THE BOYS' LIFE OF MARK TWAIN
In Twichell's letters home we get pleasant pictures of the Mark Twain of that day:
Mark, to-day, was immensely absorbed in flowers. He scrambled around and gathered a great variety, and manifested the intensest pleasure in them. . . . Mark is splendid to walk with amid such grand scenery, for he talks so well about it, has such a power of strong, picturesque expression. I wish you might have heard him to-day. His vigorous speech nearly did justice to the things we saw.
And in another place:
He can't bear to see the whip used, or to see a horse pull hard. To-day when the driver clucked up his horse and quickened his pace a little, Mark said, "The fellow's got the notion that we were in a hurry."
Another extract refers to an incident which Mark Twain also mentions in A Tramp Abroad:[1]
Mark is a queer fellow. There is nothing so delights him as a swift, strong stream. You can hardly get him to leave one when once he is in the influence of its fascinations. To throw in stones and sticks seems to afford him rapture.
Twichell goes on to tell how he threw some driftwood into a racing torrent and how Mark went running down-stream after it, waving and shouting in a sort of mad ecstasy.
When a piece went over a fall and emerged to view in the foam below, he would jump up and down and yell. He acted just like a boy.
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