Admiring friends used to send
him costly, imported cigars, but he rarely touched them, and they were
smoked by visitors. He often smoked a pipe, and preferred it to be old
and violent. Once when he had bought a new, expensive briar-root, he
handed it to me, saying:
"I'd like to have you smoke that a year or two, and when it gets so you
can't stand it, maybe it will suit me."
LXI.
DICTATIONS AT DUBLIN, N. H.
Following his birthday dinner, Mark Twain had become once more the "Belle
of New York," and in a larger way than ever before. An editorial in the
"Evening Mail" referred to him as a kind of joint Aristides, Solon, and
Themistocles of the American metropolis, and added:
"Things have reached a point where, if Mark Twain is not at a public
meeting or banquet, he is expected to console it with one of his
inimitable letters of advice and encouragement."
He loved the excitement of it, and it no longer seemed to wear upon him.
Scarcely an evening passed that he did not go out to some dinner or
gathering where he had promised to speak. In April, for the benefit of
the Robert Fulton Society, he delivered his farewell lecture--the last
lecture, he said, where any one would have to pay to hear him.
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