When he was going, he turned and said: 

“You don’t remember me?”

“I?  Why, no.  Have we met before?”

“No, it was a matter of correspondence.”

“Correspondence?”

“Yes, many years ago.  Twelve or fifteen.  Oh, longer than that.  But of course you——­” A musing pause.  Then he said: 

“Do you remember Corrigan Castle?”

“N-no, I believe I don’t.  I don’t seem to recall the name.”

He waited a moment, pondering, with the door-knob in his hand, then started out; but turned back and said that I had once been interested in Corrigan Castle, and asked me if I would go with him to his quarters in the evening and take a hot Scotch and talk it over.  I was a teetotaler and liked relaxation, so I said I would.

We drove from the lecture-hall together about half-past ten.  He had a most comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor, with good pictures on the walls, Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and there, and books everywhere-largely mine; which made me proud.  The light was brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements for brewing and smoking were all there.  We brewed and lit up; then he passed a sheet of note-paper to me and said—­

“Do you remember that?”

“Oh, yes, indeed!”

The paper was of a sumptuous quality.  At the top was a twisted and interlaced monogram printed from steel dies in gold and blue and red, in the ornate English fashion of long years ago; and under it, in neat gothic capitals was this—­printed in blue: 

Themark Twain club
Corrigan castle
............187..

“My!” said I, “how did you come by this?”

“I was President of it.”

“No!—­you don’t mean it.”

“It is true.  I was its first President.  I was re-elected annually as long as its meetings were held in my castle—­Corrigan—­which was five years.”

Then he showed me an album with twenty-three photographs of me in it.  Five of them were of old dates, the others of various later crops; the list closed with a picture taken by Falk in Sydney a month before.

“You sent us the first five; the rest were bought.”

This was paradise!  We ran late, and talked, talked, talked—­subject, the Mark Twain Club of Corrigan Castle, Ireland.

My first knowledge of that Club dates away back; all of twenty years, I should say.  It came to me in the form of a courteous letter, written on the note-paper which I have described, and signed “By order of the President; C. Pembroke, Secretary.”  It conveyed the fact that the Club had been created in my honor, and added the hope that this token of appreciation of my work would meet with my approval.

I answered, with thanks; and did what I could to keep my gratification from over-exposure.