y put to sea
again. Certainly they were a daring lot of voyagers. On the 8th another
of the patients died. Then the cooler weather seemed to check the
contagion, and it was not until the night of the 11th, when the New York
harbor lights were in view, that the final death occurred. There were
no new cases by this time, and the other patients were convalescent. A
certificate was made out that the last man had died of "dropsy." There
would seem to have been no serious difficulty in docking the vessel and
landing the passengers. The matter would probably be handled differently
to-day.

LVII. OLD FRIENDS AND NEW PLANS

It had been more than thirteen years since his first arrival in New
York. Then he had been a youth, green, untraveled, eager to get away
from home. Now a veteran, he was as eager to return.

He stopped only long enough in New York to see Charles Henry Webb, late
of California, who had put together a number of the Mark Twain sketches,
including "The Jumping Frog," for book publication. Clemens himself
decided to take the book to Carleton, thinking that, having missed the
fame of the "Frog" once, he might welcome a chance to stand sponsor for
it now. But Carleton was wary; the "Frog" had won favor, and even fame,
in its fugitive, vagrant way, but a book was another matter. Books were
undertaken very seriously and with plenty of consideration in those
days. Twenty-one years later, in Switzerland, Carleton said to Mark
Twain:

"My chief claim to immortality is the distinction of having declined
your first book."

Clemens was ready enough to give up the book when Carleton declined
it, but Webb said he would publish it himself, and he set about it
forthwith. The author waited no longer now, but started for St. Louis,
and was soon with his mother and sister, whom he had not seen since that
eventful first year of the war. They thought he looked old, which was
true enough, but they found him unchanged in his manner: buoyant, full
of banter and gravely quaint remarks--he was always the same. Jane
Clemens had grown older, too. She was nearly sixty-four, but as keen
and vigorous as ever-proud (even if somewhat critical) of this handsome,
brilliant man of new name and fame who had been her mischievous,
wayward boy. She petted him, joked with him, scolded him, and inquired
searchingly into his morals and habits. In turn he petted, comforted,
and teased her. She decided that he was the same Sam, and always would