. Next
day he wrote:

You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful
--Mrs. Clemens. For months--I may even say years--she has shown an
unaccountable animosity toward my necktie, even getting up in the
night to take it with the tongs and blackguard it, sometimes also
getting so far as to threaten it.

When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neckties, and that
they were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of
happiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the
venom in her nature gathered itself together; insomuch that I, being
near to a door, went without, perceiving danger.

It is recorded that eventually he wore the neckties, and returned no more
to the earlier mode.

Another memory of that dinner is linked to a demand that Aldrich made of
Clemens that night, for his photograph. Clemens, returning to Hartford,
put up fifty-two different specimens in as many envelopes, with the idea
of sending one a week for a year. Then he concluded that this was too
slow a process, and for a week sent one every morning to "His Grace of
Ponkapog."

Aldrich stood it for a few days, then protested. "The police," he said,
"are in the habit of swooping down upon a publication of that sort."

On New-Year's no less than twenty pictures came at once--photographs and
prints of Mark Twain, his house, his family, his various belongings.
Aldrich sent a warning then that the perpetrator of this outrage was
known to the police as Mark Twain, alias "The Jumping Frog," a well-known
California desperado, who would be speedily arrested and brought to
Ponkapog to face his victim. This letter was signed "T. Bayleigh, Chief
of Police," and on the outside of the envelope there was a statement that
it would be useless for that person to send any more mail-matter, as the
post-office had been blown up. The jolly farce closed there. It was the
sort of thing that both men enjoyed.

Aldrich was writing a story at this time which contained some Western
mining incident and environment. He sent the manuscript to Clemens for
"expert" consideration and advice. Clemens wrote him at great length and
in careful detail. He was fond of Aldrich, regarding him as one of the
most brilliant of men. Once, to Robert Louis Stevenson, he said:

"Aldrich has never had his peer for prompt and pithy and witty and
humorous sayings. None has equaled him, certainly none h