them. It chokes me up to think of them. Would
you like me to come out there and cry? It would not beseem my white
head.

Good-by. I drink to you all. Have a good time-and take an old man's
blessing.

In reply to another invitation from H. H. Bancroft, of San Francisco, he
wrote that his wandering days were over, and that it was his purpose to
sit by the fire for the rest of his "remnant of life."

A man who, like me, is going to strike 70 on the 30th of next
November has no business to be flitting around the way Howells does
--that shameless old fictitious butterfly. (But if he comes don't
tell him I said it, for it would hurt him & I wouldn't brush a flake
of powder from his wing for anything. I only say it in envy of his
indestructible youth anyway. Howells will be 88 in October.)

And it was either then or on a similar occasion that he replied after
this fashion:

I have done more for San Francisco than any other of its old
residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully
300,000. I could have done more--I could have gone earlier--it was
suggested.

Which, by the way, is a perfect example of Mark Twain's humorous manner,
the delicately timed pause, and the afterthought. Most humorists would
have been contented to end with the statement, "I could have gone
earlier." Only Mark Twain could have added that final exquisite touch
--"it was suggested."

CCXXXVI

AT PIER 70

Mark Twain was nearing seventy, the scriptural limitation of life, and
the returns were coming in. Some one of the old group was dying all the
time. The roll-call returned only a scattering answer. Of his oldest
friends, Charles Henry Webb, John Hay, and Sir Henry Irving, all died
that year. When Hay died Clemens gave this message to the press:

I am deeply grieved, & I mourn with the nation this loss which is
irreparable. My friendship with Mr. Hay & my admiration of him
endured 38 years without impairment.

It was only a little earlier that he had written Hay an anonymous letter,
a copy of which he preserved. It here follows:

DEAR & HONORED SIR,--I never hear any one speak of you & of your
long roll of illustrious services in other than terms of pride &
praise--& out of the heart. I think I am right in believing you to
be the only man in the civil service of the country the cleanness of
whose motives is never questioned by any citizen, & who