in tears at the
conclusion. Commenting on his boyhood days and referring to his mother
was too much for the great humorist. Before him as he spoke were sitting
seven of his boyhood friends."

On Sunday morning Col. John Robards escorted him to the various churches
and Sunday-schools. They were all new churches to Samuel Clemens, but he
pretended not to recognize this fact. In each one he was asked to speak
a few words, and he began by saying how good it was to be back in the
old home Sunday-school again, which as a boy he had always so loved, and
he would go on and point out the very place he had sat, and his escort
hardly knew whether or not to enjoy the proceedings. At one place he
told a moral story. He said:

Little boys and girls, I want to tell you a story which illustrates the
value of perseverance--of sticking to your work, as it were. It is
a story very proper for a Sunday-school. When I was a little boy in
Hannibal I used to play a good deal up here on Holliday's Hill, which of
course you all know. John Briggs and I played up there. I don't suppose
there are any little boys as good as we were then, but of course that
is not to be expected. Little boys in those days were 'most always good
little boys, because those were the good old times when everything was
better than it is now, but never mind that. Well, once upon a time, on
Holliday's Hill, they were blasting out rock, and a man was drilling for
a blast. He sat there and drilled and drilled and drilled perseveringly
until he had a hole down deep enough for the blast. Then he put in the
powder and tamped and tamped it down, but maybe he tamped it a little
too hard, for the blast went off and he went up into the air, and we
watched him. He went up higher and higher and got smaller and smaller.
First he looked as big as a child, then as big as a dog, then as big as
a kitten, then as big as a bird, and finally he went out of sight. John
Briggs was with me, and we watched the place where he went out of sight,
and by and by we saw him coming down first as big as a bird, then as big
as a kitten, then as big as a dog, then as big as a child, and then he
was a man again, and landed right in his seat and went to drilling just
persevering, you see, and sticking to his work. Little boys and girls,
that's the secret of success, just like that poor but honest workman on
Holliday's Hill. Of course you won't always be appreciated. He wasn't.
His employer was a hard man,