"I remember," he said, "the Sadducees didn't believe in hell. He brought them one."

"Nor the resurrection. He brought them that, also."

He did not admit that there had been a Christ with the character and mission related by the Gospels.

"It is all a myth," he said. "There have been Saviours in every age of the world. It is all just a fairy tale, like the idea of Santa Claus."

"But," I argued, "even the spirit of Christmas is real when it is genuine. Suppose that we admit there was no physical Saviour—that it is only an idea—a spiritual embodiment which humanity has made for itself and is willing to improve upon as its own spirituality improves, wouldn't that make it worthy?"

"But then the fairy story of the atonement dissolves, and with it crumbles the very foundations of any established church. You can create your own Testament, your own Scripture, and your own Christ, but you've got to give up your atonement."

"As related to the crucifixion, yes, and good riddance to it; but the death of the old order and the growth of spirituality comes to a sort of atonement, doesn't it?"

He said:

"A conclusion like that has about as much to do with the Gospels and Christianity as Shakespeare had to do with Bacon's plays. You are preaching a doctrine that would have sent a man to the stake a few centuries ago. I have preached that in my own Gospel."

I remembered then, and realized that, by my own clumsy ladder, I had merely mounted from dogma, and superstition to his platform of training the ideals to a higher contentment of soul.



CCLXXVII. "IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?"

I set out on my long journey with much reluctance. However, a series of guests with various diversions had been planned, and it seemed a good time to go. Clemens gave me letters of introduction, and bade me Godspeed. It would be near the end of April before I should see him again.

Now and then on the ship, and in the course of my travels, I remembered the great news I was to hear concerning Shakespeare. In Cairo, at Shepheard's, I looked eagerly through English newspapers, expecting any moment to come upon great head-lines; but I was always disappointed. Even on the return voyage there was no one I could find who had heard any particular Shakespeare news.

Arriving in New York, I found that Clemens himself had published his Shakespeare dictations in a little volume of his own, entitled, 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' The title certainly suggested spiritistic matters, and I got a volume at Harpers', and read it going up on the train, hoping to find somewhere in it a solution of the great mystery. But it was only matter I had already known; the secret was still unrevealed.

At Redding I lost not much time in getting up to Stormfield. There had been changes in my absence. Clara Clemens had returned from her travels, and Jean, whose health seemed improved, was coming home to be her father's secretary. He was greatly pleased with these things, and declared he was going to have a home once more with his children about him.

He was quite alone that day, and we walked up and down the great living-room for an hour, perhaps, while he discussed his new plans. For one thing, he had incorporated his pen-name, Mark Twain, in order that the protection of his copyrights and the conduct of his literary business in general should not require his personal attention. He seemed to find a relief in this, as he always did in dismissing any kind of responsibility. When we went in for billiards I spoke of his book, which I had read on the way up, and of the great Shakespearian secret which was to astonish the world. Then he told me that the matter had been delayed, but that he was no longer required to suppress it; that the revelation was in the form of a book—a book which revealed conclusively to any one who would take the trouble to follow the directions that the acrostic name of Francis Bacon in a great variety of forms ran through many—probably through all of the so-called Shakespeare plays. He said it was far and away beyond anything of the kind ever published; that Ignatius Donnelly and others had merely glimpsed the truth, but that the author of this book, William Stone Booth, had demonstrated, beyond any doubt or question, that the Bacon signatures were there. The book would be issued in a few days, he said. He had seen a set of proofs of it, and while it had not been published in the best way to clearly demonstrate its great revelation, it must settle the matter with every reasoning mind. He confessed that his faculties had been more or less defeated in, attempting to follow the ciphers, and he complained bitterly that the evidence had not been set forth so that he who merely skims a book might grasp it.

He had failed on the acrostics at first; but more recently he had understood the rule, and had been able to work out several Bacon signatures. He complimented me by saying that he felt sure that when the book came I would have no trouble with it.

Without going further with this matter, I may say here that the book arrived presently, and between us we did work out a considerable number of the claimed acrostics by following the rules laid down. It was certainly an interesting if not wholly convincing occupation, and it would be a difficult task for any one to prove that the ciphers are not there. Just why this pretentious volume created so little agitation it would be hard to say. Certainly it did not cause any great upheaval in the literary world, and the name of William Shakespeare still continues to be printed on the title-page of those marvelous dramas so long associated with his name.

Mark Twain's own book on the subject—'Is Shakespeare Dead?'—found a wide acceptance, and probably convinced as many readers. It contained no new arguments; but it gave a convincing touch to the old ones, and it was certainly readable.—[Mark Twain had the fullest conviction as to the Bacon authorship of the Shakespeare plays. One evening, with Mr. Edward Loomis, we attended a fine performance of "Romeo and Juliet" given by Sothern and Marlowe. At the close of one splendid scene he said, quite earnestly, "That is about the best play that Lord Bacon ever wrote."]

Among the visitors who had come to Stormfield was Howells. Clemens had called a meeting of the Human Race Club, but only Howells was able to attend. We will let him tell of his visit:

We got on very well without the absentees, after finding them in the wrong, as usual, and the visit was like those I used to have with him so many years before in Hartford, but there was not the old ferment of subjects. Many things had been discussed and put away for good, but we had our old fondness for nature and for each other, who were so differently parts of it. He showed his absolute content with his house, and that was the greater pleasure for me because it was my son who designed it. The architect had been so fortunate as to be able to plan it where a natural avenue of savins, the close- knit, slender, cypress-like cedars of New England, led away from the rear of the villa to the little level of a pergola, meant some day to be wreathed and roofed with vines. But in the early spring days all the landscape was in the beautiful nakedness of the Northern winter. It opened in the surpassing loveliness of wooded and meadowed uplands, under skies that were the first days blue, and the last gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked up and down, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, and talked with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age for the sort of men and things that used to excite us or enrage us; now we were far past turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk together across the yellow pastures to a chasmal creek on his grounds, where the ice still knit the clayey banks together like crystal mosses; and the stream far down clashed through and over the stones and the shards of ice. Clemens pointed out the scenery he had bought to give himself elbowroom, and showed me the lot he was going to have me build on. The next day we came again with the geologist he had asked up to Stormfield to analyze its rocks. Truly he loved the place....

My visit at Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on his part and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard him sounding my name through the house for the fun of it and I know for the fondness, and if I looked out of my door there he was in his long nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and wagging his great white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in the hope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugar-snow had fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to the station in the carriage which had been given him by his wife's father when they were first married, and had been kept all those intervening years in honorable retirement for this final use.—[This carriage—a finely built coup—had been presented to Mrs. Crane when the Hartford house was closed. When Stormfield was built she returned it to its original owner.]—Its springs had not grown yielding with time, it had rather the stiffness and severity of age; but for him it must have swung low like the sweet chariot of the negro "spiritual" which I heard him sing with such fervor when those wonderful hymns of the slaves began to make their way northward.

Howells's visit resulted in a new inspiration. Clemens started to write him one night when he could not sleep, and had been reading the volume of letters of James Russell Lowell. Then, next morning, he was seized with the notion of writing a series of letters to such friends as Howells, Twichell, and Rogers—letters not to be mailed, but to be laid away for some future public. He wrote two of these immediately—to Howells and to Twichell. The Howells letter (or letters, for it was really double) is both pathetic and amusing. The first part ran:

3 in the morning, April 17, 1909.

My pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, did you write me day-before-day-before yesterday or did I dream it? In my mind's eye I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blue envelope in the mail-pile. I have hunted the house over, but there is no such letter. Was it an illusion?

I am reading Lowell's letters & smoking. I woke an hour ago & am reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, Vol. I, I have just margined a note:

"Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now."

It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It was a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah me, the pathos of it is that we were young then. And he—why, so was he, but he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years later, when we saw him approaching and you warned me, saying:

"Don't say anything about age—he has just turned 50 & thinks he is old, & broods over it."

Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.

Time to go to sleep.

Yours ever, MARK

The second letter, begun at 10 A.M., outlines the plan by which he is to write on the subject uppermost in his mind without restraint, knowing that the letter is not to be mailed.

...The scheme furnishes a definite target for each letter, & you can choose the target that's going to be the most sympathetic for what you are hungering & thirsting to say at that particular moment. And you can talk with a quite unallowable frankness & freedom because you are not going to send the letter. When you are on fire with theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be an inspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make him writhe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire with a good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'll save it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it you can make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm is done, yet a vast advantage is gained.

The letter was not finished, and the scheme perished there. The Twichell letter concerned missionaries, and added nothing to what he had already said on the subject.

He wrote no letter to Mr. Rogers—perhaps never wrote to him again.



CCLXXVIII. THE DEATH OF HENRY ROGERS

Clemens, a little before my return, had been on a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, to attend the opening ceremonies of the Virginia Railway. He had made a speech on that occasion, in which he had paid a public tribute to Henry Rogers, and told something of his personal obligation to the financier.

He began by telling what Mr. Rogers had done for Helen Keller, whom he called "the most marvelous person of her sex that has existed on this earth since Joan of Arc." Then he said:

That is not all Mr. Rogers has done, but you never see that side of his character because it is never protruding; but he lends a helping hand daily out of that generous heart of his. You never hear of it. He is supposed to be a moon which has one side dark and the other bright. But the other side, though you don't see it, is not dark; it is bright, and its rays penetrate, and others do see it who are not God. I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have never been allowed to tell by Mr. Rogers, either by my mouth or in print, and if I don't look at him I can tell it now.

In 1894, when the publishing company of Charles L. Webster, of which I was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If you will remember what commerce was at that time you will recall that you could not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I was on my back; my books were not worth anything at all, and I could not give away my copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long-enough vision ahead to say, "Your books have supported you before, and after the panic is over they will support you again," and that was a correct proposition. He saved my copyrights, and saved me from financial ruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roam the face of the earth and persecute the nations thereof with lectures, promising at the end of four years I would pay dollar for dollar. That arrangement was made, otherwise I would now be living out-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that.

You see his white mustache and his hair trying to get white (he is always trying to look like me—I don't blame him for that). These are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say, without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever known.

This had been early in April. Something more than a month later Clemens was making a business trip to New York to see Mr. Rogers. I was telephoned early to go up and look over some matters with him before he started. I do not remember why I was not to go along that day, for I usually made such trips with him. I think it was planned that Miss Clemens, who was in the city, was to meet him at the Grand Central Station. At all events, she did meet him there, with the news that during the night Mr. Rogers had suddenly died. This was May 20, 1909. The news had already come to the house, and I had lost no time in preparations to follow by the next train. I joined him at the Grosvenor Hotel, on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. He was upset and deeply troubled by the loss of his stanch adviser and friend. He had a helpless look, and he said his friends were dying away from him and leaving him adrift.

"And how I hate to do anything," he added, "that requires the least modicum of intelligence!"

We remained at the Grosvenor for Mr. Rogers's funeral. Clemens served as one of the pall-bearers, but he did not feel equal to the trip to Fairhaven. He wanted to be very quiet, he said. He could not undertake to travel that distance among those whom he knew so well, and with whom he must of necessity join in conversation; so we remained in the hotel apartment, reading and saying very little until bedtime. Once he asked me to write a letter to Jean: "Say, 'Your father says every little while, "How glad I am that Jean is at home again!"' for that is true and I think of it all the time."

But by and by, after a long period of silence, he said:

"Mr. Rogers is under the ground now."

And so passed out of earthly affairs the man who had contributed so largely to the comfort of Mark Twain's old age. He was a man of fine sensibilities and generous impulses; withal a keen sense of humor.

One Christmas, when he presented Mark Twain with a watch and a match-case, he wrote:

MY DEAR CLEMENS,—For many years your friends have been complaining of your use of tobacco, both as to quantity and quality. Complaints are now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends think that you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chief complaint is in regard to the quality.

I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have concluded that it is impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-box.

Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine that will furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes of Yours truly, H. H. ROGERS.

P. S.—Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows you make in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrow on the bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Compliments of the season to the family.

He was a man too busy to write many letters, but when he did write (to Clemens at least) they were always playful and unhurried. One reading them would not find it easy to believe that the writer was a man on whose shoulders lay the burdens of stupendous finance-burdens so heavy that at last he was crushed beneath their weight.



CCLXXIX. AN EXTENSION OF COPYRIGHT

One of the pleasant things that came to Mark Twain that year was the passage of a copyright bill, which added to the royalty period an extension of fourteen years. Champ Clark had been largely instrumental in the success of this measure, and had been fighting for it steadily since Mark Twain's visit to Washington in 1906. Following that visit, Clark wrote:

... It [the original bill] would never pass because the bill had literature and music all mixed together. Being a Missourian of course it would give me great pleasure to be of service to you. What I want to say is this: you have prepared a simple bill relating only to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to have it passed.

Clemens replied that he might have something more to say on the copyright question by and by—that he had in hand a dialogue—[Similar to the "Open Letter to the Register of Copyrights," North American Review, January, 1905.]—which would instruct Congress, but this he did not complete. Meantime a simple bill was proposed and early in 1909 it became a law. In June Clark wrote:

DR. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, Stormfield, Redding, Conn.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,—I am gradually becoming myself again, after a period of exhaustion that almost approximated prostration. After a long lecture tour last summer I went immediately into a hard campaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had recovered my disposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings, which began shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted until midnight. Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying of tariff barons for many days and nights was followed by the work of the long session; that was followed by a hot campaign to take Uncle Joe's rules away from him; on the heels of that "Campaign that Failed" came the tariff fight in the House. I am now getting time to breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you if the copyright law is acceptable to you. If it is not acceptable to you I want to ask you to write and tell me how it should be changed and I will give my best endeavors to the work. I believe that your ideas and wishes in the matter constitute the best guide we have as to what should be done in the case. Your friend, CHAMP CLARK.

To this Clemens replied:

STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN, June 5, 1909.

DEAR CHAMP CLARK,—Is the new copyright law acceptable to me? Emphatically yes! Clark, it is the only sane & clearly defined & just & righteous copyright law that has ever existed in the United States. Whosoever will compare it with its predecessors will have no trouble in arriving at that decision.

The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I was down there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting & apparently irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all said "the case is hopeless, absolutely hopeless—out of this chaos nothing can be built." But we were in error; out of that chaotic mass this excellent bill has been constructed, the warring interests have been reconciled, and the result is as comely and substantial a legislative edifice as lifts its domes and towers and protective lightning-rods out of the statute book I think. When I think of that other bill, which even the Deity couldn't understand, and of this one, which even I can understand, I take off my hat to the man or men who devised this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was it the Authors' League? Was it both together? I don't know, but I take off my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a valuable article about the new law—I inclose it.

At last—at last and for the first time in copyright history—we are ahead of England! Ahead of her in two ways: by length of time and by fairness to all interests concerned. Does this sound like shouting? Then I must modify it: all we possessed of copyright justice before the 4th of last March we owed to England's initiative. Truly yours, S. L. CLEMENS.

Clemens had prepared what was the final word an the subject of copyright just before this bill was passed—a petition for a law which he believed would regulate the whole matter. It was a generous, even if a somewhat Utopian, plan, eminently characteristic of its author. The new fourteen-year extension, with the prospect of more, made this or any other compromise seem inadvisable.—[The reader may consider this last copyright document by Mark Twain under Appendix N, at the end of this volume.]



CCLXXX. A WARNING

Clemens had promised to go to Baltimore for the graduation of "Francesca" of his London visit in 1907—and to make a short address to her class.

It was the eighth of June when we set out on this journey,—[The reader may remember that it was the 8th of June, 1867, that Mark Twain sailed for the Holy Land. It was the 8th of June, 1907, that he sailed for England to take his Oxford degree. This 8th of June, 1909, was at least slightly connected with both events, for he was keeping an engagement made with Francesca in London, and my notes show that he discussed, on the way to the station, some incidents of his Holy Land trip and his attitude at that time toward Christian traditions. As he rarely mentioned the Quaker City trip, the coincidence seems rather curious. It is most unlikely that Clemens himself in any way associated the two dates.]—but the day was rather bleak and there was a chilly rain. Clemens had a number of errands to do in New York, and we drove from one place to another, attending to them. Finally, in the afternoon, the rain ceased, and while I was arranging some matters for him he concluded to take a ride on the top of a Fifth Avenue stage. It was fine and pleasant when he started, but the weather thickened again and when he returned he complained that he had felt a little chilly. He seemed in fine condition, however, next morning and was in good spirits all the way to Baltimore. Chauncey Depew was on the train and they met in the dining-car—the last time, I think, they ever saw each other. He was tired when we reached the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore and did not wish to see the newspaper men. It happened that the reporters had a special purpose in coming just at this time, for it had suddenly developed that in his Shakespeare book, through an oversight, due to haste in publication, full credit had not been given to Mr. Greenwood for the long extracts quoted from his work. The sensational head-lines in a morning paper, "Is Mark Twain a Plagiarist?" had naturally prompted the newspaper men to see what he would have to say on the subject. It was a simple matter, easily explained, and Clemens himself was less disturbed about it than anybody. He felt no sense of guilt, he said; and the fact that he had been stealing and caught at it would give Mr. Greenwood's book far more advertising than if he had given him the full credit which he had intended. He found a good deal of amusement in the situation, his only worry being that Clara and Jean would see the paper and be troubled.

He had taken off his clothes and was lying down, reading. After a little he got up and began walking up and down the room. Presently he stopped and, facing me, placed his hand upon his breast. He said:

"I think I must have caught a little cold yesterday on that Fifth Avenue stage. I have a curious pain in my breast."

I suggested that he lie down again and I would fill his hot-water bag. The pain passed away presently, and he seemed to be dozing. I stepped into the next room and busied myself with some writing. By and by I heard him stirring again and went in where he was. He was walking up and down and began talking of some recent ethnological discoveries—something relating to prehistoric man.

"What a fine boy that prehistoric man must have been," he said—"the very first one! Think of the gaudy style of him, how he must have lorded it over those other creatures, walking on his hind legs, waving his arms, practising and getting ready for the pulpit."

The fancy amused him, but presently he paused in his walk and again put his hand on his breast, saying:

"That pain has come back. It's a curious, sickening, deadly kind of pain. I never had anything just like it."

It seemed to me that his face had become rather gray. I said:

"Where is it, exactly, Mr. Clemens?"

He laid his hand in the center of his breast and said:

"It is here, and it is very peculiar indeed."

Remotely in my mind occurred the thought that he had located his heart, and the "peculiar deadly pain" he had mentioned seemed ominous. I suggested, however, that it was probably some rheumatic touch, and this opinion seemed warranted when, a few moments later, the hot water had again relieved it. This time the pain had apparently gone to stay, for it did not return while we were in Baltimore. It was the first positive manifestation of the angina which eventually would take him from us.

The weather was pleasant in Baltimore, and his visit to St. Timothy's School and his address there were the kind of diversions that meant most to him. The flock of girls, all in their pretty commencement dresses, assembled and rejoicing at his playfully given advice: not to smoke—to excess; not to drink—to excess; not to marry—to excess; he standing there in a garb as white as their own—it made a rare picture—a sweet memory—and it was the last time he ever gave advice from the platform to any one.

Edward S. Martin also spoke to the school, and then there was a great feasting in the big assembly-hall.

It was on the lawn that a reporter approached him with the news of the death of Edward Everett Hale—another of the old group. Clemens said thoughtfully, after a moment:

"I had the greatest respect and esteem for Edward Everett Hale, the greatest admiration for his work. I am as grieved to hear of his death as I can ever be to hear of the death of any friend, though my grief is always tempered with the satisfaction of knowing that for the one that goes, the hard, bitter struggle of life is ended."

We were leaving the Belvedere next morning, and when the subject of breakfast came up for discussion he said:

"That was the most delicious Baltimore fried chicken we had yesterday morning. I think we'll just repeat that order. It reminds me of John Quarles's farm."

We had been having our meals served in the rooms, but we had breakfast that morning down in the diningroom, and "Francesca" and her mother were there.

As he stood on the railway platform waiting for the train, he told me how once, fifty-five years before, as a boy of eighteen, he had changed cars there for Washington and had barely caught his train—the crowd yelling at him as he ran.

We remained overnight in New York, and that evening, at the Grosvenor, he read aloud a poem of his own which I had not seen before. He had brought it along with some intention of reading it at St. Timothy's, he said, but had not found the occasion suitable.

"I wrote it a long time ago in Paris. I'd been reading aloud to Mrs. Clemens and Susy—in '93, I think—about Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, from Macaulay—how great they were and how far they fell. Then I took an imaginary case—that of some old demented man mumbling of his former state. I described him, and repeated some of his mumblings. Susy and Mrs. Clemens said, 'Write it'—so I did, by and by, and this is it. I call it 'The Derelict.'"

He read in his effective manner that fine poem, the opening stanza of which follows:

You sneer, you ships that pass me by, Your snow-pure canvas towering proud! You traders base!—why, once such fry Paid reverence, when like a cloud Storm-swept I drove along, My Admiral at post, his pennon blue Faint in the wilderness of sky, my long Yards bristling with my gallant crew, My ports flung wide, my guns displayed, My tall spars hid in bellying sail! —You struck your topsails then, and made Obeisance—now your manners fail.

He had employed rhyme with more facility than was usual for him, and the figure and phrasing were full of vigor.

"It is strong and fine," I said, when he had finished.

"Yes," he assented. "It seems so as I read it now. It is so long since I have seen it that it is like reading another man's work. I should call it good, I believe."

He put the manuscript in his bag and walked up and down the floor talking.

"There is no figure for the human being like the ship," he said; "no such figure for the storm-beaten human drift as the derelict—such men as Clive and Hastings could only be imagined as derelicts adrift, helpless, tossed by every wind and tide."

We returned to Redding next day. On the train going home he fell to talking of books and authors, mainly of the things he had never been able to read.

"When I take up one of Jane Austen's books," he said, "such as Pride and Prejudice, I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I know, what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so."

He recalled again how Stepniak had come to Hartford, and how humiliated Mrs. Clemens had been to confess that her husband was not familiar with the writings of Thackeray and others.

"I don't know anything about anything," he said, mournfully, "and never did. My brother used to try to get me to read Dickens, long ago. I couldn't do it—I was ashamed; but I couldn't do it. Yes, I have read The Tale of Two Cities, and could do it again. I have read it a good many times; but I never could stand Meredith and most of the other celebrities."

By and by he handed me the Saturday Times Review, saying:

"Here is a fine poem, a great poem, I think. I can stand that."

It was "The Palatine (in the 'Dark Ages')," by Willa Sibert Cather, reprinted from McClure's. The reader will understand better than I can express why these lofty opening stanzas appealed to Mark Twain:

THE PALATINE

"Have you been with the King to Rome, Brother, big brother?" "I've been there and I've come home, Back to your play, little brother."

"Oh, how high is Caesar's house, Brother, big brother?" "Goats about the doorways browse; Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree, Home of the wild bird and home of the bee. A thousand chambers of marble lie Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky. Poppies we find amongst our wheat Grow on Caesar's banquet seat. Cattle crop and neatherds drowse On the floors of Caesar's house."

"But what has become of Caesar's gold, Brother, big brother?" "The times are bad and the world is old —Who knows the where of the Caesar's gold? Night comes black on the Caesar's hill; The wells are deep and the tales are ill. Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold, All that is left of the Caesar's gold. Back to your play, little brother."

Farther along in our journey he handed me the paper again, pointing to these lines of Kipling:

How is it not good for the Christian's health To hurry the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, And he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white And the name of the late deceased: And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here Who tried to hustle the East."

"I could stand any amount of that," he said, and presently: "Life is too long and too short. Too long for the weariness of it; too short for the work to be done. At the very most, the average mind can only master a few languages and a little history."

I said: "Still, we need not worry. If death ends all it does not matter; and if life is eternal there will be time enough."

"Yes," he assented, rather grimly, "that optimism of yours is always ready to turn hell's back yard into a playground."

I said that, old as I was, I had taken up the study of French, and mentioned Bayard Taylor's having begun Greek at fifty, expecting to need it in heaven.

Clemens said, reflectively: "Yes—but you see that was Greek."



CCLXXXI. THE LAST SUMMER AT STORMFIELD

I was at Stormfield pretty constantly during the rest of that year. At first I went up only for the day; but later, when his health did not improve, and when he expressed a wish for companionship evenings, I remained most of the nights as well. Our rooms were separated only by a bath-room; and as neither of us was much given to sleep, there was likely to be talk or reading aloud at almost any hour when both were awake. In the very early morning I would usually slip in, softly, sometimes to find him propped up against his pillows sound asleep, his glasses on, the reading-lamp blazing away as it usually did, day or night; but as often as not he was awake, and would have some new plan or idea of which he was eager to be delivered, and there was always interest, and nearly always amusement in it, even if it happened to be three in the morning or earlier.

Sometimes, when he thought it time for me to be stirring, he would call softly, but loudly enough for me to hear if awake; and I would go in, and we would settle again problems of life and death and science, or, rather, he would settle them while I dropped in a remark here and there, merely to hold the matter a little longer in solution.

The pains in his breast came back, and with a good deal of frequency as the summer advanced; also, they became more severe. Dr. Edward Quintard came up from New York, and did not hesitate to say that the trouble proceeded chiefly from the heart, and counseled diminished smoking, with less active exercise, advising particularly against Clemens's lifetime habit of lightly skipping up and down stairs.

There was no prohibition as to billiards, however, or leisurely walking, and we played pretty steadily through those peaceful summer days, and often took a walk down into the meadows or perhaps in the other direction, when it was not too warm or windy. Once we went as far as the river, and I showed him a part of his land he had not seen before—a beautiful cedar hillside, remote and secluded, a place of enchantment. On the way I pointed out a little corner of land which earlier he had given me to straighten our division line. I told him I was going to build a study on it, and call it "Markland." He thought it an admirable building-site, and I think he was pleased with the name. Later he said:

"If you had a place for that extra billiard-table of mine [the Rogers table, which had been left in New York] I would turn it over to you."

I replied that I could adapt the size of my proposed study to fit a billiard-table, and he said:

"Now that will be very good. Then, when I want exercise, I can walk down and play billiards with you, and when you want exercise you can walk up and play billiards with me. You must build that study."

So it was we planned, and by and by Mr. Lounsbury had undertaken the work.

During the walks Clemens rested a good deal. There were the New England hills to climb, and then he found that he tired easily, and that weariness sometimes brought on the pain. As I remember now, I think how bravely he bore it. It must have been a deadly, sickening, numbing pain, for I have seen it crumple him, and his face become colorless while his hand dug at his breast; but he never complained, he never bewailed, and at billiards he would persist in going on and playing in his turn, even while he was bowed with the anguish of the attack.

We had found that a glass of very hot water relieved it, and we kept always a thermos bottle or two filled and ready. At the first hint from him I would pour out a glass and another, and sometimes the relief came quickly; but there were times, and alas! they came oftener, when that deadly gripping did not soon release him. Yet there would come a week or a fortnight when he was apparently perfectly well, and at such times we dismissed the thought of any heart malady, and attributed the whole trouble to acute indigestion, from which he had always suffered more or less.

We were alone together most of the time. He did not appear to care for company that summer. Clara Clemens had a concert tour in prospect, and her father, eager for her success, encouraged her to devote a large part of her time to study. For Jean, who was in love with every form of outdoor and animal life, he had established headquarters in a vacant farm-house on one corner of the estate, where she had collected some stock and poultry, and was over-flowingly happy. Ossip Gabrilowitsch was a guest in the house a good portion of the summer, but had been invalided through severe surgical operations, and for a long time rarely appeared, even at meal-times. So it came about that there could hardly have been a closer daily companionship than was ours during this the last year of Mark Twain's life. For me, of course, nothing can ever be like it again in this world. One is not likely to associate twice with a being from another star.



CCLXXXII. PERSONAL MEMORANDA

In the notes I made of this period I caught a little drift of personality and utterance, and I do not know better how to preserve these things than to give them here as nearly as may be in the sequence and in the forth in which they were set down.

One of the first of these entries occurs in June, when Clemens was rereading with great interest and relish Andrew D. White's Science and Theology, which he called a lovely book.—['A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom'.]

June 21. A peaceful afternoon, and we walked farther than usual, resting at last in the shade of a tree in the lane that leads to Jean's farm-house. I picked a dandelion-ball, with some remark about its being one of the evidences of the intelligent principle in nature—the seeds winged for a wider distribution.

"Yes," he said, "those are the great evidences; no one who reasons can doubt them."

And presently he added:

"That is a most amusing book of White's. When you read it you see how those old theologians never reasoned at all. White tells of an old bishop who figured out that God created the world in an instant on a certain day in October exactly so many years before Christ, and proved it. And I knew a preacher myself once who declared that the fossils in the rocks proved nothing as to the age of the world. He said that God could create the rocks with those fossils in them for ornaments if He wanted to. Why, it takes twenty years to build a little island in the Mississippi River, and that man actually believed that God created the whole world and all that's in it in six days. White tells of another bishop who gave two new reasons for thunder; one being that God wanted to show the world His power, and another that He wished to frighten sinners to repent. Now consider the proportions of that conception, even in the pettiest way you can think of it. Consider the idea of God thinking of all that. Consider the President of the United States wanting to impress the flies and fleas and mosquitoes, getting up on the dome of the Capitol and beating a bass-drum and setting off red fire."

He followed the theme a little further, then we made our way slowly back up the long hill, he holding to my arm, and resting here and there, but arriving at the house seemingly fresh and ready for billiards.

June 23. I came up this morning with a basket of strawberries. He was walking up and down, looking like an ancient Roman. He said:

"Consider the case of Elsie Sigel—[Granddaughter of Gen. Franz Sigel. She was mysteriously murdered while engaged in settlement work among the Chinese.]—what a ghastly ending to any life!"

Then turning upon me fiercely, he continued:

"Anybody that knows anything knows that there was not a single life that was ever lived that was worth living. Not a single child ever begotten that the begetting of it was not a crime. Suppose a community of people to be living on the slope of a volcano, directly under the crater and in the path of lava-flow; that volcano has been breaking out right along for ages and is certain to break out again. They do not know when it will break out, but they know it will do it—that much can be counted on. Suppose those people go to a community in a far neighborhood and say, 'We'd like to change places with you. Come take our homes and let us have yours.' Those people would say, 'Never mind, we are not interested in your country. We know what has happened there, and what will happen again.' We don't care to live under the blow that is likely to fall at any moment; and yet every time we bring a child into the world we are bringing it to a country, to a community gathered under the crater of a volcano, knowing that sooner or later death will come, and that before death there will be catastrophes infinitely worse. Formerly it was much worse than now, for before the ministers abolished hell a man knew, when he was begetting a child, that he was begetting a soul that had only one chance in a hundred of escaping the eternal fires of damnation. He knew that in all probability that child would be brought to damnation—one of the ninety-nine black sheep. But since hell has been abolished death has become more welcome. I wrote a fairy story once. It was published somewhere. I don't remember just what it was now, but the substance of it was that a fairy gave a man the customary wishes. I was interested in seeing what he would take. First he chose wealth and went away with it, but it did not bring him happiness. Then he came back for the second selection, and chose fame, and that did not bring happiness either. Finally he went to the fairy and chose death, and the fairy said, in substance, 'If you hadn't been a fool you'd have chosen that in the first place.'

"The papers called me a pessimist for writing that story. Pessimist—the man who isn't a pessimist is a d—-d fool."

But this was one of his savage humors, stirred by tragic circumstance. Under date of July 5th I find this happier entry:

We have invented a new game, three-ball carom billiards, each player continuing until he has made five, counting the number of his shots as in golf, the one who finishes in the fewer shots wins. It is a game we play with almost exactly equal skill, and he is highly pleased with it. He said this afternoon:

"I have never enjoyed billiards as I do now. I look forward to it every afternoon as my reward at the end of a good day's work."—[His work at this time was an article on Marjorie Fleming, the "wonder child," whose quaint writings and brief little life had been published to the world by Dr. John Brown. Clemens always adored the thought of Marjorie, and in this article one can see that she ranked almost next to Joan of Arc in his affections.]

We went out in the loggia by and by and Clemens read aloud from a book which Professor Zubelin left here a few days ago—'The Religion of a Democrat'. Something in it must have suggested to Clemens his favorite science, for presently he said:

"I have been reading an old astronomy; it speaks of the perfect line of curvature of the earth in spite of mountains and abysses, and I have imagined a man three hundred thousand miles high picking up a ball like the earth and looking at it and holding it in his hand. It would be about like a billiard-ball to him, and he would turn it over in his hand and rub it with his thumb, and where he rubbed over the mountain ranges he might say, 'There seems to be some slight roughness here, but I can't detect it with my eye; it seems perfectly smooth to look at.' The Himalayas to him, the highest peak, would be one-sixty-thousandth of his height, or about the one- thousandth part of an inch as compared with the average man."

I spoke of having somewhere read of some very tiny satellites, one as small, perhaps, as six miles in diameter, yet a genuine world.

"Could a man live on a world so small as that?" I asked.

"Oh yes," he said. "The gravitation that holds it together would hold him on, and he would always seem upright, the same as here. His horizon would be smaller, but even if he were six feet tall he would only have one foot for each mile of that world's diameter, so you see he would be little enough, even for a world that he could walk around in half a day."

He talked astronomy a great deal—marvel astronomy. He had no real knowledge of the subject, and I had none of any kind, which made its ungraspable facts all the more thrilling. He was always thrown into a sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space—the supreme drama of the universe. The fact that Alpha Centauri was twenty-five trillions of miles away—two hundred and fifty thousand times the distance of our own remote sun, and that our solar system was traveling, as a whole, toward the bright star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra, at the rate of forty-four miles a second, yet would be thousands upon thousands of years reaching its destination, fairly enraptured him.

The astronomical light-year—that is to say, the distance which light travels in a year—was one of the things which he loved to contemplate; but he declared that no two authorities ever figured it alike, and that he was going to figure it for himself. I came in one morning, to find that he had covered several sheets of paper with almost interminable rows of ciphers, and with a result, to him at least, entirely satisfactory. I am quite certain that he was prouder of those figures and their enormous aggregate than if he had just completed an immortal tale; and when he added that the nearest fixed star—Alpha Centauri—was between four and five light-years distant from the earth, and that there was no possible way to think that distance in miles or even any calculable fraction of it, his glasses shone and his hair was roached up as with the stimulation of these stupendous facts.

By and by he said:

"I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.' Oh! I am looking forward to that." And a little later he added:

"I've got some kind of a heart disease, and Quintard won't tell me whether it is the kind that carries a man off in an instant or keeps him lingering along and suffering for twenty years or so. I was in hopes that Quintard would tell me that I was likely to drop dead any minute; but he didn't. He only told me that my blood-pressure was too strong. He didn't give me any schedule; but I expect to go with Halley's comet."

I seem to have omitted making any entries for a few days; but among his notes I find this entry, which seems to refer to some discussion of a favorite philosophy, and has a special interest of its own:

July 14, 1909. Yesterday's dispute resumed, I still maintaining that, whereas we can think, we generally don't do it. Don't do it, & don't have to do it: we are automatic machines which act unconsciously. From morning till sleeping-time, all day long. All day long our machinery is doing things from habit & instinct, & without requiring any help or attention from our poor little 7-by-9 thinking apparatus. This reminded me of something: thirty years ago, in Hartford, the billiard-room was my study, & I wrote my letters there the first thing every morning. My table lay two points off the starboard bow of the billiard-table, & the door of exit and entrance bore northeast&-by-east-half-east from that position, consequently you could see the door across the length of the billiard-table, but you couldn't see the floor by the said table. I found I was always forgetting to ask intruders to carry my letters down-stairs for the mail, so I concluded to lay them on the floor by the door; then the intruder would have to walk over them, & that would indicate to him what they were there for. Did it? No, it didn't. He was a machine, & had habits. Habits take precedence of thought.

Now consider this: a stamped & addressed letter lying on the floor —lying aggressively & conspicuously on the floor—is an unusual spectacle; so unusual a spectacle that you would think an intruder couldn't see it there without immediately divining that it was not there by accident, but had been deliberately placed there & for a definite purpose. Very well—it may surprise you to learn that that most simple & most natural & obvious thought would never occur to any intruder on this planet, whether he be fool, half-fool, or the most brilliant of thinkers. For he is always an automatic machine & has habits, & his habits will act before his thinking apparatus can get a chance to exert its powers. My scheme failed because every human being has the habit of picking up any apparently misplaced thing & placing it where it won't be stepped on.

My first intruder was George. He went and came without saying anything. Presently I found the letters neatly piled up on the billiard-table. I was astonished. I put them on the floor again. The next intruder piled them on the billiard-table without a word. I was profoundly moved, profoundly interested. So I set the trap again. Also again, & again, & yet again—all day long. I caught every member of the family, & every servant; also I caught the three finest intellects in the town. In every instance old, time-worn automatic habit got in its work so promptly that the thinking apparatus never got a chance.

I do not remember this particular discussion, but I do distinctly recall being one of those whose intelligence was not sufficient to prevent my picking up the letter he had thrown on the floor in front of his bed, and being properly classified for doing it.

Clemens no longer kept note-books, as in an earlier time, but set down innumerable memoranda-comments, stray reminders, and the like—on small pads, and bunches of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about his room. I gathered up many of them then and afterward, and a few of these characteristic bits may be offered here.

KNEE

It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest & truest & highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

JEHOVAH

He is all-good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other—take your choice. He made it hard to get into heaven and easy to get into hell. He commended man to multiply & replenish-what? Hell.

MODESTY ANTEDATES CLOTHES

& will be resumed when clothes are no more. [The latter part of this aphorism is erased and underneath it he adds:]

MODESTY DIED

when clothes were born.

MODESTY DIED when false modesty was born.

HISTORY

A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

MORALS

are not the important thing—nor enlightenment—nor civilization. A man can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to eat. The supremest thing is the needs of the body, not of the mind & spirit.

SUGGESTION

There is conscious suggestion & there is unconscious suggestion—both come from outside—whence all ideas come.

DUELS

I think I could wipe out a dishonor by crippling the other man, but I don't see how I could do it by letting him cripple me.

I have no feeling of animosity toward people who do not believe as I do; I merely do not respect 'em. In some serious matters (relig.) I would have them burnt.

I am old now and once was a sinner. I often think of it with a kind of soft regret. I trust my days are numbered. I would not have that detail overlooked.

She was always a girl, she was always young because her heart was young; & I was young because she lived in my heart & preserved its youth from decay.

He often busied himself working out more extensively some of the ideas that came to him—moral ideas, he called them. One fancy which he followed in several forms (some of them not within the privilege of print) was that of an inquisitive little girl, Bessie, who pursues her mother with difficult questionings.—[Under Appendix w, at the end of this volume, the reader will find one of the "Bessie" dialogues.]—He read these aloud as he finished them, and it is certain that they lacked neither logic nor humor.

Sometimes he went to a big drawer in his dresser, where he kept his finished manuscripts, and took them out and looked over them, and read parts of them aloud, and talked of the plans he had had for them, and how one idea after another had been followed for a time and had failed to satisfy him in the end.

Two fiction schemes that had always possessed him he had been unable to bring to any conclusion. Both of these have been mentioned in former chapters; one being the notion of a long period of dream-existence during a brief moment of sleep, and the other being the story of a mysterious visitant from another realm. He had experimented with each of these ideas in no less than three forms, and there was fine writing and dramatic narrative in all; but his literary architecture had somehow fallen short of his conception. "The Mysterious Stranger" in one of its forms I thought might be satisfactorily concluded, and he admitted that he could probably end it without much labor. He discussed something of his plans, and later I found the notes for its conclusion. But I suppose he was beyond the place where he could take up those old threads, though he contemplated, fondly enough, the possibility, and recalled how he had read at least one form of the dream tale to Howells, who had urged him to complete it.



CCLXXXIII. ASTRONOMY AND DREAMS

August 5, 1909. This morning I noticed on a chair a copy of Flaubert's Salammbo which I recently lent him. I asked if he liked it.

"No," he said, "I didn't like any of it."

"But you read it?"

"Yes, I read every line of it."

"You admitted its literary art?"

"Well, it's like this: If I should go to the Chicago stockyards and they should kill a beef and cut it up and the blood should splash all over everything, and then they should take me to another pen and kill another beef and the blood should splash over everything again, and so on to pen after pen, I should care for it about as much as I do for that book."

"But those were bloody days, and you care very much for that period in history."

"Yes, that is so. But when I read Tacitus and know that I am reading history I can accept it as such and supply the imaginary details and enjoy it, but this thing is such a continuous procession of blood and slaughter and stench it worries me. It has great art—I can see that. That scene of the crucified lions and the death canon and the tent scene are marvelous, but I wouldn't read that book again without a salary."

August 16. He is reading Suetonius, which he already knows by heart—so full of the cruelties and licentiousness of imperial Rome.

This afternoon he began talking about Claudius.

"They called Claudius a lunatic," he said, "but just see what nice fancies he had. He would go to the arena between times and have captives and wild beasts brought out and turned in together for his special enjoyment. Sometimes when there were no captives on hand he would say, 'Well, never mind; bring out a carpenter.' Carpentering around the arena wasn't a popular job in those days. He went visiting once to a province and thought it would be pleasant to see how they disposed of criminals and captives in their crude, old-fashioned way, but there was no executioner on hand. No matter; the Emperor of Rome was in no hurry—he would wait. So he sat down and stayed there until an executioner came."

I said, "How do you account for the changed attitude toward these things? We are filled with pity to-day at the thought of torture and suffering."

"Ah! but that is because we have drifted that way and exercised the quality of compassion. Relax a muscle and it soon loses its vigor; relax that quality and in two generations—in one generation—we should be gloating over the spectacle of blood and torture just the same. Why, I read somewhere a letter written just before the Lisbon catastrophe in 1755 about a scene on the public square of Lisbon: A lot of stakes with the fagots piled for burning and heretics chained for burning. The square was crowded with men and women and children, and when those fires were lighted, and the heretics began to shriek and writhe, those men and women and children laughed so they were fairly beside themselves with the enjoyment of the scene. The Greeks don't seem to have done these things. I suppose that indicates earlier advancement in compassion."

Colonel Harvey and Mr. Duneka came up to spend the night. Mr. Clemens had one of his seizures during the evening. They come oftener and last longer. One last night continued for an hour and a half. I slept there.

September 7. To-day news of the North Pole discovered by Peary. Five days ago the same discovery was reported by Cook. Clemens's comment: "It's the greatest joke of the ages." But a moment later he referred to the stupendous fact of Arcturus being fifty thousand times as big as the sun.

September 21. This morning he told me, with great glee, the dream he had had just before wakening. He said:

"I was in an automobile going slowly, with 'a little girl beside me, and some uniformed person walking along by us. I said, 'I'll get out and walk, too'; but the officer replied, 'This is only one of the smallest of our fleet.'

"Then I noticed that the automobile had no front, and there were two cannons mounted where the front should be. I noticed, too, that we were traveling very low, almost down on the ground. Presently we got to the bottom of a hill and started up another, and I found myself walking ahead of the 'mobile. I turned around to look for the little girl, and instead of her I found a kitten capering beside me, and when we reached the top of the hill we were looking out over a most barren and desolate waste of sand-heaps without a speck of vegetation anywhere, and the kitten said, 'This view beggars all admiration.' Then all at once we were in a great group of people and I undertook to repeat to them the kitten's remark, but when I tried to do it the words were so touching that I broke down and cried, and all the group cried, too, over the kitten's moving remark."

The joy with which he told this absurd sleep fancy made it supremely ridiculous and we laughed until tears really came.

One morning he said: "I was awake a good deal in the night, and I tried to think of interesting things. I got to working out geological periods, trying to think of some way to comprehend them, and then astronomical periods. Of course it's impossible, but I thought of a plan that seemed to mean something to me. I remembered that Neptune is two billion eight hundred million miles away. That, of course, is incomprehensible, but then there is the nearest fixed star with its twenty-five trillion miles—twenty-five trillion—or nearly a thousand times as far, and then I took this book and counted the lines on a page and I found that there was an average of thirty-two lines to the page and two hundred and forty pages, and I figured out that, counting the distance to Neptune as one line, there were still not enough lines in the book by nearly two thousand to reach the nearest fixed star, and somehow that gave me a sort of dim idea of the vastness of the distance and kind of a journey into space."

Later I figured out another method of comprehending a little of that great distance by estimating the existence of the human race at thirty thousand years (Lord Kelvin's figures) and the average generation to have been thirty-three years with a world population of 1,500,000,000 souls. I assumed the nearest fixed star to be the first station in Paradise and the first soul to have started thirty thousand years ago. Traveling at the rate of about thirty miles a second, it would just now be arriving in Alpha Centauri with all the rest of that buried multitude stringing out behind at an average distance of twenty miles apart.

Few things gave him more pleasure than the contemplation of such figures as these. We made occasional business trips to New York, and during one of them visited the Museum of Natural History to look at the brontosaur and the meteorites and the astronomical model in the entrance hall. To him these were the most fascinating things in the world. He contemplated the meteorites and the brontosaur, and lost himself in strange and marvelous imaginings concerning the far reaches of time and space whence they had come down to us.

Mark Twain lived curiously apart from the actualities of life. Dwelling mainly among his philosophies and speculations, he observed vaguely, or minutely, what went on about him; but in either case the fact took a place, not in the actual world, but in a world within his consciousness, or subconsciousness, a place where facts were likely to assume new and altogether different relations from those they had borne in the physical occurrence. It not infrequently happened, therefore, when he recounted some incident, even the most recent, that history took on fresh and startling forms. More than once I have known him to relate an occurrence of the day before with a reality of circumstance that carried absolute conviction, when the details themselves were precisely reversed. If his attention were called to the discrepancy, his face would take on a blank look, as of one suddenly aroused from dreamland, to be followed by an almost childish interest in your revelation and ready acknowledgment of his mistake. I do not think such mistakes humiliated him; but they often surprised and, I think, amused him.

Insubstantial and deceptive as was this inner world of his, to him it must have been much more real than the world of flitting physical shapes about him. He would fix you keenly with his attention, but you realized, at last, that he was placing you and seeing you not as a part of the material landscape, but as an item of his own inner world—a world in which philosophies and morals stood upright—a very good world indeed, but certainly a topsy-turvy world when viewed with the eye of mere literal scrutiny. And this was, mainly, of course, because the routine of life did not appeal to him. Even members of his household did not always stir his consciousness.

He knew they were there; he could call them by name; he relied upon them; but his knowledge of them always suggested the knowledge that Mount Everest might have of the forests and caves and boulders upon its slopes, useful, perhaps, but hardly necessary to the giant's existence, and in no important matter a part of its greater life.



CCLXXXIV. A LIBRARY CONCERT

In a letter which Clemens wrote to Miss Wallace at this time, he tells of a concert given at Stormfield on September 21st for the benefit of the new Redding Library. Gabrilowitsch had so far recovered that he was up and about and able to play. David Bispham, the great barytone, always genial and generous, agreed to take part, and Clara Clemens, already accustomed to public singing, was to join in the program. The letter to Miss Wallace supplies the rest of the history.

We had a grand time here yesterday. Concert in aid of the little library.

TEAM

Gabrilowitsch, pianist. David Bispham, vocalist. Clara Clemens, ditto. Mark Twain, introduces of team.

Detachments and squads and groups and singles came from everywhere —Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Redding, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield, and even from New York: some in 60-h.p. motor-cars, some in buggies and carriages, and a swarm of farmer-young-folk on foot from miles around—525 altogether.

If we hadn't stopped the sale of tickets a day and a half before the performance we should have been swamped. We jammed 160 into the library (not quite all had seats), we filled the loggia, the dining- room, the hall, clear into the billiard-room, the stairs, and the brick-paved square outside the dining-room door.

The artists were received with a great welcome, and it woke them up, and I tell you they performed to the Queen's taste! The program was an hour and three-quarters long and the encores added a half-hour to it. The enthusiasm of the house was hair-lifting. They all stayed an hour after the close to shake hands and congratulate.

We had no dollar seats except in the library, but we accumulated $372 for the Building Fund. We had tea at half past six for a dozen—the Hawthornes, Jeannette Gilder, and her niece, etc.; and after 8-o'clock dinner we had a private concert and a ball in the bare-stripped library until 10; nobody present but the team and Mr. and Mrs. Paine and Jean and her dog. And me. Bispham did "Danny Deever" and the "Erlkonig" in his majestic, great organ-tones and artillery, and Gabrilowitsch played the accompaniments as they were never played before, I do suppose.

There is not much to add to that account. Clemens, introducing the performers, was the gay feature of the occasion. He spoke of the great reputation of Bispham and Gabrilowitsch; then he said:

"My daughter is not as famous as these gentlemen, but she is ever so much better-looking."

The music of the evening that followed, with Gabrilowitsch at the piano and David Bispham to sing, was something not likely ever to be repeated. Bispham sang the "Erlkonig" and "Killiecrankie" and the "Grenadiers" and several other songs. He spoke of having sung Wagner's arrangement of the "Grenadiers" at the composer's home following his death, and how none of the family had heard it before.

There followed dancing, and Jean Clemens, fine and handsome, apparently full of life and health, danced down that great living-room as care-free as if there was no shadow upon her life. And the evening was distinguished in another way, for before it ended Clara Clemens had promised Ossip Gabrilowitsch to become his wife.



CCLXXXV. A WEDDING AT STORMFIELD

The wedding of Ossip Gabrilowitsch and Clara Clemens was not delayed. Gabrilowitsch had signed for a concert tour in Europe, and unless the marriage took place forthwith it must be postponed many months. It followed, therefore, fifteen days after the engagement. They were busy days. Clemens, enormously excited and pleased over the prospect of the first wedding in his family, personally attended to the selection of those who were to have announcement-cards, employing a stenographer to make the list.

October 6th was a perfect wedding-day. It was one of those quiet, lovely fall days when the whole world seems at peace. Claude, the butler, with his usual skill in such matters, had decorated the great living-room with gay autumn foliage and flowers, brought in mainly from the woods and fields. They blended perfectly with the warm tones of the walls and furnishings, and I do not remember ever having seen a more beautiful room. Only relatives and a few of the nearest friends were invited to the ceremony. The Twichells came over a day ahead, for Twichell, who had assisted in the marriage rites between Samuel Clemens and Olivia Langdon, was to perform that ceremony for their daughter now. A fellow-student of the bride and groom when they had been pupils of Leschetizky, in Vienna—Miss Ethel Newcomb—was at the piano and played softly the Wedding March from "Taunhauser." Jean Clemens was the only bridesmaid, and she was stately and classically beautiful, with a proud dignity in her office. Jervis Langdon, the bride's cousin and childhood playmate, acted as best man, and Clemens, of course, gave the bride away. By request he wore his scarlet Oxford gown over his snowy flannels, and was splendid beyond words. I do not write of the appearance of the bride and groom, for brides and grooms are always handsome and always happy, and certainly these were no exception. It was all so soon over, the feasting ended, and the principals whirling away into the future. I have a picture in my mind of them seated together in the automobile, with Richard Watson Gilder standing on the step for a last good-by, and before them a wide expanse of autumn foliage and distant hills. I remember Gilder's voice saying, when the car was on the turn, and they were waving back to us:

"Over the hills and far away, Beyond the utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, beyond the day, Through all the world she followed him."

The matter of the wedding had been kept from the newspapers until the eve of the wedding, when the Associated Press had been notified. A representative was there; but Clemens had characteristically interviewed himself on the subject, and it was only necessary to hand the reporter a typewritten copy. Replying to the question (put to himself), "Are you pleased with the marriage?" he answered:

Yes, fully as much as any marriage could please me or any other father. There are two or three solemn things in life and a happy marriage is one of them, for the terrors of life are all to come. I am glad of this marriage, and Mrs. Clemens would be glad, for she always had a warm affection for Gabrilowitsch.

There was another wedding at Stormfield on the following afternoon—an imitation wedding. Little Joy came up with me, and wished she could stand in just the spot where she had seen the bride stand, and she expressed a wish that she could get married like that. Clemens said:

"Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it."

Then he happened to remember a ridiculous boy-doll—a white-haired creature with red coat and green trousers, a souvenir imitation of himself from one of the Rogerses' Christmas trees. He knew where it was, and he got it out. Then he said:

"Now, Joy, we will have another wedding. This is Mr. Colonel Williams, and you are to become his wedded wife."

So Joy stood up very gravely and Clemens performed the ceremony, and I gave the bride away, and Joy to him became Mrs. Colonel Williams thereafter, and entered happily into her new estate.



CCLXXXVI. AUTUMN DAYS

A harvest of letters followed the wedding: a general congratulatory expression, mingled with admiration, affection, and good-will. In his interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his breast; and many begged him to deny that there was anything serious the matter with him, urging him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his continued life and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-weary humanity and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he should live. Such letters could not fail to cheer him.

A letter of this period, from John Bigelow, gave him a pleasure of its own. Clemens had written Bigelow, apropos of some adverse expression on the tariff:

Thank you for any hard word you can say about the tariff. I guess the government that robs its own people earns the future it is preparing for itself.

Bigelow was just then declining an invitation to the annual dinner of the Chamber of Commerce. In sending his regrets he said:

The sentiment I would propose if I dared to be present would be the words of Mark Twain, the statesman:

"The government that robs its own people earns the future it is preparing for itself."

Now to Clemens himself he wrote:

Rochefoucault never said a cleverer thing, nor Dr. Franklin a wiser one.... Be careful, or the Demos will be running you for President when you are not on your guard.

Yours more than ever, JOHN BIGELOW.

Among the tributes that came, was a sermon by the Rev. Fred Window Adams, of Schenectady, New York, with Mark Twain as its subject. Mr. Adams chose for his text, "Take Mark and bring him with thee; for he is profitable for the ministry," and he placed the two Marks, St. Mark and Mark Twain, side by side as ministers to humanity, and characterized him as "a fearless knight of righteousness." A few weeks later Mr. Adams himself came to Stormfield, and, like all open-minded ministers of the Gospel, he found that he could get on very well indeed with Mark Twain.

In spite of the good-will and the good wishes Clemens's malady did not improve. As the days grew chillier he found that he must remain closer indoors. The cold air seemed to bring on the pains, and they were gradually becoming more severe; then, too, he did not follow the doctor's orders in the matter of smoking, nor altogether as to exercise.

To Miss Wallace he wrote:

I can't walk, I can't drive, I'm not down-stairs much, and I don't see company, but I drink barrels of water to keep the pain quiet; I read, and read, and read, and smoke, and smoke, and smoke all the time (as formerly), and it's a contented and comfortable life.

But this was not altogether accurate as to details. He did come down-stairs many times daily, and he persisted in billiards regardless of the paroxysms. We found, too, that the seizures were induced by mental agitation. One night he read aloud to Jean and myself the first chapter of an article, "The Turning-Point in My Life," which he was preparing for Harper's Bazar. He had begun it with one of his impossible burlesque fancies, and he felt our attitude of disappointment even before any word had been said. Suddenly he rose, and laying his hand on his breast said, "I must lie down," and started toward the stair. I supported him to his room and hurriedly poured out the hot water. He drank it and dropped back on the bed.

"Don't speak to me," he said; "don't make me talk."

Jean came in, and we sat there several moments in silence. I think we both wondered if this might not be the end; but presently he spoke of his own accord, declaring he was better, and ready for billiards.

We played for at least an hour afterward, and he seemed no worse for the attack. It is a curious malady—that angina; even the doctors are acquainted with its manifestations, rather than its cause. Clemens's general habits of body and mind were probably not such as to delay its progress; furthermore, there had befallen him that year one of those misfortunes which his confiding nature peculiarly invited—a betrayal of trust by those in whom it had been boundlessly placed—and it seems likely that the resulting humiliation aggravated his complaint. The writing of a detailed history of this episode afforded him occupation and a certain amusement, but probably did not contribute to his health. One day he sent for his attorney, Mr. Charles T. Lark, and made some final revisions in his will.—[Mark Twain's estate, later appraised at something more than $600,000 was left in the hands of trustees for his daughters. The trustees were Edward E. Loomis, Jervis Langdon, and Zoheth S. Freeman. The direction of his literary affairs was left to his daughter Clara and the writer of this history.]

To see him you would never have suspected that he was ill. He was in good flesh, and his movement was as airy and his eye as bright and his face as full of bloom as at any time during the period I had known him; also, he was as light-hearted and full of ideas and plans, and he was even gentler—having grown mellow with age and retirement, like good wine.

And of course he would find amusement in his condition. He said:

"I have always pretended to be sick to escape visitors; now, for the first time, I have got a genuine excuse. It makes me feel so honest."

And once, when Jean reported a caller in the livingroom, he said:

"Jean, I can't see her. Tell her I am likely to drop dead any minute and it would be most embarrassing."

But he did see her, for it was a poet—Angela Morgan—and he read her poem, "God's Man," aloud with great feeling, and later he sold it for her to Collier's Weekly.

He still had violent rages now and then, remembering some of the most notable of his mistakes; and once, after denouncing himself, rather inclusively, as an idiot, he said:

"I wish to God the lightning would strike me; but I've wished that fifty thousand times and never got anything out of it yet. I have missed several good chances. Mrs. Clemens was afraid of lightning, and would never let me bare my head to the storm."

The element of humor was never lacking, and the rages became less violent and less frequent.

I was at Stormfield steadily now, and there was a regular routine of afternoon sessions of billiards or reading, in which we were generally alone; for Jean, occupied with her farming and her secretary labors, seldom appeared except at meal-times. Occasionally she joined in the billiard games; but it was difficult learning and her interest was not great. She would have made a fine player, for she had a natural talent for games, as she had for languages, and she could have mastered the science of angles as she had mastered tennis and French and German and Italian. She had naturally a fine intellect, with many of her father's characteristics, and a tender heart that made every dumb creature her friend.

Katie Leary, who had been Jean's nurse, once told how, as a little child, Jean had not been particularly interested in a picture of the Lisbon earthquake, where the people were being swallowed up; but on looking at the next page, which showed a number of animals being overwhelmed, she had said:

"Poor things!"

Katie said:

"Why, you didn't say that about the people!"

But Jean answered:

"Oh, they could speak."

One night at the dinner-table her father was saying how difficult it must be for a man who had led a busy life to give up the habit of work.

"That is why the Rogerses kill themselves," he said. "They would rather kill themselves in the old treadmill than stop and try to kill time. They have forgotten how to rest. They know nothing but to keep on till they drop."

I told of something I had read not long before. It was about an aged lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island. He had not offered to hurt any one; but after wandering about a little, rather aimlessly, he had come to a picket-fence, and a moment later began pacing up and down in front of it, just the length of his cage. They had come and led him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly into it. I noticed that Jean was listening anxiously, and when I finished she said:

"Is that a true story?"

She had forgotten altogether the point in illustration. She was concerned only with the poor old beast that had found no joy in his liberty.

Among the letters that Clemens wrote just then was one to Miss Wallace, in which he described the glory of the fall colors as seen from his windows.

The autumn splendors passed you by? What a pity! I wish you had been here. It was beyond words! It was heaven & hell & sunset & rainbows & the aurora all fused into one divine harmony, & you couldn't look at it and keep the tears back.

Such a singing together, & such a whispering together, & such a snuggling together of cozy, soft colors, & such kissing & caressing, & such pretty blushing when the sun breaks out & catches those dainty weeds at it—you remember that weed-garden of mine?—& then —then the far hills sleeping in a dim blue trance—oh, hearing about it is nothing, you should be here to see it!

In the same letter he refers to some work that he was writing for his own satisfaction—'Letters from the Earth'; said letters supposed to have been written by an immortal visitant and addressed to other immortals in some remote sphere.

I'll read passages to you. This book will never be published —in fact it couldn't be, because it would be felony... Paine enjoys it, but Paine is going to be damned one of these days, I suppose.

I very well remember his writing those 'Letters from the Earth'. He read them to me from time to time as he wrote them, and they were fairly overflowing with humor and philosophy and satire concerning the human race. The immortal visitor pointed out, one after another, the absurdities of mankind, his ridiculous conception of heaven, and his special conceit in believing that he was the Creator's pet—the particular form of life for which all the universe was created. Clemens allowed his exuberant fancy free rein, being under no restrictions as to the possibility of print or public offense. He enjoyed them himself, too, as he read them aloud, and we laughed ourselves weak over his bold imaginings.

One admissible extract will carry something of the flavor of these chapters. It is where the celestial correspondent describes man's religion.

His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists—utterly and entirely—of diversions which he cares next to nothing about here in the earth, yet he is quite sure he will like in heaven. Isn't it curious? Isn't it interesting? You must not think I am exaggerating, for it is not so. I will give you the details.

Most, men do not sing, most men cannot sing, most men will not stay where others are singing if it be continued more than two hours. Note that.

Only about two men in a hundred can play upon a musical instrument, and not four in a hundred have any wish to learn how. Set that down.

Many men pray, not many of them like to do it. A few pray long, the others make a short-cut.

More men go to church than want to.

To forty-nine men in fifty the Sabbath day is a dreary, dreary bore.

Further, all sane people detest noise.

All people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their lives. Monotony quickly wearies them.

Now then, you have the facts. You know what men don't enjoy. Well, they have invented a heaven, out of their own heads, all by themselves; guess what it is like? In fifteen hundred years you couldn't do it. They have left out the very things they care for most their dearest pleasures—and replaced them with prayer!

In man's heaven everybody sings. There are no exceptions. The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth sings there. Thus universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on all day long and every day during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays where on earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is one hymn alone. The words are always the same in number—they are only about a dozen—there is no rhyme—there is no poetry. "Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna unto the highest!" and a few such phrases constitute the whole service.

Meantime, every person is playing on a harp! Consider the deafening hurricane of sound. Consider, further, it is a praise service—a service of compliment, flattery, adulation. Do you ask who it is that is willing to endure this strange compliment, this insane compliment, and who not only endures it but likes it, enjoys it, requires it, commands it? Hold your breath: It is God! This race's God I mean—their own pet invention.

Most of the ideas presented in this his last commentary on human absurdities were new only as to phrasing. He had exhausted the topic long ago, in one way or another; but it was one of the themes in which he never lost interest. Many subjects became stale to him at last; but the curious invention called man remained a novelty to him to the end.

From my note-book:

October 25. I am constantly amazed at his knowledge of history—all history—religious, political, military. He seems to have read everything in the world concerning Rome, France, and England particularly.

Last night we stopped playing billiards while he reviewed, in the most vivid and picturesque phrasing, the reasons of Rome's decline. Such a presentation would have enthralled any audience—I could not help feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some of his public effort to work of that sort. No one could have equaled him at it. He concluded with some comments on the possibility of America following Rome's example, though he thought the vote of the people would always, or at least for a long period, prevent imperialism.

November 1. To-day he has been absorbed in his old interest in shorthand. "It is the only rational alphabet," he declared. "All this spelling reform is nonsense. What we need is alphabet reform, and shorthand is the thing. Take the letter M, for instance; it is made with one stroke in shorthand, while in longhand it requires at least three. The word Mephistopheles can be written in shorthand with one-sixth the number of strokes that is required in longhand. I tell you shorthand should be adopted as the alphabet."