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[145] === From Arlin Turner, Mark Twain and George W. Cable: The Record of a Literary Friendship (1960) George Washington Cable At the memorial to Twain in New York on November 30, 1910, George Washington Cable reminisced about the “Twins of Genius” tour. He and Twain had performed in Paris, Kentucky, on 31 December 1884; in Cincinnati the evenings of 2 and 3 January 1885; in Toronto, Canada, on 14 February 1885; and in Rochester, New York, on 6 December 1884. it is because of that hold he has on all our hearts—and I speak for the whole American people—it was that spirit that caused an audience once in Paris, Kentucky, who had applauded him until their palms were sore and until their feet were tired, and who had laughed as he came forward for the fourth alternation of our reading together—the one side of him dragging, one foot limping after the other—the peculiar way known to us all—the house burst into such a storm of laughter, coming from so crowded a house, that Mark Twain himself, grim controller of his emotions at all times, burst into laughter and had to acknowledge to me, as he came off the platform: “Yes, yes”—still laughing with joy of it himself—“yes; they got me off my feet that time.” I remember the hold he had upon children’s hearts, another field of his human kindness to all humankind. It is illustrated in an experience he had in Cincinnati when certain children were brought by their aunt to hear Mark Twain read from his pages in that great city, brought down from the town of Hamilton, and who went back home in the late hours of the night, beside themselves with the delight of their clear understanding and full appreciation of his humor, saying to their kinswoman: “Oh, Auntie! Oh, Auntie! It was better than Buffalo Bill!” One point I should like to make to indicate the conscientiousness with which he held himself the custodian of the affections of the great mass of twain in his own time [146] the people who loved him in every quarter of the land. It was the rigor of his art, an art which was able to carry the added burden beyond the burden of all other men’s art, the burden of absolutely concealing itself and of making him appear, whenever he appeared, as slipshod in his mind as he was in his gait. We were at Toronto, Canada. The appointment was for us to read two nights in succession, and we had read one night. The vast hall was filled to overflowing. I heard from the retiring room the applause that followed every period of his utterance, heard it come rolling in and tumbling like the surf of the ocean. Well, at last, as we were driving home to our hotel, I found him in an absolutely wretched condition of mental depression , groaning and sighing, and all but weeping, and I asked him what in the world justified such a mood—a man who had just come from such a triumph. “Such a triumph?” he said. “A triumph of the moment; but those people are going home to their beds, glad to get there, and they will wake up in the morning ashamed of having laughed at my nonsense.” “Nonsense?” I said. “How is it nonsense?” “I have spent the evening, and their time, and taxed them to the best of their ability to show appreciation of my wit and humor, and I have spent that whole time simply spinning yarns.” I said: “Don’t mind; you are going to meet virtually the very same audience tomorrow, and tomorrow night you shall give them good literature, if any living writer in a living language has got that chance.” I don’t know if he slept that night, but I know he did what he did not often relish. He rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed, and the next night he gave them a program which he chose to begin, at my suggestion, with the Blue Jay’s Message.1 He left that house as happy as anyone ever saw Mark Twain, and that was with a feeling of acute joy because he had won friends he considered worthy, he had won every handclap and applause with a program worthy of honor. One more point: every one knows that one of his passions was for history , and I assume that that passion...

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