in
the conservatory." So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat).
About three in the morning Mrs. C. woke me and said, "I do believe
I hear that cat in the drawing-room. What did you do with him?" I
answered with the confidence of a man who has managed to do the
right thing for once, and said, "I opened the conservatory doors,
took the library off the alarm, and spread everything open, so that
there wasn't any obstruction between him and the cellar." Language
wasn't capable of conveying this woman's disgust. But the sense of
what she said was, "He couldn't have done any harm in the
conservatory; so you must go and make the entire house free to him
and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to the
drawing-room. If you had had Mr. Howells to help you I should have
admired, but not have been astonished, because I should know that
together you would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive
such a stately blunder all by yourself is what I cannot understand."

So, you see, even she knows how to appreciate our gifts....

I knocked off during these stirring hours, and don't intend to go to
work again till we go away for the summer, four or six weeks hence.
So I am writing to you, not because I have anything to say, but
because you don't have to answer and I need something to do this
afternoon.

The rightful earl has----
Friday, 7th.

Well, never mind about the rightful earl; he merely wanted to-borrow
money. I never knew an American earl that didn't.

After a trip to Boston, during which Mrs. Clemens did some bric-a-brac
shopping, he wrote:

Mrs. Clemens has two imperishable topics now: the museum of andirons
which she collected and your dinner. It is hard to tell which she
admires the most. Sometimes she leans one way and sometimes the
other; but I lean pretty steadily toward the dinner because I can
appreciate that, whereas I am no prophet in andirons. There has
been a procession of Adams Express wagons filing before the door all
day delivering andirons.

In a more serious vein he refers to the aged violinist Ole Bull and his
wife, whom they had met during their visit, and their enjoyment of that
gentle-hearted pair.

Clemens did some shorter work that spring, most of which found its
way into the Atlantic. "Edward Mills and George Benton," one of the
c