, an English gentleman--a new acquaintance--said to him:

"Mr. Clemens, shall you go to England?"

"Very likely."

"Shall you take your tomahawk with you?"

"Why--yes, if it shall seem best."

"Well, it will. Be advised. Take it with you."

"Why?"

"Because of that sketch of yours entitled 'Luck.' That sketch is current
in England, and you will surely need your tomahawk."

"What makes you think so?"

"I think so because the hero of the sketch will naturally want your
scalp, and will probably apply for it. Be advised. Take your tomahawk
along."

"Why, even with it I sha'n't stand any chance, because I sha'n't know him
when he applies, and he will have my scalp before I know what his errand
is."

"Come, do you mean to say that you don't know who the hero of that sketch
is?"

"Indeed I haven't any idea who the hero of the sketch is. Who is it?"

His informant hesitated a moment, then named a name of world-wide
military significance.

As Mask Twain finished his Fourth of July speech at the Cecil and started
to sit down a splendidly uniformed and decorated personage at his side
said:

"Mr. Clemens, I have been wanting to know you a long time," and he was
looking down into the face of the hero of "Luck."

"I was caught unprepared," he said in his notes of it. "I didn't sit
down--I fell down. I didn't have my tomahawk, and I didn't know what
would happen. But he was, composed, and pretty soon I got composed and
we had a good, friendly time. If he had ever heard of that sketch of
mine he did not manifest it in any way, and at twelve, midnight, I took
my scalp home intact."

CCXI

DOLLIS HILL AND HOME

It was early in July, 1900, that they removed to Dollis Hill House, a
beautiful old residence surrounded by trees on a peaceful hilltop, just
outside of London. It was literally within a stone's-throw of the city
limits, yet it was quite rural, for the city had not overgrown it then,
and it retained all its pastoral features--a pond with lily-pads, the
spreading oaks, the wide spaces of grassy lawn. Gladstone, an intimate
friend of the owner, had made it a favorite retreat at one period of his
life, and the place to-day is converted into a public garden called
Gladstone Park. The old English diplomat used to drive out and sit in
the shade of the trees and read and talk and translate Homer, and pace
the lawn as he planned diplomacy, and, in effect, govern the English
empire from that retired spot.