to the pretext of that supper at which Clemens made his awful speech, and
came so near being the death of us all. At the breakfasts and luncheons
we had the pleasure of our lady contributors' company, but that night
there were only men, and because of our great strength we survived.

I suppose the year was about 1879, but here the almanac is unimportant,
and I can only say that it was after Clemens had become a very valued
contributor of the magazine, where he found himself to his own great
explicit satisfaction. He had jubilantly accepted our invitation, and
had promised a speech, which it appeared afterward he had prepared with
unusual care and confidence. It was his custom always to think out his
speeches, mentally wording them, and then memorizing them by a peculiar
system of mnemonics which he had invented. On the dinner-table a certain
succession of knife, spoon, salt-cellar, and butter-plate symbolized a
train of ideas, and on the billiard-table a ball, a cue, and a piece of
chalk served the same purpose. With a diagram of these printed on the
brain he had full command of the phrases which his excogitation had
attached to them, and which embodied the ideas in perfect form. He
believed he had been particularly fortunate in his notion for the speech
of that evening, and he had worked it out in joyous self-reliance. It was
the notion of three tramps, three deadbeats, visiting a California
mining-camp, and imposing themselves upon the innocent miners as
respectively Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver
Wendell, Holmes. The humor of the conception must prosper or must fail
according to the mood of the hearer, but Clemens felt sure of compelling
this to sympathy, and he looked forward to an unparalleled triumph.

But there were two things that he had not taken into account. One was
the species of religious veneration in which these men were held by those
nearest them, a thing that I should not be able to realize to people