Mark Twain, A Biography 1907-1910 | Page 4

men then. They were old now, but they
found the green island as fresh and full of bloom as ever. They did not
find their old landlady; they could not even remember her name at first,
and then Twichell recalled that it was the same as an author of certain

schoolbooks 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, reigned in her stead and entertained the successors of her
mother's guests. They walked and drove about the island, and it was
like taking up again a long-discontinued book and reading another
chapter of the same tale. It gave Mark Twain a fresh interest in
Bermuda, one which he did not allow to fade again.
Later in the year (March, 1907) I also made a journey; it having been
agreed that I should take a trip to the Mississippi and to the Pacific
coast to see those old friends of Mark Twain's who were so rapidly
passing away. John Briggs was still alive, and other Hannibal
schoolmates; also Joe Goodman and Steve Gillis, and a few more of the
early pioneers--all eminently worth seeing in the matter of such work as
I had in hand. The billiard games would be interrupted; but whatever
reluctance to the plan there may have been on that account was put
aside in view of prospective benefits. Clemens, in fact, seemed to
derive joy from the thought that he was commissioning a kind of
personal emissary to his old comrades, and provided me with a letter of
credentials.
It was a long, successful trip that I made, and it was undertaken none
too soon. John Briggs, a gentle-hearted man, was already entering the
valley of the shadow as he talked to me by his fire one memorable
afternoon, and reviewed the pranks of those days along the river and in
the cave and on Holliday's Hill. I think it was six weeks later that he
died; and there were others of that scattering procession who did not
reach 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 to
see Steve and Jim Gillis, and that was an unforgetable Sunday when
Steve Gillis, an invalid, but with the fire still in his eyes and speech, sat
up on his couch in his little cabin in that Arcadian stillness and told old
tales and adventures. When I left he said:
"Tell Sam I'm going to die pretty soon, but that I love him; that I've
loved him all my life, and I'll love him till I die. This is the last word I'll
ever send to him." Jim Gillis, down in Sonora, was already lying 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
wished to follow that abandoned water highway, and to visit its
presiding genius, Horace Bixby,--[He died August 2, 1912, at the age
of 86]--still alive and in service as pilot of the government snagboat,
his headquarters at St. Louis.
Coming up the river on one of the old passenger steam boats that still
exist, I noticed in a paper which came aboard that Mark Twain was to
receive from Oxford University the literary doctor's degree. There had
been no hint of this when I came away, and it seemed rather too sudden
and too good to be true. That the little barefoot lad that had played
along the river-banks at Hannibal, and received such meager
advantages in the way of schooling--whose highest ambition had been
to pilot such a craft as this one--was about to be crowned by the world's
greatest institution of learning, to receive the highest recognition for
achievement in the world of letters, was a thing which would not be
likely to happen outside of a fairy tale.
Returning to New York, I ran out to Tuxedo, where he had taken a
home for the summer (for it was already May), and walking along the
shaded paths of that beautiful suburban park, he told me what he knew
of the Oxford matter.
Moberly Bell, of the London Times, had been over in April, and soon
after his return to England there had come word of the proposed honor.
Clemens privately and openly (to Bell) attributed it largely to his
influence. He wrote to him:
DEAR MR. BELL,--Your hand is in it & you have my best thanks.
Although I wouldn't