It seemed an inopportune cheer, and for a moment it
upset the orator: yet it was felicitous in opportuneness. Slowly, after
a long pause, came the last two words--like that curious, detached and
high note in which a great piece of music suddenly ends--'Homeward
bound.' Again there was a cheer: but this time it was lower; it was
subdued; it was the fitting echo to the beautiful words--with their
double significance--the parting from a hospitable land, the return to
the native land. . . . Only a great litterateur could have conceived
such a passage: only a great orator could have so delivered it."
Mark Twain was the greatest master of the anecdote this generation has
known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one
that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in
the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection,
insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures,
his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods--all
these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from the printed
copy of his speeches.
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