he attempted any further writing for print. His mind was
busy with ideas, but he was willing to talk, rather than to write, rather
even than to play billiards, it seemed, although we had a few quiet
games--the last we should ever play together. Evenings he asked for
music, preferring the Scotch airs, such as "Bonnie Doon" and "The
Campbells are Coming." I remember that once, after playing the latter
for him, he told, with great feeling, how the Highlanders, led by Gen.
Colin Campbell, had charged at Lucknow, inspired by that stirring air.
When he had retired I usually sat with him, and he drifted into
literature, or theology, or science, or history--the story of the
universe and man.

One evening he spoke of those who had written but one immortal thing and
stopped there. He mentioned "Ben Bolt."

"I met that man once," he said. "In my childhood I sang 'Sweet Alice,
Ben Bolt,' and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote
it. His name was Brown.--[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently
remembered only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan
Poe, "Thomas Dunn Brown."]--He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I
remember how it thrilled me to realize that this was the very author of
'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.' He was just an accident. He had a vision and
echoed it. A good many persons do that--the thing they do is to put in
compact form the thing which we have all vaguely felt. 'Twenty Years
Ago' is just like it 'I have wandered through the village, Tom, and sat
beneath the tree'--and Holmes's 'Last Leaf' is another: the memory of the
hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is all so
beautiful--the past is always beautiful."

He quoted, with great feeling and effect:

The massy marbles rest
On the lips that we have pressed
In their bloom,
And the names we love to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and
thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants
and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their
characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes.

"Why," he said, "humor is mankind's greatest blessing."

"Your own case is an example," I answered. "Without it, whatever your
reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-spread
affection that is shown by the writers o