Part 19 (1/2)
Oh well, neverfellows hardly out of the e, and they rain of ave him a vast quantity heaped on the end of a knife-blade, and the fatal effects were soon apparent I think he died about dawn, I don't remember as to that He was carried to the dead-room and I went away for a while to a citizen's house and slept off so was happening The coffins provided for the dead were of unpainted white pine, but in this instance some of the ladies of Meht a metallic case, and when I came back and entered the dead-room Henry lay in that open case, and he was dressed in a suit ofour last sojourn in St Louis; and I recognized instantly that my dream of several weeks before was here exactly reproduced, so far as these details went--and I think I missed one detail; but that one was immediately supplied, for just then an elderly lady entered the place with a large bouquet consisting mainly of white roses, and in the centre of it was a red rose, and she laid it on his breast
I told the dreaht just as I have told it here
Rev Dr Burton swung his leonine head around, focussed me with his eye, and said:
”When was it that this happened?”
”In June, '58”
”It is a good o Have you told it several tiood many times”
”How many?”
”Why, I don't kno e How many times a year do you think you have told it?”
”Well, I have told it as many as six times a year, possibly oftener”
”Very well, then you've told it, we'll say, seventy or eighty times since it happened?”
”Yes,” I said, ”that's a conservative esti happened to o, and I used to tell it a nuood many times--every year, for it was so wonderful that it always astonished the hearer, and that astonishave me a distinct pleasure every ti any auxiliary advantages through repetition until one day after I had been telling it ten or fifteen years it struckold, and slow in delivery, or that the tale was longer than it hen it was born
Mark, I diligently and prayerfully examined that tale with this result: that I found that its proportions were now, as nearly as I could ht fact, fact pure and undiluted, golden fact, and twenty-four parts embroidery I never told that tale afterwards--I was never able to tell it again, for I had lost confidence in it, and so the pleasure of telling it was gone, and gone permanently How much of this tale of yours is embroidery?”
”Well,” I said, ”I don't know I don't think any of it is embroidery I think it is all just as I have stated it, detail by detail”
”Very well,” he said, ”then it is all right, but I wouldn't tell it any in to collect e is to stop now”
That was a great o And to-day is the first time that I have told that dream since Dr Burton scared me into fatal doubts about it No, I don't believe I can say that I don't believe that I ever really had any doubts whatever concerning the salient points of the dream, for those points are of such a nature that they are _pictures_, and pictures can be remembered, when they are vivid, much better than one can reh it has been so many years since I have told that dream, I can see those pictures now just as clearly defined as if they were before me in this rooood deal more of it I mean I have not told all that happened in the dream's fulfilment After the incident in the death-room I may mention one detail, and that is this
When I arrived in St Louis with the casket it was about eight o'clock in the , and I ran toto find him there, but I missed him, for while I was on the way to his office he was on his way froot back to the boat the casket was gone He had conveyed it out to his house I hastened thither, and when I arrived thethe casket from the vehicle to carry it up-stairs I stopped that procedure, for I did not want my mother to see the dead face, because one side of it was drawn and distorted by the effects of the opium When I went up-stairs, there stood the two chairs--placed to receive the coffin--just as I had seen them in my dream; and if I had arrived two or threeupon them, precisely as in my dream of several weeks before
MARK TWAIN
(_To be Continued_)
FOOTNOTE:
[8] See ”Old Times on the Mississippi”