It was not likely that I should laugh. I had a sinking feeling in the
cardiac region which does not go with mirth. It did not for the moment
occur to me that the stage would be filled with eminent citizens and
vice-presidents, and I had a vision of myself sitting there alone in
the chair in that wide emptiness, with the chief performer directing
attention to me every other moment or so, for perhaps an hour. Let
me hurry on to say that it did not happen. I dare say he realized
my unfitness for the work, and the far greater appropriateness of
conferring the honor on General Grant, for in the end he gave him the
assignment, to my immeasurable relief.
It was a magnificent occasion. That spacious hall was hung with bunting,
the stage was banked and festooned with decoration of every sort.
General Grant, surrounded by his splendidly uniformed staff, sat in the
foreground, and behind was ranged a levee of foremost citizens of the
republic. The band played “America” as Mark Twain entered, and the great
audience rose and roared out its welcome. Some of those who knew him
best had hoped that on this occasion of his last lecture he would tell
of that first appearance in San Francisco, forty years before, when his
fortunes had hung in the balance. Perhaps he did not think of it, and no
one had had the courage to suggest it. At all events, he did a different
thing. He began by making a strong plea for the smitten city where the
flames were still raging, urging prompt help for those who had lost not
only their homes, but the last shred of their belongings and their
means of livelihood. Then followed his farcical history of Fulton, with
General Grant to make the responses, and presently he drifted into
the kind of lecture he had given so often in his long trip around the
world-retelling the tales which had won him fortune and friends in many
lands.
I do not know whether the entertainment was long or short. I think
few took account of time. To a letter of inquiry as to how long the
entertainment would last, he had replied:
I cannot say for sure. It is my custom to keep on talking till I
get the audience cowed. Sometimes it takes an hour and fifteen
minutes, sometimes I can do it in an hour.
There was no indication at any time that the audience was cowed. The
house was packed, and the applause was so recurrent and continuous that
often his voice was lost to those in its remoter corners. It did not
matter. The tales were familiar to his hearers; merely to see Mark
Twain, in his old age and in that splendid setting, relating them was
enough. The audience realized that it was witnessing the close of a
heroic chapter in a unique career.