s
at General Langdon's, in the city he had just left behind. Mrs. Crane
and Susy Clemens were the only ones left at the farm, and they gave
him a seat on the veranda and brought him glasses of water or cool milk
while he refreshed them with his talk-talk which Mark Twain once
said might be likened to footprints, so strong and definite was the
impression which it left behind. He gave them his card, on which the
address was Allahabad, and Susy preserved it on that account, because to
her India was a fairyland, made up of magic, airy architecture, and dark
mysteries. Clemens once dictated a memory of Kipling's visit.

Kipling had written upon the card a compliment to me. This gave it
an additional value in Susy's eyes, since, as a distinction, it was
the next thing to being recognized by a denizen of the moon.

Kipling came down that afternoon and spent a couple of hours with
me, and at the end of that time I had surprised him as much as he
had surprised me--and the honors were easy. I believed that he knew
more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that
I knew less than any person he had met before--though he did not say
it, and I was not expecting that he would. When he was gone Mrs.
Langdon wanted to know about my visitor. I said:

"He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man--and I am
the other one. Between us we cover all knowledge; he knows all that
can be known, and I know the rest."

He was a stranger to me and to all the world, and remained so for
twelve months, then he became suddenly known, and universally known.
From that day to this he has held this unique distinction--that of
being the only living person, not head of a nation, whose voice is
heard around the world the moment it drops a remark; the only such
voice in existence that does not go by slow ship and rail, but
always travels first-class--by cable.

About a year after Kipling's visit in Elmira George Warner came into
our library one morning in Hartford with a small book in his hand
and asked me if I had ever heard of Rudyard Kipling. I said, "No."

He said I would hear of him very soon, and that the noise he was
going to make would be loud and continuous. The little book was the
Plain Tales, and he left it for me to read, saying it was charged
with a new and inspiriting fragrance, and would blow a refreshing