At the Authors Club he paid a special tribute to Rudyard Kipling, whose dangerous illness in New York City and whose daughter’s death had aroused the anxiety and sympathy of the entire American nation.  It had done much to bring England and America closer together, Clemens said.  Then he added that he had been engaged the past eight days compiling a pun and had brought it there to lay at their feet, not to ask for their indulgence, but for their applause.  It was this: 

“Since England and America have been joined in Kipling, may they not be severed in Twain.”

Hundreds of puns had been made on his pen-name, but this was probably his first and only attempt, and it still remains the best.

They arrived in Sweden early in July and remained until October.  Jean was certainly benefited by the Kellgren treatment, and they had for a time the greatest hopes of her complete recovery.  Clemens became enthusiastic over osteopathy, and wrote eloquently to every one, urging each to try the great new curative which was certain to restore universal health.  He wrote long articles on Kellgren and his science, largely justified, no doubt, for certainly miraculous benefits were recorded; though Clemens was not likely to underestimate a thing which appealed to both his imagination and his reason.  Writing to Twichell he concluded, with his customary optimism over any new benefit: 

Ten years hence no sane man will call a doctor except when the knife must be used—­& such cases will be rare.  The educated physician will himself be an osteopath.  Dave will become one after he has finished his medical training.  Young Harmony ought to become one now.  I do not believe there is any difference between Kellgren’s science and osteopathy; but I am sending to America to find out.  I want osteopathy to prosper; it is common sense & scientific, & cures a wider range of ailments than the doctor’s methods can reach.

Twichell was traveling in Europe that summer, and wrote from Switzerland: 

I seemed ever and anon to see you and me swinging along those glorious Alpine woods, staring at the new unfoldings of splendor that every turn brought into view-talking, talking, endlessly talking the days through-days forever memorable to me.  That was twenty-one years ago; think of it!  We were youngsters then, Mark, and how keen our relish of everything was!  Well, I can enjoy myself now; but not with that zest and rapture.  Oh, a lot of items of our tramp travel in 1878 that I had long forgotten came back to me as we sped through that enchanted region, and if I wasn’t on duty with Venice I’d stop and set down some of them, but Venice must be attended to.  For one thing, there is Howells’s book to be read at such intervals as can be snatched from the quick-time march on which our rustling leader keeps us.  However, in Venice so far we want to be gazing pretty steadily from morning till night, and by the grace of the gondola we can do it without exhaustion.  Really I am drunk with Venice.

But Clemens was full of Sweden.  The skies there and the sunsets be thought surpassed any he had ever known.  On an evening in September he wrote: