e day go down on the "Titanic," was
there, and Gilder and Munro and David Bispham and Robert Reid, and others
of their kind. It so happened that my seat was nearly facing the guest
of the evening, who by a custom of the Players is placed at the side and
not at the distant end of the long table. Regarding him at leisure, I
saw that he seemed to be in full health. He had an alert, rested look;
his complexion had the tints of a miniature painting. Lit by the soft
glow of the shaded candles, outlined against the richness of the shadowed
walls, he made a figure of striking beauty. I could not take my eyes
from it, for it stirred in me the farthest memories. I saw the interior
of a farm-house sitting-room in the Middle West where I had first heard
the name of Mark Twain, and where night after night a group had gathered
around the evening lamp to hear read aloud the story of the Innocents on
their Holy Land pilgrimage, which to a boy of eight had seemed only a
wonderful poem and fairy-tale. To Charles Harvey Genung, who sat next to
me, I whispered something of this, and how during the thirty-six years
since then no one had meant to me quite what Mark Twain had meant--in
literature and, indeed, in life. Now here he was just across the table.
It was a fairy-tale come true.

Genung said: "You should write his life."

It seemed to me no more than a pleasant remark, but he came back to it
again and again, trying to encourage me with the word that Munro had
brought back concerning the biography of Nast. However, nothing of what
he said had kindled any spark of hope. I put him off by saying that
certainly some one of longer and closer friendship and larger experience
had been selected for the work. Then the speaking began, and the matter
went out of my mind. Later in the evening, when we had left our seats
and were drifting about the table, I found a chance to say a word to our
guest concerning his "Joan of Arc," which I had recently re-read. To my
happiness, he told me that long-ago incident--the stray leaf from Joan's
life, blown to him by the wind--which had led to his interest in all
literature. Then presently I was with Genung again and he was still
insisting that I write the life of Mark Twain. It may have been his
faithful urging, it may have been the quick sympathy kindled by the name
of "Joan of Arc"; whatever it was, in the instant of bidding good-by to
our guest I was prompted to add:

"May I call to see you, Mr. Clemens