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 rest On the lips that we have pressed In their bloom, And the names we love to hear Have been carved for many a year On 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.
CCXCI
LETTERS FROM BERMUDA
Stormfield was solemn and empty without Mark Twain; but he wrote by every steamer, at first with his own hand, and during the last week by the hand of one of his enlisted secretaries--some member of the Allen family usually Helen. His letters were full of brightness and pleasantry-- always concerned more or less with business matters, though he was no longer disturbed by them, for Bermuda was too peaceful and too far away, and, besides, he had faith in the Mark Twain Company's ability to look after his affairs. I cannot do better, I believe, than to offer some portions of these letters here.
He reached Bermuda on the 7th of January, 1910, and on the 12th he wrote:
Again I am living the ideal life. There is nothing to mar it but the bloody-minded bandit Arthur,--[A small playmate of Helen's of whom Clemens pretended to be fiercely jealous. Once he wrote a memorandum to Helen: "Let Arthur read this book. There is a page in it that is poisoned."]--who still fetches and carries Helen. Presently he will be found drowned.