he Modoc rips and tears around outdoors most of the
time, and consequently is as hard as a pineknot and as brown as an
Indian. She is bosom friend to all the chickens, ducks, turkeys,
and guinea-hens on the place. Yesterday, as she marched along the
winding path that leads up the hill through the red-clover beds to
the summer-house, there was a long procession of these fowls
stringing contentedly after her, led by a stately rooster, who can
look over the Modoc's head. The devotion of these vassals has been
purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, and so the Modoc,
attended by her body-guard, moves in state wherever she goes.

There were days, mainly Sundays, when he did not work at all; peaceful
days of lying fallow, dreaming in shady places, drowsily watching little
Susy, or reading with Mrs. Clemens. Howells's "Foregone Conclusion" was
running in the Atlantic that year, and they delighted in it. Clemens
wrote the author:

I should think that this must be the daintiest, truest, most
admirable workmanship that was ever put on a story. The creatures
of God do not act out their natures more unerringly than yours do.
If your genuine stories can die I wonder by what right old Walter
Scott's artificialities shall continue to live.

At other times he found comfort in the society of Theodore Crane. These
two were always fond of each other, and often read together the books in
which they were mutually interested. They had portable-hammock
arrangements, which they placed side by side on the lawn, and read and
discussed through summer afternoons. The 'Mutineers of the Bounty' was
one of the books they liked best, and there was a story of an Iceland
farmer, a human document, that had an unfading interest. Also there were
certain articles in old numbers of the Atlantic that they read and
reread. 'Pepys' Diary', 'Two Years Before the Mast', and a book on the
Andes were reliable favorites. Mark Twain read not so many books, but
read a few books often. Those named were among the literature he asked
for each year of his return to Quarry Farm. Without them, the farm and
the summer would not be the same.

Then there was 'Lecky's History of European Morals'; there were periods
when they read Lecky avidly and discussed it in original and unorthodox
ways. Mark Twain found an echo of his own philosophies in Lecky. He
made frequent marginal notes along the pages of the world's mor