"Look," he said. "Do you see it?"
Clemens looked carefully now and identified one of the books as a still- born novel which Keeler had published.
"This is a library," said Keeler, eagerly, "and they've got it!"
His whole being was aglow with the wonder of it. He had been investigating; the library records showed that in the two years the book had been there it had been taken out and read three times! It never occurred to Clemens even to smile. Knowing Mark Twain, one would guess that his eyes were likely to be filled with tears.
In his book about Mark Twain, Howells tells of a luncheon which Keeler gave to his more famous associates--Aldrich, Fields, Harte, Clemens, and Howells himself--a merry informal occasion. Says Howells:
Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk--play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat- lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly; and amid the discourse, so little improving, but so full of good-fellowship, Bret Harte's leering dramatization of Clemens's mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates. "Why, fellows," he spluttered, "this is the dream of Mark's life," and I remember the glance from under Clemens's feathery eyebrows which betrayed his enjoyment of the fun.
Very likely Keeler gave that luncheon in celebration of his book's triumph; it would be like him.
Keeler's end was a mystery. The New York Tribune commissioned him to go to Cuba to report the facts of some Spanish outrages. He sailed from New York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the night before the vessel reached Havana. He had made no secret of his mission, but had discussed it in his frank, innocent way. There were some Spanish military men on the ship.
Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said:
"It may be that he was not flung into the sea, still the belief was general that that was what had happened."
In his book Howells refers to the doubt with which Mark Twain was then received by the polite culture of Boston; which, on the other hand, accepted Bret Harte as one of its own, forgiving even social shortcomings.
The reason is not difficult to understand. Harte had made his appeal with legitimate fiction of the kind which, however fresh in flavor and environment, was of a sort to be measured and classified. Harte spoke a language they could understand; his humor, his pathos, his point of view were all recognizable. It was an art already standardized by a master. It is no reflection on the genius of Bret Harte to liken his splendid achievements to those of Charles Dickens. Much of Harte's work is in no way inferior to that of his great English prototype. Dickens never wrote a better short story than "The Outcasts of Poker Flats." He never wrote as good a short story as "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Boston critics promptly realized these things and gave Harte his correct rating. That they failed to do this with Mark Twain, lay chiefly in the fact that he spoke to them in new and startling tongues. His gospels were likely to be heresies; his literary eccentricities were all unclassified. Of the ultrafastidious set Howells tells us that Charles Eliot Norton and Prof. Francis J. Child were about the only ones who accorded him unqualified approval. The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that condescension which the courtier is likely to accord to motley and the cap and bells. Only the great, simple-hearted, unbiased multitude, the public, which had no standards but the direct appeal from one human heart to another, could recognize immediately his mightier heritage, could exalt and place him on the throne.
LXXXIV
"ROUGHING IT"
Telegram to Redpath:
How in the name of God does a man find his way from here to Amherst, and when must he start? Give me full particulars, and send a man with me.