ight with a song.
Clemens often took them for extended' walks, pushing Bay in her carriage.
Once, in a preoccupied moment, he let go of the little vehicle and it
started downhill, gaining speed rapidly.

He awoke then, and set off in wild pursuit. Before he could overtake the
runaway carriage it had turned to the roadside and upset. Bay was lying
among the stones and her head was bleeding. Hastily binding the wound
with a handkerchief he started full speed with her up the hill toward the
house, calling for restoratives as he came. It was no serious matter.
The little girl was strong and did not readily give way to affliction.

The children were unlike: Susy was all contemplation and nerves; Bay
serene and practical. It was said, when a pet cat died--this was some
years later--that Susy deeply reflected as to its life here and
hereafter, while Bay was concerned only as to the style of its funeral.
Susy showed early her father's quaintness of remark. Once they bought
her a heavier pair of shoes than she approved of. She was not in the
best of humors during the day, and that night, when at prayer-time her
mother said, "Now, Susy, put your thoughts on God," she answered, "Mama,
I can't with those shoes."

Clemens worked steadily that summer and did a variety of things. He had
given up a novel, begun with much enthusiasm, but he had undertaken
another long manuscript. By the middle of August he had written several
hundred pages of a story which was to be a continuation of Tam Sawyer
--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now, here is a curious phase of
genius. The novel which for a time had filled him with enthusiasm and
faith had no important literary value, whereas, concerning this new tale,
he says:

"I like it only tolerably well, as far as I have gone, and may possibly
pigeonhole or burn the manuscript when it is done"--this of the story
which, of his books of pure fiction, will perhaps longest survive. He
did, in fact, give the story up, and without much regret, when it was
about half completed, and let it lie unfinished for years.

He wrote one short tale, "The Canvasser's Story," a burlesque of no
special distinction, and he projected for the Atlantic a scheme of
"blindfold novelettes," a series of stories to be written by well-known
authors and others, each to be constructed on the same plot. One can
easily imagine Clemens's enthusiasm over a banal project like that; his
impulses were always rainbow-hued, whethe