Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/294

 XLIX

NE day during the summer of 1889 a notable meeting took place in Elmira. On a blazing forenoon a rather small and very hot young man, in a slow, sizzling hack made his way up East Hill to Quarry Farm. He inquired for Mark Twain, only to be told that he was at the Langdon home, down in the town which the young man had just left. So he sat for a little time on the pleasant veranda, and Mrs. Crane and Susy Clemens, who were there, brought him some cool milk and listened to him talk in a way which seemed to them very entertaining and wonderful. When he went away he left his card with a name on it strange to them—strange to the world at that time. The name was Rudyard Kipling. Also on the card was the address Allahabad, and Susy kept it, because, to her, India was fairyland.

Kipling went down into Elmira and found Mark Twain. In his book American Notes he has left an account of that visit. He claimed that he had traveled around the world to see Mark Twain, and his article begins:

You are a contemptible lot over yonder. Some of you are commissioners, and some are lieutenant-governors, and 256