rest, and they had helped themselves lavishly out
by rail in the last half; but still it had been a mighty walk to do in
two days. Clemens was a great walker, in those years, and was always
telling of his tramps with Mr. Twichell to Talcott's Tower, ten miles out
of Hartford. As he walked of course he talked, and of course he smoked.
Whenever he had been a few days with us, the whole house had to be aired,
for he smoked all over it from breakfast to bedtime. He always went to
bed with a cigar in his mouth, and sometimes, mindful of my fire
insurance, I went up and took it away, still burning, after he had fallen
asleep. I do not know how much a man may smoke and live, but apparently
he smoked as much as a man could, for he smoked incessantly.

He did not care much to meet people, as I fancied, and we were greedy of
him for ourselves; he was precious to us; and I would not have exposed
him to the critical edge of that Cambridge acquaintance which might not
have appreciated him at, say, his transatlantic value. In America his
popularity was as instant as it was vast. But it must be acknowledged
that for a much longer time here than in England polite learning
hesitated his praise. In England rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in
him. Lord mayors, lord chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were
his hosts; he was desired in country houses, and his bold genius
captivated the favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of our nation.
But in his own country it was different. In proportion as people thought
themselves refined they questioned that quality which all recognize in
him now, but which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted
multitude. I went with him to see Longfellow, but I do not think
Longfellow made much of him, and Lowell made less. He stopped as if with
the long Semitic curve of Clemens's nose, which in the indulgence of his
passion for finding every one more or less a Jew he pronounced
unmistakably racial. It was two of my most fastidious Cambridge friends
who accepted him with the English, the European entirety--namely, Charles
Eliot Norton and Professor Francis J. Child. Norton was then newly back
from a long sojourn abroad, and his judgments were delocalized. He met
Clemens as if they had both been in England, and rejoiced in his bold
freedom from environment, and in the rich variety and boundless reach of
his talk. Child was of a personal liberty as great in its fastidious way
as that of