“‘Yes, and I have come to ask a favor. Don’t you think the public is as much to blame as I am? When I get tired I begin to get hasty, and I have never been called down before. If the public had done its duty in the beginning, I would not have gotten into trouble. I have a wife and four children to support and the president of the company will not take me back unless you write a letter and ask him.’ “Of course, I wrote the letter.” I often heard Mr. Clemens expatiate on his well-known subject—the Almighty Dollar. He had been out West where gold was struck in abundance, and he could not see any difference between the nationalities in the scramble to get there first. The English were always twitting us about our love of money, but, as he said: “I admit we are hunting for the almighty dollar, but the Englishman is hunting just as hard for the almighty penny.” As to fear, Roosevelt was talking in the club shortly after the Spanish War, saying that every man’s experience is the same, that he is always horribly afraid before his first battle, but that it wears off. Then he appealed to Clemens, asking him if it were not his feeling during the Civil War. “Yes,” Clemens answered, “I was scared to death at my first battle, but it seems to have been different with you. Yours wore off. My fear stuck to me during the whole war.” Whatever his physical fear, his mental bravery was phenomenal. It requires a particular kind of courage for a man to start all over again, as he did, in his later years. After losing all his money in the publishing business, he picked up the pieces and traveled about the world, lecturing, to get the money to pay back his indebtedness, sixty per cent of which was to his wife. This made no difference to a gentleman, and he treated her exactly as if she were a strange creditor. He used to come to The Players while he was going through his bankruptcy proceedings. It seemed to be a good place to get rid of his troubles. When he wasn’t being funny, he pretended to be cross; but when he was quiet, I noticed his face was very sad. He was an intensely American type in looks, and it was hard to get beyond the barrier he made for himself; but once he chose to let you in, his eyes said, “Down to you, sir,” and you saw the superman. It was more his manner of saying than what he said that made Mr. Clemens so amusing. I was told he sat at a dinner table and talked for twenty minutes upon the name Brander Matthews, with everyone exploding in laughter. He spoke through his nose slowly and with curious drawl, and repeated his thoughts many times, each variation being funnier than the preceding one, until he worked up to a screaming climax.