Produced by David Widger
By Albert Bigelow Paine
Clemens made a brief trip to Bermuda during the winter, taking Twichellalong; their first return to the island since the trip when they hadpromised to come back so soon-nearly thirty years before. They had beencomparatively young men then. They were old now, but they found thegreen island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not find theirold landlady; they could not even remember her name at first, and thenTwichell recalled that it was the same as an author of certainschoolbooks in his youth, and Clemens promptly said, "Kirkham's Grammar."Kirkham was truly the name, and they went to find her; but she was dead,and the daughter, who had been a young girl in that earlier time, reignedin her stead and entertained the successors of her mother's guests. Theywalked and drove about the island, and it was like taking up again along-discontinued book and reading another chapter of the same tale. Itgave Mark Twain a fresh interest in Bermuda, one which he did not allowto fade again.
Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having beenagreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacificcoast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidlypassing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibalschoolmates; also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of theearly pioneers—all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work asI had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted; but whateverreluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put asidein view of prospective benefits. Clemens, in fact, seemed to derive joyfrom the thought that he was commissioning a kind of personal emissary tohis old comrades, and provided me with a letter of credentials.
It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken nonetoo soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering thevalley of the shadow as he talked to me by his fire one memorableafternoon, and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and inthe cave and on Holliday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that hedied; and there were others of that scattering procession who did notreach the end of the year. Joe Goodman, still full of vigor (in 1912),journeyed with me to the green and dreamy solitudes of Jackass Hill tosee Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an unforgetable Sunday when SteveGillis, an invalid, but with the fire still in his eyes and speech, satup on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian stillness and toldold tales and adventures. When I left he said:
"Tell Sam I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him; that I'veloved him all my life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the lastword I'll ever send to him." Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was alreadylying at the point of death, and so for him the visit was too late,though he was able to receive a message from his ancient mining partner,and to send back a parting word.
I returned by way of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, for I wishedto follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its presidinggenius, Horace Bixby,—[He died August 2, 1912, at the age of 86]—stillalive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat, hisheadquarters at St. Louis.
Coming up the river on one of the old passenger steam boats that stillexist, I noticed in a paper which came aboard that Mark Twain was toreceive from Oxford Univers