sympathy.  Then there had followed such ovation as has seldom been
conferred upon a private citizen, and now approaching old age, still in
the fullness of his mental vigor, he had returned to his native soil with
the prestige of these honors upon him and the vast added glory of having
made his financial fight single-handed-and won. 

He was heralded literally as a conquering hero.  Every paper in the land
had an editorial telling the story of his debts, his sorrow, and his
triumphs. 

"He had behaved like Walter Scott," says Howells, "as millions rejoiced
to know who had not known how Walter Scott had behaved till they knew it
was like Clemens." 

Howells acknowledges that he had some doubts as to the permanency of the
vast acclaim of the American public, remembering, or perhaps assuming, a
national fickleness.  Says Howells: 

He had hitherto been more intelligently accepted or more largely
imagined in Europe, and I suppose it was my sense of this that