Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
"Mark, to-day, was immensely absorbed in flowers. He scrambled
around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest
pleasure in them . . . . Mark is splendid to walk with amid such
grand scenery, for he talks so well about it, has such a power of
strong, picturesque expression. I wish you might have heard him
today. His vigorous speech nearly did justice to the things we saw."
And in another place:
"He can't bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard.
To-day when the driver clucked up his horse and quickened his pace a
little, Mark said, 'The fellow's got the notion that we were in a
hurry.'"
Another extract refers to an incident which Mark Twain also mentions in
"A Tramp Abroad:" [8]
"Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing so delights him as a
swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once
he is in the influence of its fascinations. To throw in stones and
sticks seems to afford him rapture."
Twichell goes on to tell how he threw some driftwood into a racing
torrent and how Mark went running down-stream after it, waving and
shouting in a sort of mad ecstasy.
When a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam below, he
would jump up and down and yell. He acted just like a boy.
Boy he was, then and always. Like Peter Pan, he never really grew up
--that is, if growing up means to grow solemn and uninterested in play.
Climbing the Gorner Grat with Twichell, they sat down to rest, and a lamb
from a near-by flock ventured toward them. Clemens held out his hand and
called softly. The lamb ventured nearer, curious but timid.
It was a scene for a painter: the great American humorist on one side of
the game, and the silly little creature on the other, with the Matterhorn
for a background. Mark was reminded that the time he was consuming was
valuable, but to no purpose. The Gorner Grat could wait. He held on
with undiscouraged perseverance till he carried his point; the lamb
finally put its nose in Mark's hand, and he was happy all the rest of the
day.
"In A Tramp Abroad" Mark Twain burlesques most of the walking-tour with
Harris (Twichell), feeling, perhaps, that he must make humor at whatever
cost. But to-day the other side of the picture seems more worth while.
That it seemed so to him, also, even at the time, we may gather from a
letter he sent after Twichell when it was all over and Twichell was on
his way home:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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