The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 3, Part 2,
1907-1910, by Albert Bigelow Paine

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Title: Mark Twain, A Biography, Vol. 3, Part 2, 1907-1910
The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Author: Albert Bigelow Paine

Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #2987]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY, ***

Produced by David Widger

MARK TWAIN, A BIOGRAPHY

By Albert Bigelow Paine

VOLUME III, Part 2: 1907-1910

CCLVI

HONORS FROM OXFORD

Clemens made a brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twichell
along; their first return to the island since the trip when they had
promised to come back so soon-nearly thirty years before. They had been
comparatively young men then. They were old now, but they found the
green island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not find their
old landlady; they could not even remember her name at first, and then
Twichell recalled that it was the same as an author of certain
schoolbooks in his youth, and Clemens promptly said, "Kirkham's Grammar."
Kirkham was truly the name, and they went to find her; but she was dead,
and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier time, reigned
in her stead and entertained the successors of her mother's guests. They
walked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up again a
long-discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale. It
gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allow
to fade again.

Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having been
agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific
coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly
passing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal
schoolmates; also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the
early pioneers--all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work as
I had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted; but whatever
reluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put aside
in view of prospective benefits.