"The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and the late homecomings from the banquet and the lights and laughter, through the deserted streets--a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more--if you shrink at the thought of these things you need only reply, 'Your invitation honors me and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney-corner, and smoke my pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all affection, and that when you, in your turn, shall arrive at Pier 70 you may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.'"
The tears that had been lying in wait were no longer kept back. If there were any present who did not let them flow without shame, who did not shout their applause from throats choked with sobs, they failed to mention the fact later.
Many of his old friends, one after another, rose to tell their love for him--Cable, Carnegie, Gilder, and the rest. Mr. Rogers did not speak, nor the Reverend Twichell, but they sat at his special table. Aldrich could not be there, but wrote a letter. A group of English authors, including Alfred Austin, Barrie, Chesterton, Dobson, Doyle, Hardy, Kipling, Lang, and others, joined in a cable. Helen Keller wrote:
"And you are seventy years old? Or is the report exaggerated, like that of your death? I remember, when I saw you last, at the house of dear Mr. Hutton, in Princeton, you said:
"'If a man is a pessimist before he is forty-eight, he knows too much. If he is an optimist after he is forty-eight, he knows too little.'
"Now we know you are an optimist, and nobody would dare to accuse one on the "seven-terraced summit" of knowing little. So probably you are not seventy, after all, but only forty-seven!"
Helen Keller was right. Mark Twain was never a pessimist in his heart.
LIX.
MARK TWAIN ARRANGES FOR HIS BIOGRAPHY
It was at the beginning of 1906--a little more than a month after the seventieth-birthday dinner--that the writer of these chapters became personally associated with Mark Twain. I had met him before, and from time to time he had returned a kindly word about some book I had written and inconsiderately sent him, for he had been my literary hero from childhood. Once, indeed, he had allowed me to use some of his letters in a biography I was writing of Thomas Nast; he had been always an admirer of the great cartoonist, and the permission was kindness itself. Before the seating at the birthday dinner I happened to find myself for a moment alone with Mark Twain and remembered to thank him in person for the use of the letters; a day or two later I sent him a copy of the book. I did not expect to hear from it again.
It was a little while after this that I was asked to join in a small private dinner to be given to Mark Twain at the Players, in celebration of his being made an honorary member of that club--there being at the time only one other member of this class, Sir Henry Irving. I was in the Players a day or two before the event, and David Munro, of "The North American Review," a man whose gentle and kindly nature made him "David" to all who knew him, greeted me joyfully, his face full of something he knew I would wish to hear.
He had been chosen, he said, to propose the Players' dinner to Mark Twain, and had found him propped up in bed, and beside him a copy of the Nast book. I suspect now that David's generous heart prompted Mark Twain to speak of the book, and that his comment had lost nothing in David's eager retelling.