and frequently
had them about him. He delighted in games--especially in billiards--and
in building the house at Stormfield the billiard-room was first
considered. He had a genuine passion for the sport; without it his
afternoon was not complete. His mornings he was likely to pass in bed,
smoking--he was always smoking--and attending to his correspondence and
reading. History and the sciences interested him, and his bed was strewn
with biographies and stories of astronomical and geological research.
The vastness of distances and periods always impressed him. He had
no head for figures, but he would labor for hours over scientific
calculations, trying to compass them and to grasp their gigantic import.
I remember once finding him highly elated over the fact that he had
figured out for himself the length in hours and minutes of a "light
year." He showed me the pages covered with figures, and was more proud
of them than if they had been the pages of an immortal story. Then
we played billiards, but even his favorite game could not make him
altogether forget his splendid achievement.

It was on the day before Christmas, 1909, that heavy bereavement once
more came into the life of Mark Twain. His daughter Jean, long subject
to epileptic attacks, was seized with a convulsion while in her bath and
died before assistance reached her. He was dazed by the suddenness of
the blow. His philosophy sustained him. He was glad, deeply glad for the
beautiful girl that had been released.

"I never greatly envied anybody but the dead," he said, when he had
looked at her. "I always envy the dead."

The coveted estate of silence, time's only absolute gift, it was the one
benefaction he had ever considered worth while.

Yet the years were not unkindly to Mark Twain. They brought him sorrow,
but they brought him likewise the capacity and opportunity for large
enjoyment, and at the last they laid upon him a kind of benediction.
Naturally impatient, he grew always more gentle, more generous, more
tractable and considerate as the seasons passed. His final days may be
said to have been spent in the tranquil light of a summer afternoon.

His own end followed by a few months that of his daughter. There were
already indications that his heart was seriously affected, and soon
after Jean's death he sought the warm climate of Bermuda. But his malady
made rapid progress, and in April he returned to Stormfield. He died
there just a week later, April 21