would
be his way. Then steadily, and almost without emphasis, he delivered the
opening of his final sentence:

"And now in his cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his
approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole
strategic mind, at this moment, to trying to find out some way to get his
own big toe into his mouth, an achievement which (meaning no disrespect)
the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his attention to some
fifty-six years ago."

He paused, and the vast crowd had a chill of fear. After all, he seemed
likely to overdo it to spoil everything with a cheap joke at the end. No
one ever knew better than Mark Twain the value of a pause. He waited now
long enough to let the silence become absolute, until the tension was
painful, then wheeling to Grant himself he said, with all the dramatic
power of which he was master:

"And if the child is but the father of the man, there are mighty few who
will doubt that he succeeded!"

The house came down with a crash. The linking of their hero's great
military triumphs with that earliest of all conquests seemed to them so
grand a figure that they went mad with the joy of it. Even Grant's iron
serenity broke; he rocked and laughed while the tears streamed down his
cheeks.

They swept around the speaker with their congratulations, in their
efforts to seize his hand. He was borne up and down the great
dining-hall. Grant himself pressed up to make acknowledgments.

"It tore me all to pieces," he said; and Sherman exclaimed, "Lord bless
you, my boy! I don't know how you do it!"

The little speech has been in "cold type" so many years since then that
the reader of it to-day may find it hard to understand the flame of
response it kindled so long ago. But that was another day--and another
nation--and Mark Twain, like Robert Ingersoll, knew always his period and
his people.

CXXIV

ANOTHER "ATLANTIC" SPEECH

The December good-fortune was an opportunity Clemens had to redeem
himself with the Atlantic contingent, at a breakfast given to Dr. Holmes.

Howells had written concerning it as early as October, and the first
impulse had been to decline. It would be something of an ordeal; for
though two years had passed since the fatal Whittier dinner, Clemens had
not been in that company since, and the lapse of time did not signify.
Both Howells and Warn