orking & deep in the luxury of it. But there is one tremendous
defect. Livy is all so enchanted with the place & so in love with
it that she doesn't know how she is going to tear herself away from
it.

Much company came to them at Dollis Hill. Friends drove out from London,
and friends from America came often, among them--the Sages, Prof.
Willard Fiske, and Brander Matthews with his family. Such callers were
served with tea and refreshment on the lawn, and lingered, talking and
talking, while the sun got lower and the shadows lengthened, reluctant
to leave that idyllic spot.

"Dollis Hill comes nearer to being a paradise than any other home I ever
occupied," he wrote when the summer was about over.

But there was still a greater attraction than Dollis Hill. Toward the
end of summer they willingly left that paradise, for they had decided at
last to make that home-returning voyage which had invited them so long.
They were all eager enough to go--Clemens more eager than the rest,
though he felt a certain sadness, too, in leaving the tranquil spot
which in a brief summer they had so learned to love.

Writing to W. H. Helm, a London newspaper man who had spent pleasant
hours with him chatting in the shade, he said:

... The packing & fussing & arranging have begun, for the
removal to America &, by consequence, the peace of life is marred &
its contents & satisfactions are departing. There is not much
choice between a removal & a funeral; in fact, a removal is a
funeral, substantially, & I am tired of attending them.

They closed Dollis Hill, spent a few days at Brown's Hotel, and sailed
for America, on the Minnehaha, October 6, 1900, bidding, as Clemens
believed, and hoped, a permanent good-by to foreign travel. They reached
New York on the 15th, triumphantly welcomed after their long nine years
of wandering. How glad Mark Twain was to get home may be judged from his
remark to one of the many reporters who greeted him.

"If I ever get ashore I am going to break both of my legs so I
can't, get away again."

VOLUME III, Part 1: 1900-1907

CCXII. THE RETURN OF THE CONQUEROR

It would be hard to exaggerate the stir which the newspapers and the
public generally made over the homecoming of Mark Twain. He had left
America, staggering under heavy obligation and set out on a pilgrimage
of redemption. At the moment when this Mecca, was in view a great sorrow
had befallen