could go without my knowing it, but I did
not spend any thought upon that. I was too busy thinking of how
vivid & real was the dream that we had lost her, & how unspeakably
blessed it was to find that it was not true & that she was still
ours & with us.

He had the orchestrelle moved to Dublin, although it was no small
undertaking, for he needed the solace of its harmonies; and so the days
passed along, and he grew stronger in body and courage as his grief
drifted farther behind him. Sometimes, in the afternoon or in the
evening; when the neighbors had come in for a little while, he would walk
up and down and talk in his old, marvelous way of all the things on land
and sea, of the past and of the future, "Of Providence, foreknowledge,
will, and fate," of the friends he had known and of the things he had
done, of the sorrow and absurdities of the world.

It was the same old scintillating, incomparable talk of which Howells
once said:

"We shall never know its like again. When he dies it will die with him."

It was during the summer at Dublin that Clemens and Rogers together made
up a philanthropic ruse on Twichell. Twichell, through his own prodigal
charities, had fallen into debt, a fact which Rogers knew. Rogers was a
man who concealed his philanthropies when he could, and he performed many
of them of which the world will never know: In this case he said:

"Clemens, I want to help Twichell out of his financial difficulty. I
will supply the money and you will do the giving. Twichell must think it
comes from you."

Clemens agreed to this on the condition that he be permitted to leave a
record of the matter for his children, so that he would not appear in a
false light to them, and that Twichell should learn the truth of the
gift, sooner or later. So the deed was done, and Twichell and his wife
lavished their thanks upon Clemens, who, with his wife, had more than
once been their benefactors, making the deception easy enough now.
Clemens writhed under these letters of gratitude, and forwarded them to
Clara in Norfolk, and later to Rogers himself. He pretended to take
great pleasure in this part of the conspiracy, but it was not an unmixed
delight. To Rogers he wrote:

I wanted her [Clara] to see what a generous father she's got. I
didn't tell her it was you, but by and by I want to tell her, when I
have your consent; then I shall want her to remember the letters. I
want a record ther