unfortunate brother,

SAML. L. CLEMENS.

P. S.--I got here two days after Henry.

But, alas, this was not all, nor the worst. It would seem that Samuel
Clemens's cup of remorse must be always overfull. The final draft
that would embitter his years was added the sixth night after the
accident--the night that Henry died. He could never bring himself to
write it. He was never known to speak of it but twice.

Henry had rallied soon after the foregoing letter had been mailed, and
improved slowly that day and the next: Dr. Peyton came around about
eleven o'clock on the sixth night and made careful examination. He said:

"I believe he is out of danger and will get well. He is likely to be
restless during the night; the groans and fretting of the others will
disturb him. If he cannot rest without it, tell the physician in charge
to give him one-eighth of a grain of morphine."

The boy did wake during the night, and was disturbed by the complaining
of the other sufferers. His brother told the young medical student in
charge what the doctor had said about the morphine. But morphine was a
new drug then; the student hesitated, saying:

"I have no way of measuring. I don't know how much an eighth of a grain
would be."

Henry grew rapidly worse--more and more restless. His brother was half
beside himself with the torture of it. He went to the medical student.

"If you have studied drugs," he said, "you ought to be able to judge an
eighth of a grain of morphine."

The young man's courage was over-swayed. He yielded and ladled out in
the old-fashioned way, on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed
to be the right amount. Henry immediately sank into a heavy sleep. He
died before morning. His chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his
death was not necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens, unsparing
in his self-blame, all his days carried the burden of it.

He saw the boy taken to the dead room, then the long strain of grief,
the days and nights without sleep, the ghastly realization of the end
overcame him. A citizen of Memphis took him away in a kind of daze and
gave him a bed in his house, where he fell into a stupor of fatigue and
surrender. It was many hours before he woke; when he did, at last, he
dressed and went to where Henry lay. The coffin provided for the dead
were of unpainted wood, but the youth and striking face of Henry Clemens
had aroused a special interest. The ladies of Memphis had