on, look or gesture to treat
him with inconsideration, or any proposal of his, however preposterous,
with levity.

He once came to visit me upon a public occasion and during a function.
I knew that I must introduce him, and with all possible ceremony, to
my colleagues. He was very queer; tall and peaked, wearing a black,
swallow-tailed suit, shiny with age, and a silk hat, bound with black
crepe to conceal its rustiness, not to indicate a recent death; but
his linen as spotless as new-fallen snow. I had my fears. Happily the
company, quite dazed by the apparition, proved decorous to solemnity,
and the kind old gentleman, pleased with himself and proud of his
"distinguished young kinsman," went away highly gratified.

Not long after this one of his daughters--pretty girls they were, too,
and in charm altogether worthy of their Cousin Sam Clemens--was to be
married, and Sellers wrote me a stately summons, all-embracing, though
stiff and formal, such as a baron of the Middle Ages might have indited
to his noble relative, the field marshal, bidding him bring his good
lady and his retinue and abide within the castle until the festivities
were ended, though in this instance the castle was a suburban cottage
scarcely big enough to accommodate the bridal couple. I showed the
bombastic but hospitable and genuine invitation to the actor Raymond,
who chanced to be playing in Louisville when it reached me. He read it
through with care and reread it.

"Do you know," said he, "it makes me want to cry. That is not the man I
am trying to impersonate at all."

Be sure it was not; for there was nothing funny about the spiritual
being of Mark Twain's Colonel Mulberry Sellers; he was as brave as a
lion and as upright as Sam Clemens himself.

When a very young man, living in a woodland cabin down in the Pennyrile
region of Kentucky, with a wife he adored and two or three small
children, he was so carried away by an unexpected windfall that he
lingered overlong in the nearby village, dispensing a royal hospitality;
in point of fact, he "got on a spree." Two or three days passed before
he regained possession of himself. When at last he reached home, he
found his wife ill in bed and the children nearly starved for lack of
food. He said never a word, but walked out of the cabin, tied himself
to a tree, and was wildly horsewhipping himself when the cries of the
frightened family summoned the neighbors and he was brought to reason.
He never