CCLXXVII. MARK TWAIN'S READING

October 25. I am constantly amazed at his knowledge of history—allhistory—religious, political, military. He seems to have readeverything in the world concerning Rome, France, and Englandparticularly.Last night we stopped playing billiards while he reviewed, in themost vivid and picturesque phrasing, the reasons of Rome's decline.Such a presentation would have enthralled any audience—I could nothelp feeling a great pity that he had not devoted some of his publiceffort to work of that sort. No one could have equaled him at it.He concluded with some comments on the possibility of Americafollowing Rome's example, though he thought the vote of the peoplewould always, or at least for a long period, prevent imperialism.November 1. To-day he has been absorbed in his old interest inshorthand. “It is the only rational alphabet,” he declared. “Allthis spelling reform is nonsense. What we need is alphabet reform,and shorthand is the thing. Take the letter M, for instance; it ismade with one stroke in shorthand, while in longhand it requires atleast three. The word Mephistopheles can be written in shorthandwith 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 slightlydifferent that each writer soon forms a system of his own and it isseldom 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 stenographicpurposes, but only for use in writing to save time.”He was very much in earnest, and said he had undertaken an articleon the subject.November 3. He said he could not sleep last night, for thinkingwhat a fool he had been in his various investments.“I have always been the victim of somebody,” he said, “and always anidiot myself, doing things that even a child would not do. Neverasking anybody's advice—never taking it when it was offered. Ican't see how anybody could do the things I have done and have keptright on doing.”I could see that the thought agitated him, and I suggested that wego to his room and read, which we did, and had a riotous time overthe most recent chapters of the 'Letters from the Earth', and somenotes he had made for future chapters on infant damnation and otherdistinctive features of orthodox creeds. He told an anecdote of anold minister who declared that Presbyterianism without infantdamnation would be like the dog on the train that couldn't beidentified 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 ofit. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from theday of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics inchild-birth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblicalcurse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy andgeology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition.The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture fivehundred years before the Christian religion was born.“I have been reading Gibbon's celebrated Fifteenth Chapter,” he saidlater, “and I don't see what Christians found against it. It is somild—so gentle in its sarcasm.” He added that he had been readingalso a little book of brief biographies and had found in it thesaying of Darwin's father, “Unitarianism is a featherbed to catchfalling Christians.”“I was glad to find and identify that saying,” he said; “it is sogood.”He finished the evening by reading a chapter from Carlyle's FrenchRevolution—a fine pyrotechnic passage—the gathering at Versailles.I said that Carlyle somehow reminded me of a fervid stump-speakerwho pounded his fists and went at his audience fiercely, determinedto convince them.“Yes,” he said, “but he is the best one that ever lived.”November 10. This morning early he heard me stirring and called. Iwent in and found him propped up with a book, as usual. He said:“I seldom read Christmas stories, but this is very beautiful. Ithas made me cry. I want you to read it.” (It was BoothTarkington's 'Beasley's Christmas Party'.) “Tarkington has the truetouch,” he said; “his work always satisfies me.” Another book hehas been reading with great enjoyment is James Branch Cabell'sChivalry. He cannot say enough of the subtle poetic art with whichCabell has flung the light of romance about dark and sordid chaptersof history.

Perhaps here one may speak of Mark Twain's reading in general. On the table by him, and on his bed, and in the billiard-room shelves he kept the books he read most. They were not many—not more than a dozen—but they were manifestly of familiar and frequent usage. All, or nearly all, had annotations—spontaneously uttered marginal notes, title prefatories, or concluding comments. They were the books he had read again and again, and it was seldom that he had not had something to say with each fresh reading.

There were the three big volumes by Saint-Simon—'The Memoirs'—which he once told me he had read no less than twenty times. On the fly-leaf of the first volume he wrote—

This, & Casanova & Pepys, set in parallel columns, could afford a good coup d'oeil of French & English high life of that epoch.

All through those finely printed volumes are his commentaries, sometimes no more than a word, sometimes a filled, closely written margin. He found little to admire in the human nature of Saint-Simon's period—little to approve in Saint-Simon himself beyond his unrestrained frankness, which he admired without stint, and in one paragraph where the details of that early period are set down with startling fidelity he wrote: “Oh, incomparable Saint-Simon!”

Saint-Simon is always frank, and Mark Twain was equally so. Where the former tells one of the unspeakable compulsions of Louis XIV., the latter has commented:

We have to grant that God made this royal hog; we may also be permitted to believe that it was a crime to do so.

And on another page:

In her memories of this period the Duchesse de St. Clair makes this striking remark: “Sometimes one could tell a gentleman, but it was only by his manner of using his fork.”

His comments on the orthodox religion of Saint-Simon's period are not marked by gentleness. Of the author's reference to the Edict of Nantes, which he says depopulated half of the realm, ruined its commerce, and “authorized torments and punishments by which so many innocent people of both sexes were killed by thousands,” Clemens writes:

So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.

In the place where Saint-Simon describes the death of Monseigneur, son of the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their extravagantly pretended sorrow, Clemens wrote:

It is all so true, all so human. God made these animals. He must have noticed this scene; I wish I knew how it struck Him.

There were not many notes in the Suetonius, nor in the Carlyle Revolution, though these were among the volumes he read oftenest. Perhaps they expressed for him too completely and too richly their subject-matter to require anything at his hand. Here and there are marked passages and occasional cross-references to related history and circumstance.

There was not much room for comment on the narrow margins of the old copy of Pepys, which he had read steadily since the early seventies; but here and there a few crisp words, and the underscoring and marked passages are plentiful enough to convey his devotion to that quaint record which, perhaps next to Suetonius, was the book he read and quoted most.

Francis Parkman's Canadian Histories he had read periodically, especially the story of the Old Regime and of the Jesuits in North America. As late as January, 1908, he wrote on the title-page of the Old Regime:

Very interesting. It tells how people religiously and otherwise insane came over from France and colonized Canada.

He was not always complimentary to those who undertook to Christianize the Indians; but he did not fail to write his admiration of their courage—their very willingness to endure privation and even the fiendish savage tortures for the sake of their faith. “What manner of men are these?” he wrote, apropos of the account of Bressani, who had undergone the most devilish inflictions which savage ingenuity could devise, and yet returned maimed and disfigured the following spring to “dare again the knives and fiery brand of the Iroquois.” Clemens was likely to be on the side of the Indians, but hardly in their barbarism. In one place he wrote:

That men should be willing to leave their happy homes and endurewhat the missionaries endured in order to teach these Indians theroad to hell would be rational, understandable, but why they shouldwant to teach them a way to heaven is a thing which the mind somehowcannot grasp.

Other histories, mainly English and French, showed how he had read them—read and digested every word and line. There were two volumes of Lecky, much worn; Andrew D. White's 'Science and Theology'—a chief interest for at least one summer—and among the collection a well-worn copy of 'Modern English Literature—Its Blemishes and Defects', by Henry H. Breen. On the title-page of this book Clemens had written:

HARTFORD, 1876. Use with care, for it is a scarce book. Englandhad to be ransacked in order to get it—or the bookseller speakethfalsely.

He once wrote a paper for the Saturday Morning Club, using for his text examples of slipshod English which Breen had noted.

Clemens had a passion for biography, and especially for autobiography, diaries, letters, and such intimate human history. Greville's 'Journal of the Reigns of George IV. and William IV.' he had read much and annotated freely. Greville, while he admired Byron's talents, abhorred the poet's personality, and in one place condemns him as a vicious person and a debauchee. He adds:

Then he despises pretenders and charlatans of all sorts, while he is himself a pretender, as all men are who assume a character which does not belong to them and affect to be something which they are all the time conscious they are not in reality.

Clemens wrote on the margin:

But, dear sir, you are forgetting that what a man sees in the humanrace is merely himself in the deep and honest privacy of his ownheart. Byron despised the race because he despised himself. I feelas Byron did, and for the same reason. Do you admire the race (&consequently yourself)?

A little further along—where Greville laments that Byron can take no profit to himself from the sinful characters he depicts so faithfully, Clemens commented:

If Byron—if any man—draws 50 characters, they are all himself—50shades, 50 moods, of his own character. And when the man draws themwell why do they stir my admiration? Because they are me—Irecognize myself.

A volume of Plutarch was among the biographies that showed usage, and the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself. Two Years Before the Mast he loved, and never tired of. The more recent Memoirs of Andrew D. White and Moncure D. Conway both, I remember, gave him enjoyment, as did the Letters of Lowell. A volume of the Letters of Madame de Sevigne had some annotated margins which were not complimentary to the translator, or for that matter to Sevigne herself, whom he once designates as a “nauseating” person, many of whose letters had been uselessly translated, as well as poorly arranged for reading. But he would read any volume of letters or personal memoirs; none were too poor that had the throb of life in them, however slight.

Of such sort were the books that Mark Twain had loved best, and such were a few of his words concerning them. Some of them belong to his earlier reading, and among these is Darwin's 'Descent of Man', a book whose influence was always present, though I believe he did not read it any more in later years. In the days I knew him he read steadily not much besides Suetonius and Pepys and Carlyle. These and his simple astronomies and geologies and the Morte Arthure and the poems of Kipling were seldom far from his hand.

It was the middle of November, 1909, when Clemens decided to take another Bermuda vacation, and it was the 19th that we sailed. I went to New York a day ahead and arranged matters, and on the evening of the 18th received the news that Richard Watson Gilder had suddenly died.

Next morning there was other news. Clemens's old friend, William M. Laffan, of the Sun, had died while undergoing a surgical operation. I met Clemens at the train. He had already heard about Gilder; but he had not yet learned of Laffan's death. He said:

“That's just it. Gilder and Laffan get all the good things that come along and I never get anything.”

Then, suddenly remembering, he added:

“How curious it is! I have been thinking of Laffan coming down on the train, and mentally writing a letter to him on this Stetson-Eddy affair.”

I asked when he had begun thinking of Laffan.

He said: “Within the hour.”

It was within the hour that I had received the news, and naturally in my mind had carried it instantly to him. Perhaps there was something telepathic in it.

He was not at all ill going down to Bermuda, which was a fortunate thing, for the water was rough and I was quite disqualified. We did not even discuss astronomy, though there was what seemed most important news—the reported discovery of a new planet.

But there was plenty of talk on the subject as soon as we got settled in the Hamilton Hotel. It was windy and rainy out-of-doors, and we looked out on the drenched semi-tropical foliage with a great bamboo swaying and bending in the foreground, while he speculated on the vast distance that the new planet must lie from our sun, to which it was still a satellite. The report had said that it was probably four hundred billions of miles distant, and that on this far frontier of the solar system the sun could not appear to it larger than the blaze of a tallow candle. To us it was wholly incredible how, in that dim remoteness, it could still hold true to the central force and follow at a snail-pace, yet with unvarying exactitude, its stupendous orbit. Clemens said that heretofore Neptune, the planetary outpost of our system, had been called the tortoise of the skies, but that comparatively it was rapid in its motion, and had become a near neighbor. He was a good deal excited at first, having somehow the impression that this new planet traveled out beyond the nearest fixed star; but then he remembered that the distance to that first solar neighbor was estimated in trillions, not billions, and that our little system, even with its new additions, was a child's handbreadth on the plane of the sky. He had brought along a small book called The Pith of Astronomy—a fascinating little volume—and he read from it about the great tempest of fire in the sun, where the waves of flame roll up two thousand miles high, though the sun itself is such a tiny star in the deeps of the universe.

If I dwell unwarrantably on this phase of Mark Twain's character, it is because it was always so fascinating to me, and the contemplation of the drama of the skies always meant so much to him, and somehow always seemed akin to him in its proportions. He had been born under a flaming star, a wanderer of the skies. He was himself, to me, always a comet rushing through space, from mystery to mystery, regardless of sun and systems. It is not likely to rain long in Bermuda, and when the sun comes back it brings summer, whatever the season. Within a day after our arrival we were driving about those coral roads along the beaches, and by that marvelously variegated water. We went often to the south shore, especially to Devonshire Bay, where the reefs and the sea coloring seem more beautiful than elsewhere. Usually, when we reached the bay, we got out to walk along the indurated shore, stopping here and there to look out over the jeweled water liquid turquoise, emerald lapis-lazuli, jade, the imperial garment of the Lord.

At first we went alone with only the colored driver, Clifford Trott, whose name Clemens could not recollect, though he was always attempting resemblances with ludicrous results. A little later Helen Allen, an early angel-fish member already mentioned, was with us and directed the drives, for she had been born on the island and knew every attractive locality, though, for that matter, it would be hard to find there a place that was not attractive.

Clemens, in fact, remained not many days regularly at the hotel. He kept a room and his wardrobe there; but he paid a visit to Bay House—the lovely and quiet home of Helen's parents—and prolonged it from day to day, and from week to week, because it was a quiet and peaceful place with affectionate attention and limitless welcome. Clifford Trott had orders to come with the carriage each afternoon, and we drove down to Bay House for Mark Twain and his playmate, and then went wandering at will among the labyrinth of blossom-bordered, perfectly kept roadways of a dainty paradise, that never, I believe, becomes quite a reality even to those who know it best.

Clemens had an occasional paroxysm during these weeks, but they were not likely to be severe or protracted; and I have no doubt the peace of his surroundings, the remoteness from disturbing events, as well as the balmy temperature, all contributed to his improved condition.

He talked pretty continuously during these drives, and he by no means restricted his subjects to juvenile matters. He discussed history and his favorite sciences and philosophies, and I am sure that his drift was rarely beyond the understanding of his young companion, for it was Mark Twain's gift to phrase his thought so that it commanded not only the respect of age, but the comprehension and the interest of youth. I remember that once he talked, during an afternoon's drive, on the French Revolution and the ridiculous episode of Anacharsis Cloots, “orator and advocate of the human race,” collecting the vast populace of France to swear allegiance to a king even then doomed to the block. The very name of Cloots suggested humor, and nothing could have been more delightful and graphic than the whole episode as he related it. Helen asked if he thought such a thing as that could ever happen in America.

“No,” he said, “the American sense of humor would have laughed it out of court in a week; and the Frenchman dreads ridicule, too, though he never seems to realize how ridiculous he is—the most ridiculous creature in the world.”

On the morning of his seventy-fourth birthday he was looking wonderfully well after a night of sound sleep, his face full of color and freshness, his eyes bright and keen and full of good-humor. I presented him with a pair of cuff-buttons silver-enameled with the Bermuda lily, and I thought he seemed pleased with them.

It was rather gloomy outside, so we remained indoors by the fire and played cards, game after game of hearts, at which he excelled, and he was usually kept happy by winning. There were no visitors, and after dinner Helen asked him to read some of her favorite episodes from Tom Sawyer, so he read the whitewashing scene, Peter and the Pain-killer, and such chapters until tea-time. Then there was a birthday cake, and afterward cigars and talk and a quiet fireside evening.

Once, in the course of his talk, he forgot a word and denounced his poor memory:

“I'll forget the Lord's middle name some time,” he declared, “right in the midst of a storm, when I need all the help I can get.”

Later he said:

“Nobody dreamed, seventy-four years ago to-day, that I would be in Bermuda now.” And I thought he meant a good deal more than the words conveyed.

It was during this Bermuda visit that Mark Twain added the finishing paragraph to his article, “The Turning-Point in My Life,” which, at Howells's suggestion, he had been preparing for Harper's Bazar. It was a characteristic touch, and, as the last summary of his philosophy of human life, may be repeated here.

Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and ofyours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link wasforged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying ofme into the literary guild. Adam's temperament was the firstcommand the Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. Andit was the only command Adam would never be able to disobey. Itsaid, “Be weak, be water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.”The later command, to let the fruit alone, was certain to bedisobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by his temperament—which hedid not create and had no authority over. For the temperament isthe man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named Man is merelyits Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's temperament is,Thou shaft kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is, Thou shaltnot kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let thefat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbrue its hands inthe blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands can'tbe obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law oftemperament, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all otherauthorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve.That is, in their temperaments. Not in them, poor helpless youngcreatures—afflicted with temperaments made out of butter, whichbutter 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 splendidpair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos.By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell-fire could Satan havebeguiled them to eat the apple.There would have been results! Indeed yes. The apple would beintact to-day; there would be no human race; there would be no you;there would be no me. And the old, old creation-dawn scheme ofultimately launching me into the literary guild would have beendefeated.

He decided to go home for the holidays, and how fortunate it seems now that he did so! We sailed for America on the 18th of December, arriving the 21st. Jean was at the wharf to meet us, blue and shivering with the cold, for it was wretchedly bleak there, and I had the feeling that she should not have come.

She went directly, I think, to Stormfield, he following a day or two later. On the 23d I was lunching with Jean alone. She was full of interest in her Christmas preparations. She had a handsome tree set up in the loggia, and the packages were piled about it, with new ones constantly arriving. With her farm management, her housekeeping, her secretary work, and her Christmas preparations, it seemed to me that she had her hands overfull. Such a mental pressure could not be good for her. I suggested that for a time at least I might assume a part of her burden.

I was to remain at my own home that night, and I think it was as I left Stormfield that I passed jean on the stair. She said, cheerfully, that she felt a little tired and was going up to lie down, so that she would be fresh for the evening. I did not go back, and I never saw her alive again.

I was at breakfast next morning when word was brought in that one of the men from Stormfield was outside and wished to see me immediately. When I went out he said: “Miss Jean is dead. They have just found her in her bath-room. Mr. Clemens sent me to bring you.”

It was as incomprehensible as such things always are. I could not realize at all that Jean, so full of plans and industries and action less than a day before, had passed into that voiceless mystery which we call death.

Harry Iles drove me rapidly up the hill. As I entered Clemens's room he looked at me helplessly and said:

“Well, I suppose you have heard of this final disaster.”

He was not violent or broken down with grief. He had come to that place where, whatever the shock or the ill-turn of fortune, he could accept it, and even in that first moment of loss he realized that, for Jean at least, the fortune was not ill. Her malady had never been cured, and it had been one of his deepest dreads that he would leave her behind him. It was believed, at first; that Jean had drowned, and Dr. Smith tried methods of resuscitation; but then he found that it was simply a case of heart cessation caused by the cold shock of her bath.

The Gabrilowitsches were by this time in Europe, and Clemens cabled them not to come. Later in the day he asked me if we would be willing to close our home for the winter and come to Stormfield. He said that he should probably go back to Bermuda before long; but that he wished to keep the house open so that it would be there for him to come to at any time that he might need it.

We came, of course, for there was no thought among any of his friends but for his comfort and peace of mind. Jervis Langdon was summoned from Elmira, for Jean would lie there with the others.

In the loggia stood the half-trimmed Christmas tree, and all about lay the packages of gifts, and in Jean's room, on the chairs and upon her desk, were piled other packages. Nobody had been forgotten. For her father she had bought a handsome globe; he had always wanted one. Once when I went into his room he said:

“I have been looking in at Jean and envying her. I have never greatly envied any one but the dead. I always envy the dead.”

He told me how the night before they had dined together alone; how he had urged her to turn over a part of her work to me; how she had clung to every duty as if now, after all the years, she was determined to make up for lost time.

While they were at dinner a telephone inquiry had come concerning his health, for the papers had reported him as returning from Bermuda in a critical condition. He had written this playful answer:

MANAGER ASSOCIATED PRESS,New York.I hear the newspapers say I am dying. The charge is not true. Iwould not do such a thing at my time of life. I am behaving as goodas I can.Merry Christmas to everybody!     MARK TWAIN.

Jean telephoned it for him to the press. It had been the last secretary service she had ever rendered.

She had kissed his hand, he said, when they parted, for she had a severe cold and would not wish to impart it to him; then happily she had said good night, and he had not seen her again. The reciting of this was good to him, for it brought the comfort of tears.

Later, when I went in again, he was writing:

“I am setting it down,” he said—“everything. It is a relief to me to write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking.”

He continued writing most of the day, and at intervals during the next day, and the next.

It was on Christmas Day that they went with Jean on her last journey. Katie Leary, her baby nurse, had dressed her in the dainty gown which she had worn for Clara's wedding, and they had pinned on it a pretty buckle which her father had brought her from Bermuda, and which she had not seen. No Greek statue was ever more classically beautiful than she was, lying there in the great living-room, which in its brief history had seen so much of the round of life.

They were to start with jean at about six o'clock, and a little before that time Clemens (he was unable to make the journey) asked me what had been her favorite music. I said that she seemed always to care most for the Schubert Impromptu.—[Op. 142, No. 2.]—Then he said:

“Play it when they get ready to leave with her, and add the Intermezzo for Susy and the Largo for Mrs. Clemens. When I hear the music I shall know that they are starting. Tell them to set lanterns at the door, so I can look down and see them go.”

So I sat at the organ and began playing as they lifted and bore her away. A soft, heavy snow was falling, and the gloom of those shortest days was closing in. There was not the least wind or noise, the whole world was muffled. The lanterns at the door threw their light out on the thickly falling flakes. I remained at the organ; but the little group at the door saw him come to the window above—the light on his white hair as he stood mournfully gazing down, watching Jean going away from him for the last time. I played steadily on as he had instructed, the Impromptu, the Intermezzo from “Cavalleria,” and Handel's Largo. When I had finished I went up and found him.

“Poor little Jean,” he said; “but for her it is so good to go.”

In his own story of it he wrote:

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along theroad and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, andpresently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would notcome back any more. The cousin she had played with when they werebabies together—he and her beloved old Katie—Were conducting herto her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother'sside once more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.

He did not come down to dinner, and when I went up afterward I found him curiously agitated. He said:

“For one who does not believe in spirits I have had a most peculiar experience. I went into the bath-room just now and closed the door. You know how warm it always is in there, and there are no draughts. All at once I felt a cold current of air about me. I thought the door must be open; but it was closed. I said, 'Jean, is this you trying to let me know you have found the others?' Then the cold air was gone.”

I saw that the incident had made a very great impression upon him; but I don't remember that he ever mentioned it afterward.

Next day the storm had turned into a fearful blizzard; the whole hilltop was a raging, driving mass of white. He wrote most of the day, but stopped now and then to read some of the telegrams or letters of condolence which came flooding in. Sometimes he walked over to the window to look out on the furious tempest. Once, during the afternoon, he said:

“Jean always so loved to see a storm like this, and just now at Elmira they are burying her.”

Later he read aloud some lines by Alfred Austin, which Mrs. Crane had sent him lines which he had remembered in the sorrow for Susy:

When last came sorrow, around barn and byreWind-careen snow, the year's white sepulchre, lay.“Come in,” I said, “and warm you by the fire”;And there she sits and never goes away.

It was that evening that he came into the room where Mrs. Paine and I sat by the fire, bringing his manuscript.

“I have finished my story of Jean's death,” he said. “It is the end of my autobiography. I shall never write any more. I can't judge it myself at all. One of you read it aloud to the other, and let me know what you think of it. If it is worthy, perhaps some day it may be published.”

It was, in fact, one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph which he omitted may be printed now:

December 27. Did I know jean's value? No, I only thought I did.I knew a ten-thousandth fraction of it, that was all. It is alwaysso, with us, it has always been so. We are like the poor ignorantprivate soldier-dead, now, four hundred years—who picked up thegreat Sancy diamond on the field of the lost battle and sold it fora franc. Later he knew what he had done.Shall I ever be cheerful again, happy again? Yes. And soon. ForI know my temperament. And I know that the temperament is master ofthe man, and that he is its fettered and helpless slave and must inall things do as it commands. A man's temperament is born in him,and no circumstances can ever change it.My temperament has never allowed my spirits to remain depressed longat a time.That was a feature of Jean's temperament, too. She inherited itfrom me. I think she got the rest of it from her mother.

Jean Clemens had two natural endowments: the gift of justice and a genuine passion for all nature. In a little paper found in her desk she had written:

I know a few people who love the country as I do, but not many.Most of my acquaintances are enthusiastic over the spring and summermonths, but very few care much for it the year round. A few peopleare interested in the spring foliage and the development of the wildflowers—nearly all enjoy the autumn colors—while comparatively fewpay much attention to the coming and going of the birds, the changesin their plumage and songs, the apparent springing into life on somewarm April day of the chipmunks and woodchucks, the skurrying ofbaby rabbits, and again in the fall the equally sudden disappearanceof some of the animals and the growing shyness of others. To me itis all as fascinating as a book—more so, since I have never lostinterest in it.

It is simple and frank, like Thoreau. Perhaps, had she exercised it, there was a third gift—the gift of written thought.

Clemens remained at Stormfield ten days after Jean was gone. The weather was fiercely cold, the landscape desolate, the house full of tragedy. He kept pretty closely to his room, where he had me bring the heaps of letters, a few of which he answered personally; for the others he prepared a simple card of acknowledgment. He was for the most part in gentle mood during these days, though he would break out now and then, and rage at the hardness of a fate that had laid an unearned burden of illness on Jean and shadowed her life.

They were days not wholly without humor—none of his days could be altogether without that, though it was likely to be of a melancholy sort.

Many of the letters offered orthodox comfort, saying, in effect: “God does not willingly punish us.”

When he had read a number of these he said:

“Well, why does He do it then? We don't invite it. Why does He give Himself the trouble?”

I suggested that it was a sentiment that probably gave comfort to the writer of it.

“So it does,” he said, “and I am glad of it—glad of anything that gives comfort to anybody.”

He spoke of the larger God—the God of the great unvarying laws, and by and by dropped off to sleep, quite peacefully, and indeed peace came more and more to him each day with the thought that Jean and Susy and their mother could not be troubled any more. To Mrs. Gabrilowitsch he wrote:

REDDING, CONN, December 29, 1909.O, Clara, Clara dear, I am so glad she is out of it & safe—safe!I am not melancholy; I shall never be melancholy again, I think.You see, I was in such distress when I came to realize that you weregone far away & no one stood between her & danger but me—& I coulddie at any moment, & then—oh then what would become of her! Forshe was wilful, you know, & would not have been governable.You can't imagine what a darling she was that last two or threedays; & how fine, & good, & sweet, & noble—& joyful, thank Heaven!—& how intellectually brilliant. I had never been acquainted withJean before. I recognized that.But I mustn't try to write about her—I can't. I have alreadypoured my heart out with the pen, recording that last day or two.I will send you that—& you must let no one but Ossip read it.Good-by. I love you so! And Ossip.FATHER.

I don't think he attempted any further writing for print. His mind was busy with ideas, but he was willing to talk, rather than to write, rather even than to play billiards, it seemed, although we had a few quiet games—the last we should ever play together. Evenings he asked for music, preferring the Scotch airs, such as “Bonnie Doon” and “The Campbells are Coming.” I remember that once, after playing the latter for him, he told, with great feeling, how the Highlanders, led by Gen. Colin Campbell, had charged at Lucknow, inspired by that stirring air. When he had retired I usually sat with him, and he drifted into literature, or theology, or science, or history—the story of the universe and man.

One evening he spoke of those who had written but one immortal thing and stopped there. He mentioned “Ben Bolt.”

“I met that man once,” he said. “In my childhood I sang 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,' and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote it. His name was Brown.—[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently remembered only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan Poe, “Thomas Dunn Brown.”]—He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I remember how it thrilled me to realize that this was the very author of 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.' He was just an accident. He had a vision and echoed it. A good many persons do that—the thing they do is to put in compact form the thing which we have all vaguely felt. 'Twenty Years Ago' is just like it 'I have wandered through the village, Tom, and sat beneath the tree'—and Holmes's 'Last Leaf' is another: the memory of the hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is all so beautiful—the past is always beautiful.”

He quoted, with great feeling and effect:

The massy marbles restOn the lips that we have pressedIn their bloom,And the names we love to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.

He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes.

“Why,” he said, “humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”

“Your own case is an example,” I answered. “Without it, whatever your reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-spread affection that is shown by the writers of that great heap of letters.”

“Yes,” he said, gently, “they have liked to be amused.”

I tucked him in for the night, promising to send him to Bermuda, with Claude to take care of him, if he felt he could undertake the journey in two days more.

He was able, and he was eager to go, for he longed for that sunny island, and for the quiet peace of the Allen home. His niece, Mrs. Loomis, came up to spend the last evening in Stormfield, a happy evening full of quiet talk, and next morning, in the old closed carriage that had been his wedding-gift, he was driven to the railway station. This was on January 4, 1910.

He was to sail next day, and that night, at Mr. Loomis's, Howells came in, and for an hour or two they reviewed some of the questions they had so long ago settled, or left forever unsettled, and laid away. I remember that at dinner Clemens spoke of his old Hartford butler, George, and how he had once brought George to New York and introduced him at the various publishing houses as his friend, with curious and sometimes rather embarrassing results.

The talk drifted to sociology and to the labor-unions, which Clemens defended as being the only means by which the workman could obtain recognition of his rights.

Howells in his book mentions this evening, which he says “was made memorable to me by the kind, clear, judicial sense with which he explained and justified the labor-unions as the sole present help of the weak against the strong.”

They discussed dreams, and then in a little while Howells rose to go. I went also, and as we walked to his near-by apartment he spoke of Mark Twain's supremacy. He said:

“I turn to his books for cheer when I am down-hearted. There was never anybody like him; there never will be.”

Clemens sailed next morning. They did not meet again.


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