“What a fine boy that prehistoric man must have been,” he said—­“the very first one!  Think of the gaudy style of him, how he must have lorded it over those other creatures, walking on his hind legs, waving his arms, practising and getting ready for the pulpit.”

The fancy amused him, but presently he paused in his walk and again put his hand on his breast, saying: 

“That pain has come back.  It’s a curious, sickening, deadly kind of pain.  I never had anything just like it.”

It seemed to me that his face had become rather gray.  I said: 

“Where is it, exactly, Mr. Clemens?”

He laid his hand in the center of his breast and said: 

“It is here, and it is very peculiar indeed.”

Remotely in my mind occurred the thought that he had located his heart, and the “peculiar deadly pain” he had mentioned seemed ominous.  I suggested, however, that it was probably some rheumatic touch, and this opinion seemed warranted when, a few moments later, the hot water had again relieved it.  This time the pain had apparently gone to stay, for it did not return while we were in Baltimore.  It was the first positive manifestation of the angina which eventually would take him from us.

The weather was pleasant in Baltimore, and his visit to St. Timothy’s School and his address there were the kind of diversions that meant most to him.  The flock of girls, all in their pretty commencement dresses, assembled and rejoicing at his playfully given advice:  not to smoke—­to excess; not to drink—­to excess; not to marry—­to excess; he standing there in a garb as white as their own—­it made a rare picture—­a sweet memory—­and it was the last time he ever gave advice from the platform to any one.

Edward S. Martin also spoke to the school, and then there was a great feasting in the big assembly-hall.

It was on the lawn that a reporter approached him with the news of the death of Edward Everett Hale—­another of the old group.  Clemens said thoughtfully, after a moment: 

“I had the greatest respect and esteem for Edward Everett Hale, the greatest admiration for his work.  I am as grieved to hear of his death as I can ever be to hear of the death of any friend, though my grief is always tempered with the satisfaction of knowing that for the one that goes, the hard, bitter struggle of life is ended.”

We were leaving the Belvedere next morning, and when the subject of breakfast came up for discussion he said: 

“That was the most delicious Baltimore fried chicken we had yesterday morning.  I think we’ll just repeat that order.  It reminds me of John Quarles’s farm.”

We had been having our meals served in the rooms, but we had breakfast that morning down in the diningroom, and “Francesca” and her mother were there.

As he stood on the railway platform waiting for the train, he told me how once, fifty-five years before, as a boy of eighteen, he had changed cars there for Washington and had barely caught his train—­the crowd yelling at him as he ran.