Your husband was a man I knew and loved and honored for twenty-five
years. I mourn with you.

And once during the evening he said:

"He was one of our two or three real Presidents. There is none to take
his place."

CCLXX

THE ALDRICH MEMORIAL

At the end of June came the dedication at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of
the Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Museum, which the poet's wife had
established there in the old Aldrich homestead. It was hot weather. We
were obliged to take a rather poor train from South Norwalk, and Clemens
was silent and gloomy most of the way to Boston. Once there, however,
lodged in a cool and comfortable hotel, matters improved. He had brought
along for reading the old copy of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthur Tales, and
after dinner he took off his clothes and climbed into bed and sat up and
read aloud from those stately legends, with comments that I wish I could
remember now, only stopping at last when overpowered with sleep.

We went on a special train to Portsmouth next morning through the summer
heat, and assembled, with those who were to speak, in the back portion of
the opera-house, behind the scenes: Clemens was genial and good-natured
with all the discomfort of it; and he liked to fancy, with Howells, who
had come over from Kittery Point, how Aldrich must be amused at the whole
circumstance if he could see them punishing themselves to do honor to his
memory. Richard Watson Gilder was there, and Hamilton Mabie; also
Governor Floyd of New Hampshire; Colonel Higginson, Robert Bridges, and
other distinguished men. We got to the more open atmosphere of the stage
presently, and the exercises began. Clemens was last on the program.

The others had all said handsome, serious things, and Clemens himself had
mentally prepared something of the sort; but when his turn came, and he
rose to speak, a sudden reaction must have set in, for he delivered an
address that certainly would have delighted Aldrich living, and must have
delighted him dead, if he could hear it. It was full of the most
charming humor, delicate, refreshing, and spontaneous. The audience,
that had been maintaining a proper gravity throughout, showed its
appreciation in ripples of merriment that grew presently into genuine
waves of laughter. He spoke out his regret for having worn black
clothes. It was a mistake, he said, to consider this a solemn time
--Aldrich would not have wished it to be so considered. He had been a
m