ially delighted in Mark's table conversation, and how he
(Twichell) had later taken the young man aside and divulged the speaker's
identity.

"I could not forbear telling him who Mark was, and the mingled
surprise and pleasure his face exhibited made me glad I had done so."

They did not climb many of the Alps on foot. They did scale the Rigi,
after which Mark Twain was not in the best walking trim; though later
they conquered Gemmi Pass--no small undertaking--that trail that winds up
and up until the traveler has only the glaciers and white peaks and the
little high-blooming flowers for company.

All day long the friends would tramp and walk together, and when they did
not walk they would hire a diligence or any vehicle that came handy, but,
whatever their means of travel the joy of comradeship amid those superb
surroundings was the same.

In Twichell's letters home we get pleasant pictures of the Mark Twain of
that day:

"Mark, to-day, was immensely absorbed in flowers. He scrambled
around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest
pleasure in them . . . . Mark is splendid to walk with amid such
grand scenery, for he talks so well about it, has such a power of
strong, picturesque expression. I wish you might have heard him
today. His vigorous speech nearly did justice to the things we saw."

And in another place:

"He can't bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard.
To-day when the driver clucked up his horse and quickened his pace a
little, Mark said, 'The fellow's got the notion that we were in a
hurry.'"

Another extract refers to an incident which Mark Twain also mentions in
"A Tramp Abroad:" [8]

"Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing so delights him as a
swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once
he is in the influence of its fascinations. To throw in stones and
sticks seems to afford him rapture."

Twichell goes on to tell how he threw some driftwood into a racing
torrent and how Mark went running down-stream after it, waving and
shouting in a sort of mad ecstasy.

When a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam below, he
would jump up and down and yell. He acted just like a boy.

Boy he was, then and always. Like Peter Pan, he never really grew up
--that is, if growing up means to grow solemn and uninterested in play.

Climbing the Gorner Grat with Twichell, they sat down to re