mira, and next day--a somber day of
rain--he lay in those stately parlors that had seen his wedding-day, and
where Susy had lain, and Mrs. Clemens, and Jean, while Dr. Eastman spoke
the words of peace which separate us from our mortal dead. Then in the
quiet, steady rain of that Sunday afternoon we laid him beside those
others, where he sleeps well, though some have wished that, like De
Soto, he might have been laid to rest in the bed of that great river
which must always be associated with his name.

CCXCV. MARK TWAIN'S RELIGION

There is such a finality about death; however interesting it may be as
an experience, one cannot discuss it afterward with one's friends. I
have thought it a great pity that Mark Twain could not discuss, with
Howells say, or with Twichell, the sensations and the particulars of the
change, supposing there be a recognizable change, in that transition of
which we have speculated so much, with such slender returns. No one
ever debated the undiscovered country more than he. In his whimsical,
semi-serious fashion he had considered all the possibilities of the
future state--orthodox and otherwise--and had drawn picturesquely
original conclusions. He had sent Captain Stormfield in a dream to
report the aspects of the early Christian heaven. He had examined the
scientific aspects of the more subtle philosophies. He had considered
spiritualism, transmigration, the various esoteric doctrines, and in the
end he had logically made up his mind that death concludes all, while
with that less logical hunger which survives in every human heart he had
never ceased to expect an existence beyond the grave. His disbelief and
his pessimism were identical in their structure. They were of his mind;
never of his heart.

Once a woman said to him:

"Mr. Clemens, you are not a pessimist, you only think you are." And she
might have added, with equal force and truth:

"You are not a disbeliever in immortality; you only think you are."

Nothing could have conveyed more truly his attitude toward life and
death. His belief in God, the Creator, was absolute; but it was a God
far removed from the Creator of his early teaching. Every man builds his
God according to his own capacities. Mark Twain's God was of colossal
proportions--so vast, indeed, that the constellated stars were but
molecules in His veins--a God as big as space itself.

Mark Twain had many moods, and he did not always approve of his own God;
but whe