I thought it was.  My friend said, “I always admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad.”  I naturally said, “What do you mean?  Where did you ever see it before?” “Well, I saw it first, some years ago, as Dr. Holmes’s dedication to his Songs in Many Keys.”  Of course my first impulse was to prepare this man’s remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two, and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could.  We stepped into a book-store. and he did prove it.  I had stolen that dedication almost word for word.  I could not imagine how this curious thing happened; for I knew one thing, for a dead certainty—­that a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people’s ideas.  That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man, and admirers had often told me I had nearly a basketful, though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket.  However, I thought the thing out and solved the mystery.  Some years before I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and reread Dr. Holmes’s poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the brim.  The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I unconsciously took it.  Well, of course, I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him I hadn’t meant to steal, and he wrote back and said, in the kindest way, that it was all right, and no harm done, and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves.  He stated a truth and did it in such a pleasant way, and salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter.  I afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that struck him as good protoplasm for poetry.  He could see by that time that there wasn’t anything mean about me; so we got along, right from the start.—­[Holmes in his letter had said:  “I rather think The Innocents Abroad will have many more readers than Songs in Many Keys. . .  You will be stolen from a great deal oftener than you will borrow from other people.”]

I have met Dr. Holmes many times since; and lately he said—­However, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got on my feet to do; that is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow-teachers of the great public, and likewise to say I am right glad to see that Dr. Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life, and as age is not determined by years but by trouble, and by infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before any can truthfully say, “He is growing old.”

Whatever Mark Twain may have lost on that former occasion, came back to him multiplied when he had finished this happy tribute.  So the year for him closed prosperously.  The rainbow of promise was justified.