He was the most caressing of men in his pity, but he had the fine
instinct, which would have pleased Lowell, of never putting his hands on
you--fine, delicate hands, with taper fingers, and pink nails, like a
girl's, and sensitively quivering in moments of emotion; he did not paw
you with them to show his affection, as so many of us Americans are apt
to do. Among the half-dozen, or half-hundred, personalities that each of
us becomes, I should say that Clemens's central and final personality was
something exquisite. His casual acquaintance might know him, perhaps,
from his fierce intensity, his wild pleasure in shocking people with his
ribaldries and profanities, or from the mere need of loosing his
rebellious spirit in that way, as anything but exquisite, and yet that
was what in the last analysis he was. They might come away loathing or
hating him, but one could not know him well without realizing him the
most serious, the most humane, the most conscientious of men. He was
Southwestern, and born amid the oppression of a race that had no rights
as against ours, but I never saw a man more regardful of negroes. He had
a yellow butler when I first began to know him, because he said he could
not bear to order a white man about, but the terms of his ordering George
were those of the softest entreaty which command ever wore. He loved to
rely upon George, who was such a broken reed in some things, though so
stanch in others, and the fervent Republican in politics that Clemens
then liked him to be. He could interpret Clemens's meaning to the public
without conveying his mood, and could render his roughest answer smooth
to the person denied his presence. His general instructions were that
this presence was to be denied all but personal friends, but the soft
heart of George was sometimes touched by importunity, and once he came up
into the billiard-room saying that Mr. Smith wished to see Clemens. Upon
inquiry, Mr. Smith developed no ties of friendship, and Clemens said,
"You go and tell Mr. Smith that I wouldn't come down to see the Twelve