United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There is nothing so delights him as a swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once he is in the influence of its fascinations. To throw in stones and sticks seems to afford him rapture." Twichell goes on to tell how he threw some driftwood into a racing torrent and how Mark went running down-stream after it, waving and shouting in a sort of mad ecstasy.
They were all like one great family, of which Mark Twain's home was the central gathering-place. The Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and Mark Twain used to take many long walks together, and once they decided to walk from Hartford to Boston about one hundred miles.
His reception abroad had increased his prestige at home. Howells and Aldrich came over from Boston to tell him what a great man he had become to renew those Boston days of three years before to talk and talk of all the things between the earth and sky. And Twichell came in, of course, and Warner, and no one took account of time, or hurried, or worried about anything at all.
Twichell, in an account of the meeting, said: "The meeting between the Prince and Mark was a most cordial one on both sides, and presently the Prince took Mark Twain's arm and the two marched up and down, talking earnestly together, the Prince solid, erect, and soldier-like; Clemens weaving along in his curious, swinging gait, in full tide of talk, and brandishing a sun umbrella of the most scandalous description."
He was one of the finest wits and remarkable humorists of his time. Wit and humor were with him spontaneous, and he bubbled over with them. Mark Twain's faculties in that line were more labored and had to be worked out. Doctor Twichell often furnished in the rough the jewels which afterwards in Mark Twain's workshop became perfect gems.
On the morning of his wedding-day Mark Twain received from his publisher a check for four thousand dollars, his profit from three months' sales of the book, a handsome sum. The wedding was mainly a family affair. Twichell and his wife came over from Hartford Twichell to assist Thomas K. Beecher in performing the ceremony.
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?
That evening the enemy came up for a reconnoissance, in the deepest darkness, and there were alarms all night. The next day the Sixth Connecticut got afloat, and came up the river; and two days after, to my continued amazement, arrived a part of the Eighth Maine, under Lieutenant-Colonel Twichell. This increased my command to four regiments, or parts of regiments, half white and half black.
Twichell presented him to many congenial people, including Charles Dudley Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other writing folk. But flattering lecture offers were made him, and he could no longer refuse. He called his new lecture "The Vandal Abroad," it being chapters from the forthcoming book, and it was a great success everywhere. His houses were crowded; the newspapers were enthusiastic.
Joseph H. Twichell, and at least tacitly far from the entire negation he came to at last. I should say he had hardly yet examined the grounds of his passive acceptance of his wife's belief, for it was hers and not his, and he held it unscanned in the beautiful and tender loyalty to her which was the most moving quality of his most faithful soul.
Word Of The Day