st
themselves personally in the matter, and finally persuaded the painter
J. Wells Champney to come over from New York and go with them to the
Gerhardts' humble habitation, to see his work. Champney approved of it.
He thought it well worth while, he said, for the people of Hartford to
go to the expense of Gerhardt's art education. He added that it would
be better to get the judgment of a sculptor. So they brought over John
Quincy Adams Ward, who, like all the others, came away bewitched with
these young people and their struggles for the sake of art. Ward said:

"If any stranger had told me that this 'prentice did not model that
thing from plaster-casts I should not have believed it. It's full of
crudities, but it's full of genius, too. Hartford must send him to Paris
for two years; then, if the promise holds good, keep him there three
more."

When he was gone Mrs. Clemens said:

"Youth, we won't wait for Hartford to do it. It would take too long. Let
us send the Gerhardts to Paris ourselves, and say nothing about it to
any one else."

So the Gerhardts, provided with funds and an arrangement that would
enable them to live for five years in Paris if necessary, were started
across the sea without further delay.

Clemens and his wife were often doing something of this sort. There was
seldom a time that they were not paying the way of some young man
or woman through college, or providing means and opportunity for
development in some special field of industry.

CXXXIV. LITERARY PROJECTS AND A MONUMENT TO ADAM

Mark Twain's literary work languished during this period. He had a world
of plans, as usual, and wrote plentifully, but without direction or
conclusion. "A Curious Experience," which relates a circumstance told to
him by an army officer, is about the most notable of the few completed
manuscripts of this period.

Of the books projected (there were several), a burlesque manual of
etiquette would seem to have been the most promising. Howells had faith
in it, and of the still remaining fragments a few seem worth quoting:

AT BILLIARDS

If your ball glides along in the intense and immediate vicinity of
the object-ball, and a count seems exquisitely imminent, lift one
leg; then one shoulder; then squirm your body around in sympathy
with the direction of the moving ball; and at the instant when the
ball seems on the point of colliding throw up both of your arms
v