“Look,” he said. “Do you see it?”
Clemens looked carefully now and identified one of the books as a still-born novel which Keeler had published.
“This is a library,” said Keeler, eagerly, “and they've got it!”
His whole being was aglow with the wonder of it. He had been investigating; the library records showed that in the two years the book had been there it had been taken out and read three times! It never occurred to Clemens even to smile. Knowing Mark Twain, one would guess that his eyes were likely to be filled with tears.
In his book about Mark Twain, Howells tells of a luncheon which Keeler gave to his more famous associates—Aldrich, Fields, Harte, Clemens, and Howells himself—a merry informal occasion. Says Howells:
Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and
aimless and joyful talk—play, beginning and ending nowhere, of
eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-
lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional
concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it
gladly; and amid the discourse, so little improving, but so full of
good-fellowship, Bret Harte's leering dramatization of Clemens's
mental attitude toward a symposium of Boston illuminates. “Why,
fellows,” he spluttered, “this is the dream of Mark's life,” and I
remember the glance from under Clemens's feathery eyebrows which
betrayed his enjoyment of the fun.
Very likely Keeler gave that luncheon in celebration of his book's triumph; it would be like him.
Keeler's end was a mystery. The New York Tribune commissioned him to go to Cuba to report the facts of some Spanish outrages. He sailed from New York in the steamer, and was last seen alive the night before the vessel reached Havana. He had made no secret of his mission, but had discussed it in his frank, innocent way. There were some Spanish military men on the ship.
Clemens, commenting on the matter, once said:
“It may be that he was not flung into the sea, still the belief was general that that was what had happened.”