hat final exquisite
touch--"it was suggested."

CCXXXVI. AT PIER 70

Mark Twain was nearing seventy, the scriptural limitation of life, and
the returns were coming in. Some one of the old group was dying all the
time. The roll-call returned only a scattering answer. Of his oldest
friends, Charles Henry Webb, John Hay, and Sir Henry Irving, all died
that year. When Hay died Clemens gave this message to the press:

I am deeply grieved, & I mourn with the nation this loss which is
irreparable. My friendship with Mr. Hay & my admiration of him
endured 38 years without impairment.

It was only a little earlier that he had written Hay an anonymous
letter, a copy of which he preserved. It here follows:

DEAR & HONORED SIR,--I never hear any one speak of you & of your
long roll of illustrious services in other than terms of pride &
praise--& out of the heart. I think I am right in believing you to
be the only man in the civil service of the country the cleanness of
whose motives is never questioned by any citizen, & whose acts
proceed always upon a broad & high plane, never by accident or
pressure of circumstance upon a narrow or low one. There are
majorities that are proud of more than one of the nation's great
servants, but I believe, & I think I know, that you are the only one
of whom the entire nation is proud. Proud & thankful.

Name & address are lacking here, & for a purpose: to leave you no
chance to make my words a burden to you and a reproach to me, who
would lighten your burdens if I could, not add to them.

Irving died in October, and Clemens ordered a wreath for his funeral. To
MacAlister he wrote:

I profoundly grieve over Irving's death. It is another reminder.
My section of the procession has but a little way to go. I could
not be very sorry if I tried.

Mark Twain, nearing seventy, felt that there was not much left for him
to celebrate; and when Colonel Harvey proposed a birthday gathering
in his honor, Clemens suggested a bohemian assembly over beer and
sandwiches in some snug place, with Howells, Henry Rogers, Twichell, Dr.
Rice, Dr. Edward Quintard, Augustus Thomas, and such other kindred
souls as were still left to answer the call. But Harvey had something
different in view: something more splendid even than the sixty-seventh
birthday feast, more pretentious, indeed, than any former literary
gathering. He felt that