of the
English edition of The Innocents Abroad. This was gratifying for a
moment; then he remembered that the man had never laughed, never even
smiled during the hour of his steady reading. Clemens recalled what he
had heard of the English lack of humor. He wondered if this was a fair
example of it, and if the man could be really taking seriously every word
he was reading. Clemens could not look at the scenery any more for
watching his fellow-passenger, waiting with a fascinated interest for the
paragraph that would break up that iron-clad solemnity. It did not come.
During all the rest of the trip to London the atmosphere of the
compartment remained heavy with gloom.

He drove to the Langham Hotel, always popular with Americans, established
himself, and went to look up his publishers. He found the Routledges
about to sit down to luncheon in a private room, up-stairs, in their
publishing house. He joined them, and not a soul stirred from that table
again until evening. The Routledges had never heard Mark Twain talk
before, never heard any one talk who in the least resembled him. Various
refreshments were served during the afternoon, came and went, while this
marvelous creature talked on and they listened, reveling, and wondering
if America had any more of that sort at home. By and by dinner was
served; then after a long time, when there was no further excuse for
keeping him there, they took him to the Savage Club, where there were yet
other refreshments and a gathering of the clans to welcome this new
arrival as a being from some remote and unfamiliar star.

Tom Hood, the younger, was there, and Harry Lee, and Stanley the
explorer, who had but just returned from finding Livingstone, and Henry
Irving, and many another whose name remains, though the owners of those
names are all dead now, and their laughter and their good-fellowship are
only a part of that intangible fabric which we call the past.'--[Clemens
had first known Stanley as a newspaper man. "I first met him when he
reported a lecture of mine in St. Louis," he said once in a conversation
where the name of Stanley was mentioned.]

LXXXVI

ENGLAND

From that night Mark Twain's stay in England could not properly be called
a gloomy one.

Routledge, Hood, Lee, and, in fact, all literary London, set themselves
the task of giving him a good time. Whatever place of interest they
could think of he was taken there; whatever there was to see he saw it.
Dinner