Colonel RoBards is still amiable. He took us to his office, showed us a scrap-book containing clippings in which he was mentioned in connection with Mark Twain, and told us of old days in the log schoolhouse.
Seeing that I was making notes, the Colonel called my attention politely to the spelling of his name, requesting that I get it right. Then he explained to me the reason for the capital B, beginning the second syllable.
"I may say, sir," he explained in his fine Southern manner, "that I inserted that capital B myself. At least I converted the small B into a capital. I am a Kentuckian, sir, and in Kentucky my family name stands for something. It is a name that I am proud to bear, and I do not like to be called out of it. But up here I was continually annoyed by the errors of careless persons. Frequently they would fail to give the accent on the final syllable, where it should be placed, sir—RoBards; that is the way it should be pronounced—but even worse, it happened now and then that some one called me by the plebeian appellation, Roberts. That was most distasteful to me, sir. Most distasteful. For that reason I use the capital B for emphasis."
I was glad to assure the Colonel that in these pages his name would be correctly spelled, and I call him to witness that I spoke the truth. I repeat, the name is RoBards. And it is borne by a most amiable gentleman.
Mr. F. W. Hixson of St. Louis has in his possession an autograph book which belonged to his mother when she was a young girl (Ann Virginia Ruffner), residing in Hannibal. In this book, Sam Clemens wrote a verse at the time when he was preparing to leave the town where he had spent his youth. I reproduce that boyish bit of doggerel here, solely for the value of one word which it contains:
Good-by, good-by,
I bid you now, my friend;
And though 'tis hard to say the word,
To destiny I bend.
Never, in his most perfect passages, did Samuel Clemens hit more certainly upon the one right word than when in this verse he wrote the second word in the last line.
And what a destiny it was!
