Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1910-04-27
COUNTRY MOURNs MARK TWAIN.
Noted Hum0rist Succumbcd to Shock
Of daughters Death.


Langhorn Clemens, Mark Twain"
died painlessly at go o'clock to-
night Of angina pectorls. He lapsed
into coma at 3 o'clock this afternoon
and never recovered consciousness.
1t was the end Of man outworn by
grief and acute agony Of body.
For long hours yesterday the grey
aquiline features lay moulded In the
inertia of death while the pulse sank
lower and lower, but late at night
Mark Twain passed from stupor into
the first natural sleep he had known
since he returned from Bermuda, and
this morning he woke refreshed,
even family cheerful, and in full pos
session of all his faculties. He rec
ognized his daughter Clara, Mrs. Os-
sip Gabrilowitsch, spoke a rational
word or two, and feeling himself un-
equal to conversation wrote out in
pencil:
"Give me my glasses"
They were his last words. Lay
ing them aside he sank first into rev.
erie and later into final unconscious
ness.
There was no thought at the time,
however, that the end was SO near.
At S o'clock DR.. Robert Halsey, who
had been continuously in attendance,
said:
Hlnmnn, jc
this hour as he was at the CORES
ponding hour yesterday, but he has
wonderful vitality and he may rally
again."
Agina pectoris is a paroxysmal af-
fection Of the chest of battling and
obscure origin, characterized by Sc
we're pain, faintness, and deep de-
preston Of the spirits.
But Mark Twain did not die in
anguish. Sedatives soothed his pain,
but In his moments Of consciousness
the mental depression persisted. On
the way up from Bermuda he said to
Albert Payne, who had been his con-
slant companion in illness: "This
IS bad job; We'll never pull through
with it,"
On shore once more, and longing
for the serenity Of the New England
hills, he took heart and said to those
who noted his enfeeblement in sor-
row: "Give me breath Of Redding
air once more and this will pass"
But 1t did not pass, and, tired Of body
| and weary of spirit, the old warrior
against shams and snobs said family
| to his nurses: why do you fight to
keep me alive? Two days of life are
as good to me as four"
An nvetcrate Smoker.
Mark Twain was for more than flf-
| ty years an inyeterate smoker. DR..
Halsey said tonight that he was un-
able to predicate that the angina pee
| toris, from which Mark Twain died,
| was In any way a sequel of nicotine
poisoning. Some constitutions, he
| said, seem immune from the effect Of
tobacco. This was one of them
Since his illness began, however, the
doctors had cut down Mark Twain's
daily allowance Of twenty cigars and
| countless pipes to four cigars a day.
No dep riyation was a greater sor-
| row to him. He tried to smoke on
the steamer while returning from
| Bermuda, and only gave it up be-
| cause he was too feeble to draw on
his pipe. Even on his death bed,
when he had passed the point Of
speech and it was no longer certain
| that his Ideas were lucid he would
make the motion Of waving a cigar,
and, smiling, eXpel empty air from
| under the moustache still stained
with smoke.
Where Mark Twain chose to spend
his declining years was the first out
post Of Methodism in New England,
and 1t was among the hills Of Red
ding that Gen. Izail Putnam, Of Rev
olutionary fame, mustered his sparse
ranks. Putnam Park now encloses
the memory Of his camp. Mark
Twain first heard Of it at the dinner
given him on his 10th birthday, when
fellow guest who lived there men
toned its beauties and added that
there was vacant house adjoining
his own. 81 think you may buy that
old house" and where it stood Mark
Twain named 1t "Innocents at
Home but his frst experience of