Livy darling, it was a great time.There were perhaps thirty people on the stage of the theatre, and I think I never sat elbow-to-elbow with so many historic names before.Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope, Logan, Augur, and so on.What an iron man Grant is! He sat facing the house, with his right leg crossed over his left and his right boot-sole tilted up at an angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of his chair--you note that position? Well, when glowing references were made to other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a trifle of nervous consciousness--and as these references came frequently, the nervous change of position and attitude were also frequent.But Grant!--he was under a tremendous and ceaseless bombardment of praise and gratulation, but as true as I'm sitting here he never moved a muscle of his body for a single instant, during 30 minutes! You could have played him on a stranger for an effigy.Perhaps he never would have moved, but at last a speaker made such a particularly ripping and blood-stirring remark about him that the audience rose and roared and yelled and stamped and clapped an entire minute--Grant sitting as serene as ever--when Gen.
Sherman stepped to him, laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder, bent respectfully down and whispered in his ear.Gen.Grant got up and bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane.He sat down, took about the same position and froze to it till by and by there was another of those deafening and protracted roars, when Sherman made him get up and bow again.He broke up his attitude once more--the extent of something more than a hair's breadth--to indicate me to Sherman when the house was keeping up a determined and persistent call for me, and poor bewildered Sherman, (who did not know me), was peering abroad over the packed audience for me, not knowing I was only three feet from him and most conspicuously located, (Gen.Sherman was Chairman.)One of the most illustrious individuals on that stage was "Ole Abe," the historic war eagle.He stood on his perch--the old savage-eyed rascal--three or four feet behind Gen.Sherman, and as he had been in nearly every battle that was mentioned by the orators his soul was probably stirred pretty often, though he was too proud to let on.
Read Logan's bosh, and try to imagine a burly and magnificent Indian, in General's uniform, striking a heroic attitude and getting that stuff off in the style of a declaiming school-boy.
Please put the enclosed scraps in the drawer and I will scrap-book them.
I only staid at the Owl Club till 3 this morning and drank little or nothing.Went to sleep without whisky.Ich liebe dish.
SAML.
But it is in the third letter that we get the climax.On the same day he wrote a letter to Howells, which, in part, is very similar in substance and need not be included here.
A paragraph, however, must not be omitted.
"Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-shredded old battle-flag reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-aged soldiers, most of whom hadn't seen it since they saw it advancing over victorious fields, when they were in their prime.And imagine what it was like when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view while they were still going mad over the flag, and then right in the midst of it all somebody struck up, 'When we were marching through Georgia.' Well, you should have heard the thousand voices lift that chorus and seen the tears stream down.If I live a hundred years Ishan't ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about them....
Grand times, my boy, grand times!"
At the great banquet Mark Twain's speech had been put last on the program, to hold the house.He had been invited to respond to the toast of "The Ladies," but had replied that he had already responded to that toast more than once.There was one class of the community, he said, commonly overlooked on these occasions--the babies--he would respond to that toast.In his letter to Howells he had not been willing to speak freely of his personal triumph, but to Mrs.
Clemens he must tell it all, and with that child-like ingenuousness which never failed him to his last day.
To Mrs.Clemens, in Hartford:
CHICAGO, Nov.14 '79.
A little after 5 in the morning.
I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life.By George, I never was so stirred since I was born.
I heard four speeches which I can never forget.One by Emory Storrs, one by Gen.Vilas (O, wasn't it wonderful!) one by Gen.Logan (mighty stirring), one by somebody whose name escapes me, and one by that splendid old soul, Col.Bob Ingersoll, --oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began.My soul, how handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! Lord, what an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! All these speeches may look dull in print, but how the lightning glared around them when they were uttered, and how the crowd roared in response! It was a great night, a memorable night.I am so richly repaid for my journey--and how I did wish with all my whole heart that you were there to be lifted into the very seventh heaven of enthusiasm, as I was.The army songs, the military music, the crashing applause--Lord bless me, it was unspeakable.
Out of compliment they placed me last in the list--No.15--I was to "hold the crowd"--and bless my life I was in awful terror when No.14.rose, at a o'clock this morning and killed all the enthusiasm by delivering the flattest, insipidest, silliest of all responses to "Woman" that ever a weary multitude listened to.Then Gen.Sherman (Chairman) announced my toast, and the crowd gave me a good round of applause as I mounted on top of the dinner table, but it was only on account of my name, nothing more --they were all tired and wretched.They let my first sentence go in.