e--always beautifully laid,
and always a shrine of wisdom when he was there. He did not always talk;
but it was his habit to do so, and memory holds the clearer vision of
him when, with eyes and face alive with interest, he presented some
new angle of thought in fresh picturesqueness of speech. These are the
pictures that have remained to me out of the days spent under his roof,
and they will not fade while memory lasts.

Of Mark Twain's table philosophies it seems proper to make rather
extended record. They were usually unpremeditated, and they presented
the man as he was, and thought. I preserved as much of them as I could,
and have verified phrase and idea, when possible, from his own notes and
other unprinted writings.

This dinner-table talk naturally varied in character from that of the
billiard-room. The latter was likely to be anecdotal and personal; the
former was more often philosophical and commentative, ranging through
a great variety of subjects scientific, political, sociological, and
religious. His talk was often of infinity--the forces of creation--and
it was likely to be satire of the orthodox conceptions, intermingled
with heresies of his own devising.

Once, after a period of general silence, he said:

"No one who thinks can imagine the universe made by chance. It is too
nicely assembled and regulated. There is, of course, a great Master
Mind, but it cares nothing for our happiness or our unhappiness."

It was objected, by one of those present, that as the Infinite Mind
suggested perfect harmony, sorrow and suffering were defects which that
Mind must feel and eventually regulate.

"Yes," he said, "not a sparrow falls but He is noticing, if that is
what you mean; but the human conception of it is that God is sitting up
nights worrying over the individuals of this infinitesimal race."

Then he recalled a fancy which I have since found among his memoranda.
In this note he had written:

The suns & planets that form the constellations of a billion billion
solar systems & go pouring, a tossing flood of shining globes,
through the viewless arteries of space are the blood-corpuscles in
the veins of God; & the nations are the microbes that swarm and
wiggle & brag in each, & think God can tell them apart at that
distance & has nothing better to do than try. This--the
entertainment of an eternity. Who so poor in his ambitions as to
consent to be God on those terms? Blasph