all the requisites of matrimony except the bride, and just then this detail appeared on the scene, dressed for the occasion.  Behind her ranged the rest of the servants and a few invited guests.  Before the young man knew it he had a wife, and on the whole did not seem displeased.  It ended with a gay supper and festivities.  Then Clemens started them handsomely by giving each of them a check for one hundred dollars; and in truth (which in this case, at least, is stranger than fiction) they lived happily and prosperously ever after.

Some years later Mark Twain based a story on this episode, but it was never entirely satisfactory and remains unpublished.

CXIV

THE WHITTIER BIRTHDAY SPEECH

It was the night of December 17, 1877, that Mark Twain made his unfortunate speech at the dinner given by the Atlantic staff to John G. Whittier on his seventieth birthday.  Clemens had attended a number of the dinners which the Atlantic gave on one occasion or another, and had provided a part of the entertainment.  It is only fair to say that his after-dinner speeches at such times had been regarded as very special events, genuine triumphs of humor and delivery.  But on this particular occasion he determined to outdo himself, to prepare something unusual, startling, something altogether unheard of.

When Mark Twain had an impulse like that it was possible for it to result in something dangerous, especially in those earlier days.  This time it produced a bombshell; not just an ordinary bombshell, or even a twelve-inch projectile, but a shell of planetary size.  It was a sort of hoax-always a doubtful plaything—­and in this case it brought even quicker and more terrible retribution than usual.  It was an imaginary presentation of three disreputable frontier tramps who at some time had imposed themselves on a lonely miner as Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes, quoting apposite selections from their verses to the accompaniment of cards and drink, and altogether conducting themselves in a most unsavory fashion.  At the end came the enlightenment that these were not what they pretended to be, but only impostors—­disgusting frauds.  A feature like that would be a doubtful thing to try in any cultured atmosphere.  The thought of associating, ever so remotely, those three old bummers which he had conjured up with the venerable and venerated Emerson, Longfellow, and Holmes, the Olympian trinity, seems ghastly enough to-day, and must have seemed even more so then.  But Clemens, dazzled by the rainbow splendor of his conception, saw in it only a rare colossal humor, which would fairly lift and bear his hearers along on a tide of mirth.  He did not show his effort to any one beforehand.  He wanted its full beauty to burst upon the entire company as a surprise.

It did that.  Howells was toastmaster, and when he came to present Clemens he took particular pains to introduce him as one of his foremost contributors and dearest friends.  Here, he said, was “a humorist who never left you hanging you head for having enjoyed his joke.”