He afterward corresponded with Margaret, and once wrote her:

I'm already making mistakes. When I was in New York, six weeks ago, I was on a corner of Fifth Avenue and I saw a small girl--not a big one--start across from the opposite corner, and I exclaimed to myself joyfully, "That is certainly my Margaret!" so I rushed to meet her. But as she came nearer I began to doubt, and said to myself, "It's a Margaret--that is plain enough--but I'm afraid it is somebody else's." So when I was passing her I held my shell so she couldn't help but see it. Dear, she only glanced at it and passed on! I wondered if she could have overlooked it. It seemed best to find out; so I turned and followed and caught up with her, and said, deferentially; "Dear Miss, I already know your first name by the look of you, but would you mind telling me your other one?" She was vexed and said pretty sharply, "It's Douglas, if you're so anxious to know. I know your name by your looks, and I'd advise you to shut yourself up with your pen and ink and write some more rubbish. I am surprised that they allow you to run' at large. You are likely to get run over by a baby-carriage any time. Run along now and don't let the cows bite you."

What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I didn't smile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She was from the country, of course, and didn't know what a comical blunder. she was making.

Mr. Rogers's health was very poor that winter, and Clemens urged him to try Bermuda, and offered to go back with him; so they sailed away to the summer island, and though Margaret was gone, there was other entertaining company--other granddaughters to be adopted, and new friends and old friends, and diversions of many sorts. Mr. Rogers's son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, came down and joined the little group. It was one of Mark Twain's real holidays. Mr. Rogers's health improved rapidly, and Mark Twain was in fine trim. To Mrs. Rogers, at the end of the first week, he wrote:

DEAR MRS. ROGERS, He is getting along splendidly! This was the very place for him. He enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat.

But he will get a backset if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the brightest man in these regions, & the best company. Bright? He is much more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intensely alive.

With love & all good wishes. S. L. C.

Mark Twain and Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They were often referred to as "the King" and "the Rajah," and it was always a question whether it was "the King" who took care of "the Rajah," or vice versa. There was generally a group to gather around them, and Clemens was sure of an attentive audience, whether he wanted to air his philosophies, his views of the human race, or to read aloud from the verses of Kipling.

"I am not fond of all poetry," he would say; "but there's something in Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just about my level."

Miss Wallace recalls certain Kipling readings in his room, when his friends gathered to listen.

On those Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one. The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and Mark Twain in the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch) still in his white serge suit, with the light from the jet shining down on the crown of his silver hair, making it gleam and glisten like frosted threads.

In one hand he held his book, in the other he had his pipe, which he used principally to gesture with in the most dramatic passages.

Margaret's small successors became the earliest members of the Angel Fish Club, which Clemens concluded to organize after a visit to the spectacular Bermuda aquarium.

Mark Twain
Classic Literature Library

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