Of course I forgot to go and pay for my hotel car and so secure it, but the army officers told me an hour ago to rest easy, they would go at once, at this unholy hour of the night and compel the railways to do their duty by me, and said “You don’t need to request the Army of the Tennessee to do your desires—­you can command its services.”

Well, I bummed around that banquet hall from 8 in the evening till 2 in the morning, talking with people and listening to speeches, and I never ate a single bite or took a sup of anything but ice water, so if I seem excited now, it is the intoxication of supreme enthusiasm.  By George, it was a grand night, a historical night.

And now it is a quarter past 6 A.M.—­so good bye and God bless you and the Bays,—­[Family word for babies]—­my darlings

Saml.

Show it to Joe if you want to—­I saw some of his friends here.

Mark Twain’s admiration for Robert Ingersoll was very great, and we may believe that he was deeply impressed by the Chicago speech, when we find him, a few days later, writing to Ingersoll for a perfect copy to read to a young girls’ club in Hartford.  Ingersoll sent the speech, also some of his books, and the next letter is Mark Twain’s acknowledgment.

To Col.  Robert G. Ingersoll: 

Hartford, Dec. 14.  My dear Ingersoll,—­Thank you most heartily for the books—­I am devouring them—­they have found a hungry place, and they content it and satisfy it to a miracle.  I wish I could hear you speak these splendid chapters before a great audience—­to read them by myself and hear the boom of the applause only in the ear of my imagination, leaves a something wanting —­and there is also a still greater lack, your manner, and voice, and presence.

The Chicago speech arrived an hour too late, but I was all right anyway,
for I found that my memory had been able to correct all the errors. 
I read it to the Saturday Club (of young girls) and told them to remember
that it was doubtful if its superior existed in our language. 
                              Truly Yours,
                                   S. L. Clemens.

The reader may remember Mark Twain’s Whittier dinner speech of 1877, and its disastrous effects.  Now, in 1879, there was to be another Atlantic gathering:  a breakfast to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to which Clemens was invited.  He was not eager to accept; it would naturally recall memories of two years before, but being urged by both Howells and Warner, he agreed to attend if they would permit him to speak.  Mark Twain never lacked courage and he wanted to redeem himself.  To Howells he wrote: 

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Nov. 28, 1879.  My dear Howells,—­If anybody talks, there, I shall claim the right to say a word myself, and be heard among the very earliest—­else it would be confoundedly awkward for me—­and for the rest, too.  But you may read what I say, beforehand, and strike out whatever you choose.