Bay House stands upon the water, and the morning light, reflected in at the window, had an unusual quality.  He was not yet shaven, and he seemed unnaturally pale and gray; certainly he was much thinner.  I was too startled, for the moment, to say anything.  When he turned and saw me he seemed a little dazed.

“Why,” he said, holding out his hand, “you didn’t tell us you were coming.”

“No,” I said, “it is rather sudden.  I didn’t quite like the sound of your last letters.”

“But those were not serious,” he protested.  “You shouldn’t have come on my account.”

I said then that I had come on my own account; that I had felt the need of recreation, and had decided to run down and come home with him.

“That’s—­very—­good,” he said, in his slow, gentle fashion.  “Now I’m glad to see you.”

His breakfast came in and he ate with an appetite.

When he had been shaved and freshly propped tip in his pillows it seemed to me, after all, that I must have been mistaken in thinking him so changed.  Certainly he was thinner, but his color was fine, his eyes were bright; he had no appearance of a man whose life was believed to be in danger.  He told me then of the fierce attacks he had gone through, how the pains had torn at him, and how it had been necessary for him to have hypodermic injections, which he amusingly termed “hypnotic injunctions” and “subcutaneous applications,” and he had his humor out of it, as of course he must have, even though Death should stand there in person.

From Mr. and Mrs. Allen and from the physician I learned how slender had been his chances and how uncertain were the days ahead.  Mr. Allen had already engaged passage on the Oceana for the 12th, and the one purpose now was to get him physically in condition for the trip.

How devoted those kind friends had been to him!  They had devised every imaginable thing for his comfort.  Mr. Allen had rigged an electric bell which connected with his own room, so that he could be aroused instantly at any hour of the night.  Clemens had refused to have a nurse, for it was only during the period of his extreme suffering that he needed any one, and he did not wish to have a nurse always around.  When the pains were gone he was as bright and cheerful, and, seemingly, as well as ever.

On the afternoon of my arrival we drove out, as formerly, and he discussed some of the old subjects in quite the old way.  He had been rereading Macaulay, he said, and spoke at considerable length of the hypocrisy and intrigue of the English court under James II.  He spoke, too, of the Redding Library.  I had sold for him that portion of the land where Jean’s farm-house had stood, and it was in his mind to use the money for some sort of a memorial to Jean.  I had written, suggesting that perhaps he would like to put up a small library building, as the Adams lot faced the corner where Jean had passed every day when she rode to the station for the mail.  He had been thinking this over, he said, and wished the idea carried out.  He asked me to write at once to his lawyer, Mr. Lark, and have a paper prepared appointing trustees for a memorial library fund.