ten to of the matter.

A little later I joined her in Redding, and she was the first of the
family to see that beautiful hilltop. She was well pleased with the
situation, and that day selected the spot where the house should stand.
Clemens wrote Howells that he proposed to call it "Autobiography House,"
as it was to be built out of the Review money, and he said:

"If you will build on my farm and live there it will set Mrs. Howells's
health up for sure. Come and I'll sell you the site for twenty-five
dollars. John will tell you it is a choice place."

The unusual summer was near its close. In my notebook, under date of
September 16th, appears this entry:

Windy in valleys but not cold. This veranda is protected. It is
peaceful here and perfect, but we are at the summer's end.

This is my last entry, and the dictations must have ceased a few
days later. I do not remember the date of the return to New York, and
apparently I made no record of it; but I do not think it could have been
later than the 20th. It had been four months since the day of arrival,
a long, marvelous summer such as I would hardly know again. When I think
of that time I shall always hear the ceaseless slippered, shuffling
walk, and see the white figure with its rocking, rolling movement
passing up and down the long gallery, with that preternaturally
beautiful landscape behind, and I shall hear his deliberate
speech--always deliberate, save at rare intervals; always impressive,
whatever the subject might be; whether recalling some old absurdity of
youth, or denouncing orthodox creeds, or detailing the shortcomings of
human-kind.

CCXLIX. BILLIARDS

The return to New York marked the beginning of a new era in my relations
with Mark Twain. I have not meant to convey up to this time that there
was between us anything resembling a personal friendship. Our relations
were friendly, certainly, but they were relations of convenience
and mainly of a business, or at least of a literary nature. He was
twenty-six years my senior, and the discrepancy of experience and
attainments was not measurable. With such conditions friendship must
be a deliberate growth; something there must be to bridge the dividing
gulf. Truth requires the confession that, in this case, the bridge took
a very solid, material form, it being, in fact, nothing less than a
billiard-table.--[Clemens had been without a billiard-table since 1891,
the old one having been disposed