was a welcome to General Grant after his journey around the world.
Grant's trip had been one continuous ovation--a triumphal march.
In '79 most of his old commanders were still alive, and they had
planned to assemble in Chicago to do him honor. A Presidential year
was coming on, but if there was anything political in the project
there were no surface indications. Mark Twain, once a Confederate
soldier, had long since been completely "desouthernized"--at least
to the point where he felt that the sight of old comrades paying
tribute to the Union commander would stir his blood as perhaps it
had not been stirred, even in that earlier time, when that same
commander had chased him through the Missouri swamps. Grant,
indeed, had long since become a hero to Mark Twain, though it is
highly unlikely that Clemens favored the idea of a third term. Some
days following the preceding letter an invitation came for him to be
present at the Chicago reunion; but by this time he had decided not
to go. The letter he wrote has been preserved.

*****

To Gen. William E. Strong, in Chicago:

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.

Oct. 28, 1879.

GEN. WM. E. STRONG, CH'M, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:

I have been hoping during several weeks that it might be my good
fortune to receive an invitation to be present on that great occasion in
Chicago; but now that my desire is accomplished my business matters have
so shaped themselves as to bar me from being so far from home in the
first half of November. It is with supreme regret that I lost this
chance, for I have not had a thorough stirring up for some years, and
I judged that if I could be in the banqueting hall and see and hear
the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee at the moment that their old
commander entered the room, or rose in his place to speak, my system
would get the kind of upheaval it needs. General Grant's progress across
the continent is of the marvelous nature of the returning Napoleon's
progress from Grenoble to Paris; and as the crowning spectacle in the
one case was the meeting with the Old Guard, so, likewise, the crowning
spectacle in the other will be our great captain's meeting with his Old
Guard--and that is the very climax which I wanted to witness.

Besides, I wanted to see the General again, any way, and renew