The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-11-05

more piOusl ylOved them than Clemens
himself, but the intoxication of his
fancy carried him beyond bounds of
that regard, and embOldened him to
the other thing which he had not
taken into account-namely the inn
mense hazard of working his fancy out
before their faces and expecting them
to enter into the delight of it. If
neither Emerson nor LongfellOw nor
! Holmes had been there, the scheme
might possibly have carried but even
this is doubtful
Il was the hapless president, fulfill
ing the abhorred function of calling
people to their feet and making them
/ speak. When l came to Clemens l
! introduced him with the cordial adj
miration l had for him as one of my
greatest contributors and dearest
friends Here, | said, in sum, was a
humorist who never left you hanging
your head for having enjoyed his joke,
and then the amazing mistake, the be-
wildering biunder, the cruel catastrO-
! phe was upon us. I believe that after
the scope of the burlesque made itself
clear there was no one there, including
| the burlesquer himself. who was not
smitten with desOlating rismay.
| There fell a silence, weighing many
| tons to the square inch, which deep
ened from moment to moment, and
was broken only by the hysterical and
blood-curdling laughter of a single
guest, whose name shall not be handed
Gown to infamy. Nobody knew
whether to look at the speaker or
down at his plate. I chose my plate
as the least affliction, and so I do not
know how Clemens looked, except
when [ stole. a glance at him and saw
him standing solitary amid his ap-
palled and appalling listeners. with his
joke dead on his hands. From a first
glance at the great three whom his
jest had made its theme, | was aware
of LongfellOw sitting upright and re-
garding the humOrist with an air of
pensive puzzle, of Holmes busily writ
ing on his menu with a we'll feigned
effect of preoCcupation, and of Emer-
son holding his elbows and listening
with a sort of Jovian oblivion of this
neither world in that lapse of memory
which saved him in those later years
from so much bother. Clemens must
have dragged his joke to the climax
and left it there, but l cannot say this
from any sense of the fact. OF what
happened afterward at the table where
the immense. the wholly innocent, the
truly unimag!ned affront was offered,
l have no longer the least remem-
room of the hotel where Clemens was
not to sleep, but to toss in despair,
and Charles Dudley Warmers saying
in the gloon We'll, Mark! You're
funny fella 1t was as well as any
thing he cuul4 have said. but Clemens
seemed unable to accept the tribute.
81 stayed the night with him. and
the next morning after a haggard
breakfast we drove about. and he
made some purchases of bric-a-brac
for his house in Hartford, with a soul
as far away from bric-a-brac as ever
the soul of man was. He went home
by an early train, and he lost no time
in writing back to the three divine
personalities which he had so involun-
tarily seemed to flOut. They all wrote
back to him. making it is light for
him as they could. I have heard that
Emerson was good deal mystified
and in his sublime forgetfulness asked,
peared to think he had offered him
some sort of annoyance? - But l am
not sure that this is accurate. What
am sure of is that LOngfellow few
days aster in my study stopped before
a photograph of Clemens and said,
All, he is a wag!' and nothing more.
Holmes told me, with deep emotion,
such as a brother humorist might we'll
feel that he had not lost an instant in
replying to Clemens letter and assur-
ing him that there had not been the
least offense and entreating him never
to think of the matter again. He said
that ne was a fool, but he was Gods
fool Holmes quoted from the letter
with a true sense of the pathOs and
humor of the self-abasement'