em. You know one of these ladies, while
a great leader at home, uses very emphatic language when she is
irritated. The dinner, like most French dinners, with many
courses, was unusually long. Suddenly this lady, leaning over
me, said to her sister: 'Damn it, Fan, will this dinner never end?'
The whole table was shocked and my nerves were completely shattered."
The great war, as I think, exterminated this entire tribe.

I was delighted to find at Nauheim my old friends, Mark Twain and
the Reverend Doctor Joseph Twichell, of Hartford, Conn. Doctor
Twichell was Mark Twain's pastor at home. He was in college with
me at Yale, and I was also associated with him in the governing
corporation of Yale University. He was one of the finest wits
and remarkable humorists of his time. Wit and humor were with
him spontaneous, and he bubbled over with them. Mark Twain's
faculties in that line were more labored and had to be worked out.
Doctor Twichell often furnished in the rough the jewels which
afterwards in Mark Twain's workshop became perfect gems.

I invited them to come over and spend the day and dine with me
in the evening at Homburg. Mark Twain at that time had the
reputation in England of being the greatest living wit and humorist.
It soon spread over Homburg that he was in town and was to dine
with me in the evening, and requests came pouring in to be invited.
I kept enlarging my table at the Kursaal, with these requests,
until the management said they could go no farther. I placed
Mark Twain alongside Lady Cork, one of the most brilliant women
in England. In the course of years of acquaintance I had met
Mark Twain under many conditions. He was very uncertain in a
social gathering. Sometimes he would be the life of the occasion
and make it one to be long remembered, but generally he contributed
nothing. At this dinner, whenever he showed the slightest sign
of making a remark, there was dead silence, but the remark did
not come. He had a charming time, and so did Lady Cork, but the
rest of the company heard nothing from the great humorist, and
they were greatly disappointed.

The next morning Mark Twain came down to the springs in his
tramping-suit, which had fairly covered the continent. I introduced
him to the Prince of Wales, and he was charmed with him in their
hour of walk and talk. At dinner that evening the prince said
to me: "I would have invited Mark Twain this evening, if I thought
he had with