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There is a gap in my recollections of Clemens, which I think is of a year or two, for the next thing I remember of him is meeting him at a lunch in Boston, given us by that genius of hospitality, the tragically destined Ralph Keeler, author of one of the most unjustly forgotten books, 'Vagabond Adventures', a true bit of picaresque autobiography.
The little household on Delaware Avenue was indeed a happy place during those early months. Neither Clemens nor his wife in those days cared much for society, preferring the comfort of their own home. Once when a new family moved into a house across the way they postponed calling until they felt ashamed. Clemens himself called first.
When Kranitski entered his own lodgings, after passing the night with Maryan, and after the long conversation with Malvina, old widow Clemens looked at him from behind her great spectacles, and dropped her hands: "Are you sick, or what? Arabian adventure! Ah, what a look you have! What has happened? Maybe those pains have come; you have had them a number of times already.
Child was of a personal liberty as great in its fastidious way as that of Clemens himself, and though he knew him only at second hand, he exulted in the most audacious instance of his grotesquery, as I shall have to tell by-and-by, almost solely.
Clemens had tried to keep his money affairs out of the newspapers, but the payment of the final claims could not be concealed, and the press made the most of it. Head-lines shouted it. Never had Mark Twain been so beloved by his fellow-men.
It was the end of an autumn day, twilight had begun to come down on the yard in Lipovka, and the linden grove, in a black line, cut through the evening ruddiness glowing in the western heavens. Widow Clemens, with her eyes fixed on the grove and the red of evening, said: "Oi! Tulek, Tulek! how will this be?
An entry in his diary says: "Since the last two hours all laughter, all levity, has ceased on the ship a settled gloom is upon the faces of the passengers. "But the winter air of the North checked the contagion, and there were no new cases when New York City was reached." Clemens remained but a short time in New York, and was presently in St. Louis with his mother and sister.
Over at Mount Clemens, at the Springs, folks congregated, and there young Edison took weekly trips selling papers. On one such visit he rescued the little son of the station-agent from in front of a moving train.
I was away at the time of his great Browning passion, and I know of it chiefly from hearsay; but at the time Tolstoy was doing what could be done to make me over Clemens wrote, "That man seems to have been to you what Browning was to me." I do not know that he had other favorites among the poets, but he had favorite poems which he liked to read to you, and he read, of course, splendidly.
Then a letter addressed "The Devil Knows Where" also reached him, and he answered, "He did, too." Surely these were the farthermost limits of fame. Countless anecdotes went the rounds of the press. Among them was one which happened to be true: Their near neighbor, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was leaving for Florida one morning, and Clemens ran over early to say good-by. On his return Mrs.
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