MARK TWAIN.

On another occasion, when Bynner had written a poem to Clara
Clemens, her father pretended great indignation that the first poem
written by Bynner to any one in his household should not be to him,
and threatened revenge. At dinner shortly after he produced from
his pocket a slip of paper on which he had set down what he said was
"his only poem." He read the lines that follow:

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been.
Ah, say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner,
We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner!"

He returned to New York in October and soon after was presented by
Mrs. H. H. Rogers with a handsome billiard-table.

He had a passion for the game, but had played comparatively little
since the old Hartford days of fifteen years before, when a group of
his friends used to assemble on Friday nights in the room at the top
of the house for long, strenuous games and much hilarity. Now the
old fever all came back; the fascinations of the game superseded
even his interest in the daily dictations.

*****

To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York:

21 FIFTH AVENUE, Monday, Nov., 1906.

DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--The billiard table is better than the doctors. It is
driving out the heartburn in a most promising way. I have a billiardist
on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the
cue in my hand. And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor
the most health-giving part of it, I think. Through the multitude of the
positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and
exercises them all.

The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until
midnight, with 2 hours' intermission for dinner and music. And so it is
9 hours' exercise per day, and 10 or 12 on Sunday. Yesterday and last
night it was 12--and I slept until 8 this morning without waking.
The billiard table, as a Sabbath breaker can beat any coal-breaker in
Pennsylvania, and give it 30 in, the game. If Mr. Rogers will take to
daily billiards he can do without doctors and the massageur, I think.

We are really going to build a house on my farm, an hour and a half from
New York. It is decided. It is to be built by contract, and is to com