were arriving, and there
was a babble of hearty greetings, with not a voice in it that was
not old and familiar and affectionate; and when the curtain went up
we looked out from the stage upon none but faces that were dear to
us, none but faces that were lit up with welcome for us.

CLXI. HISTORY: MAINLY BY SUSY

Suzy, in her biography, which she continued through this period, writes:

Mama and I have both been very much troubled of late because papa,
since he had been publishing General Grant's books, has seemed to
forget his own books and works entirely; and the other evening, as
papa and I were promonading up and down the library, he told me that
he didn't expect to write but one more book, and then he was ready
to give up work altogether, die, or, do anything; he said that he
had written more than he had ever expected to, and the only book
that he had been pertickularly anxious to write was one locked up in
the safe downstairs, not yet published.

The book locked in the safe was Captain Stormfield, and the one he
expected to write was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He
had already worked at it in a desultory way during the early months of
1886, and once wrote of it to Webster:

I have begun a book whose scene is laid far back in the twilight of
tradition; I have saturated myself with the atmosphere of the day
and the subject and got myself into the swing of the work. If I peg
away for some weeks without a break I am safe.

But he could not peg away. He had too many irons in the fire for that.
Matthew Arnold had criticized General Grant's English, and Clemens
immediately put down other things to rush to his hero's defense. He
pointed out that in Arnold's criticism there were no less than "two
grammatical crimes and more than several examples of very crude and
slovenly English," and said:

There is that about the sun which makes us forget his spots, and
when we think of General Grant our pulses quicken and his grammar
vanishes; we only remember that this is the simple soldier, who, all
untaught of the silken phrase-makers, linked words together with an
art surpassing the art of the schools, and put into them a something
which will still bring to American ears, as long as America shall
last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his marching
hosts.--[Address to Army and Navy Club. For