, and Livy. I read in
Twichell's chapel Friday night and had a most rattling high time--but
the thing that went best of all was Uncle Remus's Tar Baby. I mean
to try that on my dusky audience. They've all heard that tale from
childhood--at least the older members have.

I arrived home in time to make a most noble blunder--invited Charley
Warner here (in Livy's name) to dinner with the Gerhardts, and told him
Livy had invited his wife by letter and by word of mouth also. I don't
know where I got these impressions, but I came home feeling as one does
who realizes that he has done a neat thing for once and left no flaws or
loop-holes. Well, Livy said she had never told me to invite Charley
and she hadn't dreamed of inviting Susy, and moreover there wasn't
any dinner, but just one lean duck. But Susy Warner's intuitions were
correct--so she choked off Charley, and staid home herself--we waited
dinner an hour and you ought to have seen that duck when he was done
drying in the oven.

MARK.

Clemens and his wife were always privately assisting worthy and
ambitious young people along the way of achievement. Young actors
were helped through dramatic schools; young men and women were
assisted through college and to travel abroad. Among others Clemens
paid the way of two colored students, one through a Southern
institution and another through the Yale law school.

The mention of the name of Gerhardt in the preceding letter
introduces the most important, or at least the most extensive, of
these benefactions. The following letter gives the beginning of the
story:

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Private and Confidential.

HARTFORD, Feb. 21, 1881.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Well, here is our romance.

It happened in this way. One morning, a month ago--no, three
weeks--Livy, and Clara Spaulding and I were at breakfast, at 10 A.M.,
and I was in an irritable mood, for the barber was up stairs waiting
and his hot water getting cold, when the colored George returned from
answering the bell and said: "There's a lady in the drawing-room wants
to see you." "A book agent!" says I, with heat. "I won't see her; I will
die in my tracks, first."

Then I got up with a soul full of rage, and went in there and bent
scowling over that person, and began a succession of rude and raspy
questions--and without even o