He rose presently to go, and came directly toward me.  A year before I had done what new writers were always doing—­I had sent him a book I had written, and he had done what he was always doing—­acknowledged it with a kindly letter.  I made my thanks now an excuse for addressing him.  It warmed me to hear him say that he remembered the book, though at the time I confess I thought it doubtful.  Then he was gone; but the mind and ear had photographed those vivid first impressions that remain always clear.

It was the following spring that I saw him again—­at an afternoon gathering, and the memory of that occasion is chiefly important because I met Mrs. Clemens there for the only time, and like all who met her, however briefly, felt the gentleness and beauty of her spirit.  I think I spoke with her at two or three different moments during the afternoon, and on each occasion was impressed with that feeling of acquaintanceship which we immediately experience with those rare beings whose souls are wells of human sympathy and free from guile.  Bret Harte had just died, and during the afternoon Mr. Clemens asked me to obtain for him some item concerning the obsequies.

It was more than three years before I saw him again.  Meantime, a sort of acquaintance had progressed.  I had been engaged in writing the life of Thomas Nast, the cartoonist, and I had found among the material a number of letters to Nast from Mark Twain.  I was naturally anxious to use those fine characteristic letters, and I wrote him for his consent.  He wished to see the letters, and the permission that followed was kindness itself.  His admiration of Nast was very great.

It was proper, under the circumstances, to send him a copy of the book when it appeared; but that was 1904, his year of sorrow and absence, and the matter was postponed.  Then came the great night of his seventieth birthday dinner, with an opportunity to thank him in person for the use of the letters.  There was only a brief exchange of words, and it was the next day, I think, that I sent him a copy of the book.  It did not occur to me that I should hear of it again.

We step back a moment here.  Something more than a year earlier, through a misunderstanding, Mark Twain’s long association with The Players had been severed.  It was a sorrow to him, and a still greater sorrow to the club.  There was a movement among what is generally known’ as the “Round Table Group”—­because its members have long had a habit of lunching at a large, round table in a certain window—­to bring him back again.  David Munro, associate editor of the North American Review—­“David,” a man well loved of men—­and Robert Reid, the painter, prepared this simple document: 

To
Mark Twain
from
the clansmen

Will ye no come back again? 
Will ye no come back again? 
Better lo’ed ye canna be,
Will ye no come back again?