ps and puffing
in the old way.

Two dreams beset him in his momentary slumber--one of a play in which
the title-role of the general manager was always unfilled. He spoke of
this now and then when it had passed, and it seemed to amuse him. The
other was a discomfort: a college assembly was attempting to confer upon
him some degree which he did not want. Once, half roused, he looked at
me searchingly and asked:

"Isn't there something I can resign and be out of all this? They
keep trying to confer that degree upon me and I don't want it." Then
realizing, he said: "I am like a bird in a cage: always expecting to get
out, and always beaten back by the wires." And, somewhat later: "Oh, it
is such a mystery, and it takes so long."

Toward the evening of the first day, when it grew dark outside, he
asked:

"How long have we been on this voyage?"

I answered that this was the end of the first day.

"How many more are there?" he asked.

"Only one, and two nights."

"We'll never make it," he said. "It's an eternity."

"But we must on Clara's account," I told him, and I estimated that Clara
would be more than half-way across the ocean by now.

"It is a losing race," he said; "no ship can outsail death."

It has been written--I do not know with what proof--that certain great
dissenters have recanted with the approach of death--have become weak,
and afraid to ignore old traditions in the face of the great mystery. I
wish to write here that Mark Twain, as he neared the end, showed never
a single tremor of fear or even of reluctance. I have dwelt upon these
hours when suffering was upon him, and death the imminent shadow, in
order to show that at the end he was as he had always been, neither more
nor less, and never less than brave.

Once, during a moment when he was comfortable and quite himself, he
said, earnestly:

"When I seem to be dying I don't want to be stimulated back to life. I
want to be made comfortable to go."

There was not a vestige of hesitation; there was no grasping at straws,
no suggestion of dread.

Somehow those two days and nights went by. Once, when he was partially
relieved by the opiate, I slept, while Claude watched; and again, in
the fading end of the last night, when we had passed at length into the
cold, bracing northern air, and breath had come back to him, and with it
sleep.

Relatives, physicians, and news-gatherers were at the dock to welcome
him. He was awake, and the northern ai