as reported Mark Twain's meeting with the Prince (later Edward
VII) as having come about by special request of the latter, made through
the British ambassador. "The meeting," he says, "was a most cordial one
on both sides, and presently the Prince took Mark Twain's arm and the two
marched up and down, talking earnestly together, the Prince, solid,
erect, and soldierlike, Clemens weaving along in his curious, swinging
gait in a full tide of talk, and brandishing a sun-umbrella of the most
scandalous description."

When they parted Clemens said:

"It has been, indeed, a great pleasure to meet your Royal Highness."

The Prince answered:

"And it is a pleasure, Mr. Clemens, to have met you--again."

Clemens was puzzled to reply.

"Why," he said, "have we met before?"

The Prince smiled happily.

"Oh yes," he said; "don't you remember that day on the Strand when you
were on the top of a bus and I was heading a procession and you had on
your new overcoat with flap-pockets?"--[See chap. clxiii, "A Letter to
the Queen of England."]

It was the highest compliment he could have paid, for it showed that he
had read, and had remembered all those years. Clemens expressed to
Twichell regret that he had forgotten to mention his visit to the
Prince's sister, Louise, in Ottawa, but he had his opportunity at a
dinner next day. Later the Prince had him to supper and they passed an
entire evening together.

There was a certain uneasiness in the Nauheim atmosphere that year, for
the cholera had broken out at Hamburg, and its victims were dying at a
terrific rate. It was almost impossible to get authentic news as to the
spread of the epidemic, for the German papers were curiously conservative
in their reports. Clemens wrote an article on the subject but concluded
not to print it. A paragraph will convey its tenor.

What I am trying to make the reader understand is the strangeness of
the situation here--a mighty tragedy being played upon a stage that
is close to us, & yet we are as ignorant of its details as we should
be if the stage were in China. We sit "in front," & the audience is
in fact the world; but the curtain is down, & from behind it we hear
only an inarticulate murmur. The Hamburg disaster must go into
history as the disaster without a history.

He closes with an item from a physician's letter--an item which he says
"gives you a sudden and terrific sense of the situation there."
For i