 CHAPTER 235 A SUMMER IN NEW HAMPSHURE. He took for the summer a house at Dublin, New Hampshire, the home of Henry Copley Green, the lone tree hill, on the Mondadnock Slope. It was in a lovely locality, and for neighbours there were artists, literary people, and those of kindred pursuits, among them a number of old friends. Colonel Higginson had a place nearby, and Abbot H. Thayer, the painter, and George de Forest Brush, and the Raphael Pumbly family, and many more. Colonel Higginson wrote Clemens a letter of welcome as soon as the news got out that he was going to Dublin, and Clemens' answering said, I early learned that you would be my neighbour in the summer, and I rejoiced, recognizing in you and your family a large asset. I hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I shall have my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the rest cure in this city to the rest cure in Norfolk, Connecticut, and we shall not see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the middle of October. Jean, the younger daughter, went to Dublin and saw the house and came back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old manifestly. There is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near forty years ago. Aldrich was there half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the fields, with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired of wanting for that man to get old. They went to Dublin in May, and became at once a part of the summer colony which congregated there. There was much going to and fro among the different houses, pleasant afternoons in the woods, mountain climbing for Jean, and, everywhere, a spirit of fine, unpretentious comradeship. The Copley Green House was romantically situated with a charming outlook. Clemens wrote to Twitchell, We like it here, in the mountains, in the shadows of Monadnock. It is a woody solitude. We have no near neighbors. We have neighbors, and I can see their houses scattered in the forest distances, for we live on a hill. I am astonished to find that I have known eight of these fifteen neighbors a long time. Ten years is the shortest. Then, seven, beginning with twenty-five years, and running up to thirty-seven years friendship. It is the most remarkable thing I ever heard of. This letter was written in July, and he states in it that he has turned out one hundred thousand words of a large manuscript. It was a fantastic tale entitled Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes, a sort of scientific revel or revelry, the autobiography of a microbe that had been once a man, and through a failure in a biological experiment transformed into a cholera germ when the experimenter was trying to turn him into a bird. His habitat was the person of a disreputable tramp named Blazowski, a human continent of vast areas with seething microbic nations and fantastic life problems. It was a satire, of course, Gulliver's Lilliput Outdone, a sort of scientific, socialistic, mathematical jamboree. He tired of it before it reached completion, though not before it had attained the proportions of a book of size. As a whole it would hardly have added to his reputation, though it is not without fine and humorous passages, and certainly not without interest. Its chief mission was to divert him mentally that summer, during those days and nights when he would otherwise have been alone and brooding upon his loneliness. For extracts from Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes see appendix V at the end of this work. Mark Twain's suggested title page for his microbe book, Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes by a microbe, with notes added by the same hand, seven thousand years later, translated from the original microbic by Mark Twain. His inability to reproduce faces in his mind's eye he mourned as an increasing calamity. Photographs were lifeless things, and when he tried to conjure up the faces of his dead they seemed to drift farther out of reach. But now and then, kindly sleep brought to him something out of that treasure-house where all our realities are kept for us fresh and fair, perhaps for a day when we may claim them again. As he wrote to Mrs. Crane, "'Susie, dear, I have had a lovely dream. Livy, dressed in black, was sitting up in my bed here, at my right, and looking as young and sweet as she used to, when she was in health. She said, What is the name of your sweet sister?' I said, Pamela. "'Oh, yes, that is it. I thought it was naming a name which has escaped me. Won't you write it down for me?' I reached eagerly for a pen and pad, laid my hands upon both, then said to myself, It is only a dream, and turned back sorrowfully. And there she was still. The conviction flamed through me that our lamented disaster was a dream, and this a reality. I said, How blessed it is! How blessed it is! It was all a dream, only a dream. She only smiled, and did not ask what dream I meant, which surprised me. She leaned her head against mine, and kept saying, I was perfectly sure it was a dream. I never would have believed it wasn't. I think she said several things, but if so, they are gone from my memory. I woke, and did not know I had been dreaming. She was gone. I wondered how she could go without my knowing it, but I did not spend any thought upon that. I was too busy thinking of how vivid and real was the dream that we had lost her, and how unspeakably blessed it was to find that it was not true, and that she was still ours, and with us. He had the orchestral move to Dublin, although it was no small undertaking, for he needed the solace of its harmonies, and so the days passed along, and he grew stronger in body and courage as his grief drifted farther behind him. Sometimes in the afternoon or in the evening, when the neighbours had come in for a little while, he would walk up and down and talk in his old marvellous way of all the things on land and sea of the past and of the future, of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate of the friends he had known and of the things he had done, of the sorrow and absurdities of the world. It was the same old scintillating, incomparable talk of which Hals once said, We shall never know its like again. When he dies, it will die with him. It was during the summer at Dublin that Clemens and Rogers together made up a philanthropic ruse on Twitchell. Twitchell, through his own prodigal charities, had fallen into debt, a fact which Rogers knew. Rogers was a man who concealed his philanthropies when he could, and he performed many of them of which the world and will never know. In this case he said, Clemens, I want to help Twitchell out of his financial difficulty. I will supply the money and you will do the giving. Twitchell must think it comes from you. Clemens agreed to this on the condition that he be permitted to leave a record of the matter for his children so that he would not appear in a false light to them and that Twitchell should learn the truth of the gift sooner or later. So the deed was done and Twitchell and his wife lavished their thanks upon Clemens who, with his wife, had more than once been their benefactors, making the deception easy enough now. Clemens writhed under these letters of gratitude and forwarded them to Clara in Norfolk and later to Rogers himself. He pretended to take great pleasure in this part of the conspiracy, but it was not an unmixed delight. To Rogers he wrote, I wanted her, Clara, to see what a generous father she's got. I didn't tell her it was you, but by and by I want to tell her, when I have your consent, then I shall want her to remember the letters. I want a record there for my life, when I am dead, and must be able to furnish the facts about the relief of Look Now Twitchell in case I fall suddenly, before I get those facts with your consent before the Twitchells themselves. I read those letters with immense pride. I recognized that I had scored one good deed for sure on my halo account. I haven't had anything that tasted so good since the stolen watermelon. P.S., I am hurrying them off to you because I danced, read them again. I should blush to my heels to fill up with this unearned gratitude again, pouring out of the thankful hearts of those poor, swindled people who do not suspect you, but honestly believe I gave that money. Mr. Rogers hastily replied, My dear Clemens, the letters are lovely. Don't breathe. They are so happy. It would be a crime to let them think that you have in any way deceived them. I can keep still. You must. I am sending you all traces of the crime so that you may look innocent and tell the truth, as you usually do when you think you can escape detection. Don't get rattled. Seriously, you have done a kindness. You are proud of it, I know. You have made your friends happy, and you ought to be so glad as to cheerfully accept reproof from your conscience. Joe Wadsworth and I once stole a goose and gave it to a poor widow as a Christmas present. No crime in that. I always put my counterfeit money on the plate. The passer of the sasser always smiles at me, and I get credit for doing generous things. But seriously again, if you do feel a little uncomfortable, wait until I see you before you tell anybody. Avoid cultivating misery. I am trying to loaf ten solid days. We do hope to see you soon. The secret was kept, and the matter presently and characteristically passed out of Clemens' mind altogether. He never remembered to tell Twitchell, and it is revealed here, according to his wish. The Russian-Japanese war was in progress that summer, and its settlement occurred in August. The terms of it did not please Mark Twain. When a newspaper correspondent asked him for an expression of opinion on the subject, he wrote, Russia was on the high road to emancipation from an insane and intolerable slavery. I was hoping there would be no peace until Russian liberty was safe. I think that this was a holy war in the best and noblest sense of that abused term, and that no war was ever charged with a higher mission. I think there can be no doubt that that mission is now defeated, and Russia's chain riveted, this time to stay. I think Vizar will now withdraw the small humanities that have been forced from him, and resume his medieval barbarisms with a relieved spirit, and an immeasurable joy. I think Russian liberty has had its last chance, and has lost it. I think nothing has been gained by the peace that is remotely comparable to what has been sacrificed by it. One more battle would have abolished the waiting chains of billions upon billions of unborn Russians, and I wish it could have been fought. I hope I am mistaken, yet in all sincerity I believe that this peace is entitled to rank as the most conspicuous disaster in political history. It was the wisest public utterance on the subject, the deep, resonant note of truth sounding amid a clamour of foolish joy-bells. It was the message of a seer, the prophecy of a sage who sees with the clairvoyance of knowledge and human understanding. Clemens a few days later was invited by Colonel Harvey to dine with Baron Rosen and M. S. S. V. But in tack of his old malady, rheumatism prevented his acceptance. His telegram of declination apparently pleased the Russian officials, for Ritt asked permission to publish it, and declared that he was going to take it home to show to the Tsar. It was as follows. To Colonel Harvey I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad of this opportunity to meet the illustrious magicians who came here equipped with nothing but a pen, and with it have divided the honors of the war with the sword. It is fair to presume that in thirty centuries history will not get done in admiring these men who attempted what the world regarded as the impossible, and achieved it. Mark Twain. But this was a modified form. His original draft would perhaps have been less gratifying to that Russian embassy. It read, To Colonel Harvey I am still a cripple, otherwise I should be more than glad of this opportunity to meet those illustrious magicians who with the pen have annulled, obliterated, and abolished every high achievement of the Japanese sword, and turned the tragedy of a tremendous war into a gay and blithesome comedy. If I may, let me in all respect and honor salute them as my fellow humorists. I, taking three places, as becomes one who was not born to modesty, but by diligence and hard work is acquiring it. Mark. There was still another form, brief and expressive. Dear Colonel, know this is a love-feast when you call a lodge of sorrow, send for me. Mark. Clemens's war sentiment was given the widest newspaper circulation and brought him many letters, most of them applauding his words. Charles Francis Adams wrote him, It attracted my attention because it so exactly expresses the views I myself all along entertained. And this was the gist of most of the expressed sentiments which came to him. Clemens wrote a number of things that summer, among them a little essay entitled The Privilege of the Grave, that is to say Free Speech. He was looking forward, he said, to the time when he should inherit that privilege, when some of the things he had said, written and laid away, could be published without damage to his friends or family. An article entitled, Interpreting the Deity, he counted as among the things to be uttered when he had entered into that last great privilege. It is an article on the reading of signs and auguries in all ages to discover the intentions of the Almighty with historical examples of God's judgments and vindications. Here is a fair specimen. It refers to the chronicle of Henry Huntington. All through this book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of God with the reasons for the intentions. Sometimes, very often, in fact, the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one intention, and get the thing right every time, when there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a man offends the deity with a crime and is punished for it thirty years later. Meantime he has committed a million other crimes. No matter, Henry can pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally used in those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone out now, but in the old times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case of wrath. For instance, the just God avenging Robert Fitzhildebrand's profidity, a worm, grew in his vitals, which, gradually gnawing its way through his intestines, fatted on the abandoned man till tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end, page 400. It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell. We only know it was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt. The entire article is in this amusing satirical strain, and might well enough be printed today. It is not altogether clear why it was withheld even then. He finished his eaves diary that summer, and wrote a story which was originally planned to oblige Mrs. Mini-Mattern Fisk to aid her in a crusade against bullfighting in Spain. Mrs. Fisk wrote him that she had read his dog's story, written against the cruelties of vivisection, and urged him to do something to save the horses that, after faithful service, were sacrificed in the bullring. I have lain awake nights, very often, wondering if I dare ask you to write a story of an old horse that is finally given over to the bullring. The story you would write would do more good than all the laws we are trying to have made and enforced for the prevention of cruelty to animals in Spain. We would translate and circulate the story in that country. I have wondered if you would ever write it, with most devoted homage, sincerely yours, Mini-Mattern Fisk. Clemens promptly replied, Dear Mrs. Fisk, I shall certainly write the story, but I may not get it to suit me, in which case it will go in the fire. Later I will try it again, and yet again, and again. I am used to this. It has taken me twelve years to write a short story, the shortest one I ever wrote, I think. Probably the Death-Disc. So do not be discouraged. I will stick to this one in the same way. Sincerely yours, S. L. Clemens. It was an inspiring subject, and he began working on it immediately. Within a month from the time he received Mrs. Fisk's letter, he had written that pathetic, heartbreaking little story, A Horse's Tale, and sent it to Harper's Magazine for illustration. In a letter written to Mr. Dunnecke at the time, he tells of his interest in the narrative, and adds, This strong interest is natural, for the heroine is my small daughter Susie, whom we lost. It was not intentional. It was a good while before I found it out. So I am sending you her picture to use, and to reproduce with photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression, and all. May you find an artist who has lost an idol. He explains how he put in a good deal of work with his secretary on the orchestral to get the bugle calls. We are to do these theatricals this evening, with a couple of neighbors for audience, and then pass the hat. It is not one of Mark Twain's greatest stories, but its pathos brings the tears, and no one can read it without indignation toward the custom which it was intended to oppose. When it was published a year later, Mrs. Fisk sent him her grateful acknowledgments, and asked permission to have it printed for pamphlet circulation in Spain. A number of more or less notable things happened in this, Mark Twain's seventieth year. There was some kind of a reunion going on in California, and he was variously invited to attend. Robert Fulton of Nevada was appointed a committee of one to invite him to Reno for a great celebration which was to be held there. Clemens replied that he remembered, as if it were but yesterday, when he had disembarked from the overland stage in front of the Ormsby Hotel in Carson City, and told how he would like to accept the invitation. If I were a few years younger, I would accept it, and promptly, and I would go. I would let somebody else do the oration, but as for me, I would talk, just talk. I would renew my youth, and talk, and talk, and talk, and have the time of my life. I would march the unforgotten and unforgettable antiques by, and name their names, and give them reverent hail and farewell as they passed. Goodman, McCarthy, Gillis, Curry, Bailiff, and Baldwin, Winters, Howard, Nye, Stewart, Neely Johnson, Hal Clainton, North, Root, and my brother, upon Whom Be Peace, and then the Desperados, who made life a joy, and the Slaughter House, a precious possession, Sam Brown, Farmer Pete, Bill Mayfield, Six Finger Jake, Jack Williams, and the rest of the Crimson Discipleship, and so on and so on. Believe me, I would start a resurrection it would do you more good to look at than the next one will, if you go on the way you are going now. Those were the days, those old ones, they will come no more, youths will come no more. They were so full to the brim with a line of life, there have been no others like them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white head. Goodbye, I drink to you all. Have a good time, and take an old man's blessing." In reply to another invitation from H. H. Bancroft of San Francisco, he wrote that his wandering days were over, and that it was his purpose to sit by the fire for the rest of his remnant of life. A man who, like me, is going to strike seventy on the thirtieth of next November, has no business to be flitting around the way Howells does, that shameless old fictitious butterfly, but if he comes don't tell him I said it, for it would hurt him, and I wouldn't brush a flake of powder from his wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his indestructible youth, anyway. Howells will be eighty-eight in October, and it was either then or on a similar occasion that he replied after this fashion. I have done more for San Francisco than any other of its old residence. Since I left there it has increased in population fully three hundred thousand. I could have done more. I could have gone earlier, it was suggested. Which, by the way, is a perfect example of Mark Twain's humorous manner, the delicately timed pause, and the afterthought. Most humorous would have been contented to end with a statement I could have gone earlier. Only Mark Twain could have added that final exquisite touch, it was suggested. End of Chapter 235, A Summer in New Hampshire, read by John Greenman. Section 25 of Mark Twain of Biography, Part 1, 1900-1907. Mark Twain of Biography, by Albert Bigelow Payne, Chapter 236, at Pier 70. Mark Twain was nearing 70, the Scriptural Limitation of Life, and the Returns were coming in. Some one of the old group was dying all the time. The roll-call returned only a scattering answer. Of his oldest friends, Charlie Henry Webb, John Hay and Sir Henry Irving all died that year. When Hay died, Clemens gave this message to the press. I am deeply grieved, and I mourn with the nation this loss which is irreparable. My friendship with Mr. Hay and my admiration of him endured thirty-eight years without impairment. It was only a little earlier that he had written Hay an anonymous letter, a copy of which he preserved. It here follows, Dear and honoured sir, I never hear anyone speak of you and of your long roll of illustrious services in other than terms of pride and praise and out of the heart. I think I am right in believing you to be the only man in the civil service of the country, the cleanest of whose motives is never questioned by any citizen, and whose acts proceed always upon a broad and high plain, never by accident or pressure of circumstance upon a narrow line or low one. There are majorities that are proud of more than one of the nation's great servants, but I believe, and I think I know, that you are the only one of whom the entire nation is proud, proud and thankful. Name and address are lacking here and for a purpose to leave you no chance to make my words a burden to you and a reproach to me who would lighten your burdens if I could, not add to them. Irving died in October and Clemens ordered a wreath for his funeral. To Macalester he wrote, I profoundly grieve over Irving's death. It is another reminder. My section of the procession has but a little way to go. I could not be very sorry if I tried. Mark Twain, nearing seventy, felt that there was not much left for him to celebrate, and when Colonel Harvey proposed a birthday gathering in his honour, Clemens suggested a bohemian assembly over beer and sandwiches in some snug place with Howells, Henry Rogers, Twitchell, Dr. Rice, Dr. Edward Quinterd, Augustus Thomas, and such other kindred souls as were still left to answer the call. But Harvey had something different in view, something more splendid even than the sixty-seventh birthday feast, more pretentious indeed than any former literary gathering. He felt that the attainment of seventy years by America's most distinguished man of letters and private citizen was a circumstance which could not be moderately or even modestly observed. The date was set five days later than the actual birthday, that is to say on December fifth, in order that it might not conflict with the various thanksgiving holidays and occasions. Delmonico's great room was chosen for the celebration of it, and invitations were sent out to practically every writer of any distinction in America and to many abroad. Of these nearly two hundred accepted, while such as could not come, sent pathetic regrets. What an occasion it was! The flower of American literature gathered to do honour to its chief. The whole atmosphere of the place seemed permeated with his presence, and when Colonel Harvey presented William Dean Howells, and when Howells had read another double-barreled sonnet and introduced the guest of the evening with the words, I will not say, O King, live forever, but, O King, live as long as you like! And Mark Twain Rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of applause and welcome. With a great tumult, the throng rose, a billow of life, the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest. Those who had gathered there realised that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in theirs. They were there to see this supreme embodiment of the American spirit as he scaled the mountaintop. He too realised the drama of that moment, the marvel of it, and he must have flashed a swift panoramic view backward over the long way he had come to stand, as he had himself once expressed it, for a single splendid moment on the Alps of fame outlined against the sun. He must have remembered, for when he came to speak he went back to the very beginning, to his very first banquet, as he called it, when, as he said, I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any clothes. He sketched the meagerness of that little hamlet which had seen his birth, sketched it playfully, delightfully, so that his hearers laughed and shouted. But there was always a tenderness under it all, and often the tears were not far beneath the surface. He told of his habits of life, how he had attained seventy years by simply sticking to a scheme of living which would kill anybody else, how he smoked constantly, loathed exercise, and had no other regularity of habits. Then at last he reached that wonderful, unforgettable close. Three score years and ten. It is the Scriptural Statute of Limitations. After that you owe no active duties. For you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man. To use Kipling's military phrase you have served your term well or less well. You have served and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the Republic. You are emancipated. Compulsions are not for you nor any bugle call but lights out. You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer, and without prejudice for the they are not legally collectable. The previous engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside for ever. On this side of the grave you will never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night and winter and the late homecomings from the banquet, and the lights and laughter through the deserted streets, a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping and you must creep in a tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe. You can never disturb them more. If you shrink at the thought of these things you need only reply. Your invitation honors me and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy. Seventy and would nestle in the chimney corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at pier seventy, you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sink of the sinking sun with a contented heart. The tears that had been lying in wait were not restrained now. If there were any present who did not let them flow without shame, who did not shout their applause from throats choked with sobs, the writer of these lines failed to see them or to hear of them, there was not one who was ashamed to pay the great tribute of tears. Many of his old friends, one after another, rose to tell their love for him. Brander Matthews, Cable, Kate, Douglas Riggs, Gilder, Carnegie, Bangs, Batchelor. They kept it up far into the next morning. No other arrival at pier seventy ever awoke a grandeur welcome. End of chapter two hundred and thirty-six at pier seventy, read by John Greenman. Section twenty-six of Mark Twain a Biography, part one, nineteen hundred to nineteen oh seven. Mark Twain a Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne, chapter two hundred and thirty-seven, aftermath. The announcement of the seventieth birthday dinner had precipitated a perfect avalanche of letters which continued to flow in until the news accounts of it precipitated another avalanche. The carrier's bags were stuffed with greetings that came from every part of the world, from every class of humanity. They were all full of love and tender wishes. A card signed only with initials said, God bless your old sweet soul for having lived. Aldridge, who could not attend the dinner, declared that all through the evening he had been listening in his mind to a murmur of voices in the hall at Delmonico's. A group of English authors in London combined in a cable of congratulations. antsy, Albert Austin, Balfour, Barry, Bryce, Chesterton, Dobson, Doyle, Goss, Hardy, Hope, Jacobs, Kipling, Lang, Parker, Tennille, Watson and Zangwill were among the signatures. Helen Keller wrote, and you are seventy years old? Or is the report exaggerated? Like that of your death? I remember when I saw you last at the house of dear Mr. Hutton in Princeton. You said, if a man is a pessimist before he is forty-eight he knows too much. If he is an optimist after he is forty-eight he knows too little. Now we know you are an optimist, and nobody would dare to accuse one on the Seven Terrorist Summit of knowing little, so probably you are not seventy after all, but only forty-seven. Helen Keller was right. Mark Twain was not a pessimist in his heart, but only by premeditation. It was his observation and his logic that led him to write those things that, even in their bitterness, somehow conveyed that spirit of human sympathy which is so closely linked to hope. To Miss Keller he wrote, oh, thank you for your lovely words. He was given another birthday celebration that month, this time by the Society of Illustrators. Dan Beard, President, was also Toastmaster, and, as he presented Mark Twain, there was a trumpet note, and a lovely girl, costumed as Joan of Arc, entered and, approaching him, presented him with a laurel wreath. It was planned and carried out as a surprise to him, and he hardly knew for the moment whether it was a vision or a reality. He was deeply affected, so much so that, for several moments he could not find his voice to make any acknowledgments. Clemens was more than ever sought now, and he responded, when the clause was a worthy one. He spoke for the benefit of the Russian sufferers at the Casino on December 18. Madame Sara Bernhard was also there, and spoke in French. He followed her, declaring that it seemed a sort of cruelty to inflict upon an audience our rude English, after hearing that divine speech flowing in that lucid, gaelic tongue. It has always been a marvel to me, that French language. It has always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is! How expressive it seems to be! How full of grace it is! And, when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how limpid it is! And, oh, I am always deceived. I always think I am going to understand it. It is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame Bernhard, and laugh hand to hand, and heart to heart with her. I have seen her play, as we all have, and, oh, that is divine! But I have always wanted to know Madame Bernhard herself, her fiery self. I have wanted to know that beautiful character. Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself, for I always feel young when I come in the presence of young people. And truly, at seventy, Mark Twain was young, his manner, his movement, his point of view. These were all and always young. A number of palmists about that time examined impressions of his hand without knowledge as to the owner, and they all agreed that it was the hand of a man with the characteristics of youth, with inspiration, and enthusiasm, and sympathy, a lover of justice, and of the sublime. They all agreed, too, that he was a deep philosopher. Though, alas, they likewise agreed that he lacked the sense of humour, which is not as surprising as it sounds, for with Mark Twain, humour was never mere fun-making, nor the love of it. Rather, it was the flower of his philosophy, its bloom and fragrance. When the fanfare and drumbeat of his birthday honours had passed by, and a moment of calm had followed, Mark Twain set down some reflections on the new estate he had achieved. The little paper which forms a perfect pendant to the seventieth birthday speech here follows. Old age. I think it likely that people who have not been here will be interested to know what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of November, fresh from carefree and frivolous sixty-nine, and was disappointed. There is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill you and make your eye glitter and your tongue cry out, oh, it is wonderful, perfectly wonderful! Yes, it is disappointing. You say, is this it? I think it is. Is it this? After all, this talk and fuss of a thousand generations of travellers who have crossed this frontier and looked about them and told what they saw and felt, why, it looks just like sixty-nine, and that is true. Also, it is natural, for you have never seen not come by the fast express, you have been lagging and dragging across the world's continents behind oxen. When that is your pace, one country melts into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the change. Seventy looks like sixty-nine. Sixty-nine looked like sixty-eight. Sixty-eight looked like sixty-seven and so on back and back to the beginning. If you climb to a summit and look back, ah, then you see. Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country and climate that you crossed, all the way up from the hot equator to the ice summit where you are perched. You can make out where infancy verged into boyhood, boyhood into down-lipped youth, youth into bearded infancy, youth into youth, youth into indefinite young manhood, indefinite young manhood into definite manhood, definite manhood with large aggressive ambitions, into sobered and heedful husbandhood and fatherhood, these into troubled and foreboding age with graying hair, this into old age white-headed, the temple empty, the idols broken, the worshippers in their graves, nothing left but you, a remnant, a tradition, belated, fag and of a foolish dream, a dream that was so ingeniously dreamed that it seemed real all the time, nothing left but you, center of a snowy desolation, perched on the ice summit, gazing out over the stages of that long trek and asking yourself, would you do it again if you had the chance? End of Chapter 237, Aftermath, read by John Greenman. Section 27 of Mark Twain, a Biography, Part 1, 1900-1907. Mark Twain, a Biography, by Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 238, The Writer Meets Mark Twain. We have reached a point in this history where the narrative becomes mainly personal and where, at the risk of inviting the charge of egotism, the form of the telling must change. It was at the end of 1901 that I first met Mark Twain at the Players Club on the night when he made the Founder's Address mentioned in an earlier chapter. I was not able to arrive in time for the address, but as I reached the head of the stairs I saw him sitting at the dining-room entrance, talking earnestly to someone who, as I remember it, did not enter into my consciousness at all. I saw only that crown of white hair, that familiar profile, and heard the slow modulations of his measured speech. I was surprised to see how frail and old he looked. From his pictures I had conceived him different. I did not realize that it was a temporary condition due to a period of poor health and a succession of social demands. I have no idea how long I stood there watching him. He had been my literary idol from childhood, as he had been of so many others. More than that, for the personality in his work had made him nothing less than a hero to his readers. He rose presently to go and came directly toward me. A year before, I had done what new writers were always doing, I had sent him a book I had written, and he had done what he was always doing, acknowledged it with a kindly letter. I made my thanks now an excuse for addressing him. It warmed me to hear him say that he remembered the book, though at the time I confess I thought it doubtful. Then he was gone, but the mind and ear had photographed those vivid first impressions that remain always clear. It was the following spring that I saw him again at an afternoon gathering, and the memory of that occasion is chiefly important because I met Mrs. Clemens there for the only time, and like all who met her, however briefly, felt the gentleness and beauty of her spirit. I think I spoke with her at two or three different moments during the afternoon, and on each occasion was impressed with that feeling of acquaintance-ship which we immediately experience with those rare beings whose souls are wells of human sympathy and free from guile. Bret Hart had just died, and during the afternoon Mr. Clemens asked me to obtain for him some item concerning the obsequies. It was more than three years before I saw him again. Meantime a sort of acquaintance had progressed. I had been engaged in writing the life of Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, and I had found among the material a number of letters to Nast from Mark Twain. I was naturally anxious to use those fine characteristic letters, and I wrote him for his consent. He wished to see the letters and the permission that followed was kindness itself. His admiration of Nast was very great. It was proper under the circumstances to send him a copy of the book when it appeared, but that was 1904, his year of sorrow and absence, and the matter was postponed. Then came the great night of his seventieth birthday dinner with an opportunity to thank him in person for the use of the letters. There was only a brief exchange of words, and it was the next day, I think, that I sent him a copy of the book. It did not occur to me that I should hear of it again. We step back a moment here. Something more than a year earlier, through a misunderstanding, Mark Twain's long association with the players had been severed. It was a sorrow to him, and a still greater sorrow to the club. There was a movement among what is generally known as the round table-group, because its members have long had a habit of lunching at a large round table in a center window, to bring him back again. David Monroe, associate editor of the North American Review, David, a man well-loved of men, and Robert Reed, the painter, prepared this simple document. To Mark Twain from the Klansmen. Will you know come back again? Will you know come back again? Better load! You cannot be! Will you know come back again? It was signed by Monroe and by Reed, and about thirty others, and it touched Mark Twain deeply. The lines had always moved him, he wrote, to Robert Reed and the others. Well-beloved! Surely those lovely verses went to Prince Charlie's heart if he had one, and certainly they have gone to mine. I shall be glad and proud to come back again, after such a moving and beautiful complement as this, from comrades whom I have loved so long. I hope you can poll the necessary vote. I know you will try at any rate. It will be many months before I can foregather with you, for this black border is not perfunctory not a convention. It symbolizes the loss of one whose memory is the only thing I worship. It is not necessary for me to thank you, and words could not deliver what I feel anyway. I will put the contents of your envelope in the small casket where I keep the things, which have become sacred to me. S. L. C. So the matter was temporarily held in abeyance until he should return to social life. At the completion of his seventieth year the club had taken action, and Mark Twain had been brought back, not in the regular order of things, but as an honorary life member without dues or duties. There was only one other member of this class, Sir Henry Irving. The players, as a club, does not give dinners. Whatever is done in that way is done by one or more of the members in the private dining-room where there is a single large table that holds twenty-five, even thirty when expanded to its limit. That room and that table have mingled with much distinguished entertainment, also with history. Henry James made his first after-dinner speech there, for one thing—at least he claimed it was his first, though this is, by the way. A letter came to me which said that those who had signed the plea for the Prince's return were going to welcome him in the private dining-room on the fifth of January. It was not an invitation, but a gracious privilege. I was in New York a day or two in advance of the date, and I think David Monroe was the first person I met at the players. As he greeted me, his eyes were eager with something he knew I would wish to hear. He had been delegated to propose the dinner to Mark Twain, and had found him propped up in bed, and noticed on the table near him a copy of the Nast book. I suspect that Monroe had led him to speak of it, and that the result had lost nothing filtered through that radiant benevolence of his. The night of January 5, 1906, remains a memory apart from other dinners. Brander Matthews presided, and Gilder was there, and Frank Millet, and Willard Metcalf, and Robert Reed, and a score of others. Some of them are dead now, David Monroe among them. It so happened that my seat was nearly facing the guest of the evening who, by custom of the players, is placed at the side and not at the end of the long table. He was no longer frail and thin, as, when I had first met him, he had a robust, rested look. His complexion had the tints of a miniature painting. Lipped by the glow of the shaded candles, relieved against the dusk richness of the walls, he made a picture of striking beauty. One could not take his eyes from it, and, to one guest, at least, it stirred the farthest memories. I suddenly saw the interior of a farmhouse sitting-room in the Middle West, where I had first heard uttered the name of Mark Twain, and where, night after night, a group gathered around the evening lamp to hear the tale of the first pilgrimage, which, to a boy of eight, had seemed only a wonderful poem and fairy tale, to Charles Harvey Ganung, who sat next to me, I whispered something of this, and how, during the thirty-six years since then, no other human being to me had meant quite what Mark Twain had meant in literature, in life, in the ineffable thing which means more than either, and which we call inspiration for lack of a truer word. Now here he was just across the table. It was the fairy tale come true. Ganung said, You should write his life. His remark seemed a pleasant courtesy, and was put aside as such. When he persisted, I attributed it to the general bloom of the occasion, and a little to the wine, maybe, for the dinner was in its sweetest stage just then. That happy early stage when the first glass of champagne, or the second, has proved its quality. He urged, in support of his idea, the word that Monroe had brought concerning the Nast book, but nothing of what he said kindled any spark of hope. I could not but believe that someone with a larger equipment of experience, personal friendship, and abilities, had already been selected for the task. By and by the speaking began, delightful, intimate speaking in that restricted circle, and the matter went out of my mind. When the dinner had ended, and we were drifting about the table in general talk, I found an opportunity to say a word to the guest of the evening about his Joan of Arc, which I had recently reread. To my happiness he detained me while he told me the long ago incident which had led to his interest, not only in the martyred girl, but in all literature. I think we broke up soon after, and descended to the lower rooms. At any rate, I presently found the faithful Charles Ganung privately reasserting to me the proposition that I should undertake the biography of Mark Twain. Perhaps it was the brief sympathy established by the name of Joan of Arc. Perhaps it was only Ganung's insistent purpose, his faith, if I may be permitted the word. Whatever it was there came an impulse, and the instant of bidding goodbye to our guest of honour, which prompted me to say, may I call to see you, Mr. Clemens, some day? And something, dating from the primal atom, I suppose, prompted him to answer, yes, come soon. This was on Wednesday night, or rather on Thursday morning, for it was past midnight, and a day later I made an appointment with his secretary to call on Saturday. I can say truly that I set out with no more than the barest hope of success, and wondering if I should have the courage, when I saw him, even to suggest the thought in my mind. I know I did not have the courage to confide in Ganung that I had made the appointment. I was so sure it would fail. I arrived at 21 Fifth Avenue, and was shown into that long library and drawing-room combined, and found a curious and deep interest in the books and ornaments along the shelves as I waited. Then I was summoned, and I remember ascending the stairs, wondering why I had come on so futile and errant, and trying to think of an excuse to offer for having come at all. He was propped up in bed, in that stately bed sitting, as was his habit, with his pillows placed at the foot, so that he might have always before him, the rich, carved beauty of its headboard. He was delving through a copy of Huckleberry Finn in search of a paragraph concerning which some random correspondent had asked the explanation. He was commenting unfavorably on this correspondent, and on miscellaneous letter-writing in general. He pushed the cigars toward me, and the talk of these matters ran along and blended into others more or less personal. By and by I told him what so many thousands had told him before, what he had meant to me, recalling the childhood impressions of that large, black, and gilt-covered book with its wonderful pictures and adventures, the Mediterranean pilgrimage. Very likely it bored him, he had heard it so often. And he was willing enough, I daresay, to let me change the subject and thank him for the kindly word which David Monroe had brought. I do not remember what he said then, but I suddenly found myself suggesting that out of his encouragement had grown a hope, though certainly it was something less, that I might some day undertake a book about himself. I expected the chapter to end at this point, and his silence, which followed, seemed long and ominous. He said, at last, that at various times through his life he had been preparing some autobiographical matter, but that he had tired of the undertaking and had put it aside. He added that he had hoped his daughters would one day collect his letters, but that a biography, a detailed story of personality and performance of success and failure, was of course another matter, and that for such a work no arrangement had been made. He may have added one or two other general remarks. Then, turning those piercing agate blue eyes directly upon me, he said, When would you like to begin? There was a dresser with a large mirror behind him. I happened to catch my reflection in it, and I vividly recollect saying to it mentally, This is not true. It is only one of many similar dreams. But even in a dream one must answer. And I said, Whenever you like, I can begin now. He was always eager in any new undertaking. Very good. He said, The sooner, then the better. Let's begin while we are in the humor. The longer you postpone a thing of this kind, the less likely you are ever to get at it. This was on Saturday, as I have stated. I mentioned that my family was still in the country and that it would require a day or two to get established in the city. I asked if Tuesday, January 9, would be too soon to begin. He agreed that Tuesday would do, and inquired something about my plan of work. Of course I had formed nothing definite, but I said that in similar undertakings a part of the work had been done with a stenographer who had made the notes while I prompted this subject to recall a procession of incidents and episodes to be supplemented with every variety of material obtainable letters and other documentary accumulations. Then he said, I think I should enjoy dictating to a stenographer with someone to prompt me and to act as audience. The room adjoining this was fitted up for my study, my manuscripts and notes and private books, and many of my letters are there, and there are a trunkful or two of such things in the attic. I seldom use the room myself. I do my writing and reading in bed. I will turn that room over to you for this work. Whatever you need will be brought to you. We can have the dictation here in the morning, and you can put in the rest of the day to suit yourself. You can have a key and come and go as you please. That was always his way. He did nothing by house, nothing without unquestioning confidence and prodigality. He got up and showed me the lovely luxury of the study with its treasures of material. I did not believe it true yet. It had all the atmosphere of a dream, and I have no distinct recollection of how I came away. When I returned to the players and found Charles Harvey Ganung there and told him about it, it is quite certain that he perjured himself when he professed to believe it true and pretended that he was not surprised. End of Chapter 238 The Writer Meets Mark Twain Read by John Greenman Section 28 of Mark Twain a Biography Part 1, 1900 to 1907 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain A Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne Chapter 239 Working with Mark Twain On Tuesday, January 9th, 1906, I was on hand with a capable stenographer, Miss Josephine Hobby, who had successfully and successfully held secretarial positions with Charles Dudley Warner and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, and was therefore peculiarly qualified for the work in hand. Clemens, meantime, had been revolving our plans and adding some features of his own. He proposed to double the value and interest of our employment by letting his dictations continue the form of those earlier autobiographical chapters, begun with Redpath in 1885, and continued later in Vienna and at the Villa Quarto. He said he did not think he could follow a definite chronological program that he would like to wander about, picking up this point and that, as memory or fancy prompted, without any particular biographical order. It was his purpose, he declared, that his dictations should not be published until he had been dead a hundred years or more, a prospect which seemed to give him in a special gratification. As early as October 1900, he had proposed to Harper and Brothers a contract for publishing his personal memoirs at the expiration of one hundred years from date, and letters covering the details were exchanged with Mr. Rogers. The document, however, was not completed. He wished to pay the stenographer and to own these memoranda, he said, allowing me free access to them for any material I might find valuable. I could also suggest subjects for dictation and ask particulars of any special episode or period. I believe this covered the whole arrangement, which did not require more than five minutes, and we set to work without further prologue. I ought to state that he was in bed when we arrived, and that he remained there during almost all of these earlier dictations, clad in a handsome silk dressing gown of rich Persian pattern, propped against great snowy pillows. He loved this loose luxury and ease, and found it conducive to thought. On the little table beside him, where lay his cigars, papers, pipes, and various knickknacks, shone a reading lamp, making more brilliant the rich coloring of his complexion and the gleam of his shining hair. There was daylight, too, but it was Northlight, and the winter days were dull. Also the walls of the room were a deep, unreflecting red, and his eyes were getting old. The outlines of that vast bed blending into the luxuriant background, the whole focusing to the striking central figure, remain in my mind today, a picture of classic value. He dictated that morning some matters connected with the history of the Comstock mine, then he drifted back to his childhood, returning again to the more modern period, and closed, I think, with some comments on current affairs. It was absorbingly interesting, his quaint, unhurried fashion of speech, the unconscious movement of his hands, the play of his features as his fancies and phrases passed in mental review, and were accepted, or waved aside. We were watching one of the great literary creators of his time in the very process of his architecture. We constituted about the most select audience in the world enjoying what was, likely enough, its most remarkable entertainment. When he turned at last and inquired the time, we were all amazed that two hours and more had slipped away. And how much I have enjoyed it, he said, it is the ideal plan for this kind of work. Narrative writing is always disappointing. The moment you pick up a pen, you begin to lose the spontaneity of the personal relation, which contains the very essence of interest. With shorthand dictation, one can talk as if he were at his own dinner table, always a most inspiring place. I expect to dictate all the rest of my life, if you good people are willing to come and listen to it. The dictations thus began continued steadily from week to week, and always with increasing charm. We never knew what he was going to talk about, and it was seldom that he knew until the moment of beginning. Then he went drifting among episodes, incidents, and periods in his irresponsible fashion, the fashion of table conversation, as he said, the methodless method of the human mind. It was always delightful and always amusing, tragic or instructive, and it was likely to be one of these at one instant and another the next. I felt myself the most fortunate biographer in the world, as undoubtedly I was, though not just in the way that I first imagined. It was not for several weeks that I began to realize that these marvelous reminiscences bore only an atmospheric relation to history, that they were aspects of biography rather than its veritable narrative, and built largely, sometimes wholly, from an imagination that, with age, had dominated memory, creating details, even reversing them, yet with a perfect sincerity of purpose on the part of the narrator to set down the literal and unvarnished truth. It was his constant effort to be frank and faithful to fact, to record, to confess, and to condemn, without stint. If you wanted to know the worst of Mark Twain you had only to ask him for it. He would give it to the last syllable, worse than the worst, for his imagination would magnify it and adorn it with new iniquities. And if he gave it again, or a dozen times, he would improve upon it each time, until the thread of history was almost impossible to trace through the marvel of that fabric, and he would do the same for another person just as willingly. Those vividly real personalities that he marched and counter-marched before us were the most convincing creatures in the world, the most entertaining, the most excruciatingly humorous, or wicked, or tragic, but alas they were not always safe to include in a record that must bear a certain semblance to history. They often disagreed in their performance, and even in their characters, with the documents in the next room, as I learned by and by when those records, disentangled, began to rebuild the structure of the years. His gift of dramatization had been exercised too long to be discarded now. The things he told of Mrs. Clemens and Susie were true, marvelously and beautifully true, in spirit and in aspect, and the actual detail of these mattered little in such a record. The rest was history only as roughing it is history, or the tramp abroad. That is to say, it was fictional history with fact as a starting point. In a preparatory note to these volumes, we have quoted Mark Twain's own lovely and whimsical admission made once when he realized his deviations. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter. At another time he paraphrased one of Josh Billing's sayings in the remark, It isn't so astonishing the number of things that I can remember as the number of things I can remember that aren't so. I do not wish to say by any means that his so-called autobiography is a mere fairy tale. It is far from that. It is amazingly truthful in the character picture it represents of the man himself. It is only not reliable, and it is sometimes even unjust as detailed history. Yet, curiously enough, there were occasional chapters that were photographically exact, and fitted precisely with the more positive, if less picturesque, materials. It is also true that such chapters were likely to be episodes intrinsically so perfect as to not require the touch of art. In the talks which we usually had, when the dictations were ended and Miss Hobbie had gone, I gathered much that was of still greater value. Imagination was temporarily dispossessed, as it were, and whether expounding some theory or summarizing some event, he cared little for literary effect and only for the idea and the moment immediately present. It was at such times that he allowed me to make those inquiries we had planned in the beginning, and which apparently had little place in the dictations themselves. Sometimes I led him to speak of the genesis of his various books, how he had come to write them, and I think there was not a single case where, later, I did not find his memory of these matters almost exactly in accord with the letters of the moment written to Howells or Twitchell or to some member of his family. Such reminiscence was usually followed by some vigorous burst of human philosophy, often too vigorous for print, too human, but as dazzling as a searchlight in its revelation. It was during this earlier association that he propounded one day his theory of circumstance, already set down, that inevitable sequence of cause and effect beginning with the first act of the primal atom. He had been dictating that morning his story of the clairvoyant dream which preceded his brother's death, and the talk of foreknowledge had continued. I said one might logically conclude from such a circumstance that the future was at fixed quantity. As absolutely fixed as the past, he said, and added the remark already quoted, Chapter 75. A little later he continued, Even the Almighty Himself cannot check or change that sequence of events once it is started. It is a fixed quantity, and a part of the scheme is a mental condition during certain moments usually of sleep, when the mind may reach out and grasp some of the acts which are still to come. It was a new angle to me, a line of logic so simple and so utterly convincing that I have remained unshaken in it to this day. I have never been able to find any answer to it, nor anyone who could even attempt to show that the first act of the first created atom did not strike the keynote of eternity. At another time, speaking of the idea that God works through man, he burst out, yes, of course, just about as much as a man works through his microbes. He had a startling way of putting things like that, and had left not much to say. I was, at this period, interested a good deal in mental healing, and had been treated for neurasthenia with gratifying results. Like most of the world, I had assumed from his published articles that he condemned Christian science and its related practices out of hand. When I confessed, rather reluctantly one day, the benefit I had received, he surprised me by answering, Of course you have been benefited. Christian science is humanity's boon. Mother Eddie deserves a place in Trinity as much as any member of it. She has organized and made available a healing principle that for two thousand years has never been employed, except as the merest kind of guesswork. She is the benefactor of the age. It seemed strange at the time to hear him speak in this way concerning a practice of which he was generally regarded as the chief public antagonist. It was another angle of his many-sided character. End of Chapter 239 Working With Mark Twain, Read by John Greenman Section 29 of Mark Twain a Biography Part 1, 1900 to 1907. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain a Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne Chapter 240 The Definition of a Gentleman That was a busy winter for him socially. He was constantly demanded for this thing and that, for public gatherings, dinners, everywhere he was a central figure. Once he presided at a Valentine dinner given by some players to David Monroe, he had never presided at a dinner before, he said, and he did it in his own way, which certainly was a taking one suitable to that carefree company and occasion, a real scotch occasion, with the Monroe tartan everywhere, the table banked with Heather, and a wild piper marching up and down in the ante-room, blowing savage airs in honour of Scotland's gentlest son. An important meeting of that winter was at Carnegie Hall, a great gathering which had assembled for the purpose of aiding Booker T. Washington in his work for the welfare of his race. The stage and the auditorium were thronged with notables. Joseph H. Chote and Mark Twain presided, and both spoke. Also Robert C. Ogden and Booker T. Washington himself. It was all fine and interesting. Chote's address was ably given, and Mark Twain was at his best. He talked of politics and of morals, public and private, how the average American citizen was true to his Christian principles three hundred and sixty three days in the year, and how on the other two days of the year he left those principles at home and went to the tax office and the voting booths, and did his best to damage and undo his whole years faithful and righteous work. I used to be an honest man, but I am crumbling. Now I have crumbled. When they assessed me at seventy-five thousand dollars a fortnight ago, I went out and tried to borrow the money and couldn't. Then when I found they were letting a whole crowd of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me, I was hurt. I was indignant and said this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself. In that moment, in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just a mere moral sandpile, and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in the world. I had never heard him address a miscellaneous audience. It was marvellous to see how he had convulsed it and silenced it and controlled it at will. He did not undertake any special pleading for the Negro cause. He only prepared the way with cheerfulness. Clemens and Chote joined forces again a few weeks later at a great public meeting assembled in aid of the adult blind. Helen Keller was to be present, but she had fallen ill through overwork. She sent to Clemens one of her beautiful letters in which she said, I should be happy if I could have spelled into my hand the words as they fall from your lips and receive, even as it is uttered, the eloquence of our newest ambassador to the blind. Clemens, dictating the following morning, told of his first meeting with Helen Keller at a little gathering in Lawrence Hutton's home, when she was about the age of fourteen. It was an incident that invited no elaboration and probably received none. Henry Rogers and I went together. The company had all assembled and had been waiting a while. The wonderful child arrived now with her about equally wonderful teacher, Miss Sullivan, and seemed quite well to recognize the character of her surroundings. She said, Oh, the books! The books! So many, many books! How lovely! The guests were brought one after another. As she shook hands with each, she took her hand away and laid her fingers lightly against Miss Sullivan's lips who spoke against them the person's name. Mr. Howells seated himself by Helen on the sofa, and she put her fingers against his lips, and he told her a story of considerable length, and you could see each detail of it pass into her mind, and strike fire there, and throw the flash of it into her face. After a couple of hours spent very pleasantly, someone asked if Helen would remember the feel of the hands of the company after this considerable interval of time, and be able to discriminate the hands and name the possessors of them. Miss Sullivan said, Oh, she will have no difficulty about that. So the company filed past, shook hands in turn, and with each handshake Helen greeted the owner of the hand pleasantly, and spoke the name that belonged to it without hesitation. By and by the assemblage proceeded to the dining room and sat down to the luncheon. I had to go away before it was over, and as I passed by Helen, I patted her lightly on the head and passed on. Miss Sullivan called to me and said, Stop, Mr. Clemens, Helen is distressed because she did not recognize your hand. Won't you come back and do that again? I went back and patted her lightly on the head, and she said at once, Oh, it's Mr. Clemens. Perhaps someone can explain this miracle, but I have never been able to do it. Could she feel the wrinkles in my hand through her hair? Someone else must answer this. It was three years following this dictation that the mystery received a very simple and rather amusing solution. Helen had come to pay a visit to Mark Twain's Connecticut home Stormfield, then, but just completed. He had met her meantime, but it had not occurred to him before to ask her how she had recognized him that morning at Hutton's, in what had seemed such a marvelous way. She remembered and, with a smile, said, I smelled you, which, after all, did not make the incident seem much less marvelous. On one of the mornings after Miss Hobby had gone, Clemens said, A very curious thing has happened, a very large-sized joke. He was shaving at the time, and this information came in brief and broken relays suited to a performance of that sort. The reader may perhaps imagine the effect without further indications of it. I was going on a yachting trip once with Henry Rogers when a reporter stopped me with a statement that Mrs. Aster had said that there had never been a gentleman in the White House, and he wanted me to give him my definition of a gentleman. I didn't give him my definition, but he printed it just the same in the afternoon paper. I was angry at first and wanted to bring a damaged suit. When I came to read the definition, it was a satisfactory one, and I let it go. Now, today comes a letter and a telegram from a man who has made a will in Missouri, leaving ten thousand dollars to provide tablets for various libraries in the state, on which shall be inscribed Mark Twain's definition of a gentleman. He hasn't got the definition, he has only heard of it, and he wants me to tell him in which of my books or speeches he can find it. I couldn't think when I read that letter what in the nation the man meant, but shaving somehow has a tendency to release thought, and just now it all came to me. It was a situation full of amusing possibilities, but he reached no conclusion in the matter. Another telegram was brought in just then, which gave a sadder aspect to his thought, for it said that his old coachman Patrick McElier, who had begun in the Clemens service with the bride and groom of thirty-six years before, was very low and could not survive more than a few days. This led him to speak of Patrick, his noble and faithful nature, and how he always claimed to be in their service even during their long intervals of absence abroad. Clemens gave orders that everything possible should be done for Patrick's comfort, when the end came a few days later he travelled to Hartford to lay flowers on Patrick's beer and to serve with Patrick's friends, neighbour coachman and John O'Neill the gardener, as Paul Bearer, taking his allotted place without distinction or favour. It was the following Sunday at the Majestic Theatre in New York that Mark Twain spoke to the Young Men's Christian Association. For several reasons it proved an unusual meeting, a large number of free tickets had been given out, far more than the place could hold, and further it had been announced that when the ticket holders had been seated the admission would be free to the public. The subject chosen for the talk was reminiscences. When we arrived the streets were packed from side to side for a considerable distance, and a riot was in progress. A great crowd had swarmed about the place, and the officials, instead of throwing the doors wide and letting the theatre fill up, regardless of tickets, had locked them. As a result there was a shouting, surging human mass that presently dashed itself against the entrance. Windows and doors gave way, and there followed a wild struggle for entrance. A moment later the house was packed solid. A detachment of police had now arrived, and in time cleared the street. It was said that, amid the tumult, some had lost their footing and had been trampled and injured, but of this we did not learn until later. We had been taken somehow to a side entrance and smuggled into boxes. The paper, next morning bore the headlines, ten thousand stampeded at Mark Twain meeting, well-dressed men and women clubbed by police at Majestic Theatre. In this account the paper stated that the crowd had collected an hour before the time for opening, that nothing of the kind had been anticipated, and no police preparation had been made. It was peaceful enough in the theatre until Mark Twain appeared on the stage. He was wildly greeted, and when he said slowly and seriously, I thank you for this signal recognition of merit. There was a still noisier outburst. In the quiet that followed he began his memories, and went wandering along from one anecdote to another in the manner of his daily dictations. At last it seemed to occur to him, in view of the character of his audience, that he ought to close with something in the nature of counsel suited to young men. It is, from experiences such as mine, he said, that we get our education of life. We string them into jewels or into tinware, as we may choose. I have received recently several letters asking for counsel or advice, the principal request being for some incident that may prove helpful to the young. It is my mission to teach, and I am always glad to furnish something. There have been a lot of incidents in my career to help me along. Sometimes they helped me along faster than I wanted to go. He took some papers from his pocket and started to unfold one of them. Then, as if remembering, he asked how long he had been talking. The answer came thirty-five minutes. He made as if to leave the stage, but the audience commanded him to go on. All right, he said, I can stand more of my own talk than anyone I ever knew. Opening one of the papers, a telegram, he read, In which one of your works can we find the definition of a gentleman? Then he added, I have not answered that telegram. I couldn't. I never wrote any such definition, though it seems to me that if a man has just merciful and kindly instincts, he would be a gentleman, for he would need nothing else in this world. He opened a letter from Howells, he said. My old friend, William Dean Howells. Howells, the head of American literature. No one is able to stand with him. He is an old, old friend of mine, and he writes me, Tomorrow I shall be sixty-nine years old. Why, I am surprised at Howells writing so. I have known him myself longer than that. I am sorry to see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see, Howells says now, I see you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he was old, too. The house became very still. Most of them had read an account of Mark Twain's journey to Hartford and his last service to his faithful servitor. The speaker's next words were, not much above a whisper, but every syllable was distinct. No, he was never old, Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He was our coachman, from the day that I drove my young bride to our new home. He was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never changed in all his life. He really was with us but twenty-five years, for he did not go with us to Europe, but he never regarded that as separation. As the children grew up, he was their guide. He was all honour, honesty, and affection. He was with us in New Hampshire last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good as on the day we first met. In all the long years, Patrick never made a mistake. He never needed an order. He never received a command. He knew. I have been asked for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and I give it to you. It was the sort of thing that no one but Mark Twain has quite been able to do, and it was just that recognized quality behind it that had made crowds jam the street and stampede the entrance to be in his presence to see him and to hear his voice. End of Chapter 240 The Definition of a Gentleman Read by John Greenman