om India, be they never so full of admiration. And
in another man's house--anyhow, what had I come to do or say? Suppose
the drawing-room should be full of people,--suppose a baby were sick,
how was I to explain that I only wanted to shake hands with him?

Then things happened somewhat in this order. A big, darkened
drawing-room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a mane of grizzled hair, a
brown mustache covering a mouth as delicate as a woman's, a strong,
square hand shaking mine, and the slowest, calmest, levellest voice in
all the world saying:--

"Well, you think you owe me something, and you've come to tell me so.
That's what I call squaring a debt handsomely."

"Piff!" from a cob-pipe (I always said that a Missouri meerschaum was
the best smoking in the world), and, behold! Mark Twain had curled
himself up in the big armchair, and I was smoking reverently, as befits
one in the presence of his superior.

The thing that struck me first was that he was an elderly man; yet,
after a minute's thought, I perceived that it was otherwise, and in five
minutes, the eyes looking at me, I saw that the grey hair was an
accident of the most trivial. He was quite young. I was shaking his
hand. I was smoking his cigar, and I was hearing him talk--this man I
had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand miles away.

Reading his books, I had striven to get an idea of his personality, and
all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality. Blessed
is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with
a revered writer. That was a moment to be remembered; the landing of a
twelve-pound salmon was nothing to it. I had hooked Mark Twain, and he
was treating me as though under certain circumstances I might be an
equal.

About this time I became aware that he was discussing the copyright
question. Here, so far as I remember, is what he said. Attend to the
words of the oracle through this unworthy medium transmitted. You will
never be able to imagine the long, slow surge of the drawl, and the
deadly gravity of the countenance, the quaint pucker of the body, one
foot thrown over the arm of the chair, the yellow pipe clinched in one
corner of the mouth, and the right hand casually caressing the square
chin:--

"Copyright? Some men have morals, and some men have--other things. I
presume a publisher is a man. He is not born. He is created--by
circumstances. Some publishers have morals. Mine have. They pay m