re full of pity
at last when this pair of rapscallions ride out of the history on a rail,
and feel some of Huck's inclusive loyalty and all the sorrowful truth of
his comment: "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."

The "poor old king" Huck calls him, and confesses how he felt "ornery and
humble and to blame, somehow," for the old scamp's misfortunes. "A
person's conscience ain't got no sense," he says, and Huck is never more
real to us, or more lovable, than in that moment. Huck is what he is
because, being made so, he cannot well be otherwise. He is a boy
throughout--such a boy as Mark Twain had known and in some degree had
been. One may pettily pick a flaw here and there in the tale's
construction if so minded, but the moral character of Huck himself is not
open to criticism. And indeed any criticism of this the greatest of Mark
Twain's tales of modern life would be as the mere scratching of the
granite of an imperishable structure. Huck Finn is a monument that no
puny pecking will destroy. It is built of indestructible blocks of human
nature; and if the blocks do not always fit, and the ornaments do not
always agree, we need not fear. Time will blur the incongruities and
moss over the mistakes. The edifice will grow more beautiful with the
years.

CLIV

THE MEMOIRS OF GENERAL GRANT

The success of Huck Finn, though sufficiently important in itself,
prepared the way for a publishing venture by the side of which it
dwindled to small proportions. One night (it was early in November,
1884), when Cable and Clemens had finished a reading at Chickering Hall,
Clemens, coming out into the wet blackness, happened to hear Richard
Watson Gilder's voice say to some unseen companion:

"Do you know General Grant has actually determined to write his memoirs
and publish them. He has said so to-day, in so many words."

Of course Clemens was immediately interested. It was the thing he had
proposed to Grant some three years previously, during his call that day
with Howells concerning the Toronto consulship.

With Mrs. Clemens, he promptly overtook Gilder and accompanied him to his
house, where they discussed the matter in its various particulars. Gilder
said that the Century Editors had endeavored to get Grant to contribute
to their war series, but that not until his financial disaster, as a
member of the firm of Grant & Ward, had he been willing to consider the
matter. He said that Grant now welcomed the idea