, the better
+thing triumphed--forgiveness and generosity and justice--in a word,
+Humanity. Certain of his aphorisms and memoranda each in itself
+constitutes an epitome of Mark Twain's creed. His paraphrase, "When in
+doubt tell the truth," is one of these, and he embodied his whole
+attitude toward Infinity when in one of his stray pencilings he wrote:
+
+Why, even poor little ungodlike man holds himself responsible for the
+welfare of his child to the extent of his ability. It is all that we
+require of God.
+
+
+
+
+CCXCVI
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+Every life is a drama--a play in all its particulars; comedy, farce,
+tragedy--all the elements are there. To examine in detail any life,
+however conspicuous or obscure, is to become amazed not only at the
+inevitable sequence of events, but at the interlinking of details, often
+far removed, into a marvelously intricate pattern which no art can hope
+to reproduce, and can only feebly imitate.
+
+The biographer may reconstruct an episode, present a picture, or reflect
+a mood by which the reader is enabled to feel something of the glow of
+personality and know, perhaps, a little of the substance of the past. In
+so far as the historian can accomplish this his work is a success. At
+best his labor will be pathetically incomplete, for whatever its detail
+and its resemblance to life, these will record mainly but an outward
+expression, behind which was the mighty sweep and tumult of unwritten
+thought, the overwhelming proportion of any life, which no other human
+soul can ever really know.
+
+Mark Twain's appearance on the stage of the world was a succession of
+dramatic moments. He was always exactly in the setting. Whatever he
+did, or whatever came to him, was timed for the instant of greatest
+effect. At the end he was more widely observed and loved and honored
+than ever before, and at the right moment and in the right manner he
+died.
+
+How little one may tell of such a life as his! He traveled always such a
+broad and brilliant highway, with plumes flying and crowds following
+after. Such a whirling panorama of life, and death, and change! I have
+written so much, and yet I have put so much aside--and often the best
+things, it seemed afterward, perhaps because each in its way was best and
+the variety infinite. One may only strive to be faithful--and I would
+have made it better if I could.
+
+
+
+
+
+                       APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX A
+
+LETTER FROM ORION CLEMENS TO MISS WOOD CONCERNING HENRY CLEMENS
+
+(See Chapter xxvi)
+
+                         KEOKUK, Iowa, October 3, 1858.
+
+MISS WOOD,--My mother having sent me your kind letter, with a request
+that myself and wife should write to you, I hasten to do so.
+
+In my memory I can go away back to Henry's infancy; I see his large, blue
+eyes intently regarding my father when he rebuked him for his credulity
+in giving full faith to the boyish idea of planting his marbles,
+expecting a crop therefrom; then comes back the recollection of the time
+when, standing we three alone by our father's grave, I told them always
+to remember that brothers should be kind to each other; afterward I see
+Henry returning from school with his books for the last time. He must go
+into my printing-office. He learned rapidly. A word of encouragement or
+a word of discouragement told upon his organization electrically. I
+could see the effects in his day's work. Sometimes I would say, "Henry!"
+He would stand full front with his eyes upon mine--all attention. If I
+commanded him to do something, without a word he was off instantly,
+probably in a run. If a cat was to be drowned or shot Sam (though
+unwilling yet firm) was selected for the work. If a stray kitten was to
+be fed and taken care of Henry was expected to attend to it, and he would
+faithfully do so. So they grew up, and many was the grave lecture
+commenced by ma, to the effect that Sam was misleading and spoiling
+Henry. But the lectures were never concluded, for Sam would reply with a
+witticism, or dry, unexpected humor, that would drive the lecture clean
+out of my mother's mind, and change it to a laugh. Those were happier
+days. My mother was as lively as any girl of sixteen. She is not so
+now. And sister Pamela I have described in describing Henry; for she was
+his counterpart. The blow falls crushingly on her. But the boys grew
+up--Sam a rugged, brave, quick-tempered, generous-hearted fellow, Henry
+quiet, observing, thoughtful, leaning on Sam for protection; Sam and I
+too leaning on him for knowledge picked up from conversation or books,
+for Henry seemed never to forget anything, and devoted much of his
+leisure hours to reading.
+
+Henry is gone! His death was horrible! How I could have sat by him,
+hung over him, watched day and night every change of expression, and
+ministered to every want in my power that I could discover. This was
+denied to me, but Sam, whose organization is such as to feel the utmost
+extreme of every feeling, was there. Both his capacity of enjoyment and
+his capacity of suffering are greater than mine; and knowing how it would
+have affected me to see so sad a scene, I can somewhat appreciate Sam's
+sufferings. In this time of great trouble, when my two brothers, whose
+heartstrings have always been a part of my own, were suffering the utmost
+stretch of mortal endurance, you were there, like a good angel, to aid
+and console, and I bless and thank you for it with my whole heart. I
+thank all who helped them then; I thank them for the flowers they sent to
+Henry, for the tears that fell for their sufferings, and when he died,
+and all of them for all the kind attentions they bestowed upon the poor
+boys. We thank the physicians, and we shall always gratefully remember
+the kindness of the gentleman who at so much expense to himself enabled
+us to deposit Henry's remains by our father.
+
+With many kind wishes for your future welfare, I remain your earnest
+friend,
+                     Respectfully,
+                                ORION CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX B
+
+MARK TWAIN'S BURLESQUE OF CAPTAIN ISAIAH SELLERS
+
+(See Chapter xxvii)
+
+The item which served as a text for the "Sergeant Fathom" communication
+was as follows:
+
+                            VICKSBURG, May 4, 1859.
+
+My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is
+higher this far up than it has been since 1815. My opinion is that the
+water will be four feet deep in Canal Street before the first of next
+June. Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all
+under water, and it has not been since 1815.
+                            I. SELLERS.--[Captain Sellers, as
+                            in this case, sometimes signed
+                            his own name to his
+                            communications.]
+
+THE BURLESQUE
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+Our friend Sergeant Fathom, one of the oldest cub pilots on the river,
+and now on the Railroad Line steamer Trombone, sends us a rather bad
+account concerning the state of the river. Sergeant Fathom is a "cub" of
+much experience, and although we are loath to coincide in his view of the
+matter, we give his note a place in our columns, only hoping that his
+prophecy will not be verified in this instance. While introducing the
+Sergeant, "we consider it but simple justice (we quote from a friend of
+his) to remark that he is distinguished for being, in pilot phrase,
+'close,' as well as superhumanly 'safe.'" It is a well-known fact that
+he has made fourteen hundred and fifty trips in the New Orleans and St.
+Louis trade without causing serious damage to a steamboat. This
+astonishing success is attributed to the fact that he seldom runs his
+boat after early candle-light. It is related of the Sergeant that upon
+one occasion he actually ran the chute of Glasscock's Island,
+down-stream, in the night, and at a time, too, when the river was
+scarcely more than bank full. His method of accomplishing this feat
+proves what we have just said of his "safeness"--he sounded the chute
+first, and then built a fire at the head of the island to run by. As to
+the Sergeant's "closeness," we have heard it whispered that he once went
+up to the right of the "Old Hen,"--[Glasscock's Island and the "Old Hen"
+were phenomenally safe places.]--but this is probably a pardonable little
+exaggeration, prompted by the love and admiration in which he is held by
+various ancient dames of his acquaintance (for albeit the Sergeant may
+have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect,
+his step is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he
+hath a winning way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you
+will, and a smoothness of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of
+funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or
+middle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of the ancient Mississippi,
+which, taken together, form a 'tout ensemble' which is sufficient excuse
+for the tender epithet which is, by common consent, applied to him by all
+those ancient dames aforesaid, of "che-arming creature!"). As the
+Sergeant has been longer on the river, and is better acquainted with it
+than any other "cub" extant, his remarks are entitled to far more
+consideration, and are always read with the deepest interest by high and
+low, rich and poor, from "Kiho" to Kamschatka, for let it be known that
+his fame extends to the uttermost parts of the earth:
+
+
+THE COMMUNICATION
+
+R.R. Steamer Trombone, VICKSBURG, May 8, 1859.
+
+The river from New Orleans up to Natchez is higher than it has been since
+the niggers were executed (which was in the fall of 1813) and my opinion
+is that if the rise continues at this rate the water will be on the roof
+of the St. Charles Hotel before the middle of January. The point at
+Cairo, which has not even been moistened by the river since 1813, is now
+entirely under water.
+
+However, Mr. Editor, the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley should not
+act precipitately and sell their plantations at a sacrifice on account of
+this prophecy of mine, for I shall proceed to convince them of a great
+fact in regard to this matter, viz.: that the tendency of the Mississippi
+is to rise less and less high every year (with an occasional variation of
+the rule), that such has been the case for many centuries, and eventually
+that it will cease to rise at all. Therefore, I would hint to the
+planters, as we say in an innocent little parlor game commonly called
+"draw," that if they can only "stand the rise" this time they may enjoy
+the comfortable assurance that the old river's banks will never hold a
+"full" again during their natural lives.
+
+In the summer of 1763 I came down the river on the old first Jubilee. She
+was new then, however; a singular sort of a single-engine boat, with a
+Chinese captain and a Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, wheels in
+the center, and the jackstaff "nowhere," for I steered her with a
+window-shutter, and when we wanted to land we sent a line ashore and
+"rounded her to" with a yoke of oxen.
+
+Well, sir, we wooded off the top of the big bluff above Selmathe only dry
+land visible--and waited there three weeks, swapping knives and playing
+"seven up" with the Indians, waiting for the river to fall. Finally, it
+fell about a hundred feet, and we went on. One day we rounded to, and I
+got in a horse-trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up
+there at Selma while they were at prayers, and went down to sound around
+No. 8, and while I was gone my partner got aground on the hills at
+Hickman. After three days' labor we finally succeeded in sparring her
+off with a capstan bar, and went on to Memphis. By the time we got there
+the river had subsided to such an extent that we were able to land where
+the Gayoso House now stands. We finished loading at Memphis, and loaded
+part of the stone for the present St. Louis Court House (which was then
+in process of erection), to be taken up on our return trip.
+
+You can form some conception, by these memoranda, of how high the water
+was in 1763. In 1775 it did not rise so high by thirty feet; in 1790 it
+missed the original mark at least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred
+and fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hundred and fifty feet. These
+were "high-water" years. The "high waters" since then have been so
+insignificant that I have scarcely taken the trouble to notice them.
+Thus, you will perceive that the planters need not feel uneasy. The
+river may make an occasional spasmodic effort at a flood, but the time is
+approaching when it will cease to rise altogether.
+
+In conclusion, sir, I will condescend to hint at the foundation of these
+arguments: When me and De Soto discovered the Mississippi I could stand
+at Bolivar Landing (several miles above "Roaring Waters Bar") and pitch a
+biscuit to the main shore on the other side, and in low water we waded
+across at Donaldsonville. The gradual widening and deepening of the
+river is the whole secret of the matter.
+
+                     Yours, etc.
+                            SERGEANT FATHOM.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX C
+
+I
+
+MARK TWAIN'S EMPIRE CITY HOAX (See Chapter xli)
+THE LATEST SENSATION.
+
+    A Victim to Jeremy Diddling Trustees--He Cuts his Throat from Ear to
+    Ear, Scalps his Wife, and Dashes Out the Brains of Six Helpless
+    Children!
+
+From Abram Curry, who arrived here yesterday afternoon from Carson, we
+learn the following particulars concerning a bloody massacre which was
+committed in Ormsby County night before last. It seems that during the
+past six months a man named P. Hopkins, or Philip Hopkins, has been
+residing with his family in the old log-house just at the edge of the
+great pine forest which lies between Empire City and Dutch Nick's. The
+family consisted of nine children--five girls and four boys--the oldest
+of the group, Mary, being nineteen years old, and the youngest, Tommy,
+about a year and a half. Twice in the past two months Mrs. Hopkins,
+while visiting Carson, expressed fears concerning the sanity of her
+husband, remarking that of late he had been subject to fits of violence,
+and that during the prevalence of one of these he had threatened to take
+her life. It was Mrs. Hopkins's misfortune to be given to exaggeration,
+however, and but little attention was given to what she said.
+
+About 10 o'clock on Monday evening Hopkins dashed into Carson on
+horseback, with his throat cut from ear to ear, and bearing in his hand a
+reeking scalp, from which the warm, smoking blood was still dripping, and
+fell in a dying condition in front of the Magnolia saloon. Hopkins
+expired, in the course of five minutes, without speaking. The long, red
+hair of the scalp he bore marked it as that of Mrs. Hopkins. A number of
+citizens, headed by Sheriff Gasherie, mounted at once and rode down to
+Hopkins's house, where a ghastly scene met their eyes. The scalpless
+corpse of Mrs. Hopkins lay across the threshold, with her head split open
+and her right hand almost severed from the wrist. Near her lay the ax
+with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of the bedrooms
+six of the children were found, one in bed and the others scattered about
+the floor. They were all dead. Their brains had evidently been dashed
+out with a club, and every mark about them seemed to have been made with
+a blunt instrument. The children must have struggled hard for their
+lives, as articles of clothing and broken furniture were strewn about the
+room in the utmost confusion. Julia and Emma, aged respectively fourteen
+and seventeen, were found in the kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it
+is thought their recovery is possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have
+sought refuge, in her terror, in the garret, as her body was found there
+frightfully mutilated, and the knife with which her wounds had been
+inflicted still sticking in her side. The two girls Julia and Emma, who
+had recovered sufficiently to be able to talk yesterday morning, declare
+that their father knocked them down with a billet of wood and stamped on
+them. They think they were the first attacked. They further state that
+Hopkins had shown evidence of derangement all day, but had exhibited no
+violence. He flew into a passion and attempted to murder them because
+they advised him to go to bed and compose his mind.
+
+Curry says Hopkins was about forty-two years of age, and a native of
+western Pennsylvania; he was always affable and polite, and until very
+recently no one had ever heard of his ill-treating his family. He had
+been a heavy owner in the best mines of Virginia and Gold Hill, but when
+the San Francisco papers exposed our game of cooking dividends in order
+to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold out, and invested an
+immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company, of San Francisco. He
+was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of the editors of the
+San Francisco Bulletin, who had suffered pecuniarily by the
+dividend-cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company recently.
+Hopkins had not long ceased to own in the various claims on the Comstock
+lead, however, when several dividends were cooked on his newly acquired
+property, their water totally dried up, and Spring Valley stock went down
+to nothing. It is presumed that this misfortune drove him mad, and
+resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of his family.
+The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on
+borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which the cunning
+financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash to come
+upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to expose the
+villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above may prove
+the saddest result of their silence.
+
+
+II
+
+NEWS-GATHERING WITH MARK TWAIN.
+
+Alfred Doten's son gives the following account of a reporting trip made
+by his father and Mark Twain, when the two were on Comstock papers:
+
+My father and Mark Twain were once detailed to go over to Como and write
+up some new mines that had been discovered over there. My father was on
+the Gold Hill News. He and Mark had not met before, but became promptly
+acquainted, and were soon calling each other by their first names.
+
+They went to a little hotel at Carson, agreeing to do their work there
+together next morning. When morning came they set out, and suddenly on a
+corner Mark stopped and turned to my father, saying:
+
+"By gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?"
+
+"It is, Mark. Let's go in."
+
+They did so, and remained there all day, swapping yarns, sipping beer,
+and lunching, going back to the hotel that night.
+
+The next morning precisely the same thing occurred. When they were on
+the same corner, Mark stopped as if he had never been there before, and
+sand:
+
+"Good gracious, Alf! Isn't that a brewery?"
+
+"It is, Mark. Let's go in."
+
+So again they went in, and again stayed all day.
+
+This happened again the next morning, and the next. Then my father
+became uneasy. A letter had come from Gold Hill, asking him where his
+report of the mines was. They agreed that next morning they would really
+begin the story; that they would climb to the top of a hill that
+overlooked the mines, and write it from there.
+
+But the next morning, as before, Mark was surprised to discover the
+brewery, and once more they went in. A few moments later, however, a man
+who knew all about the mines--a mining engineer connected with them--came
+in. He was a godsend. My father set down a valuable, informing story,
+while Mark got a lot of entertaining mining yarns out of him.
+
+Next day Virginia City and Gold Hill were gaining information from my
+father's article, and entertainment from Mark's story of the mines.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX D
+
+FROM MARK TWAIN'S FIRST LECTURE, DELIVERED OCTOBER 2, 1866.
+
+(See Chapter liv)
+HAWAIIAN IMPORTANCE TO AMERICA.
+
+After a full elucidation of the sugar industry of the Sandwich Islands,
+its profits and possibilities, he said:
+
+I have dwelt upon this subject to show you that these islands have a
+genuine importance to America--an importance which is not generally
+appreciated by our citizens. They pay revenues into the United States
+Treasury now amounting to over a half a million a year.
+
+I do not know what the sugar yield of the world is now, but ten years
+ago, according to the Patent Office reports, it was 800,000 hogsheads.
+The Sandwich Islands, properly cultivated by go-ahead Americans, are
+capable of providing one-third as much themselves. With the Pacific
+Railroad built, the great China Mail Line of steamers touching at
+Honolulu--we could stock the islands with Americans and supply a third of
+the civilized world with sugar--and with the silkiest, longest-stapled
+cotton this side of the Sea Islands, and the very best quality of
+rice.... The property has got to fall to some heir, and why not the
+United States?
+
+
+NATIVE PASSION FOR FUNERALS
+
+They are very fond of funerals. Big funerals are their main weakness.
+Fine grave clothes, fine funeral appointments, and a long procession are
+things they take a generous delight in. They are fond of their chief and
+their king; they reverence them with a genuine reverence and love them
+with a warm affection, and often look forward to the happiness they will
+experience in burying them. They will beg, borrow, or steal money
+enough, and flock from all the islands, to be present at a royal funeral
+on Oahu. Years ago a Kanaka and his wife were condemned to be hanged for
+murder. They received the sentence with manifest satisfaction because it
+gave an opening for a funeral, you know. All they care for is a funeral.
+It makes but little difference to them whose it is; they would as soon
+attend their own funeral as anybody else's. This couple were people of
+consequence, and had landed estates. They sold every foot of ground they
+had and laid it out in fine clothes to be hung in. And the woman
+appeared on the scaffold in a white satin dress and slippers and fathoms
+of gaudy ribbon, and the man was arrayed in a gorgeous vest, blue
+claw-hammer coat and brass buttons, and white kid gloves. As the noose
+was adjusted around his neck, he blew his nose with a grand theatrical
+flourish, so as to show his embroidered white handkerchief. I never,
+never knew of a couple who enjoyed hanging more than they did.
+
+
+VIEW FROM HALEAKALA
+
+It is a solemn pleasure to stand upon the summit of the extinct crater of
+Haleakala, ten thousand feet above the sea, and gaze down into its awful
+crater, 27 miles in circumference and ago feet deep, and to picture to
+yourself the seething world of fire that once swept up out of the
+tremendous abyss ages ago.
+
+The prodigious funnel is dead and silent now, and even has bushes growing
+far down in its bottom, where the deep-sea line could hardly have reached
+in the old times, when the place was filled with liquid lava. These
+bushes look like parlor shrubs from the summit where you stand, and the
+file of visitors moving through them on their mules is diminished to a
+detachment of mice almost; and to them you, standing so high up against
+the sun, ten thousand feet above their heads, look no larger than a
+grasshopper.
+
+This in the morning; but at three or four in the afternoon a thousand
+little patches of white clouds, like handfuls of wool, come drifting
+noiselessly, one after another, into the crater, like a procession of
+shrouded phantoms, and circle round and round the vast sides, and settle
+gradually down and mingle together until the colossal basin is filled to
+the brim with snowy fog and all its seared and desolate wonders are
+hidden from sight.
+
+And then you may turn your back to the crater and look far away upon the
+broad valley below, with its sugar-houses glinting like white specks in
+the distance, and the great sugar-fields diminished to green veils amid
+the lighter-tinted verdure around them, and abroad upon the limitless
+ocean. But I should not say you look down; you look up at these things.
+
+You are ten thousand feet above them, but yet you seem to stand in a
+basin, with the green islands here and there, and the valleys and the
+wide ocean, and the remote snow-peak of Mauna Loa, all raised up before
+and above you, and pictured out like a brightly tinted map hung at the
+ceiling of a room.
+
+You look up at everything; nothing is below you. It has a singular and
+startling effect to see a miniature world thus seemingly hung in mid-air.
+
+But soon the white clouds come trooping along in ghostly squadrons and
+mingle together in heavy masses a quarter of a mile below you and shut
+out everything-completely hide the sea and all the earth save the
+pinnacle you stand on. As far as the eye can reach, it finds nothing to
+rest upon but a boundless plain of clouds tumbled into all manner of
+fantastic shapes-a billowy ocean of wool aflame with the gold and purple
+and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm does this grand
+cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that you could
+not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge headlong
+and astonish your friends at dinner ten thousand feet below.
+
+Standing on that peak, with all the world shut out by that vast plain of
+clouds, a feeling of loneliness comes over a man which suggests to his
+mind the last man at the flood, perched high upon the last rock, with
+nothing visible on any side but a mournful waste of waters, and the ark
+departing dimly through the distant mists and leaving him to storm and
+night and solitude and death!
+
+
+
+
+NOTICE OF MARK TWAIN'S LECTURE
+
+"THE TROUBLE IS OVER"
+
+"The inimitable Mark Twain, delivered himself last night of his first
+lecture on the Sandwich Islands, or anything else.
+
+"Some time before the hour appointed to open his head the Academy of
+Music (on Pine Street) was densely crowded with one of the most
+fashionable audiences it was ever my privilege to witness during my long
+residence in this city. The Elite of the town were there, and so was the
+Governor of the State, occupying one of the boxes, whose rotund face was
+suffused with a halo of mirth during the whole entertainment. The
+audience promptly notified Mark by the usual sign--stamping--that the
+auspicious hour had arrived, and presently the lecturer came sidling and
+swinging out from the left of the stage. His very manner produced a
+generally vociferous laugh from the assemblage. He opened with an
+apology, by saying that he had partly succeeded in obtaining a band, but
+at the last moment the party engaged backed out. He explained that he
+had hired a man to play the trombone, but he, on learning that he was the
+only person engaged, came at the last moment and informed him that he
+could not play. This placed Mark in a bad predicament, and wishing to
+know his reasons for deserting him at that critical moment, he replied,
+'That he wasn't going to make a fool of himself by sitting up there on
+the stage and blowing his horn all by himself.' After the applause
+subsided, he assumed a very grave countenance and commenced his remarks
+proper with the following well-known sentence: 'When, in the course of
+human events,' etc. He lectured fully an hour and a quarter, and his
+humorous sayings were interspersed with geographical, agricultural, and
+statistical remarks, sometimes branching off and reaching beyond,
+soaring, in the very choicest language, up to the very pinnacle of
+descriptive power."
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX E
+
+FROM "THE JUMPING FROG" BOOK (MARK TWAIN'S FIRST PUBLISHED VOLUME)
+
+(See Chapters lviii and lix)
+
+
+I
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+"Mark Twain" is too well known to the public to require a formal
+introduction at my hands. By his story of the Frog he scaled the heights
+of popularity at a single jump and won for himself the 'sobriquet' of The
+Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope. He is also known to fame as The
+Moralist of the Main; and it is not unlikely that as such he will go down
+to posterity. It is in his secondary character, as humorist, however,
+rather than in the primal one of moralist, that I aim to present him in
+the present volume. And here a ready explanation will be found for the
+somewhat fragmentary character of many of these sketches; for it was
+necessary to snatch threads of humor wherever they could be found--very
+often detaching them from serious articles and moral essays with which
+they were woven and entangled. Originally written for newspaper
+publication, many of the articles referred to events of the day, the
+interest of which has now passed away, and contained local allusions,
+which the general reader would fail to understand; in such cases excision
+became imperative. Further than this, remark or comment is unnecessary.
+Mark Twain never resorts to tricks of spelling nor rhetorical buffoonery
+for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich
+and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can
+resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form
+the staple of his writing.
+                                J. P.
+
+
+II
+
+FROM ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
+
+"MORAL STATISTICIAN"--I don't want any of your statistics. I took your
+whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You
+are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much
+his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he
+wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal
+practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
+coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of
+wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. . . .
+
+Of course you can save money by denying yourself all these vicious little
+enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use
+can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the
+use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this
+life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is
+the use in accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can
+use it to better purpose in furnishing good table, and in charities, and
+in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people
+who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you
+stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and
+hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor
+wretch, seeing you in a good-humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you;
+and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in
+the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give
+the revenue-officers a true statement of your income. Now you all know
+all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is the use
+of your stringing out your miserable lives to a clean and withered old
+age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless
+to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be
+always trying to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as
+you are yourselves, by your ceaseless and villainous "moral statistics"?
+Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either;
+but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming
+petty vices whatever, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I
+think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week
+about the degrading vice of smoking cigars and then came back, in my
+absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried
+off my beautiful parlor-stove.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+FROM "A STRANGE DREAM"
+
+(Example of Mark Twain's Early Descriptive Writing)
+
+. . . In due time I stood, with my companion, on the wall of the vast
+caldron which the natives, ages ago, named 'Hale mau mau'--the abyss
+wherein they were wont to throw the remains of their chiefs, to the end
+that vulgar feet might never tread above them. We stood there, at dead
+of night, a mile above the level of the sea, and looked down a thousand
+feet upon a boiling, surging, roaring ocean of fire!--shaded our eyes
+from the blinding glare, and gazed far away over the crimson waves with a
+vague notion that a supernatural fleet, manned by demons and freighted
+with the damned, might presently sail up out of the remote distance;
+started when tremendous thunder-bursts shook the earth, and followed with
+fascinated eyes the grand jets of molten lava that sprang high up toward
+the zenith and exploded in a world of fiery spray that lit up the somber
+heavens with an infernal splendor.
+
+"What is your little bonfire of Vesuvius to this?"
+
+My ejaculation roused my companion from his reverie, and we fell into a
+conversation appropriate to the occasion and the surroundings. We came
+at last to speak of the ancient custom of casting the bodies of dead
+chieftains into this fearful caldron; and my comrade, who is of the blood
+royal, mentioned that the founder of his race, old King Kamehameha the
+First--that invincible old pagan Alexander--had found other sepulture
+than the burning depths of the 'Hale mau mau'. I grew interested at
+once; I knew that the mystery of what became of the corpse of the warrior
+king hail never been fathomed; I was aware that there was a legend
+connected with this matter; and I felt as if there could be no more
+fitting time to listen to it than the present. The descendant of the
+Kamehamehas said:
+
+The dead king was brought in royal state down the long, winding road that
+descends from the rim of the crater to the scorched and chasm-riven plain
+that lies between the 'Hale mau mau' and those beetling walls yonder in
+the distance. The guards were set and the troops of mourners began the
+weird wail for the departed. In the middle of the night came a sound of
+innumerable voices in the air and the rush of invisible wings; the
+funeral torches wavered, burned blue, and went out. The mourners and
+watchers fell to the ground paralyzed by fright, and many minutes elapsed
+before any one dared to move or speak; for they believed that the phantom
+messengers of the dread Goddess of Fire had been in their midst. When at
+last a torch was lighted the bier was vacant--the dead monarch had been
+spirited away!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX F
+
+THE INNOCENTS ABROAD (See Chapter lx)
+
+NEW YORK "HERALD" EDITORIAL ON THE RETURN OF THE "QUAKER CITY"
+PILGRIMAGE, NOVEMBER 19, 1867.
+
+In yesterday's Herald we published a most amusing letter from the pen of
+that most amusing American genius, Mark Twain, giving an account of that
+most amusing of all modern pilgrimages--the pilgrimage of the 'Quaker
+City'. It has been amusing all through, this Quaker City affair. It
+might have become more serious than amusing if the ship had been sold at
+Jaffa, Alexandria, or Yalta, in the Black Sea, as it appears might have
+happened. In such a case the passengers would have been more effectually
+sold than the ship. The descendants of the Puritan pilgrims have,
+naturally enough, some of them, an affection for ships; but if all that
+is said about this religious cruise be true they have also a singularly
+sharp eye to business. It was scarcely wise on the part of the pilgrims,
+although it was well for the public, that so strange a genius as Mark
+Twain should have found admission into the sacred circle. We are not
+aware whether Mr. Twain intends giving us a book on this pilgrimage, but
+we do know that a book written from his own peculiar standpoint, giving
+an account of the characters and events on board ship and of the scenes
+which the pilgrims witnessed, would command an almost unprecedented sale.
+There are varieties of genius peculiar to America. Of one of these
+varieties Mark Twain is a striking specimen. For the development of his
+peculiar genius he has never had a more fitting opportunity. Besides,
+there are some things which he knows, and which the world ought to know,
+about this last edition of the Mayflower.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX G
+
+MARK TWAIN AT THE CORRESPONDENTS CLUB, WASHINGTON
+
+(See Chapter lxiii)
+
+WOMAN
+A EULOGY OF THE FAIR SEX.
+
+The Washington Correspondents Club held its anniversary on Saturday
+night. Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, responded to the toast,
+"Woman, the pride of the professions and the jewel of ours." He said:
+
+Mr. President,--I do not know why I should have been singled out to
+receive the greatest distinction of the evening--for so the office of
+replying to the toast to woman has been regarded in every age.
+[Applause.] I do not know why I have received this distinction, unless it
+be that I am a trifle less homely than the other members of the club.
+But, be this as it may, Mr. President, I am proud of the position, and
+you could not have chosen any one who would have accepted it more gladly,
+or labored with a heartier good--will to do the subject justice, than I.
+Because, Sir, I love the sex. [Laughter.] I love all the women, sir,
+irrespective of age or color. [Laughter.]
+
+Human intelligence cannot estimate what we owe to woman, sir. She sews
+on our buttons [laughter]; she mends our clothes [laughter]; she ropes us
+in at the church fairs; she confides in us; she tells us whatever she can
+find out about the private affairs of the neighbors; she gives good
+advice, and plenty of it; she gives us a piece of her mind sometimes
+--and sometimes all of it; she soothes our aching brows; she bears our
+children. (Ours as a general thing.)--[this last sentence appears in
+Twain's published speeches and may have been added later. D.W.]
+
+In all relations of life, sir, it is but just and a graceful tribute to
+woman to say of her that she is a brick. [Great laughter.]
+
+Wheresoever you place woman, sir--in whatsoever position or estate--she
+is an ornament to that place she occupies, and a treasure to the world.
+[Here Mr. Twain paused, looked inquiringly at his hearers, and remarked
+that the applause should come in at this point. It came in. Mr. Twain
+resumed his eulogy.] Look at the noble names of history! Look at
+Cleopatra! Look at Desdemona! Look at Florence Nightingale! Look at
+Joan of Arc! Look at Lucretia Borgia! [Disapprobation expressed.
+"Well," said Mr. Twain, scratching his head, doubtfully, "suppose we let
+Lucretia slide."] Look at Joyce Heth! Look at Mother Eve! I repeat,
+sir, look at the illustrious names of history! Look at the Widow
+Machree! Look at Lucy Stone! Look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Look at
+George Francis Train! [Great laughter.] And, sir, I say with bowed head
+and deepest veneration, look at the mother of Washington! She raised a
+boy that could not lie--could not lie. [Applause.] But he never had any
+chance. It might have been different with him if he had belonged to a
+newspaper correspondents' club. [Laughter, groans, hisses, cries of "put
+him out." Mark looked around placidly upon his excited audience, and
+resumed.]
+
+I repeat, sir, that in whatsoever position you place a woman she is an
+ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart she has
+few equals and no superior [laughter]; as a cousin she is convenient; as
+a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper she is precious; as a
+wet nurse she has no equal among men! [Laughter.]
+
+What, sir, would the people of this earth be without woman? They would
+be scarce, sir. (Mighty scarce.)--[another line added later in the
+published 'Speeches'. D.W.] Then let us cherish her, let us protect her,
+let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy--ourselves,
+if we get a chance. [Laughter.]
+
+But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of
+heart, beautiful; worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.
+Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each
+and every one of us has personally known, loved, and honored the very
+best one of them all--his own mother! [Applause.]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX H
+
+ANNOUNCEMENT FOR LECTURE OF JULY 2, 1868
+
+(See Chapter lxvi)
+
+THE PUBLIC TO MARK TWAIN--CORRESPONDENCE
+
+SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
+
+MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Hearing that you are about to sail for New
+York in the P. M. S. S. Company's steamer of the 6th July, to publish a
+book, and learning with the deepest concern that you propose to read a
+chapter or two of that book in public before you go, we take this method
+of expressing our cordial desire that you will not. We beg and implore
+you do not. There is a limit to human endurance.
+
+We are your personal friends. We have your welfare at heart. We desire
+to see you prosper. And it is upon these accounts, and upon these only,
+that we urge you to desist from the new atrocity you contemplate. Yours
+truly,
+
+    60 names including: Bret Harte, Maj.-Gen. Ord, Maj.-Gen. Halleck,
+    The Orphan Asylum, and various Benevolent Societies, Citizens on
+    Foot and Horseback, and 1500 in the Steerage.
+(REPLY)
+
+                         SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th
+
+TO THE 1,500 AND OTHERS,--It seems to me that your course is entirely
+unprecedented. Heretofore, when lecturers, singers, actors, and other
+frauds have said they were about to leave town, you have always been the
+very first people to come out in a card beseeching them to hold on for
+just one night more, and inflict just one more performance on the public,
+but as soon as I want to take a farewell benefit you come after me, with
+a card signed by the whole community and the board of aldermen, praying
+me not to do it. But it isn't of any use. You cannot move me from my
+fell purpose. I will torment the people if I want to. I have a better
+right to do it than these strange lecturers and orators that come here
+from abroad. It only costs the public a dollar apiece, and if they can't
+stand it what do they stay here for? Am I to go away and let them have
+peace and quiet for a year and a half, and then come back and only
+lecture them twice? What do you take me for?
+
+No, gentlemen, ask of me anything else and I will do it cheerfully; but
+do not ask me not to afflict the people. I wish to tell them all I know
+about VENICE. I wish to tell them about the City of the Sea--that most
+venerable, most brilliant, and proudest Republic the world has ever seen.
+I wish to hint at what it achieved in twelve hundred years, and what it
+lost in two hundred. I wish to furnish a deal of pleasant information,
+somewhat highly spiced, but still palatable, digestible, and eminently
+fitted for the intellectual stomach. My last lecture was not as fine as
+I thought it was, but I have submitted this discourse to several able
+critics, and they have pronounced it good. Now, therefore, why should I
+withhold it?
+
+Let me talk only just this once, and I will sail positively on the 6th of
+July, and stay away until I return from China--two years.
+                         Yours truly, MARK TWAIN.
+(FURTHER REMONSTRANCE)
+
+SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
+
+MR. MARK TWAIN,--Learning with profound regret that you have concluded to
+postpone your departure until the 6th July, and learning also, with
+unspeakable grief, that you propose to read from your forthcoming book,
+or lecture again before you go, at the New Mercantile Library, we hasten
+to beg of you that you will not do it. Curb this spirit of lawless
+violence, and emigrate at once. Have the vessel's bill for your passage
+sent to us. We will pay it.
+
+                         Your friends,
+                            Pacific Board of Brokers [and
+                            other financial and social
+                            institutions]
+
+                         SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
+
+MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Will you start now, without any unnecessary
+delay?
+                         Yours truly,
+                            Proprietors of the Alta,
+                            Bulletin, Times, Call, Examiner
+                            [and other San Francisco
+                            publications].
+
+                         SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
+
+MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--Do not delay your departure. You can come
+back and lecture another time. In the language of the worldly--you can
+"cut and come again."
+                         Your friends,
+                            THE CLERGY.
+
+                         SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
+
+MR. MARK TWAIN--DEAR SIR,--You had better go.
+                         Yours,
+                            THE CHIEF OF POLICE.
+(REPLY)
+
+SAN FRANCISCO, June 30th.
+
+GENTLEMEN,--Restrain your emotions; you observe that they cannot avail.
+Read:
+
+                  NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY
+                      Bush Street
+
+               Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868
+                    One Night Only
+
+                   FAREWELL LECTURE
+                         of
+                      MARK TWAIN
+                      Subject:
+                The Oldest of the Republics
+                       VENICE
+                   PAST AND PRESENT
+
+            Box-Office open Wednesday and Thursday
+             No extra charge for reserved seats
+
+       ADMISSION . . . . . . . . . . . ONE DOLLAR
+       Doors open at 7      Orgies to commence at 8 P. M.
+
+    The public displays and ceremonies projected to give fitting eclat
+    to this occasion have been unavoidably delayed until the 4th. The
+    lecture will be delivered certainly on the 2d, and the event will be
+    celebrated two days afterward by a discharge of artillery on the
+    4th, a procession of citizens, the reading of the Declaration of
+    Independence, and by a gorgeous display of fireworks from Russian
+    Hill in the evening, which I have ordered at my sole expense, the
+    cost amounting to eighty thousand dollars.
+
+                AT NEW MERCANTILE LIBRARY
+                      Bush Street
+               Thursday Evening, July 2, 1868
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I
+
+MARK TWAIN'S CHAMPIONSHIP OF THOMAS K. BEECHER
+
+(See Chapter lxxiv)
+
+There was a religious turmoil in Elmira in 1869; a disturbance among the
+ministers, due to the success of Thomas K. Beecher in a series of
+meetings he was conducting in the Opera House. Mr. Beecher's teachings
+had never been very orthodox or doctrinal, but up to this time they had
+been seemingly unobjectionable to his brother clergymen, who fraternized
+with him and joined with him in the Monday meetings of the Ministerial
+Union of Elmira, when each Monday a sermon was read by one of the
+members. The situation presently changed. Mr. Beecher was preaching his
+doubtful theology to large and nightly increasing audiences, and it was
+time to check the exodus. The Ministerial Union of Elmira not only
+declined to recognize and abet the Opera House gatherings, but they
+requested him to withdraw from their Monday meetings, on the ground that
+his teachings were pernicious. Mr. Beecher said nothing of the matter,
+and it was not made public until a notice of it appeared in a religious
+paper. Naturally such a course did not meet with the approval of the
+Langdon family, and awoke the scorn of a man who so detested bigotry in
+any form as Mark Twain. He was a stranger in the place, and not
+justified to speak over his own signature, but he wrote an article and
+read it to members of the Langdon family and to Dr. and Mrs. Taylor,
+their intimate friends, who were spending an evening in the Langdon home.
+It was universally approved, and the next morning appeared in the Elmira
+Advertiser, over the signature of "S'cat." It created a stir, of course.
+
+The article follows:
+
+
+MR. BEECHER AND THE CLERGY
+
+"The Ministerial Union of Elmira, N. Y., at a recent meeting passed
+resolutions disapproving the teachings of Rev. T. K. Beecher, declining
+to co-operate with him in his Sunday evening services at the Opera House,
+and requesting him to withdraw from their Monday morning meeting. This
+has resulted in his withdrawal, and thus the pastors are relieved from
+further responsibility as to his action."--N. Y. Evangelist.
+
+Poor Beecher! All this time he could do whatever he pleased that was
+wrong, and then be perfectly serene and comfortable over it, because the
+Ministerial Union of Elmira was responsible to God for it. He could lie
+if he wanted to, and those ministers had to answer for it; he could
+promote discord in the church of Christ, and those parties had to make it
+right with the Deity as best they could; he could teach false doctrines
+to empty opera houses, and those sorrowing lambs of the Ministerial Union
+had to get out their sackcloth and ashes and stand responsible for it. He
+had such a comfortable thing of it! But he went too far. In an evil
+hour he slaughtered the simple geese that laid the golden egg of
+responsibility for him, and now they will uncover their customary
+complacency, and lift up their customary cackle in his behalf no more.
+And so, at last, he finds himself in the novel position of being
+responsible to God for his acts, instead of to the Ministerial Union of
+Elmira. To say that this is appalling is to state it with a degree of
+mildness which amounts to insipidity.
+
+We cannot justly estimate this calamity, without first reviewing certain
+facts that conspired to bring it about. Mr. Beecher was and is in the
+habit of preaching to a full congregation in the Independent
+Congregational Church, in this city. The meeting-house was not large
+enough to accommodate all the people who desired admittance. Mr. Beecher
+regularly attended the meetings of the Ministerial Union of Elmira every
+Monday morning, and they received him into their fellowship, and never
+objected to the doctrines which he taught in his church. So, in an
+unfortunate moment, he conceived the strange idea that they would connive
+at the teaching of the same doctrines in the same way in a larger house.
+Therefore he secured the Opera House and proceeded to preach there every
+Sunday evening to assemblages comprising from a thousand to fifteen
+hundred persons. He felt warranted in this course by a passage of
+Scripture which says, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel
+unto every creature." Opera-houses were not ruled out specifically in
+this passage, and so he considered it proper to regard opera-houses as a
+part of "all the world." He looked upon the people who assembled there
+as coming under the head of "every creature." These ideas were as absurd
+as they were farfetched, but still they were the honest ebullitions of a
+diseased mind. His great mistake was in supposing that when he had the
+Saviour's indorsement of his conduct he had all that was necessary. He
+overlooked the fact that there might possibly be a conflict of opinion
+between the Saviour and the Ministerial Union of Elmira. And there was.
+Wherefore, blind and foolish Mr. Beecher went to his destruction. The
+Ministerial Union withdrew their approbation, and left him dangling in
+the air, with no other support than the countenance and approval of the
+gospel of Christ.
+
+Mr. Beecher invited his brother ministers to join forces with him and
+help him conduct the Opera House meetings. They declined with great
+unanimity. In this they were wrong. Since they did not approve of those
+meetings, it was a duty they owed to their consciences and their God to
+contrive their discontinuance. They knew this. They felt it. Yet they
+turned coldly away and refused to help at those meetings, when they well
+knew that their help, earnestly and persistently given, was able to kill
+any great religious enterprise that ever was conceived of.
+
+The ministers refused, and the calamitous meetings at the Opera House
+continued; and not only continued, but grew in interest and importance,
+and sapped of their congregations churches where the Gospel was preached
+with that sweet monotonous tranquillity and that impenetrable profundity
+which stir up such consternation in the strongholds of sin. It is a pity
+to have to record here that one clergyman refused to preach at the Opera
+House at Mr. Beecher's request, even when that incendiary was sick and
+disabled; and if that man's conscience justifies him in that refusal I do
+not. Under the plea of charity for a sick brother he could have preached
+to that Opera House multitude a sermon that would have done incalculable
+damage to the Opera House experiment. And he need not have been
+particular about the sermon he chose, either. He could have relied on
+any he had in his barrel.
+
+The Opera House meetings went on; other congregations were thin, and grew
+thinner, but the Opera House assemblages were vast. Every Sunday night,
+in spite of sense and reason, multitudes passed by the churches where
+they might have been saved, and marched deliberately to the Opera House
+to be damned. The community talked, talked, talked. Everybody discussed
+the fact that the Ministerial Union disapproved of the Opera House
+meetings; also the fact that they disapproved of the teachings put forth
+there. And everybody wondered how the Ministerial Union could tell
+whether to approve or disapprove of those teachings, seeing that those
+clergymen had never attended an Opera House meeting, and therefore didn't
+know what was taught there. Everybody wondered over that curious
+question, and they had to take it out in wondering.
+
+Mr. Beecher asked the Ministerial Union to state their objections to the
+Opera House matter. They could not--at least they did not. He said to
+them that if they would come squarely out and tell him that they desired
+the discontinuance of those meetings he would discontinue them. They
+declined to do that. Why should they have declined? They had no right
+to decline, and no excuse to decline, if they honestly believed that
+those meetings interfered in the slightest degree with the best interests
+of religion. (That is a proposition which the profoundest head among
+them cannot get around.)
+
+But the Opera House meetings went on. That was the mischief of it. And
+so, one Monday morning, when Mr. B. appeared at the usual Ministers'
+meeting, his brother clergymen desired him to come there no more. He
+asked why. They gave no reason. They simply declined to have his
+company longer. Mr. B. said he could not accept of this execution
+without a trial, and since he loved them and had nothing against them he
+must insist upon meeting with them in the future just the same as ever.
+And so, after that, they met in secret, and thus got rid of this man's
+importunate affection.
+
+The Ministerial Union had ruled out Beecher--a point gained. He would
+get up an excitement about it in public. But that was a miscalculation.
+He never mentioned it. They waited and waited for the grand crash, but
+it never came. After all their labor-pains, their ministerial mountain
+had brought forth only a mouse--and a still-born one at that. Beecher
+had not told on them; Beecher malignantly persisted in not telling on
+them. The opportunity was slipping away. Alas, for the humiliation of
+it, they had to come out and tell it themselves! And after all, their
+bombshell did not hurt anybody when they did explode it. They had ceased
+to be responsible to God for Beecher, and yet nobody seemed paralyzed
+about it. Somehow, it was not even of sufficient importance, apparently,
+to get into the papers, though even the poor little facts that Smith has
+bought a trotting team and Alderman Jones's child has the measles are
+chronicled there with avidity. Something must be done. As the
+Ministerial Union had told about their desolating action, when nobody
+else considered it of enough importance to tell, they would also publish
+it, now that the reporters failed to see anything in it important enough
+to print. And so they startled the entire religious world no doubt by
+solemnly printing in the Evangelist the paragraph which heads this
+article. They have got their excommunication-bull started at last. It
+is going along quite lively now, and making considerable stir, let us
+hope. They even know it in Podunk, wherever that may be. It excited a
+two-line paragraph there. Happy, happy world, that knows at last that a
+little congress of congregationless clergymen of whom it had never heard
+before have crushed a famous Beecher, and reduced his audiences from
+fifteen hundred down to fourteen hundred and seventy-five at one fell
+blow! Happy, happy world, that knows at last that these obscure
+innocents are no longer responsible for the blemishless teachings, the
+power, the pathos, the logic, and the other and manifold intellectual
+pyrotechnics that seduce, but to damn, the Opera House assemblages every
+Sunday night in Elmira! And miserable, O thrice miserable Beecher! For
+the Ministerial Union of Elmira will never, no, never more be responsible
+to God for his shortcomings. (Excuse these tears.)
+
+(For the protection of a man who is uniformly charged with all the
+newspaper deviltry that sees the light in Elmira journals, I take this
+opportunity of stating, under oath, duly subscribed before a magistrate,
+that Mr. Beecher did not write this article. And further still, that he
+did not inspire it. And further still, the Ministerial Union of Elmira
+did not write it. And finally, the Ministerial Union did not ask me to
+write it. No, I have taken up this cudgel in defense of the Ministerial
+Union of Elmira solely from a love of justice. Without solicitation, I
+have constituted myself the champion of the Ministerial Union of Elmira,
+and it shall be a labor of love with me to conduct their side of a
+quarrel in print for them whenever they desire me to do it; or if they
+are busy, and have not the time to ask me, I will cheerfully do it
+anyhow. In closing this I must remark that if any question the right of
+the clergymen of Elmira to turn Mr. Beecher out of the Ministerial Union,
+to such I answer that Mr. Beecher recreated that institution after it had
+been dead for many years, and invited those gentlemen to come into it,
+which they did, and so of course they have a right to turn him out if
+they want to. The difference between Beecher and the man who put an
+adder in his bosom is, that Beecher put in more adders than he did, and
+consequently had a proportionately livelier time of it when they got
+warmed up.)
+                     Cheerfully,
+                                S'CAT.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX J
+
+THE INDIGNITY PUT UPON THE REMAINS OF GEORGE HOLLAND BY THE REV. MR.
+SABINE.
+
+(See Chapter lxxvii)
+
+What a ludicrous satire it was upon Christian charity!--even upon the
+vague, theoretical idea of it which doubtless this small saint mouths
+from his own pulpit every Sunday. Contemplate this freak of nature, and
+think what a Cardiff giant of self-righteousness is crowded into his
+pigmy skin. If we probe, and dissect; and lay open this diseased, this
+cancerous piety of his, we are forced to the conviction that it is the
+production of an impression on his part that his guild do about all the
+good that is done on the earth, and hence are better than common clay
+--hence are competent to say to such as George Holland, "You are
+unworthy; you are a play-actor, and consequently a sinner; I cannot take
+the responsibility of recommending you to the mercy of Heaven." It must
+have had its origin in that impression, else he would have thought, "We
+are all instruments for the carrying out of God's purposes; it is not for
+me to pass judgment upon your appointed share of the work, or to praise
+or to revile it; I have divine authority for it that we are all sinners,
+and therefore it is not for me to discriminate and say we will supplicate
+for this sinner, for he was a merchant prince or a banker, but we will
+beseech no forgiveness for this other one, for he was a play-actor."
+
+It surely requires the furthest possible reach of self-righteousness to
+enable a man to lift his scornful nose in the air and turn his back upon
+so poor and pitiable a thing as a dead stranger come to beg the last
+kindness that humanity can do in its behalf. This creature has violated
+the letter of the Gospel, and judged George Holland--not George Holland,
+either, but his profession through him. Then it is, in a measure, fair
+that we judge this creature's guild through him. In effect he has said,
+"We are the salt of the earth; we do all the good work that is done; to
+learn how to be good and do good men must come to us; actors and such are
+obstacles to moral progress." Pray look at the thing reasonably a
+moment, laying aside all biases of education and custom. If a common
+public impression is fair evidence of a thing then this minister's
+legitimate, recognized, and acceptable business is to tell people calmly,
+coldly, and in stiff, written sentences, from the pulpit, to go and do
+right, be just, be merciful, be charitable. And his congregation forget
+it all between church and home. But for fifty years it was George
+Holland's business on the stage to make his audience go and do right, and
+be just, merciful, and charitable--because by his living, breathing,
+feeling pictures he showed them what it was to do these things, and how
+to do them, and how instant and ample was the reward! Is it not a
+singular teacher of men, this reverend gentleman who is so poorly
+informed himself as to put the whole stage under ban, and say, "I do not
+think it teaches moral lessons"? Where was ever a sermon preached that
+could make filial ingratitude so hateful to men as the sinful play of
+"King Lear"? Or where was there ever a sermon that could so convince men
+of the wrong and the cruelty of harboring a pampered and unanalyzed
+jealousy as the sinful play of "Othello"? And where are there ten
+preachers who can stand in the pulpit preaching heroism, unselfish
+devotion, and lofty patriotism, and hold their own against any one of
+five hundred William Tells that can be raised upon five hundred stages in
+the land at a day's notice? It is almost fair and just to aver (although
+it is profanity) that nine-tenths of all the kindness and forbearance and
+Christian charity and generosity in the hearts of the American people
+today got there by being filtered down from their fountain-head, the
+gospel of Christ, through dramas and tragedies and comedies on the stage,
+and through the despised novel and the Christmas story, and through the
+thousand and one lessons, suggestions, and narratives of generous deeds
+that stir the pulses, and exalt and augment the nobility of the nation
+day by day from the teeming columns of ten thousand newspapers, and not
+from the drowsy pulpit.
+
+All that is great and good in our particular civilization came straight
+from the hand of Jesus Christ, and many creatures, and of divers sorts,
+were doubtless appointed to disseminate it; and let us believe that this
+seed and the result are the main thing, and not the cut of the sower's
+garment; and that whosoever, in his way and according to his opportunity,
+sows the one and produces the other, has done high service and worthy.
+And further, let us try with all our strength to believe that whenever
+old simple-hearted George Holland sowed this seed, and reared his crop of
+broader charities and better impulses in men's hearts, it was just as
+acceptable before the Throne as if the seed had been scattered in vapid
+platitudes from the pulpit of the ineffable Sabine himself.
+
+Am I saying that the pulpit does not do its share toward disseminating
+the marrow, the meat of the gospel of Christ? (For we are not talking of
+ceremonies and wire-drawn creeds now, but the living heart and soul of
+what is pretty often only a specter.)
+
+No, I am not saying that. The pulpit teaches assemblages of people twice
+a week nearly two hours altogether--and does what it can in that time.
+The theater teaches large audiences seven times a week--28 or 30 hours
+altogether--and the novels and newspapers plead, and argue, and
+illustrate, stir, move, thrill, thunder, urge, persuade, and supplicate,
+at the feet of millions and millions of people every single day, and all
+day long and far into the night; and so these vast agencies till
+nine-tenths of the vineyard, and the pulpit tills the other tenth. Yet
+now and then some complacent blind idiot says, "You unanointed are coarse
+clay and useless; you are not as we, the regenerators of the world; go,
+bury yourselves elsewhere, for we cannot take the responsibility of
+recommending idlers and sinners to the yearning mercy of Heaven." How
+does a soul like that stay in a carcass without getting mixed with the
+secretions and sweated out through the pores? Think of this insect
+condemning the whole theatrical service as a disseminator of bad morals
+because it has Black Crooks in it; forgetting that if that were
+sufficient ground people would condemn the pulpit because it had Crooks
+and Kallochs and Sabines in it!
+
+No, I am not trying to rob the pulpit of any atom of its full share and
+credit in the work of disseminating the meat and marrow of the gospel of
+Christ; but I am trying to get a moment's hearing for worthy agencies in
+the same work, that with overwrought modesty seldom or never claim a
+recognition of their great services. I am aware that the pulpit does its
+excellent one-tenth (and credits itself with it now and then, though most
+of the time a press of business causes it to forget it); I am aware that
+in its honest and well-meaning way it bores the people with uninflammable
+truisms about doing good; bores them with correct compositions on
+charity; bores them, chloroforms them, stupefies them with argumentative
+mercy without a flaw in the grammar or an emotion which the minister
+could put in in the right place if he turned his back and took his finger
+off the manuscript. And in doing these things the pulpit is doing its
+duty, and let us believe that it is likewise doing its best, and doing it
+in the most harmless and respectable way. And so I have said, and shall
+keep on saying, let us give the pulpit its full share of credit in
+elevating and ennobling the people; but when a pulpit takes to itself
+authority to pass judgment upon the work and worth of just as legitimate
+an instrument of God as itself, who spent a long life preaching from the
+stage the selfsame gospel without the alteration of a single sentiment or
+a single axiom of right, it is fair and just that somebody who believes
+that actors were made for a high and good purpose, and that they
+accomplish the object of their creation and accomplish it well, should
+protest. And having protested, it is also fair and just--being driven to
+it, as it were--to whisper to the Sabine pattern of clergyman, under the
+breath, a simple, instructive truth, and say, "Ministers are not the only
+servants of God upon earth, nor his most efficient ones, either, by a
+very, very long distance!" Sensible ministers already know this, and it
+may do the other kind good to find it out.
+
+But to cease teaching and go back to the beginning again, was it not
+pitiable--that spectacle? Honored and honorable old George Holland,
+whose theatrical ministry had for fifty years softened hard hearts, bred
+generosity in cold ones, kindled emotion in dead ones, uplifted base
+ones, broadened bigoted ones, and made many and many a stricken one glad
+and filled it brimful of gratitude, figuratively spit upon in his
+unoffending coffin by this crawling, slimy, sanctimonious, self-righteous
+reptile!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX K
+
+A SUBSTITUTE FOR RULOFF HAVE WE A SIDNEY CARTON AMONG US?
+
+(See Chapter lxxxii)
+
+To EDITOR of 'Tribune'.
+
+SIR,--I believe in capital punishment. I believe that when a murder has
+been done it should be answered for with blood. I have all my life been
+taught to feel this way, and the fetters of education are strong. The
+fact that the death--law is rendered almost inoperative by its very
+severity does not alter my belief in its righteousness. The fact that in
+England the proportion of executions to condemnations is one to sixteen,
+and in this country only one to twenty-two, and in France only one to
+thirty-eight, does not shake my steadfast confidence in the propriety of
+retaining the death-penalty. It is better to hang one murderer in
+sixteen, twenty-two, thirty-eight than not to hang any at all.
+
+Feeling as I do, I am not sorry that Ruloff is to be hanged, but I am
+sincerely sorry that he himself has made it necessary that his vast
+capabilities for usefulness should be lost to the world. In this, mine
+and the public's is a common regret. For it is plain that in the person
+of Ruloff one of the most marvelous of intellects that any age has
+produced is about to be sacrificed, and that, too, while half the mystery
+of its strange powers is yet a secret. Here is a man who has never
+entered the doors of a college or a university, and yet by the sheer
+might of his innate gifts has made himself such a colossus in abstruse
+learning that the ablest of our scholars are but pigmies in his presence.
+By the evidence of Professor Mather, Mr. Surbridge, Mr. Richmond, and
+other men qualified to testify, this man is as familiar with the broad
+domain of philology as common men are with the passing events of the day.
+His memory has such a limitless grasp that he is able to quote sentence
+after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, from a
+gnarled and knotty ancient literature that ordinary scholars are capable
+of achieving little more than a bowing acquaintance with. But his memory
+is the least of his great endowments. By the testimony of the gentlemen
+above referred to he is able to critically analyze the works of the old
+masters of literature, and while pointing out the beauties of the
+originals with a pure and discriminating taste is as quick to detect the
+defects of the accepted translations; and in the latter case, if
+exceptions be taken to his judgment, he straightway opens up the quarries
+of his exhaustless knowledge, and builds a very Chinese wall of evidence
+around his position. Every learned man who enters Ruloff's presence
+leaves it amazed and confounded by his prodigious capabilities and
+attainments. One scholar said he did not believe that in matters of
+subtle analysis, vast knowledge in his peculiar field of research,
+comprehensive grasp of subject, and serene kingship over its limitless
+and bewildering details, any land or any era of modern times had given
+birth to Ruloff's intellectual equal. What miracles this murderer might
+have wrought, and what luster he might have shed upon his country, if he
+had not put a forfeit upon his life so foolishly! But what if the law
+could be satisfied, and the gifted criminal still be saved. If a life be
+offered up on the gallows to atone for the murder Ruloff did, will that
+suffice? If so, give me the proofs, for in all earnestness and truth I
+aver that in such a case I will instantly bring forward a man who, in the
+interests of learning and science, will take Ruloff's crime upon himself,
+and submit to be hanged in Ruloff's place. I can, and will do this
+thing; and I propose this matter, and make this offer in good faith. You
+know me, and know my address.
+                     SAMUEL LANGHORNE.
+                                   April 29, 1871.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX L
+
+ABOUT LONDON
+
+ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB, LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.
+
+(See Chapter lxxxvii)
+
+Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial
+
+It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
+which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
+of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
+fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theater;
+that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
+Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
+customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a pun
+on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he is the
+first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our human
+nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all our
+depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our
+sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of
+innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow
+of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about
+"Twain and one flesh" and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush
+that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying, "Let me take you by the
+hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks." We
+will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King "your
+Majesty" and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that
+name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this. It
+is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us not
+repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
+refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
+very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.
+
+I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
+to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
+limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
+many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
+marvelous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were-and
+gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
+horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the center, the
+king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
+condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and
+Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
+which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
+Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
+Arch--and am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in
+Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a
+great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
+can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between
+the railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and
+of heaven. And if he is a swell invalid who isn't obliged to depend upon
+parks for his country air he can drive inside--if he owns his vehicle. I
+drive round and round Hyde Park and the more I see of the edges of it the
+more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
+
+And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that
+is! I have never seen such a curious and interesting variety of
+wild-animals in any garden before--except Mabille. I never believed
+before there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you
+can find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
+Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
+nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there. It seems
+to me the noblest monument this nation has, yet erected to her greatness.
+I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has built other
+monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted in honor
+of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the world's
+stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose prodigies
+will still live in the memories of men ages after their monuments shall
+have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and Nelson monuments,
+and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert memorial is the finest
+monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as commonplace a
+person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity.]
+
+The Library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. I have
+read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. I revere
+that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean a book
+is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in Great
+Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much complained
+of by publishers.] And then every day that author goes there to gaze at
+that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a
+touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, careworn
+clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons
+for Sunday! You will pardon my referring to these things. Everything in
+this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from talking, even at
+the risk of being instructive. People here seem always to express
+distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little confusing to be
+so parabolic--so to speak. I collar a citizen, and I think I am going to
+get some valuable information out of him. I ask him how far it is to
+Birmingham, and he says it is twenty-one shillings and sixpence. Now we
+know that doesn't help a man who is trying to learn. I find myself
+down-town somewhere, and I want to get some sort of idea where I
+am--being usually lost when alone--and I stop a citizen and say, "How far
+is it to Charing Cross?" "Shilling fare in a cab," and off he goes. I
+suppose if I were to ask a Londoner how far it is from the sublime to the
+ridiculous he would try to express it in a coin. But I am trespassing
+upon your time with these geological statistics and historical
+reflections. I will not longer keep you from your orgies. 'Tis a real
+pleasure for me to be here, and I thank you for it. The name of the
+Savage Club is associated in my mind with the kindly interest and the
+friendly offices which you lavished upon an old friend of mine who came
+among you a stranger, and you opened your English hearts to him and gave
+him a welcome and a home--Artemus Ward. Asking that you will join me, I
+give you his Memory.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX M
+
+LETTER WRITTEN TO MRS. CLEMENS FROM BOSTON, NOVEMBER, 1874, PROPHESYING A
+MONARCHY IN SIXTY-ONE YEARS.
+
+(See Chapter xcvii)
+
+                            BOSTON, November 16, 1935.
+
+DEAR LIVY,--You observe I still call this beloved old place by the name
+it had when I was young. Limerick! It is enough to make a body sick.
+
+The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to see me sit here telegraphing this
+letter to you, and no doubt they are smiling in their sleeves. But let
+them! The slow old fashions are good enough for me, thank God, and I
+will none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed,
+holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a
+thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it,
+it makes me frantic with rage; and then I am more implacably fixed and
+resolved than ever to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you
+what I might communicate in ten seconds by the new way if I would so
+debase myself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full
+of idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing"
+I tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the
+blessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering talked
+pure drivel and "rot," mostly, but better that, a thousand times, than
+these dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in this mad
+generation.
+
+It is sixty years since I was here before. I walked hither then with my
+precious old friend. It seems incredible now that we did it in two days,
+but such is my recollection. I no longer mention that we walked back in
+a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of the
+hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the puerile
+organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat.
+
+My air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded
+with the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I
+was nearly an hour on my journey. But by the goodness of God thirteen of
+the missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content to
+lose the time. I love to lose time anyway because it brings soothing
+reminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to us
+forever.
+
+Our game was neatly played, and successfully. None expected us, of
+course. You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when I
+said, "Announce his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Right
+Honorable the Earl of Hartford." Arrived within, we were all eyes to see
+the Duke of Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember
+their faces and they ours. In a moment they came tottering in; he, bent
+and withered and bald; she, blooming with wholesome old age. He peered
+through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice, "Come to
+my arms! Away with titles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain and
+Twichell!" Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear,
+the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: "God bless you, old
+Howells, what is left of you!"
+
+We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" for us
+--of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our
+tongues and drank till the Lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow
+past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him, and resumed its sweeter,
+forgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient
+religion, too, good Jesuit as he has always been since O'Mulligan the
+First established that faith in the empire.
+
+And we canvassed everybody. Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of Ponkapog, came
+in, got nobly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost his
+earldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor; but he
+didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, for
+engaging in the same enterprise. He was as chaffy as he was sixty years
+ago, too, and swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston; but
+there was never a day that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the grace
+of God he got the opportunity.
+
+The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon seventy and
+bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred by the wounds
+got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in a
+high-chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny. His
+granddaughter (the eldest) is but lately married to the youngest of the
+Grand Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of the
+Howellses may reign in the land? I must not forget to say, while I think
+of it, that your new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig. Keep
+your head well bundled with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheat
+your persecuting neuralgias and rheumatisms. Would you believe it?--the
+Duchess of Cambridge is deafer than you--deafer than her husband. They
+call her to breakfast with a salvo of artillery; and usually when it
+thunders she looks up expectantly and says, "Come in." But she has
+become subdued and gentle with age and never destroys the furniture now,
+except when uncommonly vexed. God knows, my dear, it would be a happy
+thing if you and old Lady Harmony would imitate this spirit. But indeed
+the older you grow the less secure becomes the furniture. When I throw
+chairs through the window I have sufficient reason to back it. But you
+--you are but a creature of passion.
+
+The monument to the author of 'Gloverson and His Silent Partners' is
+finished.--[Ralph Keeler. See chap. lxxxiii.]--It is the stateliest and
+the costliest ever erected to the memory of any man. This noble classic
+has now been translated into all the languages of the earth and is adored
+by all nations and known to all creatures. Yet I have conversed as
+familiarly with the author of it as I do with my own great-grandchildren.
+
+I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly
+as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots.
+It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes
+three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered
+them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes
+poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps his
+best effort of late years is this:
+
+           O soul, soul, soul of mine!
+           Soul, soul, soul of throe!
+           Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine,
+           And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!
+
+This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch
+that he is become a sore affliction to all that know him.
+
+But I must desist. There are draughts here everywhere and my gout is
+something frightful. My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder.
+God be with you.
+                                HARTFORD.
+
+These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion
+of the city of Dublin.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX N
+
+MARK TWAIN AND COPYRIGHT
+
+I
+
+PETITION
+
+Concerning Copyright (1875) (See Chapter cii)
+
+TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES IN
+CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.
+
+We, your petitioners, do respectfully represent as follows, viz.: That
+justice, plain and simple, is a thing which right-feeling men stand ready
+at all times to accord to brothers and strangers alike. All such men
+will concede that it is but plain, simple justice that American authors
+should be protected by copyright in Europe; also, that European authors
+should be protected by copyright here.
+
+Both divisions of this proposition being true, it behooves our government
+to concern itself with that division of it which comes peculiarly within
+its province--viz., the latter moiety--and to grant to foreign authors
+with all convenient despatch a full and effective copyright in America
+without marring the grace of the act by stopping to inquire whether a
+similar justice will be done our own authors by foreign governments. If
+it were even known that those governments would not extend this justice
+to us it would still not justify us in withholding this manifest right
+from their authors. If a thing is right it ought to be done--the thing
+called "expediency" or "policy" has no concern with such a matter. And
+we desire to repeat, with all respect, that it is not a grace or a
+privilege we ask for our foreign brethren, but a right--a right received
+from God, and only denied them by man. We hold no ownership in these
+authors, and when we take their work from them, as at present, without
+their consent, it is robbery. The fact that the handiwork of our own
+authors is seized in the same way in foreign lands neither excuses nor
+mitigates our sin.
+
+With your permission we will say here, over our signatures, and earnestly
+and sincerely, that we very greatly desire that you shall grant a full
+copyright to foreign authors (the copyright fee for the entry in the
+office of the Congressional Librarian to be the same as we pay
+ourselves), and we also as greatly desire that this grant shall be made
+without a single hampering stipulation that American authors shall
+receive in turn an advantage of any kind from foreign governments.
+
+Since no author who was applied to hesitated for a moment to append his
+signature to this petition we are satisfied that if time had permitted we
+could have procured the signature of every writer in the United States,
+great and small, obscure or famous. As it is, the list comprises the
+names of about all our writers whose works have at present a European
+market, and who are therefore chiefly concerned in this matter.
+
+No objection to our proposition can come from any reputable publisher
+among us--or does come from such a quarter, as the appended signatures of
+our greatest publishing firms will attest. A European copyright here
+would be a manifest advantage to them. As the matter stands now the
+moment they have thoroughly advertised a desirable foreign book, and thus
+at great expense aroused public interest in it, some small-spirited
+speculator (who has lain still in his kennel and spent nothing) rushes
+the same book on the market and robs the respectable publisher of half
+the gains.
+
+Then, since neither our authors nor the decent among our publishing firms
+will object to granting an American copyright to foreign authors and
+artists, who can there be to object? Surely nobody whose protest is
+entitled to any weight.
+
+Trusting in the righteousness of our cause we, your petitioners, will
+ever pray, etc.
+                     With great respect,
+                                Your Ob't Serv'ts.
+
+
+
+
+CIRCULAR TO AMERICAN AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
+
+DEAR SIR,--We believe that you will recognize the justice and the
+righteousness of the thing we desire to accomplish through the
+accompanying petition. And we believe that you will be willing that our
+country shall be the first in the world to grant to all authors alike the
+free exercise of their manifest right to do as they please with the fruit
+of their own labor without inquiring what flag they live under. If the
+sentiments of the petition meet your views, will you do us the favor to
+sign it and forward it by post at your earliest convenience to our
+secretary?
+                            }Committee
+Address
+      -------------------Secretary of the Committee.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Communications supposed to have been written by the Tsar of Russia and
+the Sultan of Turkey to Mark Twain on the subject of International
+Copyright, about 1890.
+
+                            ST. PETERSBURG, February.
+
+COL. MARK TWAIN, Washington.
+
+Your cablegram received. It should have been transmitted through my
+minister, but let that pass. I am opposed to international copyright. At
+present American literature is harmless here because we doctor it in such
+a way as to make it approve the various beneficent devices which we use
+to keep our people favorable to fetters as jewelry and pleased with
+Siberia as a summer resort. But your bill would spoil this. We should
+be obliged to let you say your say in your own way. 'Voila'! my empire
+would be a republic in five years and I should be sampling Siberia
+myself.
+
+If you should run across Mr. Kennan--[George Kennan, who had graphically
+pictured the fearful conditions of Siberian exile.]--please ask him to
+come over and give some readings. I will take good care of him.
+
+                                ALEXANDER III.
+
+144--Collect.
+
+                            CONSTANTINOPLE, February.
+
+DR. MARK TWAIN, Washington.
+
+Great Scott, no! By the beard of the Prophet, no! How can you ask such
+a thing of me? I am a man of family. I cannot take chances, like other
+people. I cannot let a literature come in here which teaches that a
+man's wife is as good as the man himself. Such a doctrine cannot do any
+particular harm, of course, where the man has only one wife, for then it
+is a dead-level between them, and there is no humiliating inequality, and
+no resulting disorder; but you take an extremely married person, like me,
+and go to teaching that his wife is 964 times as good as he is, and
+what's hell to that harem, dear friend? I never saw such a fool as you.
+Do not mind that expression; I already regret it, and would replace it
+with a softer one if I could do it without debauching the truth. I
+beseech you, do not pass that bill. Roberts College is quite all the
+American product we can stand just now. On top of that, do you want to
+send us a flood of freedom-shrieking literature which we can't edit the
+poison out of, but must let it go among our people just as it is? My
+friend, we should be a republic inside of ten years.
+
+                                       ABDUL II.
+
+
+III
+
+MARK TWAIN'S LAST SUGGESTION ON COPYRIGHT.
+
+A MEMORIAL RESPECTFULLY TENDERED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND THE
+HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
+
+(Prepared early in 1909 at the suggestion of Mr. Champ Clack but not
+offered. A bill adding fourteen years to the copyright period was passed
+about this time.)
+
+The Policy of Congress:--Nineteen or twenty years ago James Russell
+Lowell, George Haven Putnam, and the under signed appeared before the
+Senate Committee on Patents in the interest of Copyright. Up to that
+time, as explained by Senator Platt, of Connecticut, the policy of
+Congress had been to limit the life of a copyright by a term of years,
+with one definite end in view, and only one--to wit, that after an author
+had been permitted to enjoy for a reasonable length of time the income
+from literary property created by his hand and brain the property should
+then be transferred "to the public" as a free gift. That is still the
+policy of Congress to-day.
+
+The Purpose in View:--The purpose in view was clear: to so reduce the
+price of the book as to bring it within the reach of all purses, and
+spread it among the millions who had not been able to buy it while it was
+still under the protection of copyright.
+
+The Purpose Defeated:--This purpose has always been defeated. That is to
+say, that while the death of a copyright has sometimes reduced the price
+of a book by a half for a while, and in some cases by even more, it has
+never reduced it vastly, nor accomplished any reduction that was
+permanent and secure.
+
+The Reason:--The reason is simple: Congress has never made a reduction
+compulsory. Congress was convinced that the removal of the author's
+royalty and the book's consequent (or at least probable) dispersal among
+several competing publishers would make the book cheap by force of the
+competition. It was an error. It has not turned out so. The reason is,
+a publisher cannot find profit in an exceedingly cheap edition if he must
+divide the market with competitors.
+
+Proposed Remedy:--The natural remedy would seem to be, amended law
+requiring the issue of cheap editions.
+
+Copyright Extension:--I think the remedy could be accomplished in the
+following way, without injury to author or publisher, and with extreme
+advantage to the public: by an amendment to the existing law providing as
+follows--to wit: that at any time between the beginning of a book's
+forty-first year and the ending of its forty-second the owner of the
+copyright may extend its life thirty years by issuing and placing on sale
+an edition of the book at one-tenth the price of the cheapest edition
+hitherto issued at any time during the ten immediately preceding years.
+This extension to lapse and become null and void if at any time during
+the thirty years he shall fail during the space of three consecutive
+months to furnish the ten per cent. book upon demand of any person or
+persons desiring to buy it.
+
+The Result:--The result would be that no American classic enjoying the
+thirty-year extension would ever be out of the reach of any American
+purse, let its uncompulsory price be what it might. He would get a
+two-dollar book for 20 cents, and he could get none but copyright-expired
+classics at any such rate.
+
+The Final Result:--At the end of the thirty-year extension the copyright
+would again die, and the price would again advance. This by a natural
+law, the excessively cheap edition no longer carrying with it an
+advantage to any publisher.
+
+Reconstruction of The Present Law Not Necessary:--A clause of the
+suggested amendment could read about as follows, and would obviate the
+necessity of taking the present law to pieces and building it over again:
+
+    All books and all articles enjoying forty-two years copyright-life
+    under the present law shall be admitted to the privilege of the
+    thirty-year extension upon complying with the condition requiring
+    the producing and placing upon permanent sale of one grade or form
+    of said book or article at a price of 90 per cent. below the
+    cheapest rate at which said book or article had been placed upon the
+    market at any time during the immediately preceding ten years.
+
+                       REMARKS
+
+If the suggested amendment shall meet with the favor of the present
+Congress and become law--and I hope it will--I shall have personal
+experience of its effects very soon. Next year, in fact, in the person
+of my first book, 'The Innocents Abroad'. For its forty-two-year
+copyright-life will then cease and its thirty-year extension begin--and
+with the latter the permanent low-rate edition. At present the highest
+price of the book is eight dollars, and its lowest price three dollars
+per copy. Thus the permanent low rate will be thirty cents per copy. A
+sweeping reduction like this is what Congress from the beginning has
+desired to achieve, but has not been able to accomplish because no
+inducement was offered to publishers to run the risk.
+
+              Respectfully submitted,
+
+                                S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+(A full and interesting elucidation of Mark Twain's views on Copyright
+may be found in an article entitled "Concerning Copyright," published in
+the North American Review for January, 1905.)
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX O
+
+(See Chapter cxiv)
+
+    Address of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) from a report of the
+    dinner given by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly in honor of
+    the Seventieth Anniversary of the Birth of John Greenleaf Whittier,
+    at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877, as published in
+    the Boston Evening Transcript, December 18, 1877.
+
+MR. CHAIRMAN, This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of
+pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk, therefore I will drop
+lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic,
+and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded
+of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just
+succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose
+spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly California-ward. I started an
+inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow
+and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'. I
+very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in
+the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the
+time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door to
+me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked more dejected than
+before. He let me in-pretty reluctantly, I thought--and after the
+customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whisky, I took a pipe.
+This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he
+spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering, "You're
+the fourth--I'm going to move." "The fourth what?" said I. "The fourth
+littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours--I'm going to move."
+"You don't tell me!" said I; "who were the others?" "Mr. Longfellow. Mr.
+Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--consound the lot!"
+
+You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated--three hot
+whiskies did the rest--and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he:
+
+"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in, of
+course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot,
+but that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson
+was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a
+balloon; he weighed as much as three hundered, and had double chins all
+the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a
+prize-fighter. His head was cropped and bristly, like as if he had a wig
+made of hair-brushes. His nose lay straight down in his face, like a
+finger with the end joint tilted up. They had been drinking, I could see
+that. And what queer talk they used! Mr. Holmes inspected this cabin,
+then he took me by the buttonhole and says he:
+
+     "'Through the deep caves of thought
+       I hear a voice that sings,
+
+       "Build thee more stately mansions,
+       O my soul!"'
+
+"Says I, 'I can't afford it, Mr. Holmes, and moreover I don't want to.'
+Blamed if I liked it pretty well, either, coming from a stranger that
+way. However, I started to get out my bacon and beans when Mr. Emerson
+came and looked on awhile, and then he takes me aside by the buttonhole
+and says:
+
+     "'Give me agates for my meat;
+       Give me cantharids to eat;
+       From air and ocean bring me foods,
+       From all zones and altitudes.'
+
+"Says I, 'Mr. Emerson, if you'll excuse me, this ain't no hotel.' You
+see, it sort of riled me--I warn't used to the ways of Jittery swells.
+But I went on a-sweating over my work, and next comes Mr. Longfellow and
+buttonholes me and interrupts me. Says he:
+
+     "'Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
+       You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis--'
+
+"But I broke in, and says I, 'Beg your pardon, Mr. Longfellow, if you'll
+be so kind as to hold your yawp for about five minutes and let me get
+this grub ready, you'll do me proud.' Well, sir, after they'd filled up
+I set out the jug. Mr. Holmes looks at it and then he fires up all of a
+sudden and yells:
+
+     "'Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!
+       For I would drink to other days.'
+
+"By George, I was getting kind of worked up. I don't deny it, I was
+getting kind of worked up. I turns to Mr. Holmes and says I, 'Looky
+here, my fat friend, I'm a-running this shanty, and if the court knows
+herself you'll take whisky straight or you'll go dry.' Them's the very
+words I said to him. Now I don't want to sass such famous Littery
+people, but you see they kind of forced me. There ain't nothing
+onreasonable 'bout me. I don't mind a passel of guests a-treadin' on my
+tail three or four times, but when it comes to standing on it it's
+different, 'and if the court knows herself,' I says, 'you'll take whisky
+straight or you'll go dry.' Well, between drinks they'd swell around the
+cabin and strike attitudes and spout; and pretty soon they got out a
+greasy old deck and went to playing euchre at ten cents a corner--on
+trust. I began to notice some pretty suspicious things. Mr. Emerson
+dealt, looked at his hand, shook his head, says:
+
+     "'I am the doubter and the doubt--'
+
+and calmly bunched the hands and went to shuffling for a new lay-out.
+Says he:
+
+     "'They reckon ill who leave me out;
+       They know not well the subtle ways I keep.
+       I pass and deal again!'
+
+Hang'd if he didn't go ahead and do it, too! Oh, he was a cool one!
+Well, in about a minute things were running pretty tight, but all of a
+sudden I see by Mr. Emerson's eye he judged he had 'em. He had already
+corralled two tricks and each of the others one. So now he kind of lifts
+a little in his chair and says,
+
+     "'I tire of globes and aces!
+       Too long the game is played!'
+
+and down he fetched a right bower. Mr. Longfellow smiles as sweet as pie
+and says,
+
+     "'Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
+       For the lesson thou hast taught,'
+
+and blamed if he didn't down with another right bower! Emerson claps his
+hand on his bowie, Longfellow claps his on his revolver, and I went under
+a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes rose
+up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the first
+man that draws I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All quiet on the
+Potomac, you bet!
+
+"They were pretty how-come-you-so by now, and they begun to blow. Emerson
+says, 'The noblest thing I ever wrote was "Barbara Frietchie."' Says
+Longfellow, 'It don't begin with my "Bigelow Papers."' Says Holmes, 'My
+"Thanatopsis" lays over 'em both.' They mighty near ended in a fight.
+Then they wished they had some more company, and Mr. Emerson pointed to
+me and says:
+
+     "'Is yonder squalid peasant all
+       That this proud nursery could breed?'
+
+He was a-whetting his bowie on his boot--so I let it pass. Well, sir,
+next they took it into their heads that they would like some music; so
+they made me stand up and sing, 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home' till I
+dropped--at thirteen minutes past four this morning. That's what I've
+been through, my friend. When I woke at seven they were leaving, thank
+goodness, and Mr. Longfellow had my only boots on and his'n under his
+arm. Says I, 'Hold on there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with
+them?' He says, 'Going to make tracks with 'em, because--
+
+     "'Lives of great men all remind us
+       We can make our lives sublime;
+       And, departing, leave behind us
+       Footprints on the sands of time.'
+
+"As I said, Mr. Twain, you are the fourth in twenty-four hours and I'm
+going to move; I ain't suited to a Littery atmosphere."
+
+I said to the miner, "Why, my dear sir, these were not the gracious
+singers to whom we and the world pay loving reverence and homage; these
+were impostors."
+
+The miner investigated me with a calm eye for a while; then said he, "Ah!
+impostors, were they? Are you?"
+
+I did not pursue the subject, and since then I have not traveled on my
+'nom de guerre' enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to
+contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the
+details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I
+believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular
+fact on an occasion like this.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX P
+
+THE ADAM MONUMENT PETITION
+
+(See Chapter cxxxiv)
+
+TO THE HONORABLE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES
+IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.
+
+WHEREAS, A number of citizens of the city of Elmira in the State of New
+York having covenanted among themselves to erect in that city a monument
+in memory of Adam, the father of mankind, being moved thereto by a
+sentiment of love and duty, and these having appointed the undersigned to
+communicate with your honorable body, we beg leave to lay before you the
+following facts and append to the same our humble petition.
+
+1. As far as is known no monument has ever been raised in any part of
+the world to commemorate the services rendered to our race by this great
+man, whilst many men of far less note and worship have been rendered
+immortal by means of stately and indestructible memorials.
+
+2. The common father of mankind has been suffered to lie in entire
+neglect, although even the Father of our Country has now, and has had for
+many years, a monument in course of construction.
+
+3. No right-feeling human being can desire to see this neglect
+continued, but all just men, even to the farthest regions of the globe,
+should and will rejoice to know that he to whom we owe existence is about
+to have reverent and fitting recognition of his works at the hands of the
+people of Elmira. His labors were not in behalf of one locality, but for
+the extension of humanity at large and the blessings which go therewith;
+hence all races and all colors and all religions are interested in seeing
+that his name and fame shall be placed beyond the reach of the blight of
+oblivion by a permanent and suitable monument.
+
+4. It will be to the imperishable credit of the United States if this
+monument shall be set up within her borders; moreover, it will be a
+peculiar grace to the beneficiary if this testimonial of affection and
+gratitude shall be the gift of the youngest of the nations that have
+sprung from his loins after 6,000 years of unappreciation on the part of
+its elders.
+
+5. The idea of this sacred enterprise having originated in the city of
+Elmira, she will be always grateful if the general government shall
+encourage her in the good work by securing to her a certain advantage
+through the exercise of its great authority.
+
+Therefore, Your petitioners beg that your honorable body will be pleased
+to issue a decree restricting to Elmira the right to build a monument to
+Adam and inflicting a heavy penalty upon any other community within the
+United States that shall propose or attempt to erect a monument or other
+memorial to the said Adam, and to this end we will ever pray.
+
+NAMES: (100 signatures)
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX Q
+
+GENERAL GRANT'S GRAMMAR
+
+(Written in 1886. Delivered at an Army and Navy Club dinner in New York
+City)
+
+Lately a great and honored author, Matthew Arnold, has been finding fault
+with General Grant's English. That would be fair enough, maybe, if the
+examples of imperfect English averaged more instances to the page in
+General Grant's book than they do in Arnold's criticism on the book--but
+they do not. It would be fair enough, maybe, if such instances were
+commoner in General Grant's book than they are in the works of the
+average standard author--but they are not. In fact, General Grant's
+derelictions in the matter of grammar and construction are not more
+frequent than such derelictions in the works of a majority of the
+professional authors of our time, and of all previous times--authors as
+exclusively and painstakingly trained to the literary trade as was
+General Grant to the trade of war. This is not a random statement: it is
+a fact, and easily demonstrable. I have a book at home called Modern
+English Literature: Its Blemishes and Defects, by Henry H. Breen, a
+countryman of Mr. Arnold. In it I find examples of bad grammar and
+slovenly English from the pens of Sydney Smith, Sheridan, Hallam,
+Whately, Carlyle, Disraeli, Allison, Junius, Blair, Macaulay,
+Shakespeare, Milton, Gibbon, Southey, Lamb, Landor, Smollett, Walpole,
+Walker (of the dictionary), Christopher North, Kirk White, Benjamin
+Franklin, Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Lindley Murray (who made the
+grammar).
+
+In Mr. Arnold's criticism on General Grant's book we find two grammatical
+crimes and more than several examples of very crude and slovenly English,
+enough of them to entitle him to a lofty place in the illustrious list of
+delinquents just named.
+
+The following passage all by itself ought to elect him:
+    "Meade suggested to Grant that he might wish to have immediately
+    under him Sherman, who had been serving with Grant in the West. He
+    begged him not to hesitate if he thought it for the good of the
+    service. Grant assured him that he had not thought of moving him,
+    and in his memoirs, after relating what had passed, he adds, etc."
+
+To read that passage a couple of times would make a man dizzy; to read it
+four times would make him drunk.
+
+Mr. Breen makes this discriminating remark: "To suppose that because a
+man is a poet or a historian he must be correct in his grammar is to
+suppose that an architect must be a joiner, or a physician a compounder
+of medicine."
+
+People may hunt out what microscopic motes they please, but, after all,
+the fact remains, and cannot be dislodged, that General Grant's book is a
+great and, in its peculiar department, a unique and unapproachable
+literary masterpiece. In their line there is no higher literature than
+those modest, simple memoirs. Their style is at least flawless and no
+man could improve upon it, and great books are weighed and measured by
+their style and matter, and not by the trimmings and shadings of their
+grammar.
+
+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. What do we care for grammar
+when we think of those thunderous phrases, "Unconditional and immediate
+surrender," "I propose to move immediately upon your works," "I propose
+to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." Mr. Arnold would
+doubtless claim that that last phrase is not strictly grammatical, and
+yet it did certainly wake up this nation as a hundred million tons of
+A-number-one fourth-proof, hard-boiled, hide-bound grammar from another
+mouth could not have done. And finally we have that gentler phrase, that
+one which shows you another true side of the man, shows you that in his
+soldier heart there was room for other than gory war mottoes and in his
+tongue the gift to fitly phrase them: "Let us have peace."
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX R
+
+PARTY ALLEGIANCE.
+
+BEING A PORTION OF A PAPER ON "CONSISTENCY," READ BEFORE THE MONDAY
+EVENING CLUB IN 1887.
+
+(See Chapter clxiii)
+
+. . . I have referred to the fact that when a man retires from his
+political party he is a traitor--that he is so pronounced in plain
+language. That is bold; so bold as to deceive many into the fancy that
+it is true. Desertion, treason--these are the terms applied. Their
+military form reveals the thought in the man's mind who uses them: to him
+a political party is an army. Well, is it? Are the two things
+identical? Do they even resemble each other? Necessarily a political
+party is not an army of conscripts, for they are in the ranks by
+compulsion. Then it must be a regular army or an army of volunteers. Is
+it a regular army? No, for these enlist for a specified and
+well-understood term, and can retire without reproach when the term is
+up. Is it an army of volunteers who have enlisted for the war, and may
+righteously be shot if they leave before the war is finished? No, it is
+not even an army in that sense. Those fine military terms are
+high-sounding, empty lies, and are no more rationally applicable to a
+political party than they would be to an oyster-bed. The volunteer
+soldier comes to the recruiting office and strips himself and proves that
+he is so many feet high, and has sufficiently good teeth, and no fingers
+gone, and is sufficiently sound in body generally; he is accepted; but
+not until he has sworn a deep oath or made other solemn form of promise
+to march under, that flag until that war is done or his term of
+enlistment completed. What is the process when a voter joins a party?
+Must he prove that he is sound in any way, mind or body? Must he prove
+that he knows anything--is capable of anything--whatever? Does he take
+an oath or make a promise of any sort?--or doesn't he leave himself
+entirely free? If he were informed by the political boss that if he
+join, it must be forever; that he must be that party's chattel and wear
+its brass collar the rest of his days--would not that insult him? It
+goes without saying. He would say some rude, unprintable thing, and turn
+his back on that preposterous organization. But the political boss puts
+no conditions upon him at all; and this volunteer makes no promises,
+enlists for no stated term. He has in no sense become a part of an army;
+he is in no way restrained of his freedom. Yet he will presently find
+that his bosses and his newspapers have assumed just the reverse of that:
+that they have blandly arrogated to themselves an ironclad military
+authority over him; and within twelve months, if he is an average man, he
+will have surrendered his liberty, and will actually be silly enough to
+believe that he cannot leave that party, for any cause whatever, without
+being a shameful traitor, a deserter, a legitimately dishonored man.
+
+There you have the just measure of that freedom of conscience, freedom of
+opinion, freedom of speech and action which we hear so much inflated
+foolishness about as being the precious possession of the republic.
+Whereas, in truth, the surest way for a man to make of himself a target
+for almost universal scorn, obloquy, slander, and insult is to stop
+twaddling about these priceless independencies and attempt to exercise
+one of them. If he is a preacher half his congregation will clamor for
+his expulsion--and will expel him, except they find it will injure real
+estate in the neighborhood; if he is a doctor his own dead will turn
+against him.
+
+I repeat that the new party-member who supposed himself independent will
+presently find that the party have somehow got a mortgage on his soul,
+and that within a year he will recognize the mortgage, deliver up his
+liberty, and actually believe he cannot retire from that party from any
+motive howsoever high and right in his own eyes without shame and
+dishonor.
+
+Is it possible for human wickedness to invent a doctrine more infernal
+and poisonous than this? Is there imaginable a baser servitude than it
+imposes? What slave is so degraded as the slave that is proud that he is
+a slave? What is the essential difference between a lifelong democrat
+and any other kind of lifelong slave? Is it less humiliating to dance to
+the lash of one master than another?
+
+This infamous doctrine of allegiance to party plays directly into the
+hands of politicians of the baser sort--and doubtless for that it was
+borrowed--or stolen--from the monarchial system. It enables them to
+foist upon the country officials whom no self-respecting man would vote
+for if he could but come to understand that loyalty to himself is his
+first and highest duty, not loyalty to any party name.
+
+Shall you say the best good of the country demands allegiance to party?
+Shall you also say that it demands that a man kick his truth and his
+conscience into the gutter and become a mouthing lunatic besides? Oh no,
+you say; it does not demand that. But what if it produce that in spite
+of you? There is no obligation upon a man to do things which he ought
+not to do when drunk, but most men will do them just the same; and so we
+hear no arguments about obligations in the matter--we only hear men
+warned to avoid the habit of drinking; get rid of the thing that can
+betray men into such things.
+
+This is a funny business all around. The same men who enthusiastically
+preach loyal consistency to church and party are always ready and willing
+and anxious to persuade a Chinaman or an Indian or a Kanaka to desert his
+church or a fellow-American to desert his party. The man who deserts to
+them is all that is high and pure and beautiful--apparently; the man who
+deserts from them is all that is foul and despicable. This is
+Consistency--with a capital C.
+
+With the daintiest and self-complacentest sarcasm the lifelong loyalist
+scoffs at the Independent--or as he calls him, with cutting irony, the
+Mugwump; makes himself too killingly funny for anything in this world
+about him. But--the Mugwump can stand it, for there is a great history
+at his back; stretching down the centuries, and he comes of a mighty
+ancestry. He knows that in the whole history of the race of men no
+single great and high and beneficent thing was ever done for the souls
+and bodies, the hearts and the brains of the children of this world, but
+a Mugwump started it and Mugwumps carried it to victory: And their names
+are the stateliest in history: Washington, Garrison, Galileo, Luther,
+Christ. Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a
+human soul in this world-end never will.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX S
+
+ORIGINAL PREFACE FOR "A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT"
+
+(See Chapter clxxii)
+
+My object has been to group together some of the most odious laws which
+have had vogue in the Christian countries within the past eight or ten
+centuries, and illustrate them by the incidents of a story.
+
+There was never a time when America applied the death-penalty to more
+than fourteen crimes. But England, within the memory of men still
+living, had in her list of crimes 223 which were punishable by death! And
+yet from the beginning of our existence down to a time within the memory
+of babes England has distressed herself piteously over the ungentleness
+of our Connecticut Blue Laws. Those Blue Laws should have been spared
+English criticism for two reasons:
+
+1. They were so insipidly mild, by contrast with the bloody and
+atrocious laws of England of the same period, as to seem characterless
+and colorless when one brings them into that awful presence.
+
+2. The Blue Laws never had any existence. They were the fancy-work of
+an English clergyman; they were never a part of any statute-book. And
+yet they could have been made to serve a useful and merciful purpose; if
+they had been injected into the English law the dilution would have given
+to the whole a less lurid aspect; or, to figure the effect in another
+way, they would have been coca mixed into vitriol.
+
+I have drawn no laws and no illustrations from the twin civilizations of
+hell and Russia. To have entered into that atmosphere would have
+defeated my purpose, which was to show a great and genuine progress in
+Christendom in these few later generations toward mercifulness--a wide
+and general relaxing of the grip of the law. Russia had to be left out
+because exile to Siberia remains, and in that single punishment is
+gathered together and concentrated all the bitter inventions of all the
+black ages for the infliction of suffering upon human beings. Exile for
+life from one's hearthstone and one's idols--this is rack, thumb-screw,
+the water-drop, fagot and stake, tearing asunder by horses, flaying
+alive--all these in one; and not compact into hours, but drawn out into
+years, each year a century, and the whole a mortal immortality of torture
+and despair. While exile to Siberia remains one will be obliged to admit
+that there is one country in Christendom where the punishments of all the
+ages are still preserved and still inflicted, that there is one country
+in Christendom where no advance has been made toward modifying the
+medieval penalties for offenses against society and the State.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX T
+
+A TRIBUTE TO HENRY H. ROGERS
+
+(See Chapter cc and earlier)
+
+April 25, 1902. I owe more to Henry Rogers than to any other man whom I
+have known. He was born in Fairhaven, Connecticut, in 1839, and is my
+junior by four years. He was graduated from the high school there in
+1853, when he was fourteen years old, and from that time forward he
+earned his own living, beginning at first as the bottom subordinate in
+the village store with hard-work privileges and a low salary. When he
+was twenty-four he went out to the newly discovered petroleum fields in
+Pennsylvania and got work; then returned home, with enough money to pay
+passage, married a schoolmate, and took her to the oil regions. He
+prospered, and by and by established the Standard Oil Trust with Mr.
+Rockefeller and others, and is still one of its managers and directors.
+
+In 1893 we fell together by accident one evening in the Murray Hill
+Hotel, and our friendship began on the spot and at once. Ever since then
+he has added my business affairs to his own and carried them through, and
+I have had no further trouble with them. Obstructions and perplexities
+which would have driven me mad were simplicities to his master mind and
+furnished him no difficulties. He released me from my entanglements with
+Paige and stopped that expensive outgo; when Charles L. Webster & Company
+failed he saved my copyrights for Mrs. Clemens when she would have
+sacrificed them to the creditors although they were in no way entitled to
+them; he offered to lend me money wherewith to save the life of that
+worthless firm; when I started lecturing around the world to make the
+money to pay off the Webster debts he spent more than a year trying to
+reconcile the differences between Harper & Brothers and the American
+Publishing Company and patch up a working-contract between them and
+succeeded where any other man would have failed; as fast as I earned
+money and sent it to him he banked it at interest and held onto it,
+refusing to pay any creditor until he could pay all of the 96 alike; when
+I had earned enough to pay dollar for dollar he swept off the
+indebtedness and sent me the whole batch of complimentary letters which
+the creditors wrote in return; when I had earned $28,500 more, $18,500 of
+which was in his hands, I wrote him from Vienna to put the latter into
+Federal Steel and leave it there; he obeyed to the extent of $17,500, but
+sold it in two months at $25,000 profit, and said it would go ten points
+higher, but that it was his custom to "give the other man a chance" (and
+that was a true word--there was never a truer one spoken). That was at
+the end of '99 and beginning of 1900; and from that day to this he has
+continued to break up my bad schemes and put better ones in their place,
+to my great advantage. I do things which ought to try man's patience,
+but they never seem to try his; he always finds a colorable excuse for
+what I have done. His soul was born superhumanly sweet, and I do not
+think anything can sour it. I have not known his equal among men for
+lovable qualities. But for his cool head and wise guidance I should
+never have come out of the Webster difficulties on top; it was his good
+steering that enabled me to work out my salvation and pay a hundred cents
+on the dollar--the most valuable service any man ever did me.
+
+His character is full of fine graces, but the finest is this: that he can
+load you down with crushing obligations and then so conduct himself that
+you never feel their weight. If he would only require something in
+return--but that is not in his nature; it would not occur to him. With
+the Harpers and the American Company at war those copyrights were worth
+but little; he engineered a peace and made them valuable. He invests
+$100,000 for me here, and in a few months returns a profit of $31,000. I
+invest (in London and here) $66,000 and must wait considerably for
+results (in case there shall be any). I tell him about it and he finds
+no fault, utters not a sarcasm. He was born serene, patient,
+all-enduring, where a friend is concerned, and nothing can extinguish
+that great quality in him. Such a man is entitled to the high gift of
+humor: he has it at its very best. He is not only the best friend I have
+ever had, but is the best man I have known.
+
+                     S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX U
+
+FROM MARK TWAIN'S LAST POEM
+
+BEGUN AT RIVERDALE, NEW YORK. FINISHED AT YORK HARBOR, MAINE, AUGUST 18,
+1902
+
+(See Chapter ccxxiii)
+
+(A bereft and demented mother speaks)
+
+. . . O, I can see my darling yet: the little form In slip of flimsy
+stuff all creamy white, Pink-belted waist with ample bows, Blue shoes
+scarce bigger than the house-cat's ears--Capering in delight and choked
+with glee.
+
+It was a summer afternoon; the hill Rose green above me and about, and in
+the vale below The distant village slept, and all the world Was steeped
+in dreams. Upon me lay this peace, And I forgot my sorrow in its spell.
+And now My little maid passed by, and she Was deep in thought upon a
+solemn thing: A disobedience, and my reproof. Upon my face She must not
+look until the day was done; For she was doing penance . . . She? O,
+it was I! What mother knows not that? And so she passed, I worshiping
+and longing . . . It was not wrong? You do not think me wrong? I did
+it for the best. Indeed I meant it so.
+
+She flits before me now: The peach-bloom of her gauzy crepe, The plaited
+tails of hair, The ribbons floating from the summer hat, The grieving
+face, dropp'd head absorbed with care. O, dainty little form! I see it
+move, receding slow along the path, By hovering butterflies besieged; I
+see it reach The breezy top clear-cut against the sky, . . . Then pass
+beyond and sink from sight-forever!
+
+Within, was light and cheer; without, A blustering winter's right. There
+was a play; It was her own; for she had wrought it out Unhelped, from her
+own head-and she But turned sixteen! A pretty play, All graced with
+cunning fantasies, And happy songs, and peopled all with fays, And sylvan
+gods and goddesses, And shepherds, too, that piped and danced, And wore
+the guileless hours away In care-free romps and games.
+
+Her girlhood mates played in the piece, And she as well: a goddess, she,
+--And looked it, as it seemed to me.
+
+'Twas fairyland restored-so beautiful it was And innocent. It made us
+cry, we elder ones, To live our lost youth o'er again With these its
+happy heirs.
+
+Slowly, at last, the curtain fell. Before us, there, she stood, all
+wreathed and draped In roses pearled with dew-so sweet, so glad, So
+radiant!--and flung us kisses through the storm Of praise that crowned
+her triumph . . . . O, Across the mists of time I see her yet, My
+Goddess of the Flowers!
+
+. . . The curtain hid her . . . . Do you comprehend? Till time
+shall end! Out of my life she vanished while I looked!
+
+. . . Ten years are flown. O, I have watched so long, So long. But
+she will come no more. No, she will come no more.
+
+It seems so strange . . . so strange . . . Struck down unwarned! In
+the unbought grace, of youth laid low--In the glory of her fresh young
+bloom laid low--In the morning of her life cut down! And I not by! Not
+by When the shadows fell, the night of death closed down The sun that lit
+my life went out. Not by to answer When the latest whisper passed the
+lips That were so dear to me--my name! Far from my post! the world's
+whole breadth away. O, sinking in the waves of death she cried to me For
+mother-help, and got for answer Silence!
+
+We that are old--we comprehend; even we That are not mad: whose grown-up
+scions still abide; Their tale complete: Their earlier selves we glimpse
+at intervals Far in the dimming past; We see the little forms as once
+they were, And whilst we ache to take them to our hearts, The vision
+fades. We know them lost to us--Forever lost; we cannot have them back;
+We miss them as we miss the dead, We mourn them as we mourn the dead.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX V
+
+SELECTIONS FROM AN UNFINISHED BOOK, "3,000 YEARS AMONG THE MICROBES"
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MICROBE, WHO, IN A FORMER EXISTENCE, HAD BEEN A
+MAN--HIS PRESENT HABITAT BEING THE ORGANISM OF A TRAMP, BLITZOWSKI.
+(WRITTEN AT DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1905)
+
+(See Chapter ccxxxv)
+
+Our world (the tramp) is as large and grand and awe-compelling to us
+microscopic creatures as is man's world to man. Our tramp is
+mountainous, there are vast oceans in him, and lakes that are sea-like
+for size, there are many rivers (veins and arteries) which are fifteen
+miles across, and of a length so stupendous as to make the Mississippi
+and the Amazon trifling little Rhode Island brooks by comparison. As for
+our minor rivers, they are multitudinous, and the dutiable commerce of
+disease which they carry is rich beyond the dreams of the American
+custom-house.
+
+Take a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, and what secret of Nature can be hidden
+from him? He says: "A billion, that is a million millions,[?? Trillion
+D.W.] of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is
+still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting, of a
+billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a
+microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked
+eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger
+still."
+
+The human eye could see it then--that dainty little speck. But with my
+microbe-eye I could see every individual of the whirling billions of
+atoms that compose the speck. Nothing is ever at rest--wood, iron,
+water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing, day
+and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing as
+death, everything is full of bristling life, tremendous life, even the
+bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem eight centuries ago.
+There are no vegetables, all things are animal; each electron is an
+animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an
+appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved. Heaven was not made
+for man alone, and oblivion and neglect reserved for the rest of His
+creatures. He gave them life, He gave them humble services to perform,
+they have performed them, and they will not be forgotten, they will have
+their reward. Man-always vain, windy, conceited-thinks he will be in the
+majority there. He will be disappointed. Let him humble himself. But
+for the despised microbe and the persecuted bacillus, who needed a home
+and nourishment, he would not have been created. He has a mission,
+therefore a reason for existing: let him do the service he was made for,
+and keep quiet.
+
+Three weeks ago I was a man myself, and thought and felt as men think and
+feel; I have lived 3,000 years since then [microbic time], and I see the
+foolishness of it now. We live to learn, and fortunate are we when we
+are wise enough to profit by it.
+
+In matters pertaining to microscopy we necessarily have an advantage here
+over the scientist of the earth, because, as I have just been indicating,
+we see with our naked eyes minutenesses which no man-made microscope can
+detect, and are therefore able to register as facts many things which
+exist for him as theories only. Indeed, we know as facts several things
+which he has not yet divined even by theory. For example, he does not
+suspect that there is no life but animal life, and that all atoms are
+individual animals endowed each with a certain degree of consciousness,
+great or small, each with likes and dislikes, predilections and
+aversions--that, in a word, each has a character, a character of its own.
+Yet such is the case. Some of the molecules of a stone have an aversion
+for some of those of a vegetable or any other creature and will not
+associate with them--and would not be allowed to, if they tried. Nothing
+is more particular about society than a molecule. And so there are no
+end of castes; in this matter India is not a circumstance.
+
+"Tell me, Franklin [a microbe of great learning], is the ocean an
+individual, an animal, a creature?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then water--any water-is an individual?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Suppose you remove a drop of it? Is what is left an individual?"
+
+"Yes, and so is the drop."
+
+"Suppose you divide the drop?"
+
+"Then you have two individuals."
+
+"Suppose you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen?"
+
+"Again you have two individuals. But you haven't water any more."
+
+"Of course. Certainly. Well, suppose you combine them again, but in a
+new way: make the proportions equal--one part oxygen to one of hydrogen?"
+
+"But you know you can't. They won't combine on equal terms."
+
+I was ashamed to have made that blunder. I was embarrassed; to cover it
+I started to say we used to combine them like that where I came from, but
+thought better of it, and stood pat.
+
+"Now then," I said, "it amounts to this: water is an individual, an
+animal, and is alive; remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is
+alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is
+alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined constitute a third
+individual--and yet each continues to be an individual."
+
+I glanced at Franklin, but . . . upon reflection, held my peace. I
+could have pointed out to him that here was mute Nature explaining the
+sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously--that even the commonest
+understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words
+had labored to do it with speech and failed. But he would not have known
+what I was talking about. After a moment I resumed:
+
+"Listen--and see if I have understood you rightly, to wit: All the atoms
+that constitute each oxygen molecule are separate individuals, and each
+is a living animal; all the atoms that constitute each hydrogen molecule
+are separate individuals, and each one is a living animal; each drop of
+water consists of millions of living animals, the drop itself is an
+individual, a living animal, and the wide ocean is another. Is that it?"
+
+"Yes, that is correct."
+
+"By George, it beats the band!"
+
+He liked the expression, and set it down in his tablets.
+
+"Franklin, we've got it down fine. And to think--there are other animals
+that are still smaller than a hydrogen atom, and yet it is so small that
+it takes five thousand of them to make a molecule--a molecule so minute
+that it could get into a microbe's eye and he wouldn't know it was
+there!"
+
+"Yes, the wee creatures that inhabit the bodies of us germs and feed upon
+us, and rot us with disease: Ah, what could they have been created for?
+They give us pain, they make our lives miserable, they murder us--and
+where is the use of it all, where the wisdom? Ah, friend Bkshp [microbic
+orthography], we live in a strange and unaccountable world; our birth is
+a mystery, our little life is a mystery, a trouble, we pass and are seen
+no more; all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we know not whence we came,
+nor why; we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We only know we were
+not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise purpose, and that
+all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely and unblest after
+all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let us
+trust. The humblest of us is cared for--oh, believe it!--and this
+fleeting stay is not the end!"
+
+You notice that? He did not suspect that he, also, was engaged in
+gnawing, torturing, defiling, rotting, and murdering a fellow-creature
+--he and all the swarming billions of his race. None of them suspects
+it. That is significant. It is suggestive--irresistibly suggestive
+--insistently suggestive. It hints at the possibility that the
+procession of known and listed devourers and persecutors is not complete.
+It suggests the possibility, and substantially the certainty, that man is
+himself a microbe, and his globe a blood-corpuscle drifting with its
+shining brethren of the Milky Way down a vein of the Master and Maker of
+all things, whose body, mayhap--glimpsed part-wise from the earth by
+night, and receding and lost to view in the measureless remotenesses of
+space--is what men name the Universe.
+
+Yes, that was all old to me, but to find that our little old familiar
+microbes were themselves loaded up with microbes that fed them, enriched
+them, and persistently and faithfully preserved them and their poor old
+tramp-planet from destruction--oh, that was new, and too delicious!
+
+I wanted to see them! I was in a fever to see them! I had lenses to
+two-million power, but of course the field was no bigger than a person's
+finger-nail, and so it wasn't possible to compass a considerable
+spectacle or a landscape with them; whereas what I had been craving was a
+thirty-foot field, which would represent a spread of several miles of
+country and show up things in a way to make them worth looking at. The
+boys and I had often tried to contrive this improvement, but had failed.
+
+I mentioned the matter to the Duke and it made him smile. He said it was
+a quite simple thing-he had it at home. I was eager to bargain for the
+secret, but he said it was a trifle and not worth bargaining for. He
+said:
+
+"Hasn't it occurred to you that all you have to do is to bend an X-ray to
+an angle-value of 8.4 and refract it with a parabolism, and there you
+are?"
+
+Upon my word, I had never thought of that simple thing! You could have
+knocked me down with a feather.
+
+We rigged a microscope for an exhibition at once and put a drop of my
+blood under it, which got mashed flat when the lens got shut down upon
+it. The result was beyond my dreams. The field stretched miles away,
+green and undulating, threaded with streams and roads, and bordered all
+down the mellowing distances with picturesque hills. And there was a
+great white city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery and
+divisions of cavalry and infantry waiting. We had hit a lucky moment,
+evidently there was going to be a march-past or some thing like that. At
+the front where the chief banner flew there was a large and showy tent,
+with showy guards on duty, and about it were some other tents of a swell
+kind.
+
+The warriors--particularly the officers--were lovely to look at, they
+were so trim-built and so graceful and so handsomely uniformed. They
+were quite distinct, vividly distinct, for it was a fine day, and they
+were so immensely magnified that they looked to be fully a finger-nail
+high.--[My own expression, and a quite happy one. I said to the Duke:
+"Your Grace, they're just about finger-milers!" "How do you mean,
+m'lord?" "This. You notice the stately General standing there with his
+hand resting upon the muzzle of a cannon? Well, if you could stick your
+little finger down against the ground alongside of him his plumes would
+just reach up to where your nail joins the flesh." The Duke said
+"finger-milers was good"--good and exact; and he afterward used it several
+times himself.]--Everywhere you could see officers moving smartly about,
+and they looked gay, but the common soldiers looked sad. Many
+wife-swinks ["Swinks," an atomic race] and daughter-swinks and
+sweetheart-swinks were about--crying, mainly. It seemed to indicate that
+this was a case of war, not a summer-camp for exercise, and that the poor
+labor-swinks were being torn from their planet-saving industries to go
+and distribute civilization and other forms of suffering among the feeble
+benighted somewhere; else why should the swinkesses cry?
+
+The cavalry was very fine--shiny black horses, shapely and spirited; and
+presently when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering a
+command which we couldn't hear) and a division came tearing down on a
+gallop it was a stirring and gallant sight, until the dust rose an inch
+--the Duke thought more--and swallowed it up in a rolling and tumbling
+long gray cloud, with bright weapons glinting and sparkling in it.
+
+Before long the real business of the occasion began. A battalion of
+priests arrived carrying sacred pictures. That settled it: this was war;
+these far-stretching masses of troops were bound for the front. Their
+little monarch came out now, the sweetest little thing that ever
+travestied the human shape I think, and he lifted up his hands and
+blessed the passing armies, and they looked as grateful as they could,
+and made signs of humble and real reverence as they drifted by the holy
+pictures.
+
+It was beautiful--the whole thing; and wonderful, too, when those serried
+masses swung into line and went marching down the valley under the long
+array of fluttering flags.
+
+Evidently they were going somewhere to fight for their king, which was
+the little manny that blessed them; and to preserve him and his brethren
+that occupied the other swell tents; to civilize and grasp a valuable
+little unwatched country for them somewhere. But the little fellow and
+his brethren didn't fall in--that was a noticeable particular. They
+didn't fight; they stayed at home, where it was safe, and waited for the
+swag.
+
+Very well, then-what ought we to do? Had we no moral duty to perform?
+Ought we to allow this war to begin? Was it not our duty to stop it, in
+the name of right and righteousness? Was it not our duty to administer a
+rebuke to this selfish and heartless Family?
+
+The Duke was struck by that, and greatly moved. He felt as I did about
+it, and was ready to do whatever was right, and thought we ought to pour
+boiling water on the Family and extinguish it, which we did.
+
+It extinguished the armies, too, which was not intended. We both
+regretted this, but the Duke said that these people were nothing to us,
+and deserved extinction anyway for being so poor-spirited as to serve
+such a Family. He was loyally doing the like himself, and so was I, but
+I don't think we thought of that. And it wasn't just the same, anyway,
+because we were sooflaskies, and they were only swinks.
+
+Franklin realizes that no atom is destructible; that it has always
+existed and will exist forever; but he thinks all atoms will go out of
+this world some day and continue their life in a happier one. Old
+Tolliver thinks no atom's life will ever end, but he also thinks
+Blitzowski is the only world it will ever see, and that at no time in its
+eternity will it be either worse off or better off than it is now and
+always has been. Of course he thinks the planet Blitzowski is itself
+eternal and indestructible--at any rate he says he thinks that. It could
+make me sad, only I know better. D. T. will fetch Blitzy yet one of
+these days.
+
+But these are alien thoughts, human thoughts, and they falsely indicate
+that I do not want this tramp to go on living. What would become of me
+if he should disintegrate? My molecules would scatter all around and
+take up new quarters in hundreds of plants and animals; each would carry
+its special feelings along with it, each would be content in its new
+estate, but where should I be? I should not have a rag of a feeling
+left, after my disintegration--with his--was complete. Nothing to think
+with, nothing to grieve or rejoice with, nothing to hope or despair with.
+There would be no more me. I should be musing and thinking and dreaming
+somewhere else--in some distant animal maybe--perhaps a cat--by proxy of
+my oxygen I should be raging and fuming in some other creatures--a rat,
+perhaps; I should be smiling and hoping in still another child of Nature
+--heir to my hydrogen--a weed, or a cabbage, or something; my carbonic
+acid (ambition) would be dreaming dreams in some lowly wood-violet that
+was longing for a showy career; thus my details would be doing as much
+feeling as ever, but I should not be aware of it, it would all be going
+on for the benefit of those others, and I not in it at all. I should be
+gradually wasting away, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, as the years
+went on, and at last I should be all distributed, and nothing left of
+what had once been Me. It is curious, and not without impressiveness: I
+should still be alive, intensely alive, but so scattered that I would not
+know it. I should not be dead--no, one cannot call it that--but I should
+be the next thing to it. And to think what centuries and ages and aeons
+would drift over me before the disintegration was finished, the last bone
+turned to gas and blown away! I wish I knew what it is going to feel
+like, to lie helpless such a weary, weary time, and see my faculties
+decay and depart, one by one, like lights which burn low, and flicker and
+perish, until the ever-deepening gloom and darkness which--oh, away, away
+with these horrors, and let me think of something wholesome!
+
+My tramp is only 85; there is good hope that he will live ten years
+longer--500,000 of my microbe years. So may it be.
+
+Oh, dear, we are all so wise! Each of us knows it all, and knows he
+knows it all--the rest, to a man, are fools and deluded. One man knows
+there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows high
+tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows monarchy is
+best, the next one knows it isn't; one age knows there are witches, the
+next one knows there aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only true
+one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know
+it isn't so. There is not a mind present among this multitude of
+verdict-deliverers that is the superior of the minds that persuade and
+represent the rest of the divisions of the multitude. Yet this sarcastic
+fact does not humble the arrogance nor diminish the know-it-all bulk of a
+single verdict-maker of the lot by so much as a shade. Mind is plainly
+an ass, but it will be many ages before it finds it out, no doubt. Why
+do we respect the opinions of any man or any microbe that ever lived? I
+swear I don't know. Why do I respect my own? Well--that is different.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX W
+
+LITTLE BESSIE WOULD ASSIST PROVIDENCE
+
+(See Chapter cclxxxii)
+
+[It is dull, and I need wholesome excitements and distractions; so I will
+go lightly excursioning along the primrose path of theology.]
+
+Little Bessie was nearly three years old. She was a good child, and not
+shallow, not frivolous, but meditative and thoughtful, and much given to
+thinking out the reasons of things and trying to make them harmonize with
+results. One day she said:
+
+"Mama, why is there so much pain and sorrow and suffering? What is it
+all for?"
+
+It was an easy question, and mama had no difficulty in answering it:
+
+"It is for our good, my child. In His wisdom and mercy the Lord sends us
+these afflictions to discipline us and make us better."
+
+"Is it He that sends them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does He send all of them, mama?"
+
+"Yes, dear, all of them. None of them comes by accident; He alone sends
+them, and always out of love for us, and to make us better."
+
+"Isn't it strange?"
+
+"Strange? Why, no, I have never thought of it in that way. I have not
+heard any one call it strange before. It has always seemed natural and
+right to me, and wise and most kindly and merciful."
+
+"Who first thought of it like that, mama? Was it you?"
+
+"Oh no, child, I was taught it."
+
+"Who taught you so, mama?"
+
+"Why, really, I don't know--I can't remember. My mother, I suppose; or
+the preacher. But it's a thing that everybody knows."
+
+"Well, anyway, it does seem strange. Did He give Billy Norris the
+typhus?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, to discipline him and make him good."
+
+"But he died, mama, and so it couldn't make him good."
+
+"Well, then, I suppose it was for some other reason. We know it was a
+good reason, whatever it was."
+
+"What do you think it was, mama?"
+
+"Oh, you ask so many questions! I think it was to discipline his
+parents."
+
+"Well, then, it wasn't fair, mama. Why should his life be taken away for
+their sake, when he wasn't doing anything?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! I only know it was for a good and wise and merciful
+reason."
+
+"What reason, mama?"
+
+"I think--I think-well, it was a judgment; it was to punish them for some
+sin they had committed."
+
+"But he was the one that was punished, mama. Was that right?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly. He does nothing that isn't right and wise and
+merciful. You can't understand these things now, dear, but when you are
+grown up you will understand them, and then you will see that they are
+just and wise."
+
+After a pause:
+
+"Did He make the roof fall in on the stranger that was trying to save the
+crippled old woman from the fire, mama?"
+
+"Yes, my child. Wait! Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I only
+know it was to discipline some one, or be a judgment upon somebody, or to
+show His power."
+
+"That drunken man that stuck a pitchfork into Mrs. Welch's baby when--"
+
+"Never mind about it, you needn't go into particulars; it was to
+discipline the child--that much is certain, anyway."
+
+"Mama, Mr. Burgess said in his sermon that billions of little creatures
+are sent into us to give us cholera, and typhoid, and lockjaw, and more
+than a thousand other sicknesses and--mama, does He send them?"
+
+"Oh, certainly, child, certainly. Of course."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Oh, to discipline us! Haven't I told you so, over and over again?"
+
+"It's awful cruel, mama! And silly! and if I----"
+
+"Hush, oh, hush! Do you want to bring the lightning?"
+
+"You know the lightning did come last week, mama, and struck the new
+church, and burnt it down. Was it to discipline the church?"
+
+(Wearily.) "Oh, I suppose so."
+
+"But it killed a hog that wasn't doing anything. Was it to discipline
+the hog, mama?"
+
+"Dear child, don't you want to run out and play a while? If you would
+like to----"
+
+"Mama, only think! Mr. Hollister says there isn't a bird, or fish, or
+reptile, or any other animal that hasn't got an enemy that Providence has
+sent to bite it and chase it and pester it and kill it and suck its blood
+and discipline it and make it good and religious. Is that true, mother
+--because if it is true why did Mr. Hollister laugh at it?"
+
+"That Hollister is a scandalous person, and I don't want you to listen to
+anything he says."
+
+"Why, mama, he is very interesting, and I think he tries to be good. He
+says the wasps catch spiders and cram them down into their nests in the
+ground--alive, mama!--and there they live and suffer days and days and
+days, and the hungry little wasps chewing their legs and gnawing into
+their bellies all the time, to make them good and religious and praise
+God for His infinite mercies. I think Mr. Hollister is just lovely, and
+ever so kind; for when I asked him if he would treat a spider like that
+he said he hoped to be damned if he would; and then he----Dear mama, have
+you fainted! I will run and bring help! Now this comes of staying in
+town this hot weather."
+
+
+
+                      APPENDIX X
+
+           A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MARK TWAIN'S WORK
+
+            PUBLISHED AND OTHERWISE--FROM 1851-1910
+
+
+Note 1.--This is not a detailed bibliography, but merely a general list
+of Mark Twain's literary undertakings, in the order of performance,
+showing when, and usually where, the work was done, when and where first
+published, etc. An excellent Mark Twain bibliography has been compiled
+by Mr. Merle Johnson, to whom acknowledgments are due for important
+items.
+
+Note 2.--Only a few of the more important speeches are noted. Volumes
+that are merely collections of tales or articles are not noted.
+
+Note 3.--Titles are shortened to those most commonly in use, as "Huck
+Finn" or "Huck" for "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
+
+Names of periodicals are abbreviated.
+
+The initials U. E. stand for the "Uniform Edition" of Mark Twain's
+works.
+
+The chapter number or numbers in the line with the date refers to the
+place in this work where the items are mentioned.
+
+
+                       1851.
+              (See Chapter xviii of this work.)
+
+Edited the Hannibal Journal during the absence of the owner and editor,
+Orion Clemens.
+Wrote local items for the Hannibal Journal.
+Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal.
+Wrote two sketches for The Sat. Eve. Post (Philadelphia).
+To MARY IN H-l. Hannibal Journal.
+
+
+                       1852-53.
+                   (See Chapter xviii.)
+
+JIM WOLFE AND THE FIRE--Hannibal Journal.
+Burlesque of a rival editor in the Hannibal Journal.
+
+
+                       1853.
+                   (See Chapter xix.)
+
+Wrote obituary poems--not published.
+Wrote first letters home.
+
+
+                       1855-56.
+                (See Chapters xx and xxi.)
+
+First after-dinner speech; delivered at a printers' banquet in Keokuk,
+Iowa.
+Letters from Cincinnati, November 16, 1856, signed "Snodgrass"
+--Saturday Post (Keokuk).
+
+                       1857.
+                   (See Chapter xxi.)
+
+Letters from Cincinnati, March 16, 1857, signed "Snodgrass"--Saturday
+Post (Keokuk).
+
+
+                         1858.
+
+Anonymous contributions to the New Orleans Crescent and probably to St.
+Louis papers.
+
+                       1859.
+            (See Chapter xxvii; also Appendix B.)
+
+Burlesque of Capt. Isaiah Sellers--True Delta (New Orleans), May 8 or 9.
+
+
+                         1861.
+               (See Chapters xxxiii to xxxv.)
+
+
+Letters home, published in The Gate City (Keokuk).
+
+
+                         1862.
+               (See Chapters xxxv to xxxviii.)
+
+Letters and sketches, signed "Josh," for the Territorial Enterprise
+(Virginia City, Nevada).
+REPORT OF THE LECTURE OF PROF. PERSONAL PRONOUN--Enterprise.
+REPORT OF A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION--Enterprise.
+THE PETRIFIED MAN--Enterprise.
+Local news reporter for the Enterprise from August.
+
+
+                       1863.
+         (See Chapters xli to xliii; also Appendix C.)
+
+Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise.
+First used the name "Mark Twain," February 2.
+ADVICE TO THE UNRELIABLE--Enterprise.
+CURING A COLD--Enterprise. U. E.
+INFORMATION FOR THE MILLION--Enterprise.
+ADVICE TO GOOD LITTLE GIRLS--Enterprise.
+THE DUTCH NICK MASSACRE--Enterprise.
+Many other Enterprise sketches.
+THE AGED PILOT MAN (poem)--"ROUGHING IT." U. E.
+
+                       1864.
+              (See. Chapters xliv to xlvii.)
+
+Reported the Nevada Legislature for the Enterprise.
+Speech as "Governor of the Third House."
+Letters to New York Sunday Mercury.
+Local reporter on the San Francisco Call.
+Articles and sketches for the Golden Era.
+Articles and sketches for the Californian.
+Daily letters from San Francisco to the Enterprise.
+(Several of the Era and Californian sketches appear in SKETCHES NEW AND
+OLD. U. E.)
+
+
+                       1865.
+           (See Chapters xlix to li; also Appendix E.)
+
+Notes for the Jumping Frog story; Angel's Camp, February.
+Sketches etc., for the Golden Era and Californian.
+Daily letter to the Enterprise.
+THE JUMPING FROG (San Francisco) Saturday Press. New York,
+November 18. U. E.
+
+
+                       1866.
+           (See Chapters lii to lv; also Appendix D.)
+
+Daily letter to the Enterprise.
+Sandwich Island letters to the Sacramento Union.
+Lecture on the Sandwich Islands, San Francisco, October 2.
+FORTY-THREE DAYS IN AN OPEN BOAT--Harper's Magazine, December (error in
+signature made it Mark Swain).
+
+
+                       1867.
+     (See Chapters lvii to lxv; also Appendices E, F, and G.)
+
+Letters to Alta California from New York.
+JIM WOLFE AND THE CATS--N. Y. Sunday Mercury.
+THE JUMPING FROG--book, published by Charles Henry Webb, May 1. U. E.
+Lectured at Cooper Union, May, '66.
+Letters to Alta California and New York Tribune from the Quaker City
+--Holy Land excursion.
+Letter to New York Herald on the return from the Holy Land.
+After-dinner speech on "Women" (Washington).
+Began arrangement for the publication of THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.
+
+
+                       1868.
+       (See Chapters lxvi to lxix; also Appendices H and I.)
+
+Newspaper letters, etc., from Washington, for New York Citizen, Tribune,
+Herald, and other papers and periodicals.
+Preparing Quaker City letters (in Washington and San Francisco) for book
+publication.
+CAPTAIN WAKEMAN'S (STORMFIELD'S) VISIT TO HEAVEN (San Francisco),
+published Harper's Magazine, December, 1907-January, 1908 (also book,
+Harpers).
+Lectured in California and Nevada on the "Holy Land," July 2.
+S'CAT! Anonymous article on T. K. Beecher (Elmira), published in local
+paper.
+Lecture-tour, season 1868-69.
+
+
+                       1869.
+               (See Chapters lxx to lxxni.)
+
+THE INNOCENTS ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July 20. U. E.
+Bought one-third ownership in the Buffalo Express.
+Contributed editorials, sketches, etc., to the Express.
+Contributed sketches to Packard's Monthly, Wood's Magazine, etc.
+Lecture-tour, season 1869-70.
+
+
+                       1870.
+         (See Chapters lxxiv to lxxx; also Appendix J.)
+
+Contributed various matter to Buffalo Express.
+Contributed various matter under general head of "MEMORANDA" to Galaxy
+Magazine, May to April, '71.
+ROUGHING IT begun in September (Buffalo).
+SHEM'S DIARY (Buffalo) (unfinished).
+GOD, ANCIENT AND MODERN (unpublished).
+
+
+                       1871.
+        (See Chapters lxxxi and lxxxii; also Appendix K.)
+
+MEMORANDA continued in Galaxy to April.
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FIRST ROMANCE--[THE FIRST ROMANCE had appeared in the
+Express in 1870. Later included in SKETCHES.]--booklet (Sheldon & Co.).
+U. E.
+ROUGHING IT finished (Quarry Farm).
+Ruloff letter--Tribune.
+Wrote several sketches and lectures (Quarry Farm).
+Western play (unfinished).
+Lecture-tour, season 1871-72.
+
+
+                       1872.
+        (See Chapters lxxxiii to lxxxvii; also Appendix L.)
+
+ROUGHING IT--book (Am. Pub. Co.), February. U. E.
+THE MARK TWAIN SCRAP-BOOK invented (Saybrook, Connecticut).
+TOM SAWYER begun as a play (Saybrook, Connecticut).
+A few unimportant sketches published in "Practical jokes," etc.
+Began a book on England (London).
+
+
+                       1873.
+              (See Chapters lxxxviii to xcii.)
+
+Letters on the Sandwich Islands-Tribune, January 3 and 6.
+THE GILDED AGE (with C. D. Warner)--book (Am. Pub. Co), December. U. E.
+THE LICENSE OF THE PRESS--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
+Lectured in London, October 18 and season 1873-74.
+
+
+                       1874.
+        (See Chapters xciii to xcviii; also Appendix M.)
+
+TOM SAWYER continued (in the new study at Quarry Farm).
+A TRUE STORY (Quarry Farm)-Atlantic, November. U. E.
+FABLES (Quarry Farm). U. E.
+COLONEL SELLERS--play (Quarry Farm) performed by John T. Raymond.
+UNDERTAKER'S LOVE-STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished).
+OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Hartford) Atlantic, January to July, 1875.
+Monarchy letter to Mrs. Clemens, dated 1935 (Boston).
+
+
+                       1875.
+           (See Chapters c to civ; also Appendix N.)
+
+UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
+SKETCHES NEW AND OLD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), July. U. E.
+TOM SAWYER concluded (Hartford).
+THE CURIOUS REP. OF GONDOUR--Atlantic, October (unsigned).
+PUNCH, CONDUCTOR, PUNCH--Atlantic, February, 1876. U. E.
+THE SECOND ADVENT (unfinished).
+THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER (unfinished).
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DAMN FOOL (unfinished).
+Petition for International Copyright.
+                       1876.
+                (See Chapters cvi to cx.)
+
+Performed in THE LOAN OF THE LOVER as Peter Spuyk (Hartford).
+CARNIVAL OF CRIME--paper for The Monday Evening Club--Atlantic, June.
+U. E.
+HUCK FINN begun (Quarry Farm).
+CANVASSER'S STORY (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, December. U. E.
+"1601" (Quarry Farm), privately printed. [And not edited by Livy. D.W.]
+AH SIN (with Bret Harte)--play, (Hartford).
+TOM SAWYER--book (Am. Pub. Co.), December. U. E.
+Speech on "The Weather," New England Society, December 22.
+
+
+                       1877.
+         (See Chapters cxii to cxv; also Appendix O.)
+
+LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ-CLARENCE, ETC. (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic.
+IDLE EXCURSION (Quarry Farm)--Atlantic, October, November, December.
+U. E.
+SIMON WHEELER, DETECTIVE--play (Quarry Farm) (not produced).
+PRINCE AND PAUPER begun (Quarry Farm).
+Whittier birthday speech (Boston), December.
+
+
+                       1878.
+               (See Chapters cxvii to cxx.)
+
+MAGNANIMOUS INCIDENT (Hartford)--Atlantic, May. U. E.
+A TRAMP ABROAD (Heidelberg and Munich).
+MENTAL TELEGRAPHY--Harper's Magazine, December, 1891. U. E.
+GAMBETTA DUEL--Atlantic, February, 1879 (included in TRAMP). U. E.
+REV. IN PITCAIRN--Atlantic, March, 1879. U. E.
+STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT--book (Osgood & Co.), 1882. U. E.
+(The three items last named were all originally a part of the TRAMP
+ABROAD.)
+
+
+                       1879.
+(See Chapters cxxi to cxxiv; also Chapter cxxxiv and Appendix P.)
+
+A TRAMP ABROAD continued (Paris, Elmira, and Hartford).
+Adam monument scheme (Elmira).
+Speech on "The Babies" (Grant dinner, Chicago), November.
+Speech on "Plagiarism" (Holmes breakfast, Boston), December.
+
+
+                       1880.
+               (See Chapters cxxv to cxxxii.)
+
+PRINCE AND PAUPER concluded (Hartford and Elmira).
+HUCK FINN continued (Quarry Farm, Elmira).
+A CAT STORY (Quarry Farm) (unpublished).
+A TRAMP ABROAD--book (Am. Pub. Co.), March 13. U. E.
+EDWARD MILLS AND GEO. BENTON (Hartford)--Atlantic, August. U. E.
+MRS. McWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING (Hartford)--Atlantic, September. U. E.
+
+
+                       1881.
+              (See Chapters cxxxiv to cxxxvii.)
+
+A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE--Century, November. U. E.
+A BIOGRAPHY OF ----- (unfinished).
+PRINCE AND PAUPER--book (Osgood R; CO.), December.
+BURLESQUE ETIQUETTE (unfinished). [Included in LETTERS FROM THE EARTH
+D.W.]
+
+
+                       1882.
+               (See Chapters cxl and cxli.)
+
+LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI (Elmira and Hartford).
+
+
+                       1883.
+              (See Chapters cxlii to cxlviii.)
+
+LIFE ON THE Mississippi--book (Osgood R CO.), May. U. E.
+WHAT Is HAPPINESS?--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
+Introduction to Portuguese conversation book (Hartford).
+HUCK FINN concluded (Quarry Farm).
+HISTORY GAME (Quarry Farm).
+AMERICAN CLAIMANT (with W. D. Howells)--play (Hartford), produced by
+A. P. Burbank.
+Dramatized TOM SAWYER and PRINCE AND PAUPER (not produced).
+
+
+                       1884.
+               (See Chapters cxlix to cliii.)
+
+Embarked in publishing with Charles L. Webster.
+THE CARSON FOOTPRINTS--the San Franciscan.
+HUCK FINN--book (Charles L. Webster & Co.), December. U. E.
+Platform-readings with George W. Cable, season '84-'85.
+
+
+                       1885.
+               (See Chapters cliv to clvii.)
+
+Contracted for General Grant's Memoirs.
+A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED--Century, December. U. E.
+THE UNIVERSAL TINKER--Century, December (open letter signed X. Y. Z.
+Letter on the government of children--Christian Union.)
+KIDITCHIN (children's poem).
+
+
+                       1886.
+         (See Chapters clix to clxi; also Appendix Q.)
+
+Introduced Henry M. Stanley (Boston).
+CONNECTICUT YANKEE begun (Hartford).
+ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT--Century, April, 1887.
+LUCK--Harper's, August, 1891.
+GENERAL GRANT AND MATTHEW ARNOLD--Army and Navy dinner speech.
+
+
+                       1887.
+         (See Chapters clxii to clxiv; also Appendix R.)
+
+MEISTERSCHAFT--play (Hartford)-Century, January, 1888. U. E.
+KNIGHTS OF LABOR--essay (not published).
+To THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E.
+CONSISTENCY--paper for The Monday Evening Club.
+
+
+                       1888.
+               (See Chapters clxv to clxviii.)
+
+Introductory for "Unsent Letters" (unpublished).
+Master of Arts degree from Yale.
+Yale Alumni address (unpublished).
+Copyright controversy with Brander Matthews--Princeton Review.
+Replies to Matthew Arnold's American criticisms (unpublished).
+YANKEE continued (Elmira and Hartford).
+Introduction of Nye and Riley (Boston).
+
+
+                       1889.
+        (See Chapters clxix to clxxiii; also Appendix S.)
+
+A MAJESTIC LITERARY FOSSIL Harper's Magazine, February, 1890. U. E.
+HUCK AND TOM AMONG THE INDIANS (unfinished).
+Introduction to YANKEE (not used).
+LETTER To ELSIE LESLIE--St Nicholas, February, 1890.
+CONNECTICUT YANKEE--book (Webster & Co.), December. U. E.
+
+
+                       1890.
+              (See Chapters clxxii to clxxiv.)
+
+Letter to Andrew Lang about English Criticism.
+(No important literary matters this year. Mark Twain engaged
+promoting the Paige typesetting-machine.)
+
+
+                       1891.
+              (See Chapters clxxv to clxxvii.)
+
+AMERICAN CLAIMANT (Hartford) syndicated; also book (Webster & Co.), May,
+1892. U. E.
+European letters to New York Sun.
+DOWN THE RHONE (unfinished).
+KORNERSTRASSE (unpublished).
+
+
+                       1892.
+              (See Chapters clxxx to clxxxii.)
+
+THE GERMAN CHICAGO (Berlin--Sun.) U. E.
+ALL KINDS OF SHIPS (at sea). U. E.
+Tom SAWYER ABROAD (Nauheim)--St. Nicholas, November, '93, to April, '94.
+U. E.
+THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS (Nauheim). U. E.
+PUDD'NHEAD WILSON (Nauheim and Florence)--Century, December, '93, to
+June, '94 U. E.
+$100,000 BANK-NOTE (Florence)--Century, January, '93. U. E.
+
+
+                       1893.
+            (See Chapters clxxxiii to clxxxvii.)
+
+JOAN OF ARC begun (at Villa Viviani, Florence) and completed up to the
+raising of the Siege of Orleans.
+CALIFORNIAN'S TALE (Florence) Liber Scriptorum, also Harper's.
+ADAM'S DIARY (Florence)--Niagara Book, also Harper's.
+ESQUIMAU MAIDEN'S ROMANCE--Cosmopolitan, November. U. E.
+IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?--Cosmopolitan, September. U. E.
+TRAVELING WITH A REFORMER--Cosmopolitan, December. U. E.
+IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY (Florence)--N. A.--Rev., July, '94. U. E.
+FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENSES--[This may not have been written
+until early in 1894.]--(Players, New York)--N. A. Rev., July,'95 U. E.
+
+
+                       1894.
+              (See Chapters clxxxviii to cxc.)
+
+JOAN OF ARC continued (Etretat and Paris).
+WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US (Etretat)--N. A. Rev., January, '95 U. E.
+TOM SAWYER ABROAD--book (Webster & Co.), April. U. E.
+PUDD'NHEAD WILSON--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November. U. E.
+The failure of Charles L. Webster & Co., April 18.
+THE DERELICT--poem (Paris) (unpublished).
+
+
+                       1895.
+              (See Chapters clxxxix and cxcii.)
+
+JOAN OF ARC finished (Paris), January 28, Harper's Magazine, April to
+December.
+MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN--Harper's, September. U. E.
+A LITTLE NOTE TO PAUL BOURGET. U. E.
+Poem to Mrs. Beecher (Elmira) (not published). U. E.
+Lecture-tour around the world, begun at Elmira, July 14, ended July 31.
+
+
+                       1896.
+               (See Chapters cxci to cxciv.)
+
+JOAN OF ARC--book (Harpers) May. U. E.
+TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE, and other stories-book (Harpers), November.
+FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR begun (23 Tedworth Square, London).
+
+
+                       1897.
+               (See Chapters cxcvii to cxcix.)
+
+FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR--book (Am. Pub. Co.), November.
+QUEEN'S JUBILEE (London), newspaper syndicate; book privately printed.
+JAMES HAMMOND TRUMBULL--Century, November.
+WHICH WAS WHICH? (London and Switzerland) (unfinished).
+TOM AND HUCK (Switzerland) (unfinished).
+
+HELLFIRE HOTCHKISS (Switzerland) (unfinished).
+IN MEMORIAM--poem (Switzerland)-Harper's Magazine. U. E.
+Concordia Club speech (Vienna).
+STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, March, 1898. U. E.
+
+
+                       1898.
+         (See Chapters cc to cciii; also Appendix T.)
+
+THE AUSTRIAN EDISON KEEPING SCHOOL AGAIN (Vienna) Century, August. U. E.
+AT THE APPETITE CURE (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, August. U. E.
+FROM THE LONDON TIMES, 1904 (Vienna)--Century, November. U. E.
+ABOUT PLAY-ACTING (Vienna)--Forum, October. U. E.
+CONCERNING THE JEWS (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, September, '99. U. E.
+CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND MRS. EDDY (Vienna)--Cosmopolitan, October. U. E.
+THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG (Vienna)--Harper's Magazine, December,
+'99 U. E.
+Autobiographical chapters (Vienna); some of them used in the N. A. Rev.,
+1906-07.
+WHAT IS MAN? (Kaltenleutgeben)--book (privately printed), August, 1906.
+ASSASSINATION OF AN EMPRESS (Kaltenleutgeben) (unpublished).
+THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (unfinished).
+Translations of German plays (unproduced).
+
+
+                       1899.
+               (See Chapters cciv to ccviii.)
+
+DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES (Vienna)--Forum, March. U. E.
+MY LITERARY DEBUT (Vienna)--Century, December. U. E.
+CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (Vienna)--N. A. Rev., December, 1902, January and
+February, 1903.
+Translated German plays (Vienna) (unproduced).
+Collaborated with Siegmund Schlesinger on plays (Vienna) (unfinished).
+Planned a postal-check scheme (Vienna).
+Articles about the Kellgren treatment (Sanna, Sweden) (unpublished).
+ST. JOAN OF ARC (London)--Harper's Magazine, December, 1904. U. E.
+MY FIRST LIE, AND How I GOT OUT OF IT (London)--New York World. U. E.
+
+Articles on South African War (London) (unpublished)
+Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's works (Am. Pub. Co.).
+
+                       1900.
+               (See Chapters ccix to ccxii.)
+
+TWO LITTLE TALES (London)--Century, November, 1901. U. E.
+Spoke on "Copyright" before the House of Lords.
+Delivered many speeches in London and New York.
+
+
+                       1901.
+              (See Chapters ccxiii to ccxviii.)
+
+TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS (14 West Tenth Street, New York)
+--N. A. Rev., February.
+TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS (14 West Tenth Street, New York)--N. A. Rev.,
+April.
+DOUBLE-BARREL DETECTIVE STORY (Saranac Lake, "The Lair") Harper's
+Magazine, January and February, 1902.
+Lincoln Birthday Speech, February 11.
+Many other speeches.
+PLAN FOR CASTING VOTE PARTY (Riverdale) (unpublished).
+THE STUPENDOUS PROCESSION (Riverdale) (unpublished).
+ANTE-MORTEM OBITUARIES--Harper's Weekly.
+Received degree of Doctor of Letters from Yale.
+
+
+                       1902.
+        (See Chapters ccxix to ccxxiv; also Appendix U.)
+
+DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April. U. E.
+FIVE BOONS of LIFE (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5. U. E.
+WHY NOT ABOLISH IT? (Riverdale)--Harper's Weekly, July 5.
+DEFENSE OF GENERAL FUNSTON (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., May.
+IF I COULD BE THERE (Riverdale unpublished).
+Wrote various articles, unfinished or unpublished.
+Received degree of LL.D. from the University of Missouri, June.
+
+THE BELATED PASSPORT (York Harbor)--Harper's Weekly, December 6. U. E.
+WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? (York Harbor)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E.
+Poem (Riverdale and York Harbor) (unpublished)
+Sixty-seventh Birthday speech (New York), November 27.
+
+
+                       1903.
+               (See Chapters ccxxv to ccxxx.)
+
+MRS. EDDY IN ERROR (Riverdale)--N. A. Rev., April.
+INSTRUCTIONS IN ART (Riverdale)-Metropolitan, April and May.
+EDDYPUS, and other C. S. articles (unfinished).
+A DOG'S TALE (Elmira)--Harper's Magazine, December. U. E.
+ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER (Florence)--Harper's Weekly, January 21, 1904.
+U. E.
+ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR (Florence)--Harper's Magazine, August, U. E.
+THE $30,000 BEQUEST (Florence)--Harper's Weekly, December 10, 1904. U. E.
+
+
+                       1904.
+              (See Chapters ccxxx to ccxxxiv.)
+
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Florence)--portions published, N. A. Rev. and Harper's
+Weekly.
+CONCERNING COPYRIGHT (Tyringham, Massachusetts)--N. A. Rev., January,
+1905.
+TSARS SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--N. A. Rev., March, 1905.
+ADAM'S DIARY--book (Harpers), April.
+
+
+                       1905.
+       (See Chapters ccxxxiv to ccxxxvii; also Appendix V.)
+
+LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)--pamphlet, P. R. Warren
+Company.
+THE WAR PRAYER (21 Fifth Avenue, New York) (unpublished).
+EVE'S DIARY (Dublin, New Hampshire)--Harper's Magazine, December.
+3,000 YEARS AMONG THE MICROBES (unfinished).
+INTERPRETING THE DEITY (Dublin New Hampshire) (unpublished).
+A HORSE'S TALE (Dublin, New Hampshire)-Harper's Magazine,
+August and September, 1906.
+Seventieth Birthday speech.
+W. D. HOWELLS (21 Fifth Avenue, New York)-Harper's Magazine, July, 1906.
+
+
+                       1906.
+               (See Chapters ccxxxix to ccli.)
+
+Autobiography dictation (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Dublin, New
+Hampshire)--selections published, N. A. Rev., 1906 and 1907.
+Many speeches.
+Farewell lecture, Carnegie Hall, April 19.
+WHAT IS MAN?--book (privately printed).
+Copyright speech (Washington), December.
+
+
+                       1907.
+              (See Chapters cclvi to cclxiii.)
+
+Autobiography dictations (27 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Tuxedo).
+Degree of Doctor of Literature conferred by Oxford, June 26.
+Made many London speeches.
+Begum of Bengal speech (Liverpool).
+CHRISTIAN SCIENCE--book (Harpers), February. U. E.
+CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT To HEAVEN--book (Harpers).
+
+
+                       1908.
+               (See Chapters cclxiv to cclxx.)
+
+Autobiography dictations (21 Fifth Avenue, New York; and Redding,
+Connecticut).
+Lotos Club and other speeches.
+Aldrich memorial speech.
+
+
+                       1909.
+    (See Chapters cclxxvi to cclxxxix; also Appendices N and W.)
+
+IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?--book (Harpers), April.
+A FABLE--Harper's Magazine December.
+Copyright documents (unpublished).
+Address to St. Timothy School.
+MARJORIE FLEMING (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, December.
+THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE (Stormfield)--Harper's Bazar, February, 1910
+BESSIE DIALOGUE (unpublished).
+LETTERS FROM THE EARTH (unfinished).
+THE DEATH OF JEAN--Harper's, December, 1910.
+THE INTERNATIONAL LIGHTNING TRUST (unpublished).
+
+
+                       1910.
+                  (See Chapter ccxcii.)
+
+VALENTINES TO HELEN AND OTHERS (not published).
+ADVICE TO PAINE (not published).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 3, Part
+2, 1907-1910, by Albert Bigelow Paine
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, ***
+
+***** This file should be named 2987.txt or 2987.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/8/2987/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+