heat of it
before we regained our courage for the undertaking. With all these
precautions we failed, for when our statement was imparted to the
proposed victim she instantly pronounced it unreliable, and we were left
with it on our hands intact. I think the humor of this situation was
finally a greater pleasure to Clemens than an actual visit to Concord
would have been; only a few weeks before his death he laughed our defeat
over with one of my family in Bermuda, and exulted in our prompt
detection.

XI.

From our joint experience in failing I argue that Clemens's affection for
me must have been great to enable him to condone in me the final
defection which was apt to be the end of our enterprises. I have fancied
that I presented to him a surface of such entire trustworthiness that he
could not imagine the depths of unreliability beneath it; and that never
realizing it, he always broke through with fresh surprise but unimpaired
faith. He liked, beyond all things, to push an affair to the bitter end,
and the end was never too bitter unless it brought grief or harm to
another. Once in a telegraph office at a railway station he was treated
with such insolent neglect by the young lady in charge, who was
preoccupied in a flirtation with a "gentleman friend," that emulous of
the public spirit which he admired in the English, he told her he should
report her to her superiors, and (probably to her astonishment) he did
so. He went back to Hartford, and in due time the poor girl came to me
in, terror and in tears; for I had abetted Clemens in his action, and had
joined my name to his in his appeal to the authorities. She was
threatened with dismissal unless she made full apology to him and brought
back assurance of its acceptance. I felt able to give this, and, of
course, he eagerly approved; I think he telegraphed his approval. Another
time, some years afterward, we sat down together in places near the end
of a car, and a brakeman came in looking for his official note-book.
Clemens found that he had sat down upon it, and handed it to him; the man
scolded him very abusively, and came back again and again, still scolding
him for having no more sense than to sit down on a note-book. The
patience of Clemens in bearing it was so angelic that I saw fit to
comment, "I suppose you will report this fellow." "Yes," he answered,
slowly and sadly. "That's what I should have done once. But now I
remember that he gets twenty dollars