 Section 71 of Mark Twain of Biography, Part II, 1907–1910. In the notes I made of this period I caught a little drift of personality and utterance, and I do not know better how to preserve these things than to give them here, as nearly as may be in the sequence and in the form in which they were set down. One of the first of these entries occurs in June, when Clemens was rereading with great interest and relish Andrew D. White's Science and Theology, which he called a lovely book, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. June 21st. A peaceful afternoon, and we walked farther than usual, resting at last in the shade of a tree in the lane that leads to Jean's farmhouse. I picked a dandelion ball, with some remark about its being one of the evidences of the intelligent principle in nature, the seeds winged for a wider distribution. Yes, he said, those are the great evidences. No one who reasons can doubt them. And presently he added, that is a most amusing book of Whites. When you read it you see how those old theologians never reasoned at all. White tells of an old bishop who figured out that God created the world in an instant on a certain day in October, exactly so many years before Christ, and proved it. And I knew a preacher myself once who declared that the fossils in the rocks proved nothing as to the age of the world. He said that God could create the rocks with those fossils in them, for ornaments if he wanted to. Why, it takes twenty years to build a little island in the Mississippi River, and that man actually believed that God created the whole world and all that's in it in six days. White tells of another bishop who gave two new reasons for thunder, one being that God wanted to show the world his power, and another that he wished to frighten sinners to repent. Now, consider the proportions of that conception, even in the pettiest way you can think of. Consider the idea of God thinking of all that. Consider the President of the United States wanting to impress the flies and fleas and mosquitoes, getting up on the dome of the capital and beating a bass drum and sang off red fire. He followed the theme a little further, then we made our way slowly back up the long hill, he holding to my arm and resting here and there, but arriving at the house seemingly fresh and ready for billiards. June 23. I came up this morning with a basket of strawberries. He was walking up and down, looking like an ancient Roman. He said, Consider the case of Elsie Siegel, granddaughter of General Franz Siegel. She was mysteriously murdered while engaged in settlement work among the Chinese. What a ghastly ending to any life. Then turning upon me fiercely he continued, Anybody that knows anything knows that there was not a single life that was ever lived that was worth living, not a single child ever begotten that the begueting of it was not a crime. Suppose a community of people to be living on the slope of a volcano directly under the crater and in the path of lava flow. That volcano has been breaking out right along for ages and is certain to break out again. They do not know when it will break out, but they know it will do it. That much can be counted on. Suppose those people go to a community in a far neighborhood and say, We'd like to change places with you. Come, take our homes and let us have yours. Those people would say, Never mind. We are not interested in your country. We know what has happened there and what will happen again. We don't care to live under the blow that is likely to fall at any moment. And yet, every time we bring a child into the world, we are bringing it to a country, to a community, gathered under the crater of a volcano, knowing that sooner or later death will come, and that before death there will be catastrophes infinitely worse. Formerly it was much worse than now, for before the ministers abolished hell, a man knew when he was begueting a child that he was begueting a soul that had only one chance in a hundred of escaping the eternal fires of damnation. He knew that in all probability that child would be brought to damnation, one of the ninety-nine black sheep. But since hell has been abolished, death has become more welcome. I wrote a fairy story once. It was published somewhere. I don't remember just what it was now, but the substance of it was that a fairy gave a man the customary wishes. I was interested in seeing what he would take. First he chose wealth and went away with it, but it did not bring him happiness. Then he came back for the second selection and chose fame, and that did not bring happiness either. Finally he went to the fairy and chose death, and the fairy said in substance, if you hadn't been a fool, you'd have chosen that in the first place. The papers called me a pessimist for writing that story. Pessimist, the man who isn't a pessimist, is a damn fool. But this was one of his savage humours stirred by tragic circumstance. Under date of July 5th I find this happier entry. We have invented a new game, Three Ball Carrom Billiards, each player continuing until he has made five, counting the number of his shots as in golf, the one who finishes in the fewer shots wins. It is a game we play with almost exactly equal skill, and he is highly pleased with it. He said this afternoon, I have never enjoyed billiards as I do now. I look forward to it every afternoon, as my reward, at the end of a good day's work. His work at this time was an article on Marjorie Fleming, the wonderchild whose quaint writings and brief little life had been published to the world by Dr. John Brown. Clemens always adored the thought of Marjorie, and in this article one can see that she ranked almost next to Joan of Arc in his affections. We went out in the logia by and by, and Clemens read aloud from a book which Professor Zubelin left here a few days ago, The Religion of a Democrat. Something in it must have suggested to Clemens his favourite science. For presently he said, I have been reading an old astronomy. It speaks of the perfect line of curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand. It would be about like a billiard ball to him, and he would turn it over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he rubbed over the mountain ranges he might say, there seems to be some slight roughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye. It seems perfectly smooth to look at. The Himalayas to him, the highest peak, would be one sixty thousandth of his height, or about the one thousandth part of an inch, as compared with the average man. I spoke of having somewhere red of some very tiny satellites, one as small perhaps as six miles in diameter, yet a genuine world. Could a man live in a world so small as that, I asked? Oh yes, he said. The gravitation that holds it together would hold him on, and he would always seem upright, the same as here. His horizon would be smaller, but even if he were six feet tall he would only have one foot for each mile of that world's diameter. So you see, he would be little enough, even for a world, that he could walk around in half a day. He talked astronomy a great deal, marvel astronomy. He had no real knowledge of the subject, and I had none of any kind, which made its ungraspable facts all the more thrilling. He was always thrown into a sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space. The supreme drama of the universe. The fact that Alpha Centauri was twenty-five trillions of miles away, two hundred and fifty thousand times the distance of our own remote sun, and that our solar system was travelling as a whole toward the bright Starvega in the constellation of Lyra, at the rate of forty-four miles a second, yet would be thousands upon thousands of years reaching its destination fairly enraptured him. The astronomical light year, that is to say the distance which light travels in a year, was one of the things which he loved to contemplate. But he declared that no two authorities ever figured it alike, and that he was going to figure it out for himself. I came in one morning to find that he had covered several sheets of paper with almost interminable rows of ciphers, and with a result, to him at least, entirely satisfactory. I am quite certain that he was prouder of those figures and their enormous aggregate than if he had just completed an immortal tale. And when he added that the nearest fixed Star, Alpha Centauri, was between four and five light-years distant from the earth, and that there was no possible way to think that distance in miles, or even any calculable fraction of it, his glasses shone and his hair was roached up as with the stimulation of these stupendous facts. By and by he said, I came in with Haley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Haley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, now here are these two unaccountable freaks. They came in together. They must go out together. Oh, I am looking forward to that. And a little later he added, I've got some kind of a heart disease, and Quinterd won't tell me whether it is the kind that carries a man off in an instant, or keeps him lingering along and suffering for twenty years or so. I was in hopes that Quinterd would tell me that I was likely to drop dead any minute. Me didn't. He only told me that my blood pressure was too strong. He didn't give me any schedule, but I expect to go with Haley's Comet. I seem to have omitted making any entries for a few days, but among his notes I find this entry, which seems to refer to some discussion of a favorite philosophy, and has a special interest of its own. July 14, 1909. Yesterday's dispute resumed. I still maintaining that, whereas we can think, we generally don't do it. Don't do it, and don't have to do it. We are automatic machines, which act unconsciously, from morning till sleeping time all day long. All day long our machinery is doing things from habit and instinct, and without requiring any help or attention from our poor little seven by nine thinking apparatus. This reminded me of something. Thirty years ago in Hartford the billiard room was my study, and I wrote my letters there the first thing every morning. My table lay two points off the starboard bow of the billiard table, and the door of exit and entrance bore northeast by east, half east, from that position. Consequently you could see the door across the length of the billiard table, but you couldn't see the floor by the said table. I found, I was always forgetting to ask intruders to carry my letters downstairs for the mail. So I concluded to lay them on the floor by the door. Then the intruder would have to walk over them, and that would indicate to him what they were there for. Did it? No, it didn't. He was a machine, and had habits, take precedence of thought. Now consider this, a stamped and addressed letter lying on the floor, lying aggressively and conspicuously on the floor, is an unusual spectacle. So unusual a spectacle that you would think an intruder couldn't see it there without immediately divining that it was not there by accident, but had been deliberately placed there and for a definite purpose. Very well. It may surprise you to learn that that most simple and most natural and obvious thought would never occur to any intruder on this planet whether he be fool, half fool, or the most brilliant of thinkers. For he is always an automatic machine, and has habits, and his habits will act before his thinking apparatus can get a chance to exert its powers. My scheme failed, because every human being has the habit of picking up any apparently misplaced thing and placing it where it won't be stepped on. My first intruder was George. He went and came without saying anything. Presently I found the letters neatly piled up on the billiard table. I was astonished. I put them on the floor again. The next intruder piled them on the billiard table without a word. I was profoundly moved, profoundly interested. So I set the trap again, also again and again, and yet again, all day long. I caught every member of the family, and every servant. Also, I caught the three finest intellects in the town. In every instance, old, time-worn, automatic habit got in its work so promptly that the thinking apparatus never got a chance. I do not remember this particular discussion, but I do distinctly recall being one of those whose intelligence was not sufficient to prevent my picking up the letter he had thrown on the floor in front of his bed, and being properly classified for doing it. Clemens no longer kept notebooks, as in an earlier time, but set down innumerable memoranda, comments, stray reminders and the like, on small pads, and bunches of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about his room. I gathered up many of them then and afterward, and a few of these characteristic bits may be offered here. Knee. It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them. Jehovah. He is all good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other take your choice. He made it hard to get into heaven, and easy to get into hell. He commended man to multiply and replenish. What? Hell. Modesty anti-dates clothes, and will be resumed when clothes are no more. The latter part of this aphorism is erased, and underneath it he adds, Modesty died when clothes were born. Modesty died when false modesty was born. History. A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it. Morals are not the important thing, nor enlightenment, nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the needs of the body, not of the mind and spirit. Suggestion. There is conscious suggestion, and there is unconscious suggestion. Both come from outside, whence all ideas come. Duals. I think I could wipe out a dishonor by crippling the other man, but I don't see how I could do it by letting him cripple me. I have no feeling of animosity toward people who do not believe as I do. I merely do not respect them. In some serious matters—religion—I would have them burnt. I am old now, and once was a sinner. I often think of it with a kind of soft regret. I trust my days are numbered. I would not have that detail overlooked. She was always a girl. She was always young because her heart was young, and I was young because she lived in my heart, and preserved its youth from decay. He often busied himself working out more extensively some of the ideas that came to him—moral ideas, he called them. One fancy which he followed in several forms—some of them not within the privilege of print—was that of an inquisitive little girl, Bessie, who pursues her mother with difficult questionings. Under Appendix W., at the end of this volume, the reader will find one of the Bessie dialogues. He read these aloud as he finished them, and it is certain that they lacked neither logic nor humor. Sometimes he went to a big drawer in his dresser where he kept his finished manuscripts and took them out and looked over them, and read parts of them aloud, and talked of the plans he had had for them, and how one idea after another had been followed for a time and had failed to satisfy him in the end. Two fiction schemes that had always possessed him he had been unable to bring to any conclusion. Both of these have been mentioned in former chapters, one being the notion of a long period of dream existence during a brief moment of sleep, and the other being the story of a mysterious visitant from another realm. He had experimented with each of these ideas in no less than three forms, and there was fine writing and dramatic narrative in all, but his literary architecture had somehow fallen short of his conception. The mysterious stranger in one of its forms I thought might be satisfactorily concluded, and he admitted that he could probably end it without much labor. He discussed something of his plans, and later I found the notes for its conclusion, but I suppose he was beyond the place where he could take up those old threads, though he contemplated, fondly enough, the possibility, and recalled how he had read at least one form of the dream tale to Howells, who had urged him to complete it. End of Chapter 282 Personal Memoranda Red by John Greenman Section 72 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 283 Astronomy and Dreams August 5, 1909. This morning I noticed on a chair a copy of Flaubert's Salambo, which I recently lent him. I asked if he liked it. No, he said, I didn't like any of it. But you read it. Yes, I read every line of it. You admitted its literary art? Well, it's like this. If I should go to the Chicago stockyards, and they should kill a beef, and cut it up, and the blood should splash all over everything, and then they should take me to another pen, and kill another beef, and the blood should splash over everything again, and so on to pen after pen, I should care for it about as much as I do for that book. But those were bloody days, and you care very much for that period in history. Yes, that is so. But when I read Tacitus, and know that I am reading history, I can accept it as such, and supply the imaginary details, and enjoy it. But this thing is such a continuous procession of blood, and slaughter, and stench. It worries me. It has great art, I can see that. That scene of the crucified lions, and the death cannon, and the tent scene are marvellous. But I wouldn't read that book again without a salary. August 16th he is reading Sartonius, which he already knows by heart, so full of the cruelties and licentiousness of Imperial Rome. This afternoon he began talking about Claudius. They called Claudius a lunatic, he said. But I just see what nice fancies he had. He would go to the arena between times, and have captives and wild beasts brought out, and turned in together for his special enjoyment. Sometimes when there were no captives on hand he would say, well, never mind, bring out a carpenter. Carpentering around the arena wasn't a popular job in those days. He went visiting once to a province, and thought it would be pleasant to see how they disposed of criminals and captives in their crude, old-fashioned way. But there was no executioner on hand. No matter. The Emperor of Rome was in no hurry. He would wait. So he sat down and stayed there, until an executioner came. I said, how do you account for the changed attitude toward these things? We are filled with pity today at the thought of torture and suffering. Ah! But that is because we have drifted that way, and exercised the quality of compassion. Relax a muscle, and it soon loses its vigor. Relax that quality, and in two generations, in one generation, we should be gloating over the spectacle of blood and torture just the same. Why? I read somewhere a letter written just before the Lisbon catastrophe in 1755, about a scene on the public square of Lisbon. A lot of stakes with the faggots piled for burning, and heretics chained for burning. The square was crowded with men and women and children, and when those fires were lighted, and the heretics began to shriek and writhe, those men and women and children laughed, so they were fairly beside themselves with the enjoyment of the scene. The Greeks don't seem to have done these things. I suppose that indicates earlier advancement in compassion. Colonel Harvey and Mr. Danica came up to spend the night. Mr. Clemens had one of his seizures during the evening. They come oftener and last longer. One last night continued for an hour and a half. I slept there. September 7. Today news of the North Pole Discovery by Peary. Five days ago the same discovery was reported by Cook. Clemens' comment. It's the greatest joke of the ages. But a moment later he referred to this dependous fact of Arcturus being fifty thousand times as big as the sun. September 21. This morning he told me, with great glee, the dream he had had just before awakening. He said, I was in an automobile, going slowly, with a little girl beside me, and some uniformed person walking along by us. I said, I'll get out and walk, too. But the officer replied, This is only one of the smallest of our fleet. Then I noticed that the automobile had no front, and there were two cannons mounted where the front should be. I noticed, too, that we were traveling very low, almost, down on the ground. Presently we got to the bottom of a hill and started up another, and I found myself walking ahead of the automobile. I turned around to look for the little girl, and instead of her I found a kitten capering beside me, and when we reached the top of the hill we were looking out over a most barren and desolate waste of sand heaps without a speck of vegetation anywhere, and the kitten said, This view beggars all admiration. Then all at once we were in a great group of people, and I undertook to repeat to them the kitten's remark, but when I tried to do it the words were so touching that I broke down and cried, and all the group cried, too, over the kitten's moving remark. The joy with which he told this absurd sleep fancy made it supremely ridiculous, and we laughed until tears really came. One morning he said, I was awake, a good deal in the night, and I tried to think of interesting things. I got to working out geological periods, trying to think of some way to comprehend them, and then astronomical periods. Of course it's impossible, but I thought of a plan that seemed to mean something to me. I remembered that Neptune is two billion eight hundred million miles away. That, of course, is incomprehensible. But then there is the nearest fixed star, with its twenty-five trillion miles, twenty-five trillion, or nearly a thousand times as far, and then I took this book and counted the lines on a page, and I found that there was an average of thirty-two lines to the page, and two hundred and forty pages, and I figured out that counting the distance to Neptune as one line, there were still not enough lines in the book by nearly two thousand to reach the nearest fixed star, and somehow that gave me a sort of dim idea of the vastness of the distance and kind of journey into space. Later I figured out another method of comprehending a little of that great distance by estimating the existence of the human race at thirty thousand years, Lord Kelvin's figures, and the average generation to have been thirty-three years with a world population of one billion five hundred million souls. I assumed the nearest fixed star to be the first station in paradise, and the first soul to have started thirty thousand years ago. Traveling at the rate of about thirty miles a second, it would just now be arriving in Alpha Centauri with all the rest of that buried multitude stringing out behind at an average distance of twenty miles apart. Few things gave him more pleasure than the contemplation of such figures as these. We made occasional business trips to New York, and during one of them visited the Museum of Natural History to look at the Brontosaur and the meteorites and the astronomical model in the entrance hall. To him these were the most fascinating things in the world. He contemplated the meteorites and the Brontosaur and lost himself in strange and marvellous imaginings concerning the far reaches of time and space once they had come down to us. Mark Twain lived curiously apart from the actualities of life. Dwelling mainly among his philosophies and speculations, he observed vaguely or minutely what went on about him. But in either case the fact took a place, not in the actual world, but in a world within his consciousness or subconsciousness, a place where facts were likely to assume new and altogether different relations from those they had borne in the physical occurrence. It not infrequently happened, therefore, when he recounted some incident, even the most recent, that history took on fresh and startling forms. More than once I have known him to relate an occurrence of the day before with a reality of circumstance that carried absolute conviction when the details themselves were precisely reversed. If his attention were called to the discrepancy, his face would take on a blank look, as of one suddenly aroused from dreamland, to be followed by an almost childish interest in your revelation and ready acknowledgement of his mistake. I do not think such mistakes humiliated him, but they often surprised and, I think, amused him. Insubstantial and deceptive as was this inner world of his, to him it must have been much more real than the world of flitting physical shapes about him. He would fix you keenly with his attention, but you realized at last that he was placing you and seeing you not as a part of the material landscape, but as an item of his own inner world, a world in which philosophies and morals stood upright, a very good world indeed, but certainly a topsy-turvy world when viewed with the eye of mere literal scrutiny. And this was, mainly, of course, because the routine of life did not appeal to him. Even members of his household did not always stir his consciousness. He knew they were there. He could call them by name. He relied upon them. But his knowledge of them always suggested the knowledge that Mount Everest might have of the forests and caves and boulders upon its slopes, useful, perhaps, but hardly necessary to the giant's existence, and, in no important matter, a part of its greater life. End of Chapter 283 Astronomy and Dreams Read by John Greenman Section 73 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 284 A Library Concert In a letter which Clemens wrote to Miss Wallace at this time, he tells of a concert given at Stormfield on September 21st for the benefit of the new Reading Library. Gabrielovich had so far recovered, and he was up and about and able to play. David Bisphen, the great baritone, always genial and generous, agreed to take part, and Clara Clemens, already accustomed to public singing, was to join in the program. The letter to Miss Wallace supplies the rest of the history. We had a grand time here yesterday, concert in aid of the Little Library. Team, Gabrielovich, pianist, David Bisphen, vocalist, Clara Clemens, ditto, Mark Twain, introducer of team. Detachments and squads and groups and singles came from everywhere. Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Reading, Reading Ridge, Ridgefield, and even from New York. Some in 60 horsepower motor cars, some in buggies and carriages, and a swarm of farmer-young folk on foot from miles around, 525 altogether. If we hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the performance, we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the library. Not quite all had seats. We filled the loggia, the dining-room, the hall, clear into the billiard room, the stairs, and the brick-paved square outside the dining-room door. The artists were received with a great welcome, and it woke them up. And I tell you, they performed to the Queen's taste. The program was an hour and three-quarters long, and the encores added a half-hour to it. The enthusiasm of the house was hair-lifting. They all stayed an hour after the close to shake hands and congratulate. We had no dollar seats except in the library, but we accumulated $372 for the building fund. We had tea at half-past six for a dozen, the Hawthorne's, Jeanette Gilder and her niece, etc., and, after eight o'clock dinner, we had a private concert and a ball in the bare-stripped library until ten. Nobody present but the team and Mr. and Mrs. Payne and Jean and her dog and me. Bisfam did Danny Dever and the Earl Conig in his majestic, great organ tones and artillery, and Gbrilirich played the accompaniments as they were never played before, I do suppose. There is not much to add to that account. Clemens introducing the performance was the gay feature of the occasion. He spoke of the great reputation of Bisfam and Gbrilirich. Then he said, my daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen, but she is ever so much better looking. The music of the evening that followed with Gbrilirich at the piano and David Bisfam to sing was something not likely ever to be repeated. Bisfam sang the Earl Conig and Keely Cranky and the Grenadiers and several other songs. He spoke of having sung Wagner's arrangement of the Grenadiers at the composer's home following his death and how none of the family had heard it before. There followed Dancing and Jean Clemens, fine and handsome, apparently full of life and health, danced down that great living-room as carefree as if there was no shadow upon her life, and the evening was distinguished in another way, for before it ended, Clare Clemens had promised Oseb Gbrilirich to become his wife. End of Chapter 284 A Library Concert Red by John Greenman Section 74 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 285 A Wedding at Stormfield The wedding of Oseb Gbrilirich and Clare Clemens was not delayed. Gbrilirich had signed for a concert tour in Europe, and unless the marriage took place forthwith, it must be postponed many months. It followed, therefore, fifteen days after the engagement. They were busy days. Clemens, enormously excited and pleased over the prospect of the first wedding in his family, personally attended to the selection of those who were to have announcement cards, employing a stenographer to make the list. October 6 was a perfect wedding day. It was one of those quiet, lovely fall days when the whole world seems at peace. Claude, the butler, with his usual skill in such matters, had decorated the great living room with gay autumn foliage and flowers, brought in mainly from the woods and fields. They blended perfectly with the warm tones of the walls and furnishings, and I do not remember ever having seen a more beautiful room. Only relatives and a few of the nearest friends were invited to the ceremony. The Twitchels came over a day ahead for Twitchel, who had assisted in the marriage rights between Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon, was to perform that ceremony for their daughter now. A fellow student of the bride and groom, when they had been pupils of Leshetiski in Vienna, Miss Ethel Newcomb, was at the piano and played softly the wedding march from Tanhauser. Gene Clemens was the only bridesmaid, and she was stately and classically beautiful, with a proud dignity in her office. Jervis Langdon, the bride's cousin and childhood playmate, acted as best man, and Clemens, of course, gave the bride away. By request he wore his scarlet Oxford gown over his snowy flannels, and was splendid beyond words. I do not write of the appearance of the bride and groom, for brides and grooms are always handsome and always happy, and certainly these were no exception. It was all so soon over, the feasting ended, and the principles whirling away into the future. I have a picture in my mind of them seated together in the automobile, with Richard Watson Gilder standing on the step for a last goodbye, and before them a wide expanse of autumn foliage and distant hills. I remember Gilder's voice saying, when the car was on the turn and they were waving back to us, over the hills and far away, beyond the utmost purple rim, beyond the night, beyond the day, through all the world she followed him. The matter of the wedding had been kept from the newspapers until the eve of the wedding, when the Associated Press had been notified. A representative was there, but Clemens had characteristically interviewed himself on the subject, and it was only necessary to hand the reporter a typewritten copy. Replying to the question put to himself, Are you pleased with the marriage? he answered. Yes, fully as much as any marriage could please me or any other father. There are two or three solemn things in life, and a happy marriage is one of them, for the terrors of life are all to come. I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad, for she always had a warm affection for Gabrilovich. There was another wedding at Stormfield on the following afternoon, an imitation wedding, Little Joy came up with me, and wished she could stand in just the spot where she had seen the bride stand, and she expressed a wish that she could get married like that. Clemens said, Frankness is a jewel. Only the young can afford it. Then he happened to remember a ridiculous boy doll, a white-haired creature with red coat and green trousers, a souvenir imitation of himself from one of the Rogers' Christmas trees. He knew where it was, and he got it out. Then he said, Now, Joy, we will have another wedding. This is Mr. Colonel Williams, and you are to become his wedded wife. So Joy stood up very gravely, and Clemens performed the ceremony, and I gave the bride away, and Joy to him became Mrs. Colonel Williams thereafter, and entered happily into her new estate. End of Chapter 285 A Wedding at Stormfield Read by John Greenman Section 75 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 286 Album Days A harvest of letters followed the wedding. A general congratulatory expression mingled with admiration, affection, and goodwill. In his interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his heart, and many begged him to deny that there was anything serious to matter with him, urging him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his continued life and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-weary humanity, and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he should live. Such letters could not fail to cheer him. A letter of this period from John Bigelow gave him a pleasure of its own. Clemens had written Bigelow apropos some adverse expression on the tariff. Thank you for any hard word you can say about the tariff. I guess the government that robs its own people earns the future it is preparing for itself. Bigelow was just then declining an invitation to the annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce. In sending his regrets he said, The sentiment I would propose, if I dare to be present, would be the words of Mark Twain, the statesman. The government that robs its own people earns the future it is preparing for itself. Now to Clemens himself he wrote, Rosh Foucault never said a cleverer thing, nor Dr. Franklin a wiser one. Be careful, or the demos will be running you for president when you are not on your guard. Yours more than ever, John Bigelow. Among the tributes that came was a sermon by the Reverend Fred Windo Adams of Schenectady, New York, with Mark Twain as its subject. Mr. Adams chose for his text, take Mark and bring him with thee, for he is profitable for the ministry. And he placed the two marks, St. Mark and Mark Twain, side by side as ministers to humanity, and characterized him as a fearless knight of righteousness. A few weeks later Mr. Adams himself came to Stormfield, and like all open-minded ministers of the gospel he found that he could get on very well indeed with Mark Twain. In spite of the good will and the good wishes, Clemens' malady did not improve. As the days grew chillier he found that he must remain closer indoors. The cold air seemed to bring on the pains, and they were gradually becoming more severe. Then too he did not follow the doctor's orders in the matter of smoking, nor altogether as to exercise. To Miss Wallace, he wrote, I can't walk, I can't drive, I'm not downstairs much, and I don't see company. But I drink barrels of water to keep the pain quiet. I read and read and read, and smoke and smoke and smoke, all the time, as formerly, and it's a contented and comfortable life. But this was not altogether accurate as to details. He did come downstairs many times daily, and he persisted in billiards regardless of the paroxysms. We found too that the seizures were induced by mental agitation. One night he read aloud to Gene and myself the first chapter of an article, The Turning Point in My Life, which he was preparing for Harper's Bazaar. He had begun it with one of his impossible burlesque fancies, and he felt our attitude of disappointment even before any word had been said. Suddenly he rose, and, laying his hand on his breast, said, I must lie down, and started toward the stair. I supported him to his room, and hurriedly poured out the hot water. He drank it, and dropped back on the bed. Don't speak to me, he said. Don't make me talk. Gene came in, and we sat there several moments in silence. I think we both wondered if this might not be the end, but presently he spoke of his own accord, declaring he was better, and ready for billiards. We played for at least an hour afterward, and he seemed no worse for the attack. It is a curious malady that Angina, even the doctors, are acquainted with its manifestations, rather than its cause. Clemens's general habits of body and mind were probably not such as to delay its progress. Furthermore, there had befallen him, that year, one of those misfortunes which his confiding nature peculiarly invited, a betrayal of trust by those in whom it had been boundlessly placed, and it seems likely that the resulting humiliation aggravated his complaint. The writing of a detailed history of this episode afforded him occupation and a certain amusement, but probably did not contribute to his health. One day he sent for his attorney Mr. Charles T. Lark and made some final revisions in his will. Mark Twain's estate, later appraised at something more than six hundred thousand dollars, was left in the hands of trustees for his daughters. The trustees were Edward E. Loomis, Gervus Langdon, and Zoeth S. Freeman. The direction of his literary affairs was left to his daughter Clara and the writer of this history. To see him, you would never have suspected that he was ill. He was in good flesh, and his movement was as airy, and his eye as bright, and his face as full of bloom, as at any time during the period I had known him. Also he was as light-hearted and full of ideas and plans, and he was even gentler, having grown mellow with age and retirement, like good wine. And of course he would find amusement in his condition. He said, I have always pretended to be sick, to escape visitors. Now, for the first time, I have got a genuine excuse. It makes me feel so honest. And once when Gene reported a caller in the living room he said, Gene, I can't see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead any minute, and it would be most embarrassing. But he did see her, for it was a poet, Angela Morgan, and he read her poem God's Man, Allowed, with great feeling, and later he sold it for her to Collier's Weekly. He still had violent rages now and then, remembering some of the most notable of his mistakes, and once after denouncing himself, rather inclusively, as an idiot, he said, I wish to God the lightning would strike me. But I've wished that fifty thousand times, and never got anything out of it. I have missed several good chances. Mrs. Clemens was afraid of lightning, and would never let me bear my head to the storm. The element of humor was never lacking, and the rages became less violent and less frequent. I was at Stormfield steadily now, and there was a regular routine of afternoon sessions of billiards or reading, in which we were generally alone, for Gene, occupied with her farming and her secretary labours, seldom appeared except at mealtimes. Occasionally she joined in the billiard games, but it was difficult learning, and her interest was not great. She would have made a fine player, for she had a natural talent for games, as she had for languages, and she could have mastered the science of angles, as she had mastered tennis, and French, and German, and Italian. She had naturally a fine intellect, with many of her father's characteristics, and a tender heart that made every dumb creature her friend. Katie Leary, who had been Gene's nurse, once told how, as a little child, Gene had not been particularly interested in a picture of the Lisbon earthquake, where the people were being swallowed up, but on looking at the next page, which showed a number of animals being overwhelmed, she had said, Poor things! Katie said, Why, you didn't say that about the people! But Gene answered, Oh, they could speak! One night at the dinner table her father was saying how difficult it must be for a man who had led a busy life to give up the habit of work. That is why the Rogerses killed themselves, he said, They would rather kill themselves in the old treadmill, than stop and try to kill time. They have forgotten how to rest. They know nothing, but to keep on till they drop. I told of something I had read not long before. It was about an aged lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island. He had not offered to hurt anyone, but after wandering about a little, rather aimlessly, he had come to a picket fence, and a moment later began pacing up and down in front of it, just the length of his cage. They had come and led him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly into it. I noticed that Gene was listening anxiously, and when I finished she said, Is that a true story? She had forgotten altogether the point in illustration. She was concerned only with the poor old beast that had found no joy in his liberty. Among the letters that Clemens wrote just then was one to Miss Wallace, in which he described the glory of the fall colors as seen from his windows. The autumn splendors passed you by. What a pity. I wish you had been here. It was beyond words. It was heaven and hell, and sunset and rainbows, and the aurora all fused into one divine harmony. And you couldn't look at it and keep the tears back. Such a singing together, and such a whispering together, and such a snuggling together of cozy, soft colors, and such kissing and caressing and such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out, and catches those dainty weeds at it. You remember that weed garden of mine? And then—then—the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance. Oh, hearing about it is nothing. You should be here to see it. In the same letter he refers to some work that he was writing for his own satisfaction, Letters from the Earth. Said letters supposed to have been written by an immortal visitant and addressed to other immortals in some remote sphere. I'll read passages to you. This book will never be published. In fact, it couldn't be, because it would be felony. Pain enjoys it, but pain is going to be damned one of these days, I suppose. I very well remember his writing those Letters from the Earth. He read them to me from time to time as he wrote them, and they were fairly overflowing with humor and philosophy and satire concerning the human race. The immortal visitor pointed out, one after another, the absurdities of mankind, his ridiculous conception of heaven, and his special conceit in believing that he was the Creator's pet, the particular form of life for which all the universe was created. Clemens allowed his exuberant fancy free reign, being under no restrictions as to the possibility of print or public offence. He enjoyed them himself, too, as he read them allowed, and we laughed ourselves weak over his bold imaginings. One admissible extract will carry something of the flavor of these chapters. It is where the celestial correspondent describes man's religion. His heaven is, like himself, strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists, utterly and entirely, of diversions, which he cares next to nothing about here in the earth, yet he is quite sure he will like in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you the details. Most men do not sing. Most men cannot sing. Most men will not stay where others are singing if it be continued more than two hours. Note that. Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument, and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set that down. Many men pray, not many of them like to do it, a few pray long, the others make a shortcut. More men go to church than want to. To forty-nine men in fifty the Sabbath day is a dreary, dreary bore. Furthermore all sane people don't test noise. All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their lives. Monotony quickly wearies them. Now then, you have the facts. You know what men don't enjoy. Well, they have invented a heaven out of their own heads all by themselves. Guess what it is like? In fifteen hundred years you couldn't do it. They have left out the very things they care for most, their dearest pleasures, and replaced them with prayer. In man's heaven everybody sings. There are no exceptions. The man who did not sing on earth sings there. The man who could not sing on earth sings there. Thus universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet. It goes on all day long and every day during a stretch of twelve hours, and everybody stays where on earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is one hymn alone. The words are always the same in number. They are only about a dozen. There is no rhyme. There is no poetry. Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna unto the highest. And a few such praises constitute the whole service. Meantime every person is playing on a harp. Consider the deafening hurricane of sound. Consider further. It is a praise service, a service of compliment, flattery, adulation. Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment, and who not only endures it but likes it, enjoys it, requires it, commands it? Hold your breath. It is God. This race is God, I mean, their own pet invention. Most of the ideas presented in this, his last commentary on human absurdities, were new only as to phrasing. He had exhausted the topic long ago in one way or another, but it was one of the themes in which he never lost interest. Many subjects became stale to him at last, but the curious invention called man remained a novelty to him to the end. From my notebook, October 25th, I am constantly amazed at his knowledge of history, all history, religious, political, military. He seems to have read everything in the world concerning Rome, France, and England particularly. Last night we stopped playing billiards while he reviewed, in the most vivid and picturesque phrasing, the reasons of Rome's decline. Such a presentation would have enthralled any audience. I could not help feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some of his public effort to work of that sort. No one could have equalled him at it. He concluded with some comments on the possibility of America following Rome's example, though he thought the vote of the people would always, or at least for a long time, prevent imperialism. November 1st. Today he has been absorbed in his old interest in shorthand. It is the only rational alphabet, he declared. All this spelling reform is nonsense. What we need is alphabet reform. And shorthand is the thing. Take the letter M, for instance. It is made with one stroke in shorthand, while in longhand it requires at least three. The word Mephistopheles can be written in shorthand with one sixth the number of strokes that is required in longhand. I tell you, shorthand should be adopted as the alphabet. I said, there is this objection. The characters are so slightly different that each writer soon forms a system of his own, and it is seldom that two can read each other's notes. You are talking of stenographic reporting, he said, rather warmly. Nothing of the kind is true in the case of the regular alphabet. It is perfectly clear and legible. Would you have it in the schools, then? Yes, it should be taught in the schools, not for stenographic purposes, but only for use in writing to save time. He was very much an earnest, and said he had undertaken an article on the subject. November 3rd. He said he could not sleep last night for thinking what a fool he had been in his various investments. I have always been the victim of somebody, he said, and always an idiot myself, doing things that even a child would not do, never asking anybody's advice, never taking it when it was offered. I can't see how anybody could do the things I have done and have kept right on doing. I could see that the thought agitated him, and I suggested that we go to his room and read, which we did, and had a riotous time over the most recent chapters of the letters from the earth, and some notes he had made for future chapters on infant damnation and other distinctive features of orthodox creeds. He told an anecdote of an old minister who declared that Presbyterianism without infant damnation would be like the dog on the train that couldn't be identified because it had lost its tag. Somewhat on the defensive, I said, but we must admit that the so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive. He answered, yes, but in spite of their religion, not because of it, the church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve, and every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before the Christian religion was born. I have been reading Gibbons' celebrated fifteenth chapter, he said later, and I don't see what Christians found against it. It is so mild, so gentle in its sarcasm. He added that he had been reading also a little book of brief biographies and had found in it the saying of Darwin's father, Unitarianism is a feather-bed to catch falling Christians. I was glad to find and identify that saying, he said, it is so good. He finished the evening by reading a chapter from Carlisle's French Revolution, a fine pyrotechnic passage, the Gathering at Versailles. I said that Carlisle somehow reminded me of a fervid stump-speaker who pounded his fists and went at his audience fiercely, determined to convince them. Yes, he said, but he is the best one that ever lived. November 10th, this morning early he heard me stirring and called. I went in and found him propped up with a book, as usual, he said. I seldom read Christmas stories, but this is very beautiful. It has made me cry. I want you to read it. It was Booth Tarkington's beastly Christmas party. Tarkington has the true touch, he said. His work always satisfies me. Another book he has been reading with great enjoyment is James Branch Cabell's Chivalry. He cannot say enough of the subtle poetic art with which Cabell has flung the light of romance about dark and sordid chapters of history. End of Chapter 286 Autumn Days Red by John Greenman Section 76 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 287 Mark Twain's Reading Perhaps here one may speak of Mark Twain's reading in general. On the table by him and on his bed, and in the billiard-room shelves, he kept the books he read most. They were not many, not more than a dozen, but they were manifestly of familiar and frequent usage. All, or nearly all, had annotations, spontaneously uttered marginal notes, title prefatories, or concluding comments. They were the books he had read again and again, and it was seldom that he had not had something to say with each fresh reading. There were the three big volumes by Sassimon, the memoirs, which he once told me he had read no less than twenty times. On the fly-leaf of the first volume he wrote, This, and Casanova, and Peeps, sat in parallel columns, could afford a good coup d'oeil, a French and English high-life of that epoch. All through those finely printed volumes are his commentaries, sometimes no more than a word, sometimes a filled, closely written margin. He found little to admire in the human nature of Sassimon's period, little to approve in Sassimon himself beyond his unrestrained frankness, which he admired without stint. And in one paragraph where the details of that early period are set down with startling fidelity, he wrote, O incomparable Sassimon! Sassimon is always frank, and Mark Twain was equally so. Where the former tells one of the unspeakable compulsions of Louis XIV, the latter has commented, We have to grant that God made this royal hog. We may also be permitted to believe that it was a crime to do so. And on another page, in her memories of this period, the Duchess de Saint-Claire makes this striking remark. Sometimes one could tell a gentleman, but it was only by his manner of using his fork. His comments on the Orthodox religion of Sassimon's period are not marked by gentleness. Of the author's reference to the Edict of Naut, which he says depopulated half of the realm, ruined its commerce, and authorized torments and punishments, by which so many innocent people of both sexes were killed by thousands, Plemons writes, So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel. Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is. Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions, but no religion is great enough, or divine enough, to add that new law to its code. In the place where Sassimon describes the death of Monsignor, son of the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their extravagantly pretended sorrow, Plemons wrote, It is all so true, all so human. God made these animals. He must have noticed this scene. I wish I knew how it struck him. There were not many notes in a Suetonius, nor in the Carlisle Revolution, though these were among the volumes he read oftenest. Perhaps they expressed for him too completely and too richly their subject matter to require anything at his hand. Here and there are marked passages and occasional cross-references to related history and circumstance. There was not much room for comment on the narrow margins of the old copy of peeps, which he had read steadily since the early seventies. But here and there a few crisp words, and the underscoring and marked passages are plentiful enough to convey his devotion to that quaint record which, perhaps next to Suetonius, was the book he read and quoted most. Francis Parkman's Canadian histories he had read periodically, especially the story of the old regime and of the Jesuits in North America. As late as January 1908 he wrote on the title page of the old regime, Very interesting. It tells how people, religiously and otherwise insane, came over from France and colonized Canada. He was not always complimentary to those who undertook to Christianize the Indians, but he did not fail to write his admiration of their courage, their very willingness to endure privation and even the fiendish savage tortures for the sake of their faith. What matter of men are these? he wrote, apropos of the account of Bressani, who had undergone the most devilish inflictions which savage ingenuity could devise, and yet returned maimed and disfigured the following spring to dare again the knives and fiery brand of the Iroquois. Clemens was likely to be on the side of the Indians, but hardly in their barbarism. In one place he wrote, that men should be willing to leave their happy homes and endure what the missionaries endured in order to teach these Indians the road to hell would be rational, understandable, but why they should want to teach them a way to heaven is a thing which the mind somehow cannot grasp. Other histories, mainly English and French, showed how he had read them, read and digested every word and line. There were two volumes of lekkie much worn. Andrew D. White's Science and Theology, a chief interest for at least one summer, and among the collection a well-worn copy of Modern English Literature, Its Blemishes and Defects by Henry H. Breen. On the title page of this book, Clemens had written, Hartford 1876. Use with care, for it is a scarce book. England had to be ransacked in order to get it, or the bookseller speaketh falsely. He once wrote a paper for the Saturday Morning Club using for his text examples of slipshod English which Breen had noted. Clemens had a passion for biography, and especially for autobiography, diaries, letters, and such intimate human history. Greville's Journal of the Reigns of George IV and William IV he had read much and annotated freely. Greville, while he admired Byron's talents, abhorred the poet's personality, and in one place condemns him as a vicious person and a debauchee. He adds, Then he despises pretenders and charlatans of all sorts. Well, he is himself a pretender, as all men are who assume a character which does not belong to them, and effect to be something which they are all the time conscious they are not in reality. Clemens wrote on the margin, But, dear sir, you are forgetting that what a man sees in the human race is merely himself in the deep and honest privacy of his own heart. Byron despised the race because he despised himself. I feel, as Byron did, and for the same reason. Do you admire the race and consequently yourself? A little further along where Greville laments that Byron can take no profit to himself from the sinful characters he depicts so faithfully, Clemens commented, If Byron, if any man draws fifty characters, they are all himself fifty shades, fifty moods of his own character, and when the man draws them well, why do they stir my admiration? Because they are me. I recognize myself. A volume of Plutarch was among the biographies that showed usage and the life of P. T. Barnum, written by himself. Two years before the mast he loved and never tired of. The more recent memoirs of Andrew D. White and M. C. D. Conway both, I remember, gave him enjoyment as did the letters of Lowell. A volume of the letters of Madame de Savigne had some annotated margins which were not complementary to the translator, or for that matter to Savigne herself, whom he once designates as a nauseating person, many of whose letters had been uselessly translated as well as poorly arranged for reading. But he would read any volume of letters or personal memoirs, none were too poor that had the throb of life in them, however slight. Of such sort were the books that Mark Twain had loved best, and such were a few of his words concerning them. Some of them belonged to his earlier reading, and among these is Darwin's Descent of Man, a book whose influence was always present, though I believe he did not read it any more in later years. In the days I knew him, he read steadily not much besides Setonius and Peeps and Carlisle. These and his simple astronomers and geologies, and the Mort Arthur and the poems of Kipling, were seldom far from his hand. CHAPTER 288. A Bermuda Birthday. It was the middle of November 1909, when Clemens decided to take another Bermuda vacation, and it was the nineteenth that we sailed. I went to New York a day ahead and arranged matters, and on the evening of the eighteenth received the news that Richard Watson Gilder had suddenly died. Next morning there was other news. Clemens old friend William M. Laughin of the Sun had died while undergoing a surgical operation. I met Clemens at the train, he had already heard about Gilder, but he had not yet learned of Laughin's death. He said, That's just it. Gilder and Laughin get all the good things that come along, and I never get anything. Then suddenly remembering he added, How curious it is! I have been thinking of Laughin coming down on the train, and mentally writing a letter to him on this Stetson Eddie affair. I asked when he had begun thinking of Laughin. He said, Within the hour! It was within the hour that I had received the news, and naturally in my mind had carried it instantly to him. Perhaps there was something telepathic in it. He was not at all ill going down to Bermuda, which was a fortunate thing, for the water was rough and I was quite disqualified. We did not even discuss astronomy, though there was, what seemed most important news, the reported discovery of a new planet. But there was plenty of talk on the subject as soon as we got settled in the Hamilton Hotel. It was windy and rainy out of doors, and we looked out on the drenched semi-tropical foliage with a great bamboo swaying and bending in the foreground, while he speculated on the vast distance that the new planet must lie from our sun, to which it was still a satellite. The report had said that it was probably four hundred billions of miles distant, and that on this far frontier of the solar system the sun could not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a snail pace, yet with unvarying exactitude its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its motion and has become a near neighbor. He was a good deal excited at first, having somehow the impression that this new planet traveled out beyond the nearest fixed star, but then he remembered that the distance to that first solar neighbor was estimated in trillions, not billions, and that our little system, even with its new additions, was a child's hand breath on the plane of the sky. He had brought along a small book called The Pith of Astronomy, a fascinating little volume, and he read from it about the great tempest of fire in the sun, where the waves of flame roll up two thousand miles high, though the sun itself is such a tiny star in the deeps of the universe. If I dwell unwarrantably on this phase of Mark Twain's character, it is because it was always so fascinating to me, and the contemplation of the drama of the skies always meant so much to him, and somehow always seemed akin to him in its proportions. He had been born under a flaming star, a wanderer of the skies. He was himself, to me, always a comet rushing through space from mystery to mystery, regardless of sun and systems. It is not likely to rain long in Bermuda, and when the sun comes back it brings summer, whatever the season. Within a day after our arrival we were driving about those coral roads along the beaches, and by that marvelously variegated water we went often to the south shore, especially to Devonshire Bay, where the reefs and the sea coloring seem more beautiful than elsewhere. Usually when we reached the bay we got out to walk along the indurated shore, stopping here and there to look out over the jeweled water-liquid turquoise, emerald lapis lazuli jade, the imperial garment of the Lord. At first we went alone with only the colored driver Clifford Trott whose name Clemens could not recollect, though he was always attempting resemblances with ludicrous results. A little later Helen Allen, an early angel-fish member already mentioned, was with us and directed the drives, for she had been born on the island and knew every attractive locality, though, for that matter, it would be hard to find there a place that was not attractive. Clemens in fact remained not many days regularly at the hotel. He kept a room and his wardrobe there, but he paid a visit to Bay House, the lovely and quiet home of Helen's parents, and prolonged it from day to day and from week to week, because it was a quiet and peaceful place, with affectionate attention and limitless welcome. Clifford Trott had orders to come with the carriage each afternoon, and we drove down to Bay House for Mark Twain and his playmate, and then went wandering at will among the labyrinth of Blossom bordered, perfectly kept roadways of a dainty paradise that never, I believe, becomes quite a reality, even to those who know it best. Clemens had an occasional paroxysm during these weeks, but they were not likely to be severe or protracted, and I have no doubt the peace of his surroundings, the remoteness from disturbing events, as well as the balmy nature, all contributed to his improved condition. He talked pretty continuously during these drives, and he by no means restricted his subjects to juvenile matters. He discussed history and his favorite sciences and philosophies, and I am sure that his drift was rarely beyond the understanding of his young companion, for it was Mark Twain's gift to phrase his thought so that it commanded not only the respect of age, but the comprehension and interest of youth. I remember that once he talked during an afternoon's drive on the French Revolution and the ridiculous episode of Anacarsis Clutes, orator and advocate of the human race, collecting the vast populace of France to swear allegiance to a king even then doomed to the block. The very name of Clutes suggested humor, and nothing could have been more delightful and graphic than the whole episode as he related it. Helen asked if he thought such a thing as that could ever happen in America. No, he said. The American sense of humor would have laughed it out of court in a week, and the Frenchman dreads ridicule too, though he never seems to realize how ridiculous he is. The most ridiculous creature in the world. On the morning of his seventy-fourth birthday he was looking wonderfully well after a night of sound sleep, his face full of color and freshness, his eyes bright and keen and full of good humor. I presented him with a pair of cuff buttons, silver enameled with the Bermuda lily, and I thought he seemed pleased with them. It was rather gloomy outside, so we remained indoors by the fire and played cards, game after game of hearts, at which he excelled, and he was usually kept happy by winning. There were no visitors, and after dinner Helen asked him to read some of her favorite episodes from Tom Sawyer, so he read the whitewashing scene, Peter and the painkiller, and such chapters until tea time. Then there was a birthday cake, an afterword, cigars, and talk, and a quiet fireside evening. Once in the course of his talk he forgot a word, and announced his poor memory. I'll forget the Lord's middle name some time, he declared, right in the midst of a storm, when I need all the help I can get. Later he said, nobody dreamed that seventy-four years ago, today, that I would be in Bermuda now, and I thought he meant a good deal more than the words conveyed. It was during this Bermuda visit that Mark Twain added the finishing paragraph to his article The Turning Point in My Life, which at Hal's suggestion he had been preparing for Harper's Bazaar. It was a characteristic touch, and as the last summary of his philosophy of human life may be repeated here. Necessarily the scene of the real turning point of my life, and of yours, was the garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary guild. Adam's temperament was the first command the deity ever issued to a human being on this planet, and it was the only command Adam would never be able to disobey. It said, be weak, be water, and be weak, and be characterless, be cheaply persuadable. The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certainly to be disobeyed, not by Adam himself, but by his temperament, which he did not create and had no authority over. For the temperament is the man. The thing tricked the man into and worked out with clothes and named man is merely its shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's temperament is thou shalt kill. The law of the sheep's temperament is thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbrew its hands in the blood of the lion, is not worthwhile, for those commands can't be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of temperament, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve, that is, in their temperaments, not in them poor helpless young creatures afflicted with temperaments made out of butter, which butter was commanded to get into contact with fire and be melted. What I cannot help wishing is that Adam and Eve had been postponed and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place, that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hellfire could Satan have beguiled them to eat the apple. There would have been results. Indeed, yes, the apple would be intact today. There would be no human race. There would be no you. There would be no me. And the old, old creation of the apple would be intact today. The ancient dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild would have been defeated. End of chapter 288, a Bermuda birthday, read by John Greenman.