Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1910-04-22

died painleSSly at his home here at
$50 o'clock tonight of angina pectoris.
He lapsed into coma at 8 o'clock this
afternoon and never recovered con-
seriousness. 1t was the end of man
worn out by grief and agony of body.
Yesterday was bad day for the
little knot Of anxious watchers at the
bedside. For hours 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 ma
tural sleep he had known since he re-
turned from Bermuda and this morn
ing he woke refreshed, even fairly
cheerful and in full possession of all
his faculties He recognized his
daughter Clara, Mrs. Ossip Gabrilo-
witsch. spoke a word or two and find
ing himself unequal to conversation
wrote out in pencil:
Give me my glasses"
They were his last words. Laying
them aside he sank first into reverie
and later into final unconsciousness
There was no thought at the time
however, that the end was so near
At o'clock, Dr. Robert Halsey, who
had been continuously in attendance
said:
Mr. Clemens is not 50 strong at
this hour as he was at the correspond
ing hour yesterday, but he has Won
derful vitality and he may rally
again."
At the death bed were Mrs Gabrilo-
witsch, her husband, DR.. Robert Hal
sey, DR.. Quintard. Albert Bigelow
Paine, who will write Mark Twain's
biography, and is his literary executor,
and the two trained nurses.
storatives-digitals, strychnine
and camphor-were administered but
the patient failed to respond.
Although angina pectoris is charac-
terized by severe pain and deep depres-
sion of spirits, Mark Twain did not
die in anguish. Sedatives soothed his
pain, but in his moments of conscious
ness the mental depression persisted
on the way up from Bermuda he said
to Mr.. Paine, who had been his con-
slant companion in illness:
This is a bad job; We'll never pull
through with it.f
On shore once more, and longing for
Tue SEISIHly u Tic 4NcN ILhGAohu h'h''
| he took courage and said to those who
noted his enfeeblement in sorrow:
! "Givc 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 sham
and snobbery said to his nurses; 'Why
| do you fight to keep me alive? two
days of life are as good to me as four.
| Mark Twain was for more than so
years an inveterate smoker and the
| first conjecture of the laymen Will be
that he weakened his heart by over-in-
diligence in tobacco, but DR.. Halsey
said tonight that he was unable to pre-
| dict that the angina pectoris. from
which the humorist died, was in any
wav sexual of nicotine poisoning.
Yet it is true that after his illness be-
| gan the doctors cut down Mark
Twain's daily allowance of 20 cigars
and countless pipes to four cigars a
day.
| No deprivation caused him more dis
| comfort. He tried to smoke on the
| steamer while returning from Rermu-
da and only gave it up because he was
| too feeble to draw on his pipe Even
on his death bed when he had passed
| the point of speech and 1t was no
longer certain that his ideas were lu-
cid. he would wave an imaginary CT
gar, and smiling, expel air from under
| his heavy moustache stained with
smoke.
Where Mark Twain choose to spend his
declining years was the first outpost OF
Methodism in New England and 1t was
among the hills of Redding that Gen.
Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame
mustered his ranks. There Mr.. Clemens
| reared the white walls of the Italian
villa he first named Innocence at Home -
| but first experience of what New Eng
land winter storm can be in its whitest
fury quickly caused him to christen it
anew "Stormfield.'
| Through the lanes that Innocence at
Home loved to wander in his white fan
nels for homely gossip with the neigh
bors They remember best as one who
above all things loved a good listener.
| for Mark Twain was a mighty talker,
stored with fairy tales for the little
maids he adored. and racier, ruder speech
for masculine hearers. 1t is a legend
that he was vastly proud of his famous
mop of white hair and it is said to spend
the pains of court lady in getting 1t in
to just the proper artistic disarray.
The death of H. H. Rogers, close
| friend, was severe blow to Mr.. Glenn
ems. The death of his daughter Jean,
who was seized with an attack of epilepsy
last fall while in her bath, was an added
blow from which he never recovered.
| 1t was then that the stabbing pains IN
his heart began. Mark Twain died as
nearly as it can be said of any man of
a broken heart.
The last bit of literary work he did
| was chapter of his unfinished auto
biography. describing his daughter