corner-stone of his literary edifice. As such it is immortal.

In the letter already quoted, Clemens speaks of both Bret Harte and himself having quit the Californian, and mentions that in future they expected to write for Eastern papers. He adds:

Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in this part of the country, the place properly belongs to Bret Harte, I think, though he denies it, along with the rest. He wants me to club a lot of old sketches together with a lot of his and publish a book. I wouldn't do it, only he agrees to take all the trouble. But I want to know whether we are going to make anything out of it, first. However, he has written to a New York publisher, and if we are offered a bargain that will pay for a month's labor, we will go to work and prepare the volume

for the press.

Nothing came of the proposed volume or of other joint literary schemes these two had in mind. Neither of them would seem to have been optimistic as to their future place in American literature; certainly in their most exalted moments they could hardly have dreamed that within half a dozen years they would be the head and front of a new school of letters-the two most-talked-of men in America.

Whatever Mark Twain's first emotions concerning the success of "Jim Smiley's Frog" may have been, the sudden astonishing leap of that batrachian into American literature gave the author an added prestige at home as well as in distant parts. Those about him were inclined to regard him, in some degree at least, as a national literary figure and to pay tribute accordingly. Special honors began to be shown to him. A fine new steamer, the Ajax, built for the Sandwich Island trade, carried on its initial trip a select party of guests, of which he was invited to make one. He did not go, and reproached himself sorrowfully afterward.

If the Ajax were back I would go quick, and throw up my correspondence. She had fifty-two invited guests aboard-the cream of the town-gentlemen and ladies, and a splendid brass-band. I could not accept because there would be no one to write my correspondence while I was gone.

In fact, the daily letter had grown monotonous. He was restless, and the Ajax excursion which he had been obliged to forego made him still more dissatisfied. An idea occurred to him: the sugar industry of the

islands was a matter of great commercial interest to California, while the life and scenery there, picturesquely treated, would appeal to the general reader. He was on excellent terms with James Anthony and Paul Morrill, of the Sacramento Union; he proposed to them that they send him as their special correspondent to report to their readers, in a series of letters, the life, trade, agriculture, and general aspect of the islands. To his vast delight, they gave him the commission, and he sailed by the Ajar on her next trip.

It was the 18th of March, 1866, when he arrived at Honolulu, and his first impression of that peaceful harbor remained with him always. In fact, his whole visit there became one of those memory-pictures, full of golden sunlight and peace, to be found somewhere in every human past.

The letters of introduction he had brought and the reputation which had preceded him guaranteed him welcome and hospitality. Officials and private citizens were alike ready to show him their pleasant land, and he fairly reveled in its delicious air, its summer warmth, its quiet repose.

It was near the end of June when he returned to Honolulu after a tour of the islands, fairly worn out and prostrated. He expected only to rest and be quiet for a season, but, all unknown to him, startling and historic things were taking place in which he was to have a part-events that would mark another forward stride in his

career.

The Ajax had just come in, bringing his Excellency Anson Burlingame, then en route for his post as Minister to China; also General Van Valkenburg, Minister to Japan, Colonel Rumsey, and Minister Burlingame's son Edward, then a lively boy of eighteen. Young Burlingame had read the "Jumping Frog" and was enthusiastic about Mark Twain and his work. Learn ing that he was in Honolulu, laid up at his hotel, the party sent word that they would call on him next morning.

Clemens felt that he could not accept this honor, sick or well. He crawled out of bed, dressed and shaved himself as quickly as and drove to possible, the American Minister's, where the party was staying. They had a gloriously good time. When he returned to his hotel he sent them, by request, whatever he had on hand of his work.

A still greater event was imminent. On

that very day, June 21 (1866), there came word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of Hawaii, of an open boat containing fifteen starving wretches who on a short ten-day ration had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days. A vessel, the Hornet, from New York, had taken fire and burned on the line, and since early in May on that meager sustenance the sufferers had been battling with hundreds of leagues of adverse billows, seeking for land.

A few days following the first report, eleven of the rescued men were brought to Honolulu and placed in the hospital. Mark Twain, of course, recognized the great news importance of the event. It would be a splendid beat if he could interview the castaways and be the first to get the story of it to his paper. There was no cable in those days; a vessel for San Francisco would sail next morning. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he must not miss it. Bedridden as he was, the undertaking seemed beyond his strength.

But just at this time the Burlingame party descended on him, and almost before he knew it he was on the way to the hospital, on a cot, escorted by the heads of the joint legations of China and Japan. Once there, Anson Burlingame, with his splendid human sympathy and handsome, courtly presence, drew from those enfeebled wanderers all the story of their long privation and struggle that had stretched across forty-three distempered days and four thousand miles of sea. All that Mark Twain had to do was to listen and make the notes.

He put in the night, writing against time. Next morning, just as the vessel for the States was drifting away from her dock, a strong hand flung his bulky envelope of manuscript aboard, and if the vessel arrived, his great beat was sure. It did arrive, and the three-column story on the front page of the Sacramento Union, in its issue of July 19, gave the public the first detailed history of the terrible Hornet disaster and the rescue of those starving men. The telegraph carried it everywhere and it

was featured as a sensation.

Mark Twain always adored the name and memory of Anson Burlingame. In his

letter home, he tells of Burlingame's magnanimity in "throwing away an invitation to dinner with princes and foreign dignitaries" to help him. "You know I appreciate that kind of thing," he says. Once Burlingame said to him:

"You have great ability. I believe you have genius. What you need now is the refinement of association. Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. Refine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferiors- always climb."

Clemens never forgot that advice. He did not always observe it, but he rarely failed to realize its gospel.

me.

Burlingame urged him to travel. "Come to Pekin next winter," he said, "and visit Make my house your home. I will give you letters and introduce you. You will have facilities for acquiring information about China."

It is not surprising, then, that Mark Twain never felt his debt to Anson Burlingame entirely paid. Burlingame came more than once to the hotel, for Clemens was really ill now, and they discussed plans for his future betterment. He promised, of course, to visit China, and when he was alone put in a good deal of time planning a trip around the world which would include the great capitals.

Under date of July 4, 1866, the Sandwich Island note-book says:

Went to a ball 8.30 P.M.-danced till 12.30; stopped at General Van Valkenburg's room and talked with him and Mr. Burlingame and Ed Burlingame until 3.00 a.m.

From which we may conclude that he had altogether recovered. A few days later the legation party had sailed for China and Japan, and on the 19th Clemens himself set out by a slow sailing vessel to San Francisco. They were becalmed and were twenty-five days making the voyage.

It was August 13 when he reached San Francisco, and the note-book entry of that day says:

Home again. No-not home again-in prison again, and all the wild sense of freedom gone. The city seems so cramped and so dreary with toil and care and business anxiety. God help me, I wish I were at sea again!

wheezes and his happy laughter. He sat down, puffing and blowing, on the dry, short grass, the young man submitting to his example. The two women disposed themselves on the stile's lower step, the bundles of their shopping stowed on their knees.

"My, my!" exclaimed the old gentleman, mopping a scarlet, grizzled, and perspiring countenance vigorously with a blue cotton handkerchief, drawn from a pocket in his coat-tails, "how refreshin' and revivin' it is for a city man to get out in the country!" No sooner had he polished off his countenance to his satisfaction than he drew from a pocket in his ample breeches an orange, which he fell immediately to devouring.

"You ought to come out oftener to stay to supper, Uncle Catwood," one of the ladies declared; "you ought to take a vacation every now 'n' then more'n you do from your store and your seeds and your rabbits in the window!" She was the one thought by a candid connubial judgment to look such a fright in yellow. She did not look very well, either, in the dark print dress in which she was at present attired, owning remarkably knobby proportions and an exceedingly weather-beaten complexion, but she was redeemed for any shade by a pair of twinkling eyes.

"You ought, indeed, Uncle Catwood. Ain't we the equal of rabbits?" said the other, with the identical friendliness and hospitality of what could only have been her sister from the strong resemblance between them, varied by a few natural differences. If the millionaire of whom she had spoken had been able, getting down on his knees, to induce her to accept his ardent advances, he would have been rewarded by the gift of a tiny, sharp-edged personage of probably fifty, with a wrinkled, sickly, witty face-a personage who was perpetually putting an unbecoming bonnet on straight above her front of hair, because the front, being manifestly false, was also slippery.

"Can't git away very often from business," said the old gentleman, "and them two rabbits in my store winder air harder to leave 'n twins. I don't know 'bout anything or anybody a-bein' the equal of them!" He bore unmistakable evidence of keeping a seed-store in town,

such a quantity of little round seeds lay in the folds of his waistcoat and flew out of his pockets as he dived into them. That there were pet rabbits in his window to attract the notice of passers-by on the street to his wares might very nearly be inferred, too, from the hearty, selfish fashion in which he ate his lunch, a fashion that could easily have been caught by a simple old storekeeper addicted to the habit of watching affectionately the hungry citizens of his hutch.

"I had to come this time," he continued, with a wheeze of laughter and a meaning glance toward the young man, "to fetch him out and cheer him up."

It could be gathered from the chaffing and bantering which ensued upon this remark, as well as the serious questions and suggestions, what was the reason that the silent young man needed cheering. He was, it was brought out casually, Mr. Catwood's grandson Noah—as the two ladies appeared to be his nieces Harriet and Susan-and though nothing could have been conceived of as much more cadaverous and unhealthy-colored, much more bony and dim and homely than he, his sad abstraction arose nevertheless from the fact that he had one too many feminine admirers.

Things had gone well enough with him and he had been cheerful enough as long as he possessed only one admirer, as good as she was beautiful, who worked beside him daily in the tailor shop that hired him also, and to whom he had seriously thought of engaging himself. But lately there had come into his life another, quite as beautiful, if less good, who was employed in a laundry, and whose fond advent made him waver. He was unable to choose between them, and he was dejectedly afraid of ruining his happiness to come by a mistake in preference.

"There's somebody else waitin' for you somewhere, Noah," his married aunt warned, after an expressed leaning toward the first young lady, "if you can't make up your mind quicker 'n this."

"Don't let neither of 'em hurry you," the sharp little spinster advised, sagely.

"I tell him," old Mr. Catwood cried out, in a burst of triumphant logic, "that there ain't no use in his wearin' himself to a shadder, and everybody 'round besides, a-worryin' 'bout which