about the same position and froze to it till by and by there was another of those deafening and protracted roars, when Sherman made him get up and bow again.  He broke up his attitude once more—­the extent of something more than a hair’s breadth—­to indicate me to Sherman when the house was keeping up a determined and persistent call for me, and poor bewildered Sherman, (who did not know me), was peering abroad over the packed audience for me, not knowing I was only three feet from him and most conspicuously located, (Gen. Sherman was Chairman.)

One of the most illustrious individuals on that stage was “Ole Abe,” the historic war eagle.  He stood on his perch—­the old savage-eyed rascal —­three or four feet behind Gen. Sherman, and as he had been in nearly every battle that was mentioned by the orators his soul was probably stirred pretty often, though he was too proud to let on.

Read Logan’s bosh, and try to imagine a burly and magnificent Indian, in General’s uniform, striking a heroic attitude and getting that stuff off in the style of a declaiming school-boy.

Please put the enclosed scraps in the drawer and I will scrap-book them.

I only staid at the Owl Club till 3 this morning and drank little or nothing.  Went to sleep without whisky.  Ich liebe dish.

SAML.

     But it is in the third letter that we get the climax.  On the same
     day he wrote a letter to Howells, which, in part, is very similar in
     substance and need not be included here.

     A paragraph, however, must not be omitted.

“Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-shredded old battle-flag reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-aged soldiers, most of whom hadn’t seen it since they saw it advancing over victorious fields, when they were in their prime.  And imagine what it was like when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view while they were still going mad over the flag, and then right in the midst of it all somebody struck up, ’When we were marching through Georgia.’  Well, you should have heard the thousand voices lift that chorus and seen the tears stream down.  If I live a hundred years I shan’t ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about them ....  Grand times, my boy, grand times!”

At the great banquet Mark Twain’s speech had been put last on the program, to hold the house.  He had been invited to respond to the toast of “The Ladies,” but had replied that he had already responded to that toast more than once.  There was one class of the community, he said, commonly overlooked on these occasions—­the babies—­he would respond to that toast.  In his letter to Howells he had not been willing to speak freely of his personal triumph, but to Mrs. Clemens he must tell it all, and with that child-like ingenuousness which never failed him to his last day.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: