Clemens was oftenest at my house in Cambridge, but he was also sometimes
at my house in Belmont; when, after a year in Europe, we went to live in
Boston, he was more rarely with us. We could never be long together
without something out of the common happening, and one day something far
out of the common happened, which fortunately refused the nature of
absolute tragedy, while remaining rather the saddest sort of comedy. We
were looking out of my library window on that view of the Charles which I
was so proud of sharing with my all-but-next-door neighbor, Doctor
Holmes, when another friend who was with us called out with curiously
impersonal interest, “Oh, see that woman getting into the water!” This
would have excited curiosity and alarmed anxiety far less lively than
ours, and Clemens and I rushed downstairs and out through my basement and
back gate. At the same time a coachman came out of a stable next door,
and grappled by the shoulders a woman who was somewhat deliberately
getting down the steps to the water over the face of the embankment.
Before we could reach them he had pulled her up to the driveway, and
stood holding her there while she crazily grieved at her rescue. As soon
as he saw us he went back into his stable, and left us with the poor wild
creature on our hands. She was not very young and not very pretty, and
we could not have flattered ourselves with the notion of anything
romantic in her suicidal mania, but we could take her on the broad human
level, and on this we proposed to escort her up Beacon Street till we
could give her into the keeping of one of those kindly policemen whom our
neighborhood knew. Naturally there was no policeman known to us or
unknown the whole way to the Public Garden. We had to circumvent our
charge in her present design of drowning herself, and walk her past the
streets crossing Beacon to the river. At these points it needed
considerable reasoning to overcome her wish and some active manoeuvring
in both of us to enforce our arguments. Nobody else appeared to be
interested, and though we did not court publicity in the performance of
the duty so strangely laid upon us, still it was rather disappointing to
be so entirely ignored.
There are some four or five crossings to the river between 302 Beacon
Street and the Public Garden, and the suggestions at our command were
pretty well exhausted by the time we reached it. Still the expected
policeman was nowhere in sight; but a brilliant thought occurred to
Clemens. He asked me where the nearest police station was, and when I
told him, he started off at his highest speed, leaving me in sole charge
of our hapless ward. All my powers of suasion were now taxed to the
utmost, and I began attracting attention as a short, stout gentleman in
early middle life endeavoring to distrain a respectable female of her
personal liberty, when his accomplice had abandoned him to his wicked
design. After a much longer time than I thought I should have taken to
get a policeman from the station, Clemens reappeared in easy conversation
with an officer who had probably realized that he was in the company of
Mark Twain, and was in no hurry to end the interview. He took possession
of our captive, and we saw her no more. I now wonder that with our joint
instinct for failure we ever got rid of her; but I am sure we did, and
few things in life have given me greater relief. When we got back to my
house we found the friend we had left there quite unruffled and not much
concerned to know the facts of our adventure. My impression is that he
had been taking a nap on my lounge; he appeared refreshed and even gay;
but if I am inexact in these details he is alive to refute me.