ren as a sort of nursery and
playroom, and took up his writing-quarters, first in a room over the
stables, then in the billiard-room, which, on the whole, he preferred to
any other place, for it was a third-story remoteness, and he could knock
the balls about for inspiration.

The billiard-room became his headquarters. He received his callers there
and impressed them into the game. If they could play, well and good;
if they could not play, so much the better--he could beat them
extravagantly, and he took a huge delight in such conquests. Every
Friday evening, or oftener, a small party of billiard-lovers gathered,
and played until a late hour, told stories, and smoked till the room was
blue, comforting themselves with hot Scotch and general good-fellowship.
Mark Twain always had a genuine passion for billiards. He was never
tired of the game. He could play all night. He would stay till the last
man gave out from sheer weariness; then he would go on knocking the
balls about alone. He liked to invent new games and new rules for old
games, often inventing a rule on the spur of the moment to fit some
particular shot or position on the table. It amused him highly to do
this, to make the rule advantage his own play, and to pretend a deep
indignation when his opponents disqualified his rulings and rode him
down. S. C. Dunham was among those who belonged to the "Friday Evening
Club," as they called it, and Henry C. Robinson, long dead, and rare
Ned Bunce, and F. G. Whitmore; and the old room there at the top of the
house, with its little outside balcony, rang with their voices and their
laughter in that day when life and the world for them was young. Clemens
quoted to them sometimes:

Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring
Your winter garment of repentance fling;
The bird of time has but a little way
To flutter, and the bird is on the wing.

Omar was new then on this side of the Atlantic, and to his serene "eat,
drink, and be merry" philosophy, in Fitzgerald's rhyme, these were early
converts. Mark Twain had an impressive, musical delivery of verse; the
players were willing at any moment to listen as he recited:

For some we loved, the loveliest and best
That from his vintage rolling time has prest,
Have drunk their cup a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust unto d