balls and hadn't yet
reached the cluster of pins, his annoyance began to show out through his
clothes. He wouldn't let it show in his face; but after another fifteen
balls he was not able to control his face; he didn't utter a word, but
he exuded mute blasphemy from every pore. He asked permission to take
off his coat, which was granted; then he turned himself loose, with
bitter determination, and although he was only an infantry officer he
could have been mistaken for a battery, he got up such a volleying
thunder with those balls. Presently he removed his cravat; after a
little he took off his vest; and still he went bravely on. Higgins was
suffocating. My condition was the same, but it would not be courteous to
laugh; it would be better to burst, and we came near it. That officer
was good pluck. He stood to his work without uttering a word, and kept
the balls going until he had expended the outfit four times, making four
times forty-one shots; then he had to give it up, and he did; for he was
no longer able to stand without wobbling. He put on his clothes, bade us
a courteous good-by, invited us to call at the Fort, and started away.
Then he came back, and said,

"What is the prize for the ten-strike?"

We had to confess that we had not selected it yet.

He said, gravely, that he thought there was no occasion for hurry about
it.

I believe Bateman's alley was a better one than any other in America, in
the matter of the essentials of the game. It compelled skill; it
provided opportunity for bets; and if you could get a stranger to do the
bowling for you, there was more and wholesomer and delightfuler
entertainment to be gotten out of his industries than out of the finest
game by the best expert, and played upon the best alley elsewhere in
existence.

MARK TWAIN.

(_To be Continued._)

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. DCXXV.

DECEMBER, 1907.

CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--XXV.

BY MARK TWAIN.

_January 11, 1906._ Answer to a letter received this morning:

DEAR MRS. H.,--I am forever your debtor for reminding me of that
curious passage in my life. During the first year or two after it
happened, I could not bear to think of it. My pain and shame were
so intense, and my sense of having been an imbecile so settled,
established and confirmed, that I drove the episode entirely from
my mind--and