He told me once that in his first campaign he delivered that lecture during a stretch of 9 straight months without ever missing a night. Yet he always read it from MS. He wouldn’t trust his memory for a single sentence. Not because he hadn’t a good memory, but because he hadn’t any confidence in it. The lecture began, “We are all descended from grandfathers;” and he said that when the terrible 9 months were over he went home and slept 3 days and nights, with only 3 little breaks—momentary breaks—at 8 o’clock—lecture-time—each night. Then he woke up and said “We are all descended from grandfathers,” and went to sleep again. Force of habit. And Fuller would have Josh Billings at my lecture.

 

 

[PICTURE OF JOSH.]

 

 

Another good fellow—good as ever was. He too was a great card on the lecture platform in those days; and his quaint and pithy maxims were on everybody’s tongue. He said “Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference between vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” And he said, “Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail, and then you can let go when you want to.” Also he said, “The difficulty ain’t that we know so much, but that we know so much that ain’t so.” Good friends of mine, he and Nasby were. Good fellows, too, and have gone the way that all the good fellows go. Yes, and Anna Dickinson would be at my lecture, too—

 

 

[PICTURE OF ANNA.]

 

 

My, what houses she used to draw! Some of you remember those determined lips and those indignant eyes, and how they used to snap and flash when she marched the platform pouring out the lava of her blistering eloquence upon the enemy. But that old platform is desolate, now—nobody left on it but me. And Horace Greeley was to be at my lecture, too.

 

 

[PICTURE OF HIM.]

 

 

He was a great man, an honest man, and served his country well, and was an honor to it. Also he was a good-hearted man, but abrupt with strangers if they annoyed him when he was busy. He was profane, but that is nothing—the best of us is that, thank goodness. I did not know him well—but only just casually, and by accident. I never met him but once. I called on him in the Tribune office, but I was not intending to. I was looking for Whitelaw Reid and got into the wrong den. He was alone, at his desk writing, and we conversed—not long, but just a little. I asked him if he was well, and he said “What the hell do you want?” Well—I couldn’t remember what I wanted, and so I said I would call again. But I didn’t. And Fuller said we would have Oliver W. Holmes.

 

 

[PICTURE OF HIM.]

 

 

He was a good friend of mine, and wrote me a poem on my 50th birth-day. I plagiarized the dedication of one of his books and used it in the Innocents Abroad. I didn’t know I had plagiarized him, but a friend proved it to me. I told Dr. Holmes about it and it made us good friends. He said we were all plagiarists, consciously or unconsciously, one or the other.