in charm altogether worthy of their Cousin Sam Clemens--was to be married,
and Sellers wrote me a stately summons, all-embracing, though stiff and
formal, such as a baron of the Middle Ages might have indited to his noble
relative, the field marshal, bidding him bring his good lady and his
retinue and abide within the castle until the festivities were ended,
though in this instance the castle was a suburban cottage scarcely big
enough to accommodate the bridal couple. I showed the bombastic but
hospitable and genuine invitation to the actor Raymond, who chanced to be
playing in Louisville when it reached me. He read it through with care and
reread it.

"Do you know," said he, "it makes me want to cry. That is not the man I am
trying to impersonate at all."

Be sure it was not; for there was nothing funny about the spiritual being
of Mark Twain's Colonel Mulberry Sellers; he was as brave as a lion and as
upright as Sam Clemens himself.

When a very young man, living in a woodland cabin down in the Pennyrile
region of Kentucky, with a wife he adored and two or three small children,
he was so carried away by an unexpected windfall that he lingered overlong
in the nearby village, dispensing a royal hospitality; in point of fact, he
"got on a spree." Two or three days passed before he regained possession of
himself. When at last he reached home, he found his wife ill in bed and the
children nearly starved for lack of food. He said never a word, but walked
out of the cabin, tied himself to a tree, and was wildly horsewhipping
himself when the cries of the frightened family summoned the neighbors
and he was brought to reason. He never touched an intoxicating drop from
that day to his death.