We got on very well without the absentees, after finding them in thewrong, as usual, and the visit was like those I used to have withhim so many years before in Hartford, but there was not the oldferment of subjects. Many things had been discussed and put awayfor good, but we had our old fondness for nature and for each other,who were so differently parts of it. He showed his absolute contentwith his house, and that was the greater pleasure for me because itwas my son who designed it. The architect had been so fortunate asto be able to plan it where a natural avenue of savins, the close-knit, slender, cypress-like cedars of New England, led away from therear of the villa to the little level of a pergola, meant some dayto be wreathed and roofed with vines. But in the early spring daysall the landscape was in the beautiful nakedness of the Northernwinter. It opened in the surpassing loveliness of wooded andmeadowed uplands, under skies that were the first days blue, and thelast gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked up anddown, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, andtalked with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age forthe sort of men and things that used to excite us or enrage us; nowwe were far past turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk togetheracross the yellow pastures to a chasmal creek on his grounds, wherethe ice still knit the clayey banks together like crystal mosses;and the stream far down clashed through and over the stones and theshards of ice. Clemens pointed out the scenery he had bought togive himself elbowroom, and showed me the lot he was going to haveme build on. The next day we came again with the geologist he hadasked up to Stormfield to analyze its rocks. Truly he loved theplace....My visit at Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on hispart and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard himsounding my name through the house for the fun of it and I know forthe fondness, and if I looked out of my door there he was in hislong nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and wagging hisgreat white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in thehope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugar-snowhad fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to thestation in the carriage which had been given him by his wife'sfather when they were first married, and had been kept all thoseintervening years in honorable retirement for this final use.—[Thiscarriage—a finely built coup—had been presented to Mrs. Crane whenthe Hartford house was closed. When Stormfield was built shereturned it to its original owner.]—Its springs had not grownyielding with time, it had rather the stiffness and severity of age;but for him it must have swung low like the sweet chariot of thenegro “spiritual” which I heard him sing with such fervor when thosewonderful 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 youwrite me day-before-day-before yesterday or did I dream it? In mymind's eye I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blueenvelope in the mail-pile. I have hunted the house over, but thereis no such letter. Was it an illusion?I am reading Lowell's letters & smoking. I woke an hour ago & amreading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, Vol. I, I havejust 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. Itwas a brick out of a blue sky, & knocked me groggy for a moment. Ahme, the pathos of it is that we were young then. And he—why, sowas he, but he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 yearslater, when we saw him approaching and you warned me, saying:“Don't say anything about age—he has just turned 50 & thinks he isold, & 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, & youcan choose the target that's going to be the most sympathetic forwhat you are hungering & thirsting to say at that particular moment.And you can talk with a quite unallowable frankness & freedombecause you are not going to send the letter. When you are on firewith theology you'll not write it to Rogers, who wouldn't be aninspiration; you'll write it to Twichell, because it will make himwrithe and squirm & break the furniture. When you are on fire witha good thing that's indecent you won't waste it on Twichell; you'llsave it for Howells, who will love it. As he will never see it youcan make it really indecenter than he could stand; & so no harm isdone, 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.
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 ofhis character because it is never protruding; but he lends a helpinghand 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 otherbright. 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 arenot God.I would take this opportunity to tell something that I have neverbeen 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 whichI was financial agent, failed, it left me heavily in debt. If youwill remember what commerce was at that time you will recall thatyou could not sell anything, and could not buy anything, and I wason my back; my books were not worth anything at all, and I could notgive away my copyrights. Mr. Rogers had long-enough vision ahead tosay, “Your books have supported you before, and after the panic isover they will support you again,” and that was a correctproposition. He saved my copyrights, and saved me from financialruin. He it was who arranged with my creditors to allow me to roamthe face of the earth and persecute the nations thereof withlectures, promising at the end of four years I would pay dollar fordollar. That arrangement was made, otherwise I would now be livingout-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that.You see his white mustache and his hair trying to get white (he isalways trying to look like me—I don't blame him for that). Theseare only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say,without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have everknown.
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 complainingof your use of tobacco, both as to quantity and quality. Complaintsare now coming in of your use of time. Most of your friends thinkthat you are using your supply somewhat lavishly, but the chiefcomplaint is in regard to the quality.I have been appealed to in the mean time, and have concluded that itis impossible to get the right kind of time from a blacking-box.Therefore, I take the liberty of sending you herewith a machine thatwill furnish only the best. Please use it with the kind wishes ofYours truly,H. H. ROGERS.P. S.—Complaint has also been made in regard to the furrows youmake in your trousers in scratching matches. You will find a furrowon the bottom of the article inclosed. Please use it. Complimentsof 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.
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 billhad literature and music all mixed together. Being a Missourian ofcourse 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 relatingonly to the copyright of books; send it to me and I will try to haveit 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 aperiod of exhaustion that almost approximated prostration. After along lecture tour last summer I went immediately into a hardcampaign; as soon as the election was over, and I had recovered mydisposition, I came here and went into those tariff hearings, whichbegan shortly after breakfast each day, and sometimes lasted untilmidnight. Listening patiently and meekly, withal, to the lying oftariff barons for many days and nights was followed by the work ofthe long session; that was followed by a hot campaign to take UncleJoe's rules away from him; on the heels of that “Campaign thatFailed” came the tariff fight in the House. I am now getting timeto breathe regularly and I am writing to ask you if the copyrightlaw is acceptable to you. If it is not acceptable to you I want toask you to write and tell me how it should be changed and I willgive my best endeavors to the work. I believe that your ideas andwishes in the matter constitute the best guide we have as to whatshould 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 UnitedStates. Whosoever will compare it with its predecessors will haveno trouble in arriving at that decision.The bill which was before the committee two years ago when I wasdown there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting &apparently irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we allsaid “the case is hopeless, absolutely hopeless—out of this chaosnothing can be built.” But we were in error; out of that chaoticmass this excellent bill has been constructed, the warring interestshave been reconciled, and the result is as comely and substantial alegislative edifice as lifts its domes and towers and protectivelightning-rods out of the statute book I think. When I think ofthat other bill, which even the Deity couldn't understand, and ofthis one, which even I can understand, I take off my hat to the manor men who devised this one. Was it R. U. Johnson? Was it theAuthors' League? Was it both together? I don't know, but I takeoff my hat, anyway. Johnson has written a valuable article aboutthe new law—I inclose it.At last—at last and for the first time in copyright history—we areahead of England! Ahead of her in two ways: by length of time andby fairness to all interests concerned. Does this sound likeshouting? Then I must modify it: all we possessed of copyrightjustice before the 4th of last March we owed to England'sinitiative.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.]
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 fryPaid reverence, when like a cloudStorm-swept I drove along,My Admiral at post, his pennon blueFaint in the wilderness of sky, my longYards 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 madeObeisance—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 lieWide to the sun and the wind and the sky.Poppies we find amongst our wheatGrow on Caesar's banquet seat.Cattle crop and neatherds drowseOn 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 healthTo 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 whiteAnd the name of the late deceased:And the epitaph drear: “A fool lies hereWho 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.”
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.
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 toJean's farm-house. I picked a dandelion-ball, with some remarkabout its being one of the evidences of the intelligent principle innature—the seeds winged for a wider distribution.“Yes,” he said, “those are the great evidences; no one who reasonscan doubt them.”And presently he added:“That is a most amusing book of White's. When you read it you seehow those old theologians never reasoned at all. White tells of anold bishop who figured out that God created the world in an instanton a certain day in October exactly so many years before Christ, andproved it. And I knew a preacher myself once who declared that thefossils in the rocks proved nothing as to the age of the world. Hesaid that God could create the rocks with those fossils in them forornaments if He wanted to. Why, it takes twenty years to build alittle island in the Mississippi River, and that man actuallybelieved that God created the whole world and all that's in it insix days. White tells of another bishop who gave two new reasonsfor thunder; one being that God wanted to show the world His power,and another that He wished to frighten sinners to repent. Nowconsider the proportions of that conception, even in the pettiestway you can think of it. Consider the idea of God thinking of allthat. Consider the President of the United States wanting toimpress the flies and fleas and mosquitoes, getting up on the domeof 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. Hewas walking up and down, looking like an ancient Roman. He said:“Consider the case of Elsie Sigel—[Granddaughter of Gen. FranzSigel. She was mysteriously murdered while engaged in settlementwork 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 lifethat was ever lived that was worth living. Not a single child everbegotten that the begetting of it was not a crime. Suppose acommunity of people to be living on the slope of a volcano, directlyunder the crater and in the path of lava-flow; that volcano has beenbreaking 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 doit—that much can be counted on. Suppose those people go to acommunity in a far neighborhood and say, 'We'd like to change placeswith you. Come take our homes and let us have yours.' Those peoplewould say, 'Never mind, we are not interested in your country. Weknow what has happened there, and what will happen again.' We don'tcare 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 bringingit to a country, to a community gathered under the crater of avolcano, knowing that sooner or later death will come, and thatbefore death there will be catastrophes infinitely worse. Formerlyit was much worse than now, for before the ministers abolished hella man knew, when he was begetting a child, that he was begetting asoul that had only one chance in a hundred of escaping the eternalfires of damnation. He knew that in all probability that childwould 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'tremember just what it was now, but the substance of it was that afairy gave a man the customary wishes. I was interested in seeingwhat he would take. First he chose wealth and went away with it,but it did not bring him happiness. Then he came back for thesecond selection, and chose fame, and that did not bring happinesseither. Finally he went to the fairy and chose death, and the fairysaid, in substance, 'If you hadn't been a fool you'd have chosenthat 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 playercontinuing until he has made five, counting the number of his shotsas in golf, the one who finishes in the fewer shots wins. It is agame we play with almost exactly equal skill, and he is highlypleased with it. He said this afternoon:“I have never enjoyed billiards as I do now. I look forward to itevery afternoon as my reward at the end of a good day's work.”—[Hiswork at this time was an article on Marjorie Fleming, the “wonderchild,” whose quaint writings and brief little life had beenpublished to the world by Dr. John Brown. Clemens always adored thethought of Marjorie, and in this article one can see that she rankedalmost 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: