entrance, and we saw the silken
gleam and the lifted sword of a guard of honor plowing through the
remote crowds. Then we saw that end of the house rising to its
feet; saw it rise abreast the advancing guard all along like a wave.
This supreme honor had been offered to no one before. There was an
excited whisper at our table--"Mommsen!"--and the whole house rose
--rose and shouted and stamped and clapped and banged the beer-mugs.
Just simply a storm! Then the little man with his long hair and
Emersonian face edged his way past us and took his seat. I could
have touched him with my hand--Mommsen!--think of it!

This was one of those immense surprises that can happen only a few
times in one's life. I was not dreaming of him; he was to me only a
giant myth, a world-shadowing specter, not a reality. The surprise
of it all can be only comparable to a man's suddenly coming upon
Mont Blanc, with its awful form towering into the sky, when he
didn't suspect he was in its neighborhood. I would have walked a
great many miles to get a sight of him, and here he was, without
trouble, or tramp, or cost of any kind. Here he was, clothed in a
titanic deceptive modesty which made him look like other men. Here
he was, carrying the Roman world and all the Caesars in his
hospitable skull, and doing it as easily as that other luminous
vault, the skull of the universe, carries the Milky Way and the
constellations.

During his convalescent days, Clemens had plenty of time to reflect and
to look out of the window. His notebook preserves some of his
reflections. In one place he says:

The Emperor passes in a modest open carriage. Next that happy
12-year-old butcher-boy, all in white apron and turban, standing up
& so proud!

How fast they drive-nothing like it but in London. And the horses
seem to be of very fine breed, though I am not an expert in horses
& do not speak with assurance. I can always tell which is the front
end of a horse, but beyond that my art is not above the ordinary.

The "Court Gazette" of a German paper can be covered with a playing-
card. In an English paper the movements of titled people take up
about three times that room. In the papers of Republican France
from six to sixteen times as much. There, if a Duke's dog should
catch cold in the head they would stop the press to announce