to keep him straight. The children, he said,
had fallen into the habit of calling it "dusting papa off." Then he went
on:

When my daughter came to see me off last Saturday at the boat she
slipped a note in my hand and said, "Read it when you get aboard the
ship." I didn't think of it again until day before yesterday, and
it was a "dusting off." And if I carry out all the instructions
that I got there I shall be more celebrated in England for my
behavior than for anything else. I got instructions how to act on
every occasion. She underscored "Now, don't you wear white clothes
on ship or on shore until you get back," and I intended to obey. I
have been used to obeying my family all my life, but I wore the
white clothes to-night because the trunk that has the dark clothes
in it is in the cellar. I am not apologizing for the white clothes;
I am only apologizing to my daughter for not obeying her.

He received a great welcome when the ship arrived at Tilbury. A throng
of rapid-fire reporters and photographers immediately surrounded him, and
when he left the ship the stevedores gave him a round of cheers. It was
the beginning of that almost unheard-of demonstration of affection and
honor which never for a moment ceased, but augmented from day to day
during the four weeks of his English sojourn.

In a dictation following his return, Mark Twain said:

Who began it? The very people of all people in the world whom I
would have chosen: a hundred men of my own class--grimy sons of
labor, the real builders of empires and civilizations, the
stevedores! They stood in a body on the dock and charged their
masculine lungs, and gave me a welcome which went to the marrow of
me.

J. Y. W. MacAlister was at the St. Pancras railway station to meet him,
and among others on the platform was Bernard Shaw, who had come down to
meet Professor Henderson. Clemens and Shaw were presented, and met
eagerly, for each greatly admired the other. A throng gathered. Mark
Twain was extricated at last, and hurried away to his apartments at
Brown's Hotel, "a placid, subdued, homelike, old-fashioned English inn,"
he called it, "well known to me years ago, a blessed retreat of a sort
now rare in England, and becoming rarer every year."

But Brown's was not placid and subdued during his stay. The London
newspapers declared that Mark Twain's arrival had turned Brown's not only
into a