m church 5 minutes later; I
took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and read,
and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear. There is
more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the
petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. I was peculiarly alive to his
performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I
awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable
hours, I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep
from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark. Slowly but
surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one
slipper on and the other in my hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept
softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and
among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept
it up and kept it up. At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock,"
but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and
stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down
on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof
off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could
see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong
place and could give me no information as to where I was. But I had
one comfort--I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in
silence if the night lasted long enough. So I started again and softly
pawed all over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I
laid my hand on the missing article. I rose joyfully up and butted the
wash-bowl and pitcher off the stand and simply raised----so to speak.
Livy screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said
"There ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock." She said,
"Are you hunting for it with a club?"

I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided
and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.
So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the
adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper
a good deal to my satisfaction.

I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago. When it was first lost I
was glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of
writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would
render the writing of this on