The Tucumcari news and Tucumcari times. [volume] (Tucumcari, N.M.) 1907-1921, 1910-04-26
MARK TWAIN, z
AUTHOR rs DEAD
Continued from first page

" hAnN HhENl
he took heart and said to those who not.
ed his enfeeblement in sorrow;
"Give me a breath of Redding air
once more and this will pass"
But it 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 fret to keep me alivei
Two days of life are as good to me as
four"
II is certain to be recalled Mark
Twain was for more than fifty years
an inveterate smoker and the first con.
lecture of the layman would be that he
had YEA kened his heart by over.indul.
gence in tobacco. DR.. Halsey said to.
night he was unable to predicate that
the angina peetoris from which Mark
Twain died was in any way sequel to
nicotine poisoning. Some constitutions
he said, seem immune from the effects
Of tobacco. This was one of them. Yet
it is true that since his illness began
the doctors had cut down Mark Twain's
daily allowance of twenty cigars and
countless pipes to four cigars a day.
A deprivation was a greater sorrow
TO him. He tried to smoke on the steam.
er while returning from Bermuda and
only gave it up because he was too
feeble to draw on his pipe. On his
death bed, when he 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 smilingly
expel the air from under the mousta.
che still stained with smoke.
Where Mark Twain chose to spend his
declining years was the first outpost
of Methodism in New England and it
was among the hills Of Redding that
General Israel Putnam of revolutionary
fame mustered his sparse ranks. Put.
nam park now encloses the memoir of
his camp.
Mark Twain first heard of it at the
dinner given him on his SEVENTEEN birth
day, when a fellow-guest who lived
there mentioned its beauties and added
that there was a vacant house joining
his Cwh.
81 think you may buy that old house
for me-" Mark Twain said.
Sherwood Place was the delectable
name Of that old house and where il
stood Mark Twain reared the white
walls Of the Italian villa he first named
o. Innocence at Home" but a first ex.
perience Of what a New England storm
can he in 10 whitest fury quickly caus-
ed him to christeu it ane ''Storm-
fold"
The house has been thus described by
Albert Bigelow Paine; "Set on a fair
hillside, with such a green slope below,
such a view outspread across the valley
as made one catch his breath a little
when he first turned to look at il. A
trout stream flows through one Of the
meadows, There are apple trees aud
grey stone walls. The entrance to that
- a winding leafy lane"
Through these lanes the "%Innocent at
Home" loved to wander in his white
flannels for homely gossip with the
neighbors. They remember him best
as one who above all things loved a good
listener, for Mark Twain was a mighty
taiker, stored with fairy tales for the
little maids he adored, and r%acier, ruder
speech fol- the stalwart masculine ears.
II is a legend that he was vastly proud
Of his famous mop of white hair and
used to spend the pains Of a court lady
getting II to just the proper stage of
artistic disarray.
Last summer the walks began to fal.