nd so was comparatively a new
arrival.

A friendly policeman volunteered the news that he had seen Twain or
"some one very like him" driving a buggy the day before. This gave me a
delightful sense of nearness. Fancy living in a town where you could see
the author of _Tom Sawyer_, or "some one very like him," jolting over
the pavements in a buggy!

"He lives out yonder at East Hill," said the policeman; "three miles
from here."

Then the chase began--in a hired hack, up an awful hill, where
sunflowers blossomed by the roadside, and crops waved, and _Harper's
Magazine_ cows stood in eligible and commanding attitudes knee-deep in
clover, all ready to be transferred to photogravure. The great man must
have been persecuted by outsiders aforetime, and fled up the hill for
refuge.

Presently the driver stopped at a miserable, little, white wood shanty,
and demanded "Mister Clemens."

"I know he's a big-bug and all that," he explained, "but you can never
tell what sort of notions those sort of men take into their heads to
live in, anyways."

There rose up a young lady who was sketching thistle-tops and goldenrod,
amid a plentiful supply of both, and set the pilgrimage on the right
path.

"It's a pretty Gothic house on the left-hand side a little way farther
on."

"Gothic h----," said the driver. "Very few of the city hacks take this
drive, specially if they know they are coming out here," and he glared
at me savagely.

It was a very pretty house, anything but Gothic, clothed with ivy,
standing in a very big compound, and fronted by a verandah full of
chairs and hammocks. The roof of the verandah was a trellis-work of
creepers, and the sun peeping through moved on the shining boards
below.

Decidedly this remote place was an ideal one for work, if a man could
work among these soft airs and the murmur of the long-eared crops.

Appeared suddenly a lady used to dealing with rampageous outsiders. "Mr.
Clemens has just walked down-town. He is at his brother-in-law's house."

Then he was within shouting distance, after all, and the chase had not
been in vain. With speed I fled, and the driver, skidding the wheel and
swearing audibly, arrived at the bottom of that hill without accidents.
It was in the pause that followed between ringing the brother-in-law's
bell and getting an answer that it occurred to me for the first time
Mark Twain might possibly have other engagements than the entertainment
of escaped lunatics fr