kwheat. I always recognize buckwheat when I see it. I
wish I knew as much about other things as I know about buckwheat."

The clear-running brooks, a swift-flowing river, a tumbling cascade where
we climbed a hill, all came in for his approval--then we were at the lane
that led to his new home, and the procession behind dropped away. The
carriage ascended still higher, and a view opened across the Saugatuck
Valley, with its nestling village and church-spire and farmhouses, and
beyond them the distant hills. Then came the house--simple in design,
but beautiful--an Italian villa, such as he had known in Florence,
adapted here to American climate and needs.

At the entrance his domestic staff waited to greet him, and presently he
stepped across the threshold and stood in his own home for the first time
in seventeen years. Nothing was lacking--it was as finished, as
completely furnished, as if he had occupied it a lifetime. No one spoke
immediately, but when his eyes had taken in the harmony of the place,
with its restful, home-like comfort, and followed through the open French
windows to the distant vista of treetops and farmsides and blue hills,
he said, very gently:

"How beautiful it all is! I did not think it could be as beautiful
as this." And later, when he had seen all of the apartments: "It is
a perfect house--perfect, so far as I can see, in every detail. It
might have been here always."

There were guests that first evening--a small home dinner-party--and a
little later at the foot of the garden some fireworks were set off by
neighbors inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located in Redding.
Mark Twain, watching the rockets that announced his arrival, said,
gently:

"I wonder why they go to so much trouble for me. I never go to any
trouble for anybody."

The evening closed with billiards, hilarious games, and when at midnight
the cues were set in the rack no one could say that Mark Twain's first
day in his new home had not been a happy one.

LXVI

LIFE AT STORMFIELD

Mark Twain loved Stormfield. Almost immediately he gave up the idea of
going back to New York for the winter, and I think he never entered the
Fifth Avenue house again. The quiet and undisturbed comfort of
Stormfield came to him at the right time of life. His day of being the
"Belle of New York" was over. Now and then he attended some great
dinner, but always under protest. Finally he refused to go at all. He