breath around the world that would revive the nations. A day or two
later he brought a copy of the London World which had a sketch of
Kipling in it, and a mention of the fact that he had traveled in the
United States. According to this sketch he had passed through
Elmira. This remark, with the additional fact that he hailed from
India, attracted my attention--also Susy's. She went to her room
and brought his card from its place in the frame of her mirror, and
the Quarry Farm visitor stood identified.

Kipling also has left an account of that visit. In his letter recording
it he says:

You are a contemptible lot over yonder. Some of you are
Commissioners and some are Lieutenant-Governors, and some have the
V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm
with the Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning,
have shaken his hand and smoked a cigar--no, two cigars--with him,
and talked with him for more than two hours! Understand clearly
that I do not despise you; indeed, I don't. I am only very sorry
for you, from the Viceroy downward.

A big, darkened drawing-room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a mane
of grizzled hair, a brown mustache covering a mouth as delicate as a
woman's, a strong, square hand shaking mine, and the slowest,
calmest, levelest voice in all the world saying:

"Well, you think you owe me something, and you've come to tell me
so. That's what I call squaring a debt handsomely."

"Piff!" from a cob-pipe (I always said that a Missouri meerschaum
was the best smoking in the world), and behold! Mark Twain had
curled himself up in the big arm-chair, and I was smoking
reverently, as befits one in the presence of his superior.

The thing that struck me first was that he was an elderly man; yet,
after a minute's thought, I perceived that it was otherwise, and in
five minutes, the eyes looking at me, I saw that the gray hair was
an accident of the most trivial. He was quite young. I was shaking
his hand. I was smoking his cigar, and I was hearing him talk--this
man I had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand miles away.

Reading his books, I had striven to get an idea of his personality,
and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality.
Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face
to fac