t-of-doors under an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that.
You see his white mustache and his hair trying to get white (he is
always trying to look like me--I don't blame him for that). These
are only emblematic of his character, and that is all. I say,
without exception, hair and all, he is the whitest man I have ever
known.
This had been early in April. Something more than a month later
Clemens was making a business trip to New York to see Mr. Rogers. I was
telephoned early to go up and look over some matters with him before
he started. I do not remember why I was not to go along that day, for
I usually made such trips with him. I think it was planned that Miss
Clemens, who was in the city, was to meet him at the Grand Central
Station. At all events, she did meet him there, with the news that
during the night Mr. Rogers had suddenly died. This was May 20, 1909.
The news had already come to the house, and I had lost no time in
preparations to follow by the next train. I joined him at the Grosvenor
Hotel, on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. He was upset and deeply
troubled by the loss of his stanch adviser and friend. He had a helpless
look, and he said his friends were dying away from him and leaving him
adrift.
"And how I hate to do anything," he added, "that requires the least
modicum of intelligence!"
We remained at the Grosvenor for Mr. Rogers's funeral. Clemens served
as one of the pall-bearers, but he did not feel equal to the trip to
Fairhaven. He wanted to be very quiet, he said. He could not undertake
to travel that distance among those whom he knew so well, and with whom
he must of necessity join in conversation; so we remained in the hotel
apartment, reading and saying very little until bedtime. Once he asked
me to write a letter to Jean: "Say, 'Your father says every little
while, "How glad I am that Jean is at home again!"' for that is true and
I think of it all the time."
But by and by, after a long period of silence, he said:
"Mr. Rogers is under the ground now."
And so passed out of earthly affairs the man who had contributed so
largely to the comfort of Mark Twain's old age. He was a man of fine
sensibilities and generous impulses; withal a keen sense of humor.
One Christmas, when he presented Mark Twain with a watch and a
match-case, he wrote:
MY DEAR CLEMENS,--For many years your friends have been complaining
of your use of tobacco, both as to quantity and
|