ust, and under dust to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and--sans End.'
--[The 'Rubaiyat' had made its first appearance, in Hartford, a little
before in a column of extracts published in the Courant.] Twichell
immediately wrote Clemens a card:

"Read (if you haven't) the extracts from Oman Khayyam, on the first page
of this morning's Courant. I think we'll have to get the book. I never
yet came across anything that uttered certain thoughts of mine so.
adequately. And it's only a translation. Read it, and we'll talk it
over. There is something in it very like the passage of Emerson you read
me last night, in fact identical with it in thought.

"Surely this Omar was a great poet. Anyhow, he has given me an immense
revelation this morning.

"Hoping that you are better,

J. H. T."

Twichell's "only a translation" has acquired a certain humor with time.

CXVI. OFF FOR GERMANY

The German language became one of the interests of the Clemens home
during the early months of 1878. The Clemenses had long looked forward
to a sojourn in Europe, and the demand for another Mark Twain book of
travel furnished an added reason for their going. They planned for the
spring sailing, and to spend a year or more on the Continent, making
their headquarters in Germany. So they entered into the study of the
language with an enthusiasm and perseverance that insured progress.
There was a German nurse for the children, and the whole atmosphere of
the household presently became lingually Teutonic. It amused Mark Twain,
as everything amused him, but he was a good student; he acquired a
working knowledge of the language in an extraordinarily brief time, just
as in an earlier day he had picked up piloting. He would never become
a German scholar, but his vocabulary and use of picturesque phrases,
particularly those that combined English and German words, were
often really startling, not only for their humor, but for their
expressiveness.

Necessarily the new study would infect his literature. He conceived
a plan for making Captain Wakeman (Stormfield) come across a copy of
Ollendorf in Heaven, and proceed to learn the language of a near-lying
district.

They arranged to sail early in April, and, as on their former trip,
persuaded Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, to accompany them. They wrote
to the Howellses, breaking the news of the journey, urging them to
come to Hartford for a good-by visit. Howells a