rope last summer and they made things pleasant for us. I
wanted to come over here with him, but was a good deal occupied just
then. Livy isn't very well, but she seems a good deal better, so I just
followed along to have a good talk, all together."

He stayed an hour, and whatever bad impression had formed in B----'s mind
faded long before the hour ended. Returning home Clemens noticed the
pictures still on the parlor floor.

"George," he said, "what pictures are those that gentleman left?"

"Why, Mr. Clemens, those are our own pictures. I've been straightening
up the room a little, and Mrs. Clemens had me set them around to see how
they would look in new places. The gentleman was looking at them while
he was waiting for you to come down."

CXXIX

FURTHER AFFAIRS AT THE FARM

It was at Elmira, in July (1880), that the third little girl came--Jane
Lampton, for her grandmother, but always called Jean. She was a large,
lovely baby, robust and happy. When she had been with them a little more
than a month Clemens, writing to Twichell, said:

DEAR OLD JOE,--Concerning Jean Clemens, if anybody said he "didn't
see no pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," I
should think he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor sort
of observer. She is the comeliest and daintiest and perfectest
little creature the continents and archipelagos have seen since the
Bay and Susy were her size. I will not go into details; it is not
necessary; you will soon be in Hartford, where I have already hired
a hall; the admission fee will be but a trifle.

It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotations of the
Affection Board brought about by throwing this new security on the
market. Four weeks ago the children still put Mama at the head of
the list right along, where she had always been. But now:

Jean
Mama
Motley |cats
Fraulein |
Papa

That is the way it stands now. Mama is become No. 2; I have dropped
from No. 4, and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip
and tuck between me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I
didn't stand any more show.

Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a
hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or
bathostic) letters, written in that dim (no, vanished) past, when he
w