effect was prepared, headed by F. G. Hall, and signed by other
leading citizens of Elmira, including Beecher himself. General Joe
Hawley came along just then on a political speech-making tour. Clemens
introduced him, and Hawley, in turn, agreed to father the petition in
Congress. What had begun merely as pleasantry began to have a formidable
look.

But alas! in the end Hawley's courage had failed him. He began to hate
his undertaking. He was afraid of the national laugh it would arouse,
the jeers of the newspapers. It was certain to leak out that Mark Twain
was behind it, in spite of the fact that his name nowhere appeared; that
it was one of his colossal jokes. Now and then, in the privacy of his
own room at night, Hawley would hunt up the Adam petition and read it
and feel the cold sweat breaking out. He postponed the matter from one
session to another till the summer of 1881, when he was about to sail
for Europe. Then he gave the document to his wife, to turn over to
Clemens, and ignominiously fled.

[For text of the petition in full, etc., see Appendix P, at the end of
last volume.]

Mark Twain's introduction of Hawley at Elmira contained this pleasantry:
"General Hawley was president of the Centennial Commission. Was a
gallant soldier in the war. He has been Governor of Connecticut, member
of Congress, and was president of the convention that nominated Abraham
Lincoln."

General Hawley: "That nominated Grant."

Twain: "He says it was Grant, but I know better. He is a member of my
church at Hartford, and the author of 'Beautiful Snow.' Maybe he will
deny that. But I am only here to give him a character from his last
place. As a pure citizen, I respect him; as a personal friend of years,
I have the warmest regard for him; as a neighbor whose vegetable garden
joins mine, why--why, I watch him. That's nothing; we all do that with
any neighbor. General Hawley keeps his promises, not only in private,
but in public. He is an editor who believes what he writes in his own
paper. As the author of 'Beautiful Snow' he added a new pang to winter.
He is broad-souled, generous, noble, liberal, alive to his moral and
religious responsibilities. Whenever the contribution-box was passed I
never knew him to take out a cent."

CXXXV. A TRIP WITH SHERMAN AND AN INTERVIEW WITH GRANT.

The Army of the Potomac gave a dinner in Hartford on the 8th of June,
1881. But little memory remains of it now beyond Mark Twain's speech a