s,
so that Mrs. Clemens would have it on her breakfast-plate the morning of
their anniversary:

"Wedding news. Our ship is safe in port. I sail the moment Rogers can
spare me."

So this painted bubble, this thing of emptiness, had become as substance
again--the grand hope. He was as concerned with it as if it had been an
actual gold-mine with ore and bullion piled in heaps--that shadow, that
farce, that nightmare. One longs to go back through the years and face
him to the light and arouse him to the vast sham of it all.

CLXXXVII

SOME LITERARY MATTERS

Clemens might have lectured that winter with profit, and Major Pond did
his best to persuade him; but Rogers agreed that his presence in New York
was likely to be too important to warrant any schedule of absence. He
went once to Boston to lecture for charity, though his pleasure in the
experience was a sufficient reward. On the evening before the lecture
Mrs. James T. Fields had him to her house to dine with Dr. Holmes, then
not far from the end of his long, beautiful life.--[He died that same
year, October, 1894.]

Clemens wrote to Paris of their evening together:

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out (he is in his 84th year), but he
came out this time--said he wanted to "have a time" once more with me.

Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come, & went away crying because she
wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett &
sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.

Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking
(& listening) as he ever did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett
said he hadn't been in such splendid form for years. He had ordered his
carriage for 9. The coachman sent in for him at 9, but he said, "Oh,
nonsense!--leave glories & grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away &
come in an hour!"

At 10 he was called for again, & Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but
he wouldn't go--& so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more Mrs.
Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--& he didn't go till half past 10--an
unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was prodigiously
complimentary about some of my books, & is having Pudd'nhead read to him.
I told him you & I used the Autocrat as a courting book & marked it all
through, & that you keep it in the sacred green box with the loveletters,
& it pleased him.

One other address Clemens delivered that winter, at Fair Hav