“My friends; we are here with reverence and respect to commemorate and enshrine in memory the house where was born a man who, by his life, made bright the lives of all who knew him, and by his literary efforts cheered the thoughts of thousands who never knew him. I take pleasure in unveiling the tablet of Eugene Field.”
The flag fell and the bronze inscription was revealed. By this time the crowd, generally, had recognized who it was that was speaking. A working-man proposed three cheers for Mark Twain, and they were heartily given. Then the little party drove away, while the neighborhood collected to regard the old house with a new interest.
It was reported to Clemens later that there was some dispute as to the identity of the Field birthplace. He said:
“Never mind. It is of no real consequence whether it is his birthplace or not. A rose in any other garden will bloom as sweet.”
CCXXIII. AT YORK HARBOR
They decided to spend the summer at York Harbor, Maine. They engaged a cottage, there, and about the end of June Mr. Rogers brought his yacht Kanawha to their water-front at Riverdale, and in perfect weather took them to Maine by sea. They landed at York Harbor and took possession of their cottage, The Pines, one of their many attractive summer lodges. Howells, at Kittery Point, was not far away, and everything promised a happy summer.
Mrs. Clemens wrote to Mrs. Crane:
We are in the midst of pines. They come up right about us, and the
house is so high and the roots of the trees are so far below the
veranda that we are right in the branches. We drove over to call on
Mr. and Mrs. Howells. The drive was most beautiful, and never in my
life have I seen such a variety of wild flowers in so short a space.
Howells tells us of the wide, low cottage in a pine grove overlooking York River, and how he used to sit with Clemens that summer at a corner of the veranda farthest away from Mrs. Clemens's window, where they could read their manuscripts to each other, and tell their stories and laugh their hearts out without disturbing her.