was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired
and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without
knowing it) had created in them. Perhaps it would be strictly truer
of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine
something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid
itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward
out of the forgotten walls and comers in their systems where it was
accustomed to hide."

It is Frank Millet, the artist, he is speaking of--a knightly soul
whom all the Clemens household loved, and who would one day meet his
knightly end with those other brave men that found death together
when the Titanic went down.

The Clemens family was still at Quarry Farm at the end of August,
and one afternoon there occurred a startling incident which Mark
Twain thought worth setting down in practically duplicate letters to
Howells and to Dr. John Brown. It may be of interest to the reader
to know that John T. Lewis, the colored man mentioned, lived to a
good old age--a pensioner of the Clemens family and, in the course
of time, of H. H. Rogers. Howells's letter follows. It is the
"very long letter" referred to in the foregoing.


To W. D. Howells and wife, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Aug. 25 '77.
MY DEAR HOWELLSES,--I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it for
further reference; the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it to
somebody; but that somebody would let it leak into print and that we wish