s a d--d
fool to accept it at all."

He was in one of his somber moods that morning. I had received a print
of a large picture of Thomas Nast--the last one taken. The face had a
pathetic expression which told the tragedy of his last years. Clemens
looked at the picture several moments without speaking. Then he broke
out:

"Why can't a man die when he's had his tragedy? I ought to have died
long ago." And somewhat later: "Once Twichell heard me cussing the human
race, and he said, 'Why, Mark, you are the last person in the world to do
that--one selected and set apart as you are.' I said 'Joe, you don't
know what you are talking about. I am not cussing altogether about my
own little troubles. Any one can stand his own misfortunes; but when I
read in the papers all about the rascalities and outrages going on I
realize what a creature the human animal is. Don't you care more about
the wretchedness of others than anything that happens to you?' Joe said
he did, and shut up."

It occurred to me to suggest that he should not read the daily papers.
"No difference," he said. "I read books printed two hundred years ago,
and they hurt just the same."

"Those people are all dead and gone," I objected.

"They hurt just the same," he maintained.

I sometimes thought of his inner consciousness as a pool darkened by his
tragedies, its glassy surface, when calm, reflecting all the joy and
sunlight and merriment of the world, but easily--so easily--troubled and
stirred even to violence. Once following the dictation, when I came to
the billiard-room he was shooting the balls about the table, apparently
much depressed. He said:

"I have been thinking it out--if I live two years more I will put an end
to it all. I will kill myself."

"You have much to live for----"

"But I am so tired of the eternal round," he interrupted; "so tired." And
I knew he meant that he was ill of the great loneliness that had come to
him that day in Florence, and would never pass away.

I referred to the pressure of social demands in the city, and the relief
he would find in his country home. He shook his head.

"The country home I need," he said, fiercely, "is a cemetery."

Yet the mood changed quickly enough when the play began. He was gay and
hilarious presently, full of the humors and complexities of the game. H.
H. Rogers came in with a good deal of frequency, seldom making very long
calls, but never seeming to have that air of being hurried whi