added to his list of ventures.

He made one substantial investment at this period. They became more and
more in love with the Hudson environment, its beauty and its easy
access to New York. Their house was what they liked it to be--a
gathering--place for friends and the world's notables, who could reach
it easily and quickly from New York. They had a steady procession of
company when Mrs. Clemens's health would permit, and during a single
week in the early part of this year entertained guests at no less than
seventeen out of their twenty-one meals, and for three out of the seven
nights--not an unusual week. Their plan for buying a home on the Hudson
ended with the purchase of what was known as Hillcrest, or the Casey
place, at Tarrytown, overlooking that beautiful stretch of river, the
Tappan Zee, close to the Washington Irving home. The beauty of its
outlook and surroundings appealed to them all. The house was handsome
and finely placed, and they planned to make certain changes that would
adapt it to their needs. The price, which was less than fifty thousand
dollars, made it an attractive purchase; and without doubt it would have
made them a suitable and happy home had it been written in the future
that they should so inherit it.

Clemens was writing pretty steadily these days. The human race was
furnishing him with ever so many inspiring subjects, and he found time
to touch more or less on most of them. He wreaked his indignation
upon the things which exasperated him often--even usually--without the
expectation of print; and he delivered himself even more inclusively
at such times as he walked the floor between the luncheon or dinner
courses, amplifying on the poverty of an invention that had produced
mankind as a supreme handiwork. In a letter to Howells he wrote:

Your comments on that idiot's "Ideals" letter reminds me that I preached
a good sermon to my family yesterday on his particular layer of the
human race, that grotesquest of all the inventions of the Creator. It
was a good sermon, but coldly received, & it seemed best not to try to
take up a collection.

He once told Howells, with the wild joy of his boyish heart, how Mrs.
Clemens found some compensation, when kept to her room by illness, in
the reflection that now she would not hear so much about the "damned
human race."

Yet he was always the first man to champion that race, and the more
unpromising the specimen the surer it was of his protection, an