I am back again in this country house in the New Hampshire hills after an absence of four or five weeks—since about the 25th of June. The chapter which precedes the present one, and which is dated New York JulyⒶtextual note 17th, explains the cause of this absence. I dictated that chapter in New York, at the time, in order that I might get the details crystallized into language while they were fresh in my mind.

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The sudden spewing of that “Library of Humor” upon an unoffending public, under my name and ostensibly by my authority, was one of the most unexpected things that has ever happened to me. For cool impudence and cold rascality, I doubt if the match of it can be found anywhere in the history of book publishing. I went down to New York full of a warm desire to make trouble, but of course I consulted H. H. Rogers before committing any overt acts, for many years of edifying experience have taught me that whenever in a matter of business I proceed without first taking Mr. Rogers’s judgment upon the matter, I do the wrong thing. In the present case, he advised that I make no public trouble; no public exposure of Mr. Duneka. He said that an exposure of Duneka would be an exposure of the House of Harper and Brothers, whereas the House of Harper and Brothers was not present to defend itself, since ColonelⒶtextual note Harvey, the head of it, was in Europe. Edward Lauterbach, my legal counsel, being of the like opinion, no noise was made.

Mr. Lauterbach telephoned Duneka to come and talk about the matter. Duneka was deposited in one of Mr. Lauterbach’s offices, and Lauterbach wanted me to go in there and talk with him. I said he had already advised me not to make any trouble—still I was willing to take the new advice, but thought it would be best if I should first rehearse before Lauterbach and the Harper lawyer, LarkinⒺexplanatory note, who was present, the remarks I should make to Mr. Duneka. I rehearsed—and they both said “Try it in a church first”—and they agreed that I could do more good staying out of that conference than by trying to assist it.

I had several points to make, but was quite willing to confine myself to the principal one and leave the others alone until the head of the CorporationⒶtextual note should get back from England, which would be in the course of a week or two. That principal point was the instant suppression of that bastard book and the destruction of the plates and all copies of the book that were in the Harpers’ hands. That was all that I required of Mr. Duneka, and he was effusively glad to comply, and was full of apologies and regrets for what he had done.

While waiting for Harvey’s return from England, I lived on board Mr. Rogers’s yacht, nights, lying at anchor far down the Bay, where it was cool, returning to the city at breakfast-timeⒶtextual note, mornings, and living at home, at 21 Fifth Avenue, during the days, whence I transacted such other business as came my way, by telephone. Fridays, at 9Ⓐtextual note a.m., we sailed for Fairhaven, MassachusettsⒶtextual note, Mr. Rogers’s country home, a trip of about eight hours, by that smart boat. We spent the Saturday, and half of each Sunday, there, then sailed for New York again at lunch-timeⒶtextual note, Sundays. It was the pleasantest vacation I have ever had in my life, and I was not gratified when my business finally released me and permitted me to get back to the hills and go to work.

One day in Fairhaven, while playing billiards with a member of the family, a chance remark called to my mind an early sweetheart of mine, and I fell to talking about her. I hadn’t seen her for forty-eight years; but no matter, I found that I remembered her quite vividly, and that she possessed a lively interest for me notwithstanding that prodigious interval of time that had spread its vacancy between her and me. She wasn’t yet fifteen when I knew her. It was in the summertime, and she had gone down the Mississippi [begin page 150] from St. Louis to New Orleans as guest of a relative of hers who was a pilotⒺexplanatory note on the John J. Roe, a steamboat whose officers I knew very well, as I had served a term as steersman in that boat’s pilot-house. She was a freighter. She was not licensed to carry passengers, but she always had a dozen on board, and they were privileged to be there because they were not registered; they paid no fare; they were guests of the Captain, and nobody was responsible for them if anything of a fatal nature happened to them. It was a delightful old tug, and she had a very spacious boiler-deck—just the place for moonlight dancing and daylight frolics, and such things were always happening. She was a charmingly leisurely boat, and the slowest one on the planet. Up-stream she couldn’t even beat an island; down-stream she was never able to overtake the current. But she was a love of a steamboat. Mark Leavenworth, her captain, was a giant, and hospitable and good-natured, which is the way of giants. Zeb, his brother, was another giant possessed of the same qualities, and of a laugh which could be heard from Vicksburg to Nebraska. He was one of the pilots, and Beck Jolly was another. Jolly was very handsome, very graceful, very intelligent, companionable—a fine character—and he had the manners of a duke. If that is too strong I will say a viscount. Beck Jolly was a beautiful creature to look at. But it’s different now. I saw him four years agoⒺexplanatory note, and he had white hair, and not much of it; two sets of cheeks; a cataract of chins; and by and large he looked like a gasometer. The clerks, the mates, the chief steward, and all officials, big and little, of the John J. Roe, were simple-hearted folk and overflowing with good-fellowship and the milk of human kindness. They had all been reared on farms in the interior of Indiana, and they had brought the simple farm ways and farm spirit to that steamboat and had domesticated it there. When she was on a voyage there was nothing in her to suggest a steamboat. One didn’t seem to be on board a steamboat at all. He was floating around on a farm. Nothing in this world pleasanter than this can be imagined.

At the time I speak of I had fallen out of the heaven of the John J. Roe and was steering for Brown, on the swift passenger packet, the Pennsylvania, a boat which presently blew up and killed my brother HenryⒺexplanatory note. On a memorable trip, the Pennsylvania arrived at New Orleans, and when she was berthed I discovered that her stern lapped the fo’castle of the John J. Roe. I went aft, climbed over the rail of the ladies’Ⓐtextual note cabin, and from that point jumped aboard the Roe, landing on that spacious boiler-deck of hers. It was like arriving at home at the farm-house after a long absence. It was the same delight to me to meet and shake hands with the Leavenworths and the rest of that dear family of steamboating backwoodsmen and hay-seeds as if they had all been blood kin to me. As usual, there were a dozen passengers, male and female, young and old; and as usual they were of the hearty and likableⒶtextual note sort affected by the John J. Roe farmers. Now, out of their midst, floating upon my enchanted vision, came that slip of a girl of whom I have spoken—that instantly elected sweetheart out of the remotenesses of interior Missouri—a frank and simple and winsome child who had never been away from home in her life before, and had brought with her to these distant regions the freshness and the fragrance of her own prairies.

I can state the rest, I think, in a very few words. I was not four inches from that girl’s elbow during our waking hours for the next three days. Then there came a sudden interruption. [begin page 151] Zeb Leavenworth came flying aft shouting “The Pennsylvania is backing out.” I fled at my best speed, and as I broke out upon that great boiler-deck the Pennsylvania Ⓐtextual note was gliding sternward past it. I made a flying leap and just did manage to make the connection, and nothing to spare. My toes found room on the guard; my finger-ends hooked themselves upon the guard-rail, and a quartermaster made a snatch for me and hauled me aboard.

That comely child, that charming child, was Laura M. Wright, and I could see her with perfect distinctness in the unfaded bloom of her youth, with her plaitedⒶtextual note tails dangling from her young head and her white summer frock puffing about in the wind of that ancient Mississippi time—I could see all this with perfect distinctness when I was telling about it over the billiard tableⒶtextual note in Fairhaven last Saturday. And I finished with the remark “I never saw her afterward. It is now forty-eight years, one month and twenty-seven days, since that parting, and no word has ever passed between us since.”Ⓔexplanatory note

I reached home from Fairhaven last Wednesday and found a letter from Laura Wright. It shook me to the foundations. The plaitedⒶtextual note tails fell away; the peachy young face vanished; the fluffy short frock along with it; and in the place of that care-free little girl of forty-eight years ago, I imagined the world-worn and trouble-worn widow of sixty-two. Laura’s letter was an appeal to me for pecuniary help for herself and for her disabled son, who, as she incidentally mentioned, is thirty-seven years old. She is a school-teacherⒶtextual note. She is in need of a thousand dollars, and I sent itⒺexplanatory note.

It is an awful world—it is a fiendish world. When I knew that child her father was an honored Judge of a high court in the middle of MissouriⒺexplanatory note, and was a rich man, as riches were estimated in that day and region. What had that girl done, what crime had she committed, that she must be punished with poverty and drudgery in her old age? However, let me get right away from this subject before I get warmed up and say indiscreet things—BeJesus!