 CHAPTER 262 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 number 87. Yours is 2653. 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 to restore youth and preserve life everlasting. Anonymous letters are not usually popular or to be encouraged, but Mark Twain had a special 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 goodbye 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 seventy, 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 today I was told by someone who saw you going into the lift at the Savoy that you looked sad and 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 schoolroom, 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 copybooks 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, and so they ought to be decent and go away. But I have not heard that in the Congo the missionary servants of God are unwelcome to the native. Evidently those missionaries are pitying, compassionate, kind. How it would improve God to take a lesson from them. He invented and distributed the germ of that awful disease among those helpless, poor savages, and now he sits with his elbows on the balusters and looks down, and enjoys this wanton crime. Confidently, and between you and 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 own. To which the writer answered, "'Oh, wicked Mr. Clemens! I have to ask St. 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 something, 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 axe 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 post-master ship. Another will invagle 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. Mendecancy 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 axe to grind. By and by the axe's aspect becomes familiar to the proprietor of the grindstone. He perceives that a man is a man who has a great sense of humor, and that he is the same old axe. 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 axe 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 axe to somebody and ask a wet. I don't carry mine to strangers. I draw the line there. Perhaps that is your way. This is bound to see you. 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 anyone 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 today'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. Lauder. 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 Harbour 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. End of chapter 262 from Mark Twain's Mail. Read by John Greenman. Section 52 of Mark Twain, A Biography. Part II. 1907-1910. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain, A Biography. By Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 263. 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 Dunn. 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 Potardosky were invited. Potardosky 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 venerably there 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' left, said, Uncle Mark, he often called him that. Major Lee 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. Howell 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 Beerbomb Tree's performance of Hamlet. W. C. 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 vendors 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. Howls 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 Dennis O'Sullivan. It was another choice afternoon with a mystical quality which came of the music made by O'Sullivan on some Hindu reeds, types of pan. But we shall have more of O'Sullivan presently. All too little, for his days were few and fleeting. Howls 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-bye luncheon to Howls. 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 a constant visiting back and forth the full length of the two coaches. Dennis 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 Cheetham. Then Colonel Harvey introduced Howls with mention of his coming journey. As a rural Howls does not enjoy speaking. He is willing to read and 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 chafing, which showed Howls at his very best, all too short for his listeners. Cleiman's reply 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 Dennis 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 Dennis 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 Dennis 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 unheated. 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 fairy cabin to lean over and watch the magic spectacle, the like of which is not to be found elsewhere on the earth. End of Chapter 263 Some Literary Luncheons Red by John Greenman. Section 53 of Mark Twain, A Biography. Part II. 1907 to 1910. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain, A Biography. By Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 264. 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 Stormfield's 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, 1908, 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 there 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' 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 Archbishops, 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 employment 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 today 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 as 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 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. End of Chapter 264 Captain Stormfield in Print. Red by John Greenman. Section 54 of Mark Twain of Biography. Part II. 1907-1910. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain of Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne. Chapter 265 Lotus Club Honors. It was on January 11, 1908 that Mark Twain was given his last great banquet by the Lotus 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 toastmaster 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 were siphirated their approval. Clemens was quite calm. I like this, he said, when the noise had subsided. I like its splendid colour! 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 favourably received whatever I say. I know that my audiences are warm and responsible. 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, wittier birthday speech of more than thirty years before, that bleak arctic experience from the 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. End of Chapter 265 Lotus Club Honors Read by John Greenman Section 55 of Mark Twain a Biography Part II 1907-1910 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain a Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne Chapter 266 A Winter in Bermuda Edmund Clarence Steadman 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 Steadman. 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. Chote and Depew and Steadman were in their prime then. We were all young men together. Their speeches were always worth listening to. Steadman was a prominent figure there. There don't seem to be any such men now, or any such occasions. Steadman was one of the last of the old literary group. Aldrich had died the year before. Howls and Clemens were the lingering last leaves. Clemens gave some further luncheon entertainments to his friends, and added the feature of dough luncheons. Pretty affairs, where, with Clara Clemens as hostess, were entertained a group of brilliant women, such as Mrs. Kate Douglas Riggs, Geraldine Farrocks, 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. NB. A lady who is invited to and attends a dough luncheon, it is, of course, a dough. The question is, if she attends two dough luncheons in succession, is she a dough-dough? 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 ensure 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 Blackmore, 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 in a month. We were close comrades in separables, in fact, for eight days. Every day we made pedestrian excursions, called them that, anyway, and, honestly, they were intended for that. That is what they would have been, but for the persistent intrusion of grey 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, gentle-faced 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, some time 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 poor. The child could not have enjoyed this thrilling little drama or, 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 and 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, he called one day with her mother and sent up her card. He sent backward, 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. I was in New York six weeks ago. I was on a corner of Fifth Avenue and 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 am 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' 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' son-in-law, William Everts Benjamin, came down and joined the little group. It was one of Mark Twain's real holidays. Mr. Rogers' 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 and is as quarrelsome as a cat, but he will get a back set if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the brightest man in these regions and the best company. Bright? He is much more than that. He is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intensely alive with love and all good wishes. S. L. C. Mark Twain and Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They were referred to as the King and the Raja and it was always a question whether it was the King who took care of the Raja 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, is there 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 Seine 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-surge 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 Angelfish Club which Clemens concluded to organize after a visit to the spectacular Bermuda Aquarium. The pretty Angelfish suggested youth and feminine beauty to him and his adopted granddaughters became Angelfish to him from that time forward. He bought little enamel Angelfish 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 limited. 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. End of Chapter 266 A Winter in Bermuda Read by John Greenman Section 56 of Mark Twain, A Biography Part II 1907-1910 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Mark Twain, A Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne Chapter 267 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-lined steamer, Titanic, with the destruction of many passengers among whom are Frank D. Millet, William T. Stead, Isidore Strauss, 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 cartoonist's dinner, very soon after his return from Bermuda. He spoke at the bookseller's 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 25, in honour 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 War 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 tonight 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 honour 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, when 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 honoured 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 centre 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 Crookshank's drawings of an execution scene at the Tower of London. Those 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 odd, even at times when there was no occasion 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 Puddin Head 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 unmelod 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 for a 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 today. Still the country has become broader. It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess that 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 marvelling at its fearlessness and wonderful power. I read it again a year or two ago and was amazed to see how tame it had become. It seemed that pain was apologizing everywhere for hurting the feelings of the reader. He drifted naturally into a discussion of the Nickerbocker Trust Company Suspension which had tied up some $55,000 of his capital and wondered how many were trusting in God for the return of these 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 Reading. It was only the smaller things of life that irritated him. He often met large calamities with a serenity of the responsibility of the Nickerbocker Trust Company Suspension. 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 Nickerbocker depositors. End of Chapter 267 Views and Addresses The building of the new home at Reading had been going steadily forward for something more than a year. John Meade Howells had made the plans. W. W. Sunderland and his son Philip of Danbury, Connecticut were the builders and in the absence of Ms. Clemens then on a concert tour Mark Twain's secretary was the director of the Nickerbocker Trust Company Suspension. On the concert tour Mark Twain's secretary, Ms. 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 Reading, he had scarcely even glanced at the plans or discussed any of the decorations of the new home. They were the orchestral 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. Don't want to see it," he said, until the cat is purring on the hearth. Howell 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 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 Reading Place as a summer residence and the Fifth Avenue House was not dismantled. A few days before the 18th 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 soon to see. It was referred to 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 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 Reading, 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. 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 Reading 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. Reading 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 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. Hill sides were green fields were white with daisies, dogwood and laurel shone among the trees and overall 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 road I like a good country road through the woods. The water was flowing over the mill dam where the road crosses the Sauget Hook 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 Giesbach 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 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 Sauget Hook Valley to the nestling village and church spire 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 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 I 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 treetops and distant farm side 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 a special 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 nearby 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 queues 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 end of chapter 268 Reading read by John Greenman section 58 of Mark Twain A Biography part 2 part 10 this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Mark Twain A Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne chapter 269 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 Cyprus-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 house there we must try to give that to howls 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 Francis was coming from a distant school on the evening train and the carriage was starting just then to bring her I suggested that perhaps we 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 can 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 jungle like those he said are elephant woods but Joy answered 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 fairy land it was a sweet drive to learn 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 on 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 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 Logia 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 with lightning 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 Reading, June 25th was saddened by the news 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 real presidents there is none to take his place end of chapter 269 First Days at Stormfield read by John Greenman section 59 of Mark Twain a Biography part 2 1907-1910 this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Mark Twain a Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne chapter 270 The Aldridge Memorial at the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire of the Thomas Bailey Aldridge Memorial Museum which the poet's wife had established there in the old Aldridge 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 comfortable hotel matters improved he had brought along for reading the old copy of Sir Thomas Mallory'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 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 howls who had come over from Kehry Point how Aldridge must be amused at the whole circumstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honour to his memory Richard Watson Gilder was there and Hamilton Mayby Leonard 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 he must have said him for he delivered an address that certainly would have delighted Aldridge living and must have delighted him dead if he could hear it it was full of the most charming humour, 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 and regret for having worn black clothes it was a mistake he said to consider this a solemn time Aldridge would not have wished it to be so considered he had been a man who loved humour 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 legubrious, smileless occasion this is where 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 Aldridge 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 Aldridge 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 tow-head 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 Kingbridge group now there's been still another which included Aldridge and Howells and Steadman 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 sites 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 end of chapter 270 the Aldridge Memorial read by John Greenman section 60 of Mark Twain of Biography part 2 1907 to 1910 the box recording is in the public domain Mark Twain of Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne chapter 271 Death of Sam Moffitt Clemens' next absence from Reading came on August 1st, 1908 when the sudden and shocking news was received of the drowning of his nephew Samuel E. Moffitt in the surf of the Jersey shore Moffitt 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 Moffitt held an important editorial position on Collier's Weekly Clemens was fond and proud of his nephew learning 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 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 here to fore in a letter to mrs. Crane August 12th he spoke of recent happenings Dear Aunt Sue the most moving a most heart breaking sight the spectacle of that stunned and crushed and inconsolable family I came back here in bad shape and had a billious collapse but I am all right again though the doctor from New York has given three orders that I am not to stir from here before frost no fortunate Sam Moffitt fortunate Livy Clemens doubly fortunate Susie those swords go through and 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 tranquility this deep stillness this dreamy expanse of Woodsey Hill and Valley you must come Aunt Sue and stay with us a real good visit since June 26 we have had 21 guests and they have all liked it and said they would come again to Howells on the same day he wrote won't you and Mrs. Howells and Mildred come and give us as many days as you can spare and examine John's triumph it is the most satisfactory house I am acquainted with and the most satisfactorily situated I have dismissed my stenographer and have entered upon a holiday whose other end is the cemetery End of Chapter 271 Death of Sam Moffat read by John Greenman Section 61 of Mark Twain A Biography Part 2 1907-1910 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Mark Twain A Biography by Albert Bigelow Payne Chapter 272 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 meant it 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 they 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 and loud and strong. Yes, I want Governor Hughes renominated, but it is too late and my mouth is closed. I have become a citizen and taxpayer of Connecticut and could not now without impertinence metal 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 tranquility. 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 living-room or billiard-room. He might even have it in the dining-room 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 his billiards provided the guests new 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 here to fore, 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 sagatuck 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 anyone 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 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 offering 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 acknowledgement of the 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 orchestral, while Mark Twain smoked and mingled unusual speculation with long, long backward dreams. It was three months from the day of arrival in Reading that some guests came to their 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. Launsbury and deputy sheriff banks were notified, and by morning the thieves were at a desperate encounter during which the officer received a bullet wound. Launsbury 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 Reading Station when the train came down, and there the capture was made. It was a remarkably prompt and Clemens gave credit for its success chiefly to Launsbury, whose talents in many fields always impressed him. The thieves were taken to the Reading Town Hall for a preliminary hearing. 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 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. End of Chapter 272 Stormfield Adventures Read by John Greenman