A. ELSIE LESLIE. THE "YANKEE"

One day during the summer of 1889 a notable meeting took place in Elmira.
On a blazing forenoon a rather small and very hot young man, in a slow,
sizzling hack made his way up East Hill to Quarry Faun. He inquired for
Mark Twain, only to be told that he was at the Langdon home, down in the
town which the young man had just left. So he sat for a little time on
the pleasant veranda, and Mrs. Crane and Susy Clemens, who were there,
brought him some cool milk and listened to him talk in a way which seemed
to them very entertaining and wonderful. When he went away he left his
card with a name on it strange to them--strange to the world at that
time. The name was Rudyard Kipling. Also on the card was the address
Allahabad, and Sissy kept it, because, to her, India was fairyland.

Kipling went down into Elmira and found Mark Twain. In his book
"American Notes" he has left an account of that visit. He claimed that
he had traveled around the world to see Mark Twain, and his article
begins:

"You are a contemptible lot over yonder. Some of you are
commissioners, and some are lieutenant-governors, and some have the
V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm
with the viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning,
have shaken his hand, and smoked a cigar--no, two cigars--with him,
and talked with him for more than two hours!"

But one should read the article entire--it is so worth while. Clemens
also, long after, dictated an account of the meeting.

Kipling came down and spent a couple of hours with me, and at the end of
that time I had surprised him as much as he had surprised me--and the
honors were easy. I believed that he knew more than any person I had met
before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had
met before. . . When he had gone, Mrs. Langdon wanted to know about my
visitor. I said:

"He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man--and I am the
other one. Between us we cover all knowledge. He knows all that can be
known, and I know the rest."

He was a stranger to me and all the world, and remained so for twelve
months, but then he became suddenly known and universally known. . .
George Warner came into our library one morning, in Hartford, with a
small book in his hand, and asked me if I had ever heard of Rudyard
Kipling. I said "No."

He said I would hear of him very soon, and that the noise he ma