Howells condoled with him on his failure to see the President, “but,” he added, “if you and I had both been there, our combined skill would have no doubt procured us to be expelled from the White House by Fred Douglass.  But the thing seems to be a complete failure as it was.”  Douglass at this time being the Marshal of Columbia, gives special point to Howells’s suggestion.

Later, in May, Clemens took Twichell for an excursion to Bermuda.  He had begged Howells to go with them, but Howells, as usual, was full of literary affairs.  Twichell and Clemens spent four glorious days tramping the length and breadth of the beautiful island, and remembered it always as one of their happiest adventures.  “Put it down as an Oasis!” wrote Twichell on his return, “I’m afraid I shall not see as green a spot again soon.  And it was your invention and your gift.  And your company was the best of it.  Indeed, I never took more comfort in being with you than on this journey, which, my boy, is saying a great deal.”

To Howells, Clemens triumphantly reported the success of the
excursion.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Farmington Avenue, Hartford, May 29, 1877.  Confound you, Joe Twichell and I roamed about Bermuda day and night and never ceased to gabble and enjoy.  About half the talk was—­“It is a burning shame that Howells isn’t here.”  “Nobody could get at the very meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;” “How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this people and the Sabbath repose of this land.”  “What an imperishable sketch Howells would make of Capt.  West the whaler, and Capt.  Hope with the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42 years, lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his ship —­resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this.”  “What a rattling chapter Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady; and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there —­and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but lightly upon, we not being worthy.”  “Dam Howells for not being here!” (this usually from me, not Twichell.)

O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day!  If you had gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and the various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up enough droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit in the way of the several magazine articles which I could have written, whereas I can now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of pocket by your proud ways.  Ponder these things.  Lord, what a perfectly bewitching excursion it was!  I traveled under an assumed name and was never molested with a polite attention from anybody. 
                         Love to you all. 
                                        Yrs ever
                                                  mark