What an occasion it was!  The flower of American literature gathered to do honor to its chief.  The whole atmosphere of the place seemed permeated with his presence, and when Colonel Harvey presented William Dean Howells, and when Howells had read another double-barreled sonnet, and introduced the guest of the evening with the words, “I will not say, ‘O King, live forever,’ but, ‘O King, live as long as you like!’” and Mark Twain rose, his snow-white hair gleaming above that brilliant assembly, it seemed that a world was speaking out in a voice of applause and welcome.  With a great tumult the throng rose, a billow of life, the white handkerchiefs flying foam-like on its crest.  Those who had gathered there realized that it was a mighty moment, not only in his life but in theirs.  They were there to see this supreme embodiment of the American spirit as he scaled the mountain-top.  He, too, realized the drama of that moment—­the marvel of it—­and he must have flashed a swift panoramic view backward over the long way he had come, to stand, as he had himself once expressed it, “for a single, splendid moment on the Alps of fame outlined against the sun.”  He must have remembered; for when he came to speak he went back to the very beginning, to his very first banquet, as he called it, when, as he said, “I hadn’t any hair; I hadn’t any teeth; I hadn’t any clothes.”  He sketched the meagerness of that little hamlet which had seen his birth, sketched it playfully, delightfully, so that his hearers laughed and shouted; but there was always a tenderness under it all, and often the tears were not far beneath the surface.  He told of his habits of life, how he had attained seventy years by simply sticking to a scheme of living which would kill anybody else; how he smoked constantly, loathed exercise, and had no other regularity of habits.  Then, at last, he reached that wonderful, unforgetable close: 

    Threescore years and ten!

It is the scriptural statute of limitations.  After that you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over.  You are a time- expired man, to use Kipling’s military phrase:  You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out.  You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-call but “lights out.”  You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer—­and without prejudice—­for they are not legally collectable.

The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will never need it again.  If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and the late homecomings from the banquet and the lights and laughter through the deserted streets—­a desolation which would not remind you now, as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping and you must creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but