“The loss of a fortune is tough,” wrote Pond, “but there are other resources for another fortune.  You and I will make the tour together.”

Now he had resolved to make a tour-one that even Pond himself had not contemplated.  He would go platforming around the world!  He would take Pond with him as far as the Pacific coast, arranging with some one equally familiar with the lecture circuit on the other side of the Pacific.  He had heard of R. S. Smythe, who had personally conducted Henry M. Stanley and other great lecturers through Australia and the East, and he wrote immediately, asking information and advice concerning such a tour.  Clemens himself has told us in one of his chapters how his mental message found its way to Smythe long before his written one, and how Smythe’s letter, proposing just such a trip, crossed his own.

He sailed for America, with the family on the 11th of May, and a little more than a week later, after four years of exile, they found themselves once more at beautiful Quarry Farm.  We may imagine how happy they were to reach that peaceful haven.  Mrs. Clemens had written: 

“It is, in a way, hard to go home and feel that we are not able to open our house.  But it is an immense delight to me to think of seeing our friends.”

Little at the farm was changed.  There were more vines on the home—­the study was overgrown—­that was all.  Even Ellerslie remained as the children had left it, with all the small comforts and utensils in place.  Most of the old friends were there; only Mrs. Langdon and Theodore Crane were missing.  The Beechers drove up to see them, as formerly, and the old discussions on life and immortality were taken up in the old places.

Mrs. Beecher once came with some curious thin layers of leaves of stone which she had found, knowing Mark Twain’s interest in geology.  Later, when they had been discussing the usual problems, he said he would write an agreement on those imperishable leaves, to be laid away until the ages should solve their problems.  He wrote it in verse: 

If you prove right and I prove wrong,
A million years from now,
In language plain and frank and strong
My error I’ll avow
To your dear waking face.

If I prove right, by God His grace,
Full sorry I shall be,
For in that solitude no trace
There’ll be of you and me.

A million years, O patient stone,
You’ve waited for this message. 
Deliver it a million hence;
(Survivor pays expressage.)

                                          Mark Twain

Contract with Mrs. T. K. Beecher, July 2, 1895.