“John, that is one of the loveliest sights I ever saw.  Down there by the island is the place we used to swim, and yonder is where a man was drowned, and there’s where the steamboat sank.  Down there on Lover’s Leap is where the Millerites put on their robes one night to go to heaven.  None of them went that night, but I suppose most of them have gone now.”

John Briggs said: 

“Sam, do you remember the day we stole the peaches from old man Price and one of his bow-legged niggers came after us with the dogs, and how we made up our minds that we’d catch that nigger and drown him?”

They came to the place where they had pried out the great rock that had so nearly brought them to grief.  Sam Clemens said: 

“John, if we had killed that man we’d have had a dead nigger on our hands without a cent to pay for him.”

And so they talked on of this thing and that, and by and by they drove along the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it and was taken with a cramp on the return swim, and believed for a while that his career was about to close.

“Once, near the shore, I thought I would let down,” he said, “but was afraid to, knowing that if the water was deep I was a goner, but finally my knees struck the sand and I crawled out.  That was the closest call I ever had.”

They drove by the place where the haunted house had stood.  They drank from a well they had always known, and from the bucket as they had always drunk, talking and always talking, fondling lovingly and lingeringly that most beautiful of all our possessions, the past.

“Sam,” said John, when they parted, “this is probably the last time we shall meet on this earth.  God bless you.  Perhaps somewhere we shall renew our friendship.”

“John,” was the answer, “this day has been worth thousands of dollars to me.  We were like brothers once, and I feel that we are the same now.  Good-by, John.  I’ll try to meet you—­somewhere.”

CCXXII

A PROPHET HONORED IN HIS COUNTRY

Clemens left next day for Columbia.  Committees met him at Rensselaer, Monroe City, Clapper, Stoutsville, Paris, Madison, Moberly—­at every station along the line of his travel.  At each place crowds were gathered when the train pulled in, to cheer and wave and to present him with flowers.  Sometimes he spoke a few words; but oftener his eyes were full of tears—­his voice would not come.

There is something essentially dramatic in official recognition by one’s native State—­the return of the lad who has set out unknown to battle with life, and who, having conquered, is invited back to be crowned.  No other honor, however great and spectacular, is quite like that, for there is in it a pathos and a completeness that are elemental and stir emotions as old as life itself.