LXX
the close of a great life
MARK TWAIN lived just a week from that day and hour. For a time he seemed full of life, talking freely, and suffering little. Clara and Ossip Gabrilowitsch arrived on Saturday and found him cheerful, quite like himself. At intervals he read. Suetonius and Carlyle lay on the bed beside him, and he would pick them up and read a page or a paragraph. Sometimes when I saw him thus—-the high color still in his face, the clear light in his eyes'—I said: "It is not reality. He is not going to die.'
But by Wednesday of the following week it was evident that the end was near. We did not know it then, but the mysterious messenger of his birth year, Halley's comet, became visible that night in the sky.[1]
On Thursday morning, the 21st, his mind was still fairly clear, and he read a little from one of the volumes on his bed. By Clara he sent word that he wished to see me, and when I came in he spoke of two unfinished manuscripts which he wished me to "throw away," as he briefly expressed it, for his words were few, now, and uncertain. I assured him
- ↑ See reference in Chapter Ixvi.
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