Twichell also made his reports home, some of which give us interesting pictures of his walking partner.  In one place he wrote:  “Mark is a queer fellow.  There is nothing he so delights in as a swift, strong stream.  You can hardly get him to leave one when once he is within the influence of its fascinations.”

Twichell tells how at Kandersteg they were out together one evening where a brook comes plunging down from Gasternthal and how he pushed in a drift to see it go racing along the current.  “When I got back to the path Mark was running down stream after it as hard as he could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the wildest ecstasy, and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam below he would jump up and down and yell.  He said afterward that he had not been so excited in three months.”

In other places Twichell refers to his companion’s consideration for the feeling of others, and for animals.  “When we are driving, his concern is all about the horse.  He can’t bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard.”

After the walk over Gemmi Pass he wrote:  “Mark to-day was immensely absorbed in flowers.  He scrambled around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest pleasure in them.  He crowded a pocket of his note-book with his specimens, and wanted more room.”

Whereupon Twichell got out his needle and thread and some stiff paper he had and contrived the little paper bag to hang to the front of his vest.

The tramp really ended at Lausanne, where Clemens joined his party, but a short excursion to Chillon and Chamonix followed, the travelers finally separating at Geneva, Twichell to set out for home by way of England, Clemens to remain and try to write the story of their travels.  He hurried a good-by letter after his comrade: 

To Rev. J. H. Twichell: 

(No date) dear old Joe,—­It is actually all over!  I was so low-spirited at the station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn’t seem to accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant tramping and talking at an end.  Ah, my boy! it has been such a rich holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest obligations to you for coming.  I am putting out of my mind all memory of the times when I misbehaved toward you and hurt you:  I am resolved to consider it forgiven, and to store up and remember only the charming hours of the journeys and the times when I was not unworthy to be with you and share a companionship which to me stands first after Livy’s.  It is justifiable to do this; for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live and grovel among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps?

Livy can’t accept or endure the fact that you are gone.  But you are, and we cannot get around it.  So take our love with you, and bear it also over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.