r eye and this demand on her
tongue, "Where is the profanity Mr. Howells speaks of?" Then I had
to miserably confess that I had left it out when reading the MS. to
her. Nothing but almost inspired lying got me out of this scrape
with my scalp. Does your wife give you rats, like that, when you go
a little one-sided?

The Clemens family did not, go to Elmira that year. The children's
health seemed to require the sea-shore, and in August they went to
Bateman's Point, Rhode Island, where Clemens most of the time played
tenpins in an alley that had gone to ruin. The balls would not stay on
the track; the pins stood at inebriate angles. It reminded him of the
old billiard-tables of Western mining-camps, and furnished the same
uncertainty of play. It was his delight, after he had become accustomed
to the eccentricities of the alley, to invite in a stranger and watch his
suffering and his frantic effort to score.

CII

"SKETCHES NEW AND OLD"

The long-delayed book of Sketches, contracted for five years before, was
issued that autumn. "The Jumping Frog," which he had bought from Webb,
was included in the volume, also the French translation which Madame
Blanc (Th. Bentzon) had made for the Revue des deux mondes, with Mark
Twain's retranslation back into English, a most astonishing performance
in its literal rendition of the French idiom. One example will suffice
here. It is where the stranger says to Smiley, "I don't see no p'ints
about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

Says the French, retranslated:

"Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog" (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait mieux qu'aucune
grenouille). (If that isn't grammar gone to seed then I count myself no
judge.--M. T.)

"Possible that you not it saw not," said Smiley; "possible that you you
comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
an amateur. Of all manner (de toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that
she batter in jumping, no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras."

He included a number of sketches originally published with the Frog, also
a selection from the "Memoranda" and Buffalo Express contributions, and
he put in the story of Auntie Cord, with some matter which had never
hitherto appeared. True Williams illustrated the book, but either it
furnished him no inspiration or