The hero's face assumed a sweetly genial expression, and he said, "Well now, it wasn't Providence this time. I was running the arrangements myself." "How do you mean?" "Oh, I hadn't ever seen the gentleman before. I was at the next table, with my back to you the whole time he was telling about it. I saw my chance, and slipped out and fetched the two waiters with me and offered to give them a commission out of what I could get out of the Captain if they would do a quarrel act with me and give me an opening. So, then, after a minute or two I straggled back, and you know the rest of it as well as I do." MARK TWAIN. (_To be Continued._) FOOTNOTES: [18] This was tried. I well remember it.--M. T., _October, '06_. [19] Can this be correct? I think there must be some mistake.--M. T. NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW No. DCXXIII. OCTOBER, 1907. CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XXIII. BY MARK TWAIN. [Sidenote: (1845.)] [_Dictated March 9, 1906._] ... I am talking of a time sixty years ago, and upwards. I remember the names of some of those schoolmates, and, by fitful glimpses, even their faces rise dimly before me for a moment--only just long enough to be recognized; then they vanish. I catch glimpses of George Robards, the Latin pupil--slender, pale, studious, bending over his book and absorbed in it, his long straight black hair hanging down below his jaws like a pair of curtains on the sides of his face. I can see him give his head a toss and flirt one of the curtains back around his head--to get it out of his way, apparently; really to show off. In that day it was a great thing among the boys to have hair of so flexible a sort that it could be flung back in that way, with a flirt of the head. George Robards was the envy of us all. For there was no hair among us that was so competent for this exhibition as his--except, perhaps, the yellow locks of Will Bowen and John Robards. My hair was a dense ruck of short curls, and so was my brother Henry's. We tried all kinds of devices to get these crooks straightened out so that they would flirt, but we never succeeded. Sometimes, by soaking our heads and then combing and brushing our hair down tight and flat to our skulls, we could get it straight, temporarily, and this gave us a comforting moment of joy; but the first time we gave it a flirt it all shrivelled into curls again and our happiness was gone.