and led me to the General and
formally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper remark,
General Grant said--

"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"--and that little
seven-year smile twinkled across his face again.

Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, in New York, the
streets are a crush of people who are there to honor the remains of the
great soldier as they pass to their final resting-place under the
monument; and the air is heavy with dirges and the boom of artillery, and
all the millions of America are thinking of the man who restored the
Union and the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of
life, and, as we may hope and do believe, a permanent place among the
beneficent institutions of men.

We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer--at least it was
at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from
the day's monotonies and dullnesses. It was the completing of
non-complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story
except the finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out of
their own invention. When every one who wanted a chance had had it, the
man who had introduced the story would give it its original ending--then
you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be
better than the old one. But the story which called out the most
persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no
ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with.
The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain
point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read
it in a volume of sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted
before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty dollars who
would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by
ourselves. We appointed a jury and wrestled with the tale. We invented
plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right.
It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed
satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like to
know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's
strength is in its middle, and that there is apparently no way to
transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance
the storiette was as follows:

John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gent