a grand Republican rally at the opera-house with addresses by
Charles Dudley Warner, Henry C. Robinson, and Mark Twain. It was an
unpleasant, drizzly evening, but the weather had no effect on their
audience. The place was jammed and packed, the aisles, the windows, and
the gallery railings full. Hundreds who came as late as the hour
announced for the opening were obliged to turn back, for the building had
been thronged long before. Mark Twain's speech that night is still
remembered in Hartford as the greatest effort of his life. It was hardly
that, except to those who were caught in the psychology of the moment,
the tumult and the shouting of patriotism, the surge and sweep of the
political tide. The roaring delight of the audience showed that to them
at least it was convincing. Howells wrote that he had read it twice, and
that he could not put it out of his mind. Whatever its general effect
was need not now be considered. Garfield was elected, and perhaps
Grant's visit to Hartford and the great mass-meeting that followed
contributed their mite to that result.

Clemens saw General Grant again that year, but not on political business.
The Educational Mission, which China had established in Hartford--a
thriving institution for eight years or more--was threatened now by
certain Chinese authorities with abolishment. Yung Wing (a Yale
graduate), the official by whom it had been projected and under whose
management it had prospered, was deeply concerned, as was the Rev. Joseph
Twichell, whose interest in the mission was a large and personal one.
Yung Wing declared that if influence could be brought upon Li Hung Chang,
then the most influential of Chinese counselors, the mission might be
saved. Twichell, remembering the great honors which Li Hung Chang had
paid to General Grant in China, also Grant's admiration of Mark Twain,
went to the latter without delay. Necessarily Clemens would be
enthusiastic, and act promptly. He wrote to Grant, and Grant replied by
telegraph, naming a day when he would see them in New York.

They met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Grant was in fine spirits, and by no
means the "silent man" of his repute.

He launched at once into as free and flowing talk as I have ever heard
[says Twichell], marked by broad and intelligent views on the subject of
China, her wants, disadvantages, etc. Now and then he asked a question,
but kept the lead of the conversation. At last he proposed, of his own
accord, to wri