CLVIII
MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY
Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday was one of the pleasantly observed events of that year. There was no special celebration, but friends sent kindly messages, and The Critic, then conducted by Jeannette and Joseph Gilder, made a feature of it. Miss Gilder wrote to Oliver Wendell Holmes and invited some verses, which with his never-failing kindliness he sent, though in his accompanying note he said:
"I had twenty-three letters spread out on my table for answering, all marked immediate, when your note came."
Dr. Holmes's stanzas are full of his gentle spirit:
TO MARK TWAIN
(On his fiftieth birthday)
Ah, Clemens, when I saw thee last,
We both of us were younger;
How fondly mumbling o'er the past
Is Memory's toothless hunger!
So fifty years have fled, they say,
Since first you took to drinking;
I mean in Nature's milky way
Of course no ill I'm thinking.
But while on life's uneven road
Your track you've been pursuing,
What fountains from your wit have flowed
What drinks you have been brewing!