wells, and Clemens, and the talk continued through the afternoon and
into the deepening twilight, such company and such twilight as somehow
one seems never to find any more.

On one of the visits which Howells made to Hartford that year he took
his son John, then a small boy, with him. John was about six years old
at the time, with his head full of stories of Aladdin, and of other
Arabian fancies. On the way over his father said to him:

"Now, John, you will see a perfect palace."

They arrived, and John was awed into silence by the magnificence and
splendors of his surroundings until they went to the bath-room to wash
off the dust of travel. There he happened to notice a cake of pink soap.

"Why," he said, "they've even got their soap painted!" Next morning
he woke early--they were occupying the mahogany room on the ground
floor--and slipping out through the library, and to the door of
the dining-room, he saw the colored butler, George--the immortal
George--setting the breakfast-table. He hurriedly tiptoed back and
whispered to his father:

"Come quick! The slave is setting the table!"

This being the second mention of George, it seems proper here that he
should be formally presented. Clemens used to say that George came one
day to wash windows and remained eighteen years. He was precisely
the sort of character that Mark Twain loved. He had formerly been the
body-servant of an army general and was typically racially Southern,
with those delightful attributes of wit and policy and gentleness which
go with the best type of negro character. The children loved him no less
than did their father. Mrs. Clemens likewise had a weakness for George,
though she did not approve of him. George's morals were defective. He
was an inveterate gambler. He would bet on anything, though prudently
and with knowledge. He would investigate before he invested. If he
placed his money on a horse, he knew the horse's pedigree and the
pedigree of the horses against it, also of their riders. If he invested
in an election, he knew all about the candidates. He had agents
among his own race, and among the whites as well, to supply him with
information. He kept them faithful to him by lending them money--at
ruinous interest. He buttonholed Mark Twain's callers while he was
removing their coats concerning the political situation, much to the
chagrin of Mrs. Clemens, who protested, though vainly, for the men liked
George and his ways, and upheld hi