your pilot-memory?" I asked.

"Not long; it faded out right away, but the training served me, for
when I went to report on a paper a year or two later I never had to
make any notes."

"I suppose you still remember some of the river?"

"Not much. Hat Island, Helena and here and there a place; but that
is about all."

CCLV. FURTHER PERSONALITIES

Like every person living, Mark Twain had some peculiar and petty
economies. Such things in great men are noticeable. He lived
extravagantly. His household expenses at the time amounted to more
than fifty dollars a day. In the matter of food, the choicest, and
most expensive the market could furnish was always served in lavish
abundance. He had the best and highest-priced servants, ample as to
number. His clothes he bought generously; he gave without stint to
his children; his gratuities were always liberal. He never questioned
pecuniary outgoes--seldom worried as to the state of his bank-account
so long as there was plenty. He smoked cheap cigars because he preferred
their flavor. Yet he had his economies. I have seen him, before leaving
a room, go around and carefully lower the gas-jets, to provide against
that waste. I have known him to examine into the cost of a cab, and
object to an apparent overcharge of a few cents.

It seemed that his idea of economy might be expressed in these words: He
abhorred extortion and visible waste.

Furthermore, he had exact ideas as to ownership. One evening, while
we were playing billiards, I noticed a five-cent piece on the floor. I
picked it up, saying:

"Here is five cents; I don't know whose it is."

He regarded the coin rather seriously, I thought, and said:

"I don't know, either."

I laid it on the top of the book-shelves which ran around the room. The
play went on, and I forgot the circumstance. When the game ended that
night I went into his room with him, as usual, for a good-night word. As
he took his change and keys from the pocket of his trousers, he looked
the assortment over and said:

"That five-cent piece you found was mine."

I brought it to him at once, and he took it solemnly, laid it with the
rest of his change, and neither of us referred to it again. It may have
been one of his jokes, but I think it more likely that he remembered
having had a five-cent piece, probably reserved for car fare, and that
it was missing.

More than once, in Washington, he had said:

"Draw plenty o