s and where visitors were
always welcome. Clemens was the best kind of a host; his evenings
after dinner were an unending flow of stories."

As for friends living near, they usually came and went at will, often
without the ceremony of knocking or formal leave-taking. The two Warner
famines were among these, the home of Charles Dudley Warner being only a
step away. Dr. and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe were also close neighbors,
while the Twichell parsonage was not far. They were all like one great
family, of which Mark Twain's home was the central gathering-place.

XXXVII.

"OLD TIMES," "SKETCHES," AND "TOM SAWYER"

The Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and Mark Twain used to take many long walks
together, and once they decided to walk from Hartford to Boston--about
one hundred miles. They decided to allow three days for the trip, and
really started one morning, with some luncheon in a basket, and a little
bag of useful articles. It was a bright, brisk November day, and they
succeeded in getting to Westford, a distance of twenty-eight miles, that
evening. But they were lame and foot-sore, and next morning, when they
had limped six miles or so farther, Clemens telegraphed to Redpath:

"We have made thirty-five miles in less than five days. This shows
the thing can be done. Shall finish now by rail. Did you have any
bets on us?"

He also telegraphed Howells that they were about to arrive in Boston, and
they did, in fact, reach the Howells home about nine o'clock, and found
excellent company--the Cambridge set--and a most welcome supper waiting.
Clemens and Twichell were ravenous. Clemens demanded food immediately.
Howells writes:

"I can see him now as he stood up in the midst of our friends, with
his head thrown back, and in his hands a dish of those scalloped
oysters without which no party in Cambridge was really a party,
exulting in the tale of his adventure, which had abounded in the
most original characters and amusing incidents at every mile of
their progress."

The pedestrians returned to Hartford a day or two later--by train. It
was during another, though less extended, tour which Twichell and Clemens
made that fall, that the latter got his idea for a Mississippi book.
Howells had been pleading for something for the January "Atlantic," of
which he was now chief editor, but thus far Mark Twain's inspiration had
failed. He wrote at last, "My head won't go," but later, the same day,