"Mark is a queer fellow.There is nothing he so delights in as a swift, strong stream.You can hardly get him to leave one when once he is within the influence of its fascinations."Twichell tells how at Kandersteg they were out together one evening where a brook comes plunging down from Gasternthal and how he pushed in a drift to see it go racing along the current."When I got back to the path Mark was running down stream after it as hard as he could go, throwing up his hands and shouting in the wildest ecstasy, and when a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam below he would jump up and down and yell.He said afterward that he had not been so excited in three months."In other places Twichell refers to his companion's consideration for the feeling of others, and for animals."When we are driving, his concern is all about the horse.He can't bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard."After the walk over Gemmi Pass he wrote: "Mark to-day was immensely absorbed in flowers.He scrambled around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest pleasure in them.He crowded a pocket of his note-book with his specimens, and wanted more room."Whereupon Twichell got out his needle and thread and some stiff paper he had and contrived the little paper bag to hang to the front of his vest.
The tramp really ended at Lausanne, where Clemens joined his party, but a short excursion to Chillon and Chamonix followed, the travelers finally separating at Geneva, Twichell to set out for home by way of England, Clemens to remain and try to write the story of their travels.He hurried a good-by letter after his comrade:
To Rev.J.H.Twichell:
(No date)
DEAR OLD JOE,--It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant tramping and talking at an end.Ah, my boy! it has been such a rich holiday to me, and I feel under such deep and honest obligations to you for coming.I am putting out of my mind all memory of the times when Imisbehaved toward you and hurt you: I am resolved to consider it forgiven, and to store up and remember only the charming hours of the journeys and the times when I was not unworthy to be with you and share a companionship which to me stands first after Livy's.It is justifiable to do this; for why should I let my small infirmities of disposition live and grovel among my mental pictures of the eternal sublimities of the Alps?
Livy can't accept or endure the fact that you are gone.But you are, and we cannot get around it.So take our love with you, and bear it also over the sea to Harmony, and God bless you both.
MARK.
From Switzerland the Clemens party worked down into Italy, sight-seeing, a diversion in which Mark Twain found little enough of interest.He had seen most of the sights ten years before, when his mind was fresh.He unburdened himself to Twichell and to Howells, after a period of suffering.
To J.H.Twichell, in Hartford:
ROME, Nov.3, '78.
DEAR JOE,--.....I have received your several letters, and we have prodigiously enjoyed them.How I do admire a man who can sit down and whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing--or something else as full of pleasure and as void of labor.I can't do it; else, in common decency, I would when I write to you.Joe, if I can make a book out of the matter gathered in your company over here, the book is safe;but I don't think I have gathered any matter before or since your visit worth writing up.I do wish you were in Rome to do my sightseeing for me.Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more.That is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in; but there are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living.
Livy and Clara Spaulding are having a royal time worshiping the old Masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.
A friend waits for me.A power of love to you all.
Amen.
MARK.
In his letter to Howells he said: "I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man can't write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters.In truth, I don't ever seem to be in a good-enough humor with anything to satirize it.No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp.I have got in two or three chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me!"From Italy the Clemens party went to Munich, where they had arranged in advance for winter quarters.Clemens claims, in his report of the matter to Howells, that he took the party through without the aid of a courier, though thirty years later, in some comment which he set down on being shown the letter, he wrote concerning this paragraph: "Probably a lie." He wrote, also, that they acquired a great affection for Fraulein Dahlweiner: "Acquired it at once and it outlasted the winter we spent in her house."To W.D.Howells, in Boston:
No 1a, Karlstrasse, 2e Stock.
Care Fraulein Dahlweiner.
MUNICH, Nov.17, 1878.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We arrived here night before last, pretty well fagged:
