Kipling came down that afternoon and spent a couple of hours with me, and at the end of that time I had surprised him as much as he had surprised me—­and the honors were easy.  I believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before—­though he did not say it, and I was not expecting that he would.  When he was gone Mrs. Langdon wanted to know about my visitor.  I said: 

    “He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man—­and I am
    the other one.  Between us we cover all knowledge; he knows all that
    can be known, and I know the rest.”

He was a stranger to me and to all the world, and remained so for twelve months, then he became suddenly known, and universally known.  From that day to this he has held this unique distinction—­that of being the only living person, not head of a nation, whose voice is heard around the world the moment it drops a remark; the only such voice in existence that does not go by slow ship and rail, but always travels first-class—­by cable.

    About a year after Kipling’s visit in Elmira George Warner came into
    our library one morning in Hartford with a small book in his hand
    and asked me if I had ever heard of Rudyard Kipling.  I said, “No.”

He said I would hear of him very soon, and that the noise he was going to make would be loud and continuous.  The little book was the Plain Tales, and he left it for me to read, saying it was charged with a new and inspiriting fragrance, and would blow a refreshing breath around the world that would revive the nations.  A day or two later he brought a copy of the London World which had a sketch of Kipling in it, and a mention of the fact that he had traveled in the United States.  According to this sketch he had passed through Elmira.  This remark, with the additional fact that he hailed from India, attracted my attention—­also Susy’s.  She went to her room and brought his card from its place in the frame of her mirror, and the Quarry Farm visitor stood identified.

Kipling also has left an account of that visit.  In his letter recording it he says: 

You are a contemptible lot over yonder.  Some of you are Commissioners and some are Lieutenant-Governors, and some have the V. C., and a few are privileged to walk about the Mall arm in arm with the Viceroy; but I have seen Mark Twain this golden morning, have shaken his hand and smoked a cigar—­no, two cigars—­with him, and talked with him for more than two hours!  Understand clearly that I do not despise you; indeed, I don’t.  I am only very sorry for you, from the Viceroy downward.

A big, darkened drawing-room; a huge chair; a man with eyes, a mane of grizzled hair, a brown mustache covering a mouth as delicate as a woman’s, a strong, square hand shaking mine, and the slowest, calmest, levelest voice in all the world saying: 

    “Well, you think you owe me something, and you’ve come to tell me
    so.  That’s what I call squaring a debt handsomely.”