footlights and assembled listeners. Once in New York he
appears to have been caught unawares at a Tile Club dinner and made
to tell a story, but his agony was such that at the prospect of a
similar ordeal in Boston he avoided that city and headed straight
for Georgia and safety.

The New Orleans excursion with Osgood, as planned by Clemens, proved
a great success. The little party took the steamer Gold Dust from
St. Louis down river toward New Orleans. Clemens was quickly
recognized, of course, and his assumed name laid aside. The author
of "Uncle Remus" made the trip to New Orleans. George W. Cable was
there at the time, and we may believe that in the company of Mark
Twain and Osgood those Southern authors passed two or three
delightful days. Clemens also met his old teacher Bixby in New
Orleans, and came back up the river with him, spending most of his
time in the pilot-house, as in the old days. It was a glorious
trip, and, reaching St. Louis, he continued it northward, stopping
off at Hannibal and Quincy.'

*****

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

QUINCY, ILL. May 17, '82.

Livy darling, I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, and
must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once and break
for home.

I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day
long, examining the old localities and talking with the grey-heads who
were boys and girls with me 30 or 40 years ago. It has been a moving
time. I spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from
town, in their spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me,
and afterwards schoolmates. Now they have a daughter 19 or 20 years old.
Spent an hour, yesterday, with A. W. Lamb, who was not married when I
saw him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been
talking with their grown-up sons and daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the
spruce young handsomely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me--a
grisly elephantine patriarch of 65 now, his grace all vanished.

That world which I knew in its blossoming youth is old and bowed and
melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery and wrinkled, the fire is
gone out in its eyes, and the spring from its step. It will be dust
and ashes when I come again. I have been clasping hands with the
moribund--and usually they sa