ican Review for January, 1905.)

APPENDIX O

(See Chapter cxiv)

Address of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) from a report of the
dinner given by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly in honor of
the Seventieth Anniversary of the Birth of John Greenleaf Whittier,
at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877, as published in
the Boston Evening Transcript, December 18, 1877.

MR. CHAIRMAN, This is an occasion peculiarly meet for the digging up of
pleasant reminiscences concerning literary folk, therefore I will drop
lightly into history myself. Standing here on the shore of the Atlantic,
and contemplating certain of its largest literary billows, I am reminded
of a thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just
succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose
spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly California-ward. I started an
inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow
and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'. I
very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin
in the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the
time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door
to me. When he heard my 'nom de guerre' he looked more dejected than
before. He let me in-pretty reluctantly, I thought--and after the
customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whisky, I took a pipe.
This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this time. Now he
spoke up and said, in the voice of one who is secretly suffering,
"You're the fourth--I'm going to move." "The fourth what?" said I. "The
fourth littery man that has been here in twenty-four hours--I'm going
to move." "You don't tell me!" said I; "who were the others?" "Mr.
Longfellow. Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--consound the
lot!"

You can easily believe I was interested. I supplicated--three hot
whiskies did the rest--and finally the melancholy miner began. Said he:

"They came here just at dark yesterday evening, and I let them in, of
course. Said they were going to the Yosemite. They were a rough lot, but
that's nothing; everybody looks rough that travels afoot. Mr. Emerson
was a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed. Mr. Holmes was as fat as a
balloon; he weighed as much as three hundered, and had double chins
all the way down to his stomach. Mr. Longfellow was built like a
prize-f