t Halstead right.

Mark Twain's place in literature is not for me to fix. Some one has
called him "The Lincoln of letters." That is striking, suggestive and
apposite. The genius of Clemens and the genius of Lincoln possessed a
kinship outside the circumstances of their early lives; the common lack
of tools to work with; the privations and hardships to be endured and to
overcome; the way ahead through an unblazed and trackless forest; every
footstep over a stumbling block and each effort saddled with a handicap.
But they got there, both of them, they got there, and mayhap somewhere
beyond the stars the light of their eyes is shining down upon us even
as, amid the thunders of a world tempest, we are not wholly forgetful of
them.

Chapter the Sixth

Houston and Wigfall of Texas--Stephen A. Douglas--The Twaddle about
Puritans and Cavaliers--Andrew Johnson and John C. Breckenridge

I

The National Capitol--old men's fancies fondly turn to thoughts of
youth--was picturesque in its personalities if not in its architecture.
By no means the least striking of these was General and Senator Sam
Houston, of Texas. In his life of adventure truth proved very much
stranger than fiction.

The handsomest of men, tall and stately, he could pass no way without
attracting attention; strangers in the Senate gallery first asked to
have him pointed out to them, and seeing him to all appearance idling
his time with his jacknife and bits of soft wood which he whittled into
various shapes of hearts and anchors for distribution among his lady
acquaintances, they usually went away thinking him a queer old man. So
inded he was; yet on his feet and in action singularly impressive, and,
when he chose, altogether the statesman and orator.

There united in him the spirits of the troubadour and the spearman.
Ivanhoe was not more gallant nor Bois-Guilbert fiercer. But the valor
and the prowess were tempered by humor. Below the surging subterranean
flood that stirred and lifted him to high attempt, he was a comedian
who had tales to tell, and told them wondrous well. On a lazy summer
afternoon on the shady side of Willard's Hotel--the Senate not in
session--he might be seen, an admiring group about him, spinning
these yarns, mostly of personal experience--rarely if ever repeating
himself--and in tone, gesture and grimace reproducing the drolleries of
the backwoods, which from boyhood had been his home.

He spared not himself.