We remained overnight in New York, and that evening, at the Grosvenor, he read aloud a poem of his own which I had not seen before.  He had brought it along with some intention of reading it at St. Timothy’s, he said, but had not found the occasion suitable.

“I wrote it a long time ago in Paris.  I’d been reading aloud to Mrs. Clemens and Susy—­in ’93, I think—­about Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, from Macaulay—­how great they were and how far they fell.  Then I took an imaginary case—­that of some old demented man mumbling of his former state.  I described him, and repeated some of his mumblings.  Susy and Mrs. Clemens said, ’Write it’—­so I did, by and by, and this is it.  I call it ‘The Derelict.’”

He read in his effective manner that fine poem, the opening stanza of which follows: 

You sneer, you ships that pass me by,
Your snow-pure canvas towering proud! 
You traders base!—­why, once such fry
Paid reverence, when like a cloud
Storm-swept I drove along,
My Admiral at post, his pennon blue
Faint in the wilderness of sky, my long
Yards bristling with my gallant crew,
My ports flung wide, my guns displayed,
My tall spars hid in bellying sail! 
—­You struck your topsails then, and made
Obeisance—­now your manners fail.

He had employed rhyme with more facility than was usual for him, and the figure and phrasing were full of vigor.

“It is strong and fine,” I said, when he had finished.

“Yes,” he assented.  “It seems so as I read it now.  It is so long since I have seen it that it is like reading another man’s work.  I should call it good, I believe.”

He put the manuscript in his bag and walked up and down the floor talking.

“There is no figure for the human being like the ship,” he said; “no such figure for the storm-beaten human drift as the derelict—­such men as Clive and Hastings could only be imagined as derelicts adrift, helpless, tossed by every wind and tide.”

We returned to Redding next day.  On the train going home he fell to talking of books and authors, mainly of the things he had never been able to read.

“When I take up one of Jane Austen’s books,” he said, “such as Pride and Prejudice, I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven.  I know, what his sensation would be and his private comments.  He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.”

He recalled again how Stepniak had come to Hartford, and how humiliated Mrs. Clemens had been to confess that her husband was not familiar with the writings of Thackeray and others.

“I don’t know anything about anything,” he said, mournfully, “and never did.  My brother used to try to get me to read Dickens, long ago.  I couldn’t do it—­I was ashamed; but I couldn’t do it.  Yes, I have read The Tale of Two Cities, and could do it again.  I have read it a good many times; but I never could stand Meredith and most of the other celebrities.”