d till my sides ached at some of our
reminiscences. It was the unholiest gang that ever cavorted through
Palestine, but those are the best boys in the world.

This, however, was not the event; it was only preliminary to it. We are
coming to that now. At the old St. Nicholas Hotel, which stood on the
west of Broadway between Spring and Broome streets, there were stopping
at this time Jervis Langdon, a wealty coal-dealer and mine-owner of
Elmira, his son Charles and his daughter Olivia, whose pictured face
Samuel Clemens had first seen in the Bay of Smyrna one September day.
Young Langdon had been especially anxious to bring his distinguished
Quaker City friend and his own people together, and two days before
Christmas Samuel Clemens was invited to dine at the hotel. He went very
willingly. The lovely face of that miniature had been often a part of
his waking dreams. For the first time now he looked upon its reality.
Long afterward he said:

"It is forty years ago. From that day to this she has never been out of
my mind."

Charles Dickens was in New York then, and gave a reading that night in
Steinway Hall. The Langdons went, and Samuel Clemens accompanied them.
He remembered afterward that Dickens wore a black velvet coat with a
fiery red flower in his buttonhole, and that he read the storm scene
from Copperfield--the death of James Steerforth. But he remembered still
more clearly the face and dress of that slender girlish figure at his
side.

Olivia Langdon was twenty-two years old at this time, delicate as the
miniature he had seen, fragile to look upon, though no longer with the
shattered health of her girlhood. At sixteen, through a fall upon the
ice, she had become a complete invalid, confined to her bed for two
years, unable to sit, even when supported, unable to lie in any position
except upon her back. Great physicians and surgeons, one after another,
had done their best for her but she had failed steadily until every
hope had died. Then, when nothing else was left to try, a certain Doctor
Newton, of spectacular celebrity, who cured by "laying on of hands," was
brought to Elmira to see her. Doctor Newton came into the darkened room
and said:

"Open the windows--we must have light!"

They protested that she could not bear the light, but the windows
were opened. Doctor Newton came to the bedside of the helpless girl,
delivered a short, fervent prayer, put his arm under her shoulders, and
bade her si