J. De Lancey Ferguson

Biography of Mark Twain, touching upon his personal character and events of his life.

The author graciously describes his last hours:

"With the abating of the angina pains the doctors had withdrawn the morphine which had eased his homeward journey, but when drowsiness overcame him the borders between the worlds of dreams and of waking sometimes blurred. 'This is a peculiar kind of disease,' he told Paine. 'It does not invite you to read; it does not invite you to be read to; it does not invite you to talk,m nor to enjoy any of the usual sick-room methods of treatment. What kind of a disease is THAT? Some kinds of sicknesses have pleasant features about them. You can read and smoke and have only to lie still." [325]

The author gratuitously infers a belief in an afterlife, quoting Clara, sitting by his bed:

"Suddenly he opened his eyes, took my hand, and looked steadily into my face. Faintly he murmured, 'Goodbye dear, if we meet____'" Then sank into the coma that possessed him until he died, at sunsewt. He had come into the world with Halley's comet, in 1835; he had gone out of it, as he had more than once declared he would, with Halley's comet in 1910." [325]… (altro)