rain rose up from Maine to the
Gulf and flocked to the standards--just as men always do when in
their eyes their cause is great and fine and their hearts are in it;
just as men flocked to the Crusades, sacrificing all they possessed
to the cause, and entering cheerfully upon hardships which we cannot
even imagine in this age, and upon toilsome and wasting journeys
which in our time would be the equivalent of circumnavigating the
globe five times over.

North and South we put our hearts into that colossal struggle, and
out of it came the blessed fulfilment of the prophecy of the
immortal Gettysburg speech which said: "We here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that a government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth."

We are here to honor the birthday of the greatest citizen, and the
noblest and the best, after Washington, that this land or any other
has yet produced. The old wounds are healed, you and we are
brothers again; you testify it by honoring two of us, once soldiers
of the Lost Cause, and foes of your great and good leader--with the
privilege of assisting here; and we testify it by laying our honest
homage at the feet of Abraham Lincoln, and in forgetting that you of
the North and we of the South were ever enemies, and remembering
only that we are now indistinguishably fused together and nameable
by one common great name--Americans!

CCXIV. MARK TWAIN AND THE MISSIONARIES

Mark Twain had really begun his crusade for reform soon after his
arrival in America in a practical hand-to-hand manner. His housekeeper,
Katie Leary, one night employed a cabman to drive her from the Grand
Central Station to the house at 14 West Tenth Street. No contract
had been made as to price, and when she arrived there the cabman's
extortionate charge was refused. He persisted in it, and she sent into
the house for her employer. Of all men, Mark Twain was the last one
to countenance an extortion. He reasoned with the man kindly enough
at first; when the driver at last became abusive Clemens demanded his
number, which was at first refused. In the end he paid the legal fare,
and in the morning entered a formal complaint, something altogether
unexpected, for the American public is accustomed to suffering