Horrid man, how did you know the way I behave in a thunderstorm?
Have you been secreted in the closet or lurking on the shed roof?
I hope you got thoroughly rained on; and worst of all is that you
made me laugh at myself; my real terrors turned round and grimaced
at me: they were sublime, and you have made them ridiculous just
come out here another year and have four houses within a few rods of
you struck and then see if you write an article of such exasperating
levity. I really hate you, but you are funny.

In addition to his own work, he conceived a plan for Orion. Clemens
himself had been attempting, from time to time, an absolutely faithful
autobiography; a document in which his deeds and misdeeds, even his moods
and inmost thoughts, should be truly set down. He had found it an
impossible task. He confessed freely that he lacked the courage, even
the actual ability, to pen the words that would lay his soul bare, but he
believed Orion equal to the task. He knew how rigidly honest he was, how
ready to confess his shortcomings, how eager to be employed at some
literary occupation. It was Mark Twain's belief that if Orion would
record in detail his long, weary struggle, his succession of attempts and
failures, his past dreams and disappointments, along with his sins of
omission and commission, it would make one of those priceless human
documents such as have been left by Benvenuto Cellini, Cazenova, and
Rousseau.

"Simply tell your story to yourself," he wrote, "laying all hideousness
utterly bare, reserving nothing. Banish the idea of the audience and all
hampering things."

Orion, out in Keokuk, had long since abandoned the chicken farm and a
variety of other enterprises. He had prospected insurance, mining,
journalism, his old trade of printing, and had taken down and hung up his
law shingle between each of these seizures. Aside from business, too, he
had been having a rather spectacular experience. He had changed his
politics three times (twice in one day), and his religion as many more.
Once when he was delivering a political harangue in the street, at night,
a parade of the opposition (he had but just abandoned them) marched by
carrying certain flaming transparencies, which he himself had made for
them the day before. Finally, after delivering a series of infidel
lectures; he had been excommunicated and condemned to eternal flames by
the Presbyterian Church. He was therefore ripe for