in his round. There was
constant running in and out of friendly houses where the lively
hosts and guests called one another by their Christian names or
nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at
doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he
satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another
sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which
enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.

Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of subscription sale
over the usual methods of publication, and urged the two Boston authors
to prepare something which canvassers could handle.

"Why, any other means of bringing out a book is privately printing it,"
he declared, and added that his subscription books in Bliss's hands sold
right along, "just like the Bible."

On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a subscription
book which would sell straight along, like the Bible. It was to be
called "Twelve Memorable Murders." They had dreamed two or three
fortunes by the time they had reached Boston, but the project ended
there.

"We never killed a single soul," Howells said once to the writer of this
memoir.

Clemens was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He offered
all sorts of inducements.

You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had
thought of precipitating upon you, George Warner and his wife one
day, Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Charles
Perkins and wife another. Only those--simply members of our family
they are. But I'll close the door against them all, which will
"fix" all of the lot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to
climb in the back window than nothing.

And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please,
talk when you please, read when you please.

A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of them; to
come to Hartford to live.

Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just where we
drive in to go to our new house), will sell for $16,000 or $17,000.
You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't you?
Come! Will one of you boys buy that house? Now, say yes.

Certainly those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as Howells
says, the sun does not shine on their like any more--not in Hartford,
at least, for the old group that made them