no longer assembles there.
Hartford about this time became a sort of shrine for all literary
visitors, and for other notables as well, whether of America or from
overseas. It was the half-way place between Boston and New York,
and pilgrims going in either direction rested there. It is said that
travelers arriving in America, were apt to remember two things they
wished to see: Niagara Falls and Mark Twain. But the Falls had no such
recent advertising advantage as that spectacular success in London.
Visitors were apt to begin in Hartford.

Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or rather with
regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his coming was always hailed
with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around at one place and
another among that pleasant circle of friends. But they were happiest
afterward together, Clemens smoking continually, "soothing his tense
nerves with a mild hot Scotch," says Howells, "while we both talked, and
talked, and tasked of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and
the waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would
come away hollow, realizing myself best in the image of one of those
locust-shells which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end
of summer." Sometimes Clemens told the story of his early life, "the
inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I could never
tire of even when it began to be told over again."

XCIV. BEGINNING "TOM SAWYER"

The Clemens household went to Quarry Farm in April, leaving the new
house once more in the hands of the architect and builders. It was
costing a vast sum of money, and there was a financial stress upon land.
Mrs. Clemens, always prudent, became a little uneasy at times, though
without warrant in those days, for her business statement showed that
her holdings were only a little less than a quarter of a million in
her own right, while her husband's books and lectures had been highly
remunerative, and would be more so. They were justified in living in
ample, even luxurious comfort, and how free from financial worries they
could have lived for the rest of their days!

Clemens, realizing his happiness, wrote Dr. Brown:

Indeed I am thankful for the wifey and the child, and if there is one
individual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly and
uniformly and, unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to produce
him and prove him. In my opinion he don't exist. I was a mi