CCXC. THE RETURN TO BERMUDA
I don't think he attempted any further writing for print. His mind was busy with ideas, but he was willing to talk, rather than to write, rather even than to play billiards, it seemed, although we had a few quiet games—the last we should ever play together. Evenings he asked for music, preferring the Scotch airs, such as “Bonnie Doon” and “The Campbells are Coming.” I remember that once, after playing the latter for him, he told, with great feeling, how the Highlanders, led by Gen. Colin Campbell, had charged at Lucknow, inspired by that stirring air. When he had retired I usually sat with him, and he drifted into literature, or theology, or science, or history—the story of the universe and man.
One evening he spoke of those who had written but one immortal thing and stopped there. He mentioned “Ben Bolt.”
“I met that man once,” he said. “In my childhood I sang 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,' and in my old age, fifteen years ago, I met the man who wrote it. His name was Brown.—[Thomas Dunn English. Mr. Clemens apparently remembered only the name satirically conferred upon him by Edgar Allan Poe, “Thomas Dunn Brown.”]—He was aged, forgotten, a mere memory. I remember how it thrilled me to realize that this was the very author of 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.' He was just an accident. He had a vision and echoed it. A good many persons do that—the thing they do is to put in compact form the thing which we have all vaguely felt. 'Twenty Years Ago' is just like it 'I have wandered through the village, Tom, and sat beneath the tree'—and Holmes's 'Last Leaf' is another: the memory of the hallowed past, and the gravestones of those we love. It is all so beautiful—the past is always beautiful.”
He quoted, with great feeling and effect:
The massy marbles rest
On the lips that we have pressed
In their bloom,
And the names we love to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
He continued in this strain for an hour or more. He spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes.
“Why,” he said, “humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”
“Your own case is an example,” I answered. “Without it, whatever your reputation as a philosopher, you could never have had the wide-spread affection that is shown by the writers of that great heap of letters.”
“Yes,” he said, gently, “they have liked to be amused.”