ms since
then, but we may imagine that Potter's "English violet" order of design,
as he himself designated it, startled, dazzled, and captivated in a day,
when most houses were mere habitations, built with a view to economy and
the largest possible amount of room.

Workmen were put on the ground without delay, to prepare for the
builders, and work was rapidly pushed along. Then in May the whole
matter was left in the hands of the architect and the carpenters (with
Lawyer Charles E. Perkins to stand between Potter and the violent
builder, who roared at Potter and frightened him when he wanted
changes), while the Clemens household, with Clara Spaulding, a girlhood
friend of Mrs. Clemens, sailed away to England for a half-year holiday.

XC. A LONG ENGLISH HOLIDAY

They sailed on the Batavia, and with them went a young man named
Thompson, a theological student whom Clemens had consented to take as an
amanuensis. There is a pathetic incident connected with this young man,
and it may as well be set down here. Clemens found, a few weeks after
his arrival in England, that so great was the tax upon his time that
he could make no use of Thompson's services. He gave Thompson fifty
dollars, and upon the possibility of the young man's desiring to return
to America, advanced him another fifty dollars, saying that he could
return it some day, and never thought of it again. But the young man
remembered it, and one day, thirty-six years later, after a life of
hardship and struggle, such as the life of a country minister is apt
to be, he wrote and inclosed a money-order, a payment on his debt. That
letter and its inclosure brought only sorrow to Mark Twain. He felt that
it laid upon him the accumulated burden of the weary thirty-six years'
struggle with ill-fortune. He returned the money, of course, and in a
biographical note commented:

How pale painted heroisms of romance look beside it! Thompson's
heroism, which is real, which is colossal, which is sublime, and
which is costly beyond all estimate, is achieved in profound
obscurity, and its hero walks in rags to the end of his days. I had
forgotten Thompson completely, but he flashes before me as vividly
as lightning. I can see him now. It was on the deck of the
Batavia, in the dock. The ship was casting off, with that hubbub
and confusion and rushing of sailors, and shouting of orders and
shrieking of boatswain whistles, which marked the d