"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names in as good order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and draw them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had marked a gold cross where he supposed his brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas. Then he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon,— that he said, he had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on that shore, though the ships were there so much. And the men,' said he, laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went back-heavens, how far!-to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done to Barron for surrendering her to the 'Leopard,' and whether Burr was tried again, and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed. But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,-told me the true story of his serving the gun the day we took the 'Java,'-asked about dear old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.

"How I wish it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; I told him all I could think of about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas, and his own old Kentucky.

"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I told him,-of emigration, and the means of it, of steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs,— of inventions, and books, and literature,―of the colleges, and West Point, and the Naval School,-but with the queerest interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated questions of fifty-six years!

"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like himself, but I

could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman, Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian, and the Exploring Expedition; I told him about the Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, and Crawford's Liberty, and Greenough's Washington; Ingham, I told him everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word about this infernal Rebellion.

"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away. Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,' which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the right place, and so it did. There was his double red mark down the page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me, 'For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'—and so to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the words more familiar to me: 'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United States, and all others in authority,'—and the rest of the Episcopal collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five years.' And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over him, and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I am gone.' And I went away.

"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would sleep. I knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be alone.

"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to his lips. It was his Father's badge of the Order of the Cincinnati."

"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper at the place where he had marked the text:

""They desire a country, even a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city.' On this slip of paper he had written:

"Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:

""Lieutenant in the Army of the United States.

"He loved his country as no other man has loved her;
but no man deserved less at her hands.'"

"MARK TWAIN" is still the popular designation of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, accepted throughout the world as a typical American humorist. He was born at Florida, Missouri, in 1835 and from a village school passed to a village printing-office, and thence to a Mississippi steamboat, to become a river pilot. This occupation afterwards supplied the pseudonym "Mark Twain," that being a frequent cry in sounding to signify that the water is two fathoms deep. But the civil war broke the business up, and in 1862 Clemens went to Nevada to assist his brother, then secretary of the Territory. After some mining in a desultory way, Clemens wrote sketches for the newspapers, and was soon regularly employed on the San Francisco press. His visit to Hawaii in 1866 was the subject of later lectures. A collection of his sketches, under the title "The Jumping Frog" was published in New York in 1867 and gained for him recognition as a humorist of a new style. Greater success came from his taking part in a tourists' excursion to Europe and the Holy Land. In "The Innocents Abroad" he chronicled the adventures of those pilgrims in such a mirth-provoking way as to put an end to the solemn stereotyped reports which American travelers had previously imposed on their friends who had not been abroad.

Mark Twain's popularity was now established, and he was called to rehearse his experience on the Pacific Coast. This was done in "Roughing It," and in "The Gilded Age," he joined with C. D. Warner in satirizing the Yankee race for riches. He had now settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he enjoyed highly intellectual society. He continued his droll sketches of Western life, and occasionally put forth moral and social essays

replete with common sense, expressed in an uncommon way. In some books, as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn," he assumed the character of a growing Western boy and presented vivid pictures of life on and near the Mississippi river in the days of slavery. These books brought ample pecuniary returns, and Clemens ventured into book-publishing. For a while his firm was highly successful, but eventually it became bankrupt. With indomitable energy Clemens undertook to restore his fortunes by writing and lecturing, and with this object made a tour to Australia and India.

Besides the sketches of life on the Pacific Coast and in the Mississippi Valley, by which Mark Twain is universally recognized, he has attempted some peculiar historical romances. In "The Prince and the Pauper," which deals with the time of Edward VI. he went counter to the verdict of the historians. Still more boldly in "A Yankee at King Arthur's Court" he jumbled the present with the past in humorous incongruity. Perhaps to make amends for this escapade he next published anonymously what professed to be an account of Joan of Arc by a faithful attendant. The story of the Maid of Orleans has never been more ingeniously and sympathetically related. In these and other writings Clemens has revealed a serious, inquiring, contemplative spirit, but the public whom he has entertained for many years insist on his retaining and exhibiting his earlier characteristics as a droll humorist of national and local peculiarities.

SCOTTY'S INTERVIEW WITH THE MINISTER.

(From "Roughing It." Copyright. 1872, by the American Publishing Company. Used here by permission of the publishers.)

SCOTTY was on a sorrowful mission, now, and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence he sat down before the clergyman, placed his fire-hat on an unfinished manuscript sermon under the minister's nose, took from it a red silk handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness, explanatory of his business. He choked, and even shed tears; but with an effort he mastered his voice and said in lugubrious tones:

"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?"