a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of
idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing," I
tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the
blessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering talked
pure drivel and "rot," mostly, but better that, a thousand times, than
these dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in this
mad generation.

It is sixty years since I was here before. I walked hither, then, with
my precious old friend. It seems incredible, now, that we did it in two
days, but such is my recollection. I no longer mention that we walked
back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of
the hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the puerile
organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat.

My air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded
with the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I
was nearly an hour on my journey. But by the goodness of God thirteen of
the missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content to
lose the time. I love to lose time, anyway, because it brings soothing
reminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to us
forever.

Our game was neatly played, and successfully.--None expected us, of
course. You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when I
said, "Announce his grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Rt. Hon. the
Earl of Hartford." Arrived within, we were all eyes to see the Duke of
Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember their faces,
and they ours. In a moment, they came tottering in; he, bent and
withered and bald; she blooming with wholesome old age. He peered
through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice: "Come
to my arms! Away with titles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain and
Twichell! Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear,
the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: God bless you, old
Howells what is left of you!"

We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" for
us--of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our
tongues and drank till the lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow
past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him and resumed its sweeter
forgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient
religion, too, good Jesuit, as he has