et, and the dictations gave him
employment. A part of his entertainment was a trio of kittens which he
had rented for the summer--rented because then they would not lose
ownership and would find home and protection in the fall. He named the
kittens Sackcloth and Ashes--Sackcloth being a black-and-white kit, and
Ashes a joint name owned by the two others, who were gray and exactly
alike. All summer long these merry little creatures played up and down
the wide veranda, or chased butterflies and grasshoppers down the clover
slope, offering Mark Twain never-ending amusement. He loved to see them
spring into the air after some insect, miss it, tumble back, and quickly
jump up again with a surprised and disappointed expression.

In spite of his resolve not to print any of his autobiography until he
had been dead a hundred years, he was persuaded during the summer to
allow certain chapters of it to be published in "The North American
Review." With the price received, thirty thousand dollars, he announced
he was going to build himself a country home at Redding, Connecticut, on
land already purchased there, near a small country place of my own. He
wished to have a fixed place to go each summer, he said, and his thought
was to call it "Autobiography House."

[12] His special favorites were Schubert's Op. 142, part 2, and Chopin's
Op. 37, part 2.

LXII

A NEW ERA OF BILLIARDS

With the return to New York I began a period of closer association with
Mark Twain. Up to that time our relations had been chiefly of a literary
nature. They now became personal as well.

It happened in this way: Mark Twain had never outgrown his love for the
game of billiards, though he had not owned a table since the closing of
the Hartford house, fifteen years before. Mrs. Henry Rogers had proposed
to present him with a table for Christmas, but when he heard of the plan,
boylike, he could not wait, and hinted that if he had the table "right
now" he could begin to use it sooner. So the table came--a handsome
combination affair, suitable to all games--and was set in place. That
morning when the dictation ended he said:

"Have you any special place to lunch, to-day?"

I replied that I had not.

"Lunch here," he said, "and we'll try the new billiard-table."

I acknowledged that I had never played more than a few games of pool, and
those very long ago.

"No matter," he said "the poorer you play the better I shall like it."

So I remained f