rivileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the Viceroy; but _I_
have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand, and
smoked a cigar--no, two cigars--with him, and talked with him for more
than two hours! Understand clearly that I do not despise you; indeed, I
don't. I am only very sorry for you, from the Viceroy downward. To
soothe your envy and to prove that I still regard you as my equals, I
will tell you all about it.

They said in Buffalo that he was in Hartford, Conn.; and again they said
"perchance he is gone upon a journey to Portland"; and a big, fat
drummer vowed that he knew the great man intimately, and that Mark was
spending the summer in Europe--which information so upset me that I
embarked upon the wrong train, and was incontinently turned out by the
conductor three-quarters of a mile from the station, amid the wilderness
of railway tracks. Have you ever, encumbered with great-coat and valise,
tried to dodge diversely-minded locomotives when the sun was shining in
your eyes? But I forgot that you have not seen Mark Twain, you people
of no account!

Saved from the jaws of the cow-catcher, me wandering devious a stranger
met.

"Elmira is the place. Elmira in the State of New York--this State, not
two hundred miles away;" and he added, perfectly unnecessarily, "Slide,
Kelley, slide."

I slid on the West Shore line, I slid till midnight, and they dumped me
down at the door of a frowzy hotel in Elmira. Yes, they knew all about
"that man Clemens," but reckoned he was not in town; had gone East
somewhere. I had better possess my soul in patience till the morrow, and
then dig up the "man Clemens'" brother-in-law, who was interested in
coal.

The idea of chasing half a dozen relatives in addition to Mark Twain up
and down a city of thirty thousand inhabitants kept me awake. Morning
revealed Elmira, whose streets were desolated by railway tracks, and
whose suburbs were given up to the manufacture of door-sashes and
window-frames. It was surrounded by pleasant, fat, little hills, rimmed
with timber and topped with cultivation. The Chemung River flowed
generally up and down the town, and had just finished flooding a few of
the main streets.

The hotel-man and the telephone-man assured me that the much-desired
brother-in-law was out of town, and no one seemed to know where "the man
Clemens" abode. Later on I discovered that he had not summered in that
place for more than nineteen seasons, a