let the cows bite you."

What an idea! There aren't any cows in Fifth Avenue. But I didn't
smile; I didn't let on to perceive how uncultured she was. She was
from the country, of course, and didn't know what a comical blunder.
she was making.

Mr. Rogers's health was very poor that winter, and Clemens urged him to
try Bermuda, and offered to go back with him; so they sailed away to
the summer island, and though Margaret was gone, there was other
entertaining company--other granddaughters to be adopted, and new
friends and old friends, and diversions of many sorts. Mr. Rogers's
son-in-law, William Evarts Benjamin, came down and joined the little
group. It was one of Mark Twain's real holidays. Mr. Rogers's health
improved rapidly, and Mark Twain was in fine trim. To Mrs. Rogers, at
the end of the first week, he wrote:

DEAR MRS. ROGERS, He is getting along splendidly! This was the very
place for him. He enjoys himself & is as quarrelsome as a cat.

But he will get a backset if Benjamin goes home. Benjamin is the
brightest man in these regions, & the best company. Bright? He is
much more than that, he is brilliant. He keeps the crowd intensely
alive.

With love & all good wishes.
S. L. C.

Mark Twain and Henry Rogers were much together and much observed. They
were often referred to as "the King" and "the Rajah," and it was always
a question whether it was "the King" who took care of "the Rajah,"
or vice versa. There was generally a group to gather around them, and
Clemens was sure of an attentive audience, whether he wanted to air his
philosophies, his views of the human race, or to read aloud from the
verses of Kipling.

"I am not fond of all poetry," he would say; "but there's something in
Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just about my level."

Miss Wallace recalls certain Kipling readings in his room, when his
friends gathered to listen.

On those Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one.
The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose
windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of
asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the
hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and
Mark Twain in the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch)
still in his white serge suit, with the light from the jet shining
do