t all through it with handkerchiefs stuffed in their mouths to
try to keep down their joy. And Harris told me that he was sure he never
had seen his congregation--the whole body of his congregation--the
_entire_ body of his congregation--absorbed in interest in his sermon,
from beginning to end, before. Always there had been an aspect of
indifference, here and there, or wandering, somewhere; but this time
there was nothing of the kind. Those people sat there as if they
thought, "Good for this day and train only: we must have all there is of
this show, not waste any of it." And he said that when he came down out
of the pulpit more people waited to shake him by the hand and tell him
what a good sermon it was, than ever before. And it seemed a pity that
these people should do these fictions in such a place--right in the
church--when it was quite plain they were not interested in the sermon
at all; they only wanted to get a near view of his head.

Well, Harris said--no, Harris didn't say, _I_ say, that as the days went
on and Sunday followed Sunday, the interest in Harris's hair grew and
grew; because it didn't stay merely and monotonously green, it took on
deeper and deeper shades of green; and then it would change and become
reddish, and would go from that to some other color--purplish,
yellowish, bluish, and so on--but it was never a solid color. It was
always mottled. And each Sunday it was a little more interesting than it
was the Sunday before--and Harris's head became famous, and people came
from New York, and Boston, and South Carolina, and Japan, and so on, to
look. There wasn't seating-capacity for all the people that came while
his head was undergoing these various and fascinating mottlings. And it
was a good thing in several ways, because the business had been
languishing a little, and now a lot of people joined the church so that
they could have the show, and it was the beginning of a prosperity for
that church which has never diminished in all these years.

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DCXII.

APRIL 5, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XV.

BY MARK TWAIN.

[_Dictated October 8, 1906._]

_From Susy's Biography of Me._

Papa says that if the collera comes here he will take Sour Mash to
the mountains.

[Sidenote: (1885.)]

This remark about the cat is followed b