It was a bleak, dull December day, and as we walked down through the avenues of the dead there was a presence of realized sorrow that seemed exactly suited to such a visit. We entered the little inclosure of cedars where sits the dark figure which is art's supreme expression of the great human mystery of life and death. Instinctively we removed our hats, and neither spoke until after we had come away. Then:
"What does he call it?" he asked.
I did not know, though I had heard applied to it that great line of
Shakespeare's—"the rest is silence."
"But that figure is not silent," he said.
And later, as we were driving home:
"It is in deep meditation on sorrowful things."
When we returned to New York he had the little print framed, and kept it always on his mantelpiece.
CCLII
THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
From the Washington trip dates a period of still closer association with Mark Twain. On the way to New York he suggested that I take up residence in his house—a privilege which I had no wish to refuse. There was room going to waste, he said, and it would be handier for the early and late billiard sessions. So, after that, most of the days and nights I was there.