day evening our cows (after being inspected and worshiped by
Jean from the shed for an hour) wandered off down into the pasture
and left her bereft. I thought I was going to get back home, now,
but that was an error. Jean knew of some more cows in a field
somewhere, and took my hand and led me thitherward. When we turned
the corner and took the right-hand road, I saw that we should
presently be out of range of call and sight; so I began to argue
against continuing the expedition, and Jean began to argue in favor
of it, she using English for light skirmishing and German for
"business." I kept up my end with vigor, and demolished her
arguments in detail, one after the other, till I judged I had her
about cornered. She hesitated a moment, then answered up, sharply:

"Wir werden nichts mehr daruber sprechen!" (We won't talk any more
about it.)

It nearly took my breath away, though I thought I might possibly
have misunderstood. I said:

"Why, you little rascal! Was hast du gesagt?"

But she said the same words over again, and in the same decided way.
I suppose I ought to have been outraged, but I wasn't; I was
charmed.

His own note-books of that summer are as full as usual, but there are
fewer literary ideas and more philosophies. There was an excitement,
just then, about the trichina germ in pork, and one of his memoranda
says:

I think we are only the microscopic trichina concealed in the blood
of some vast creature's veins, and that it is that vast creature
whom God concerns himself about and not us.

And there is another which says:

People, in trying to justify eternity, say we can put it in by
learning all the knowledge acquired by the inhabitants of the
myriads of stars. We sha'n't need that. We could use up two
eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own
world, and the thousands of nations that have risen, and flourished,
and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight
million years.

He records an incident which he related more fully in a letter to
Howells:

Before I forget it I must tell you that Mrs. Clemens has said a
bright thing. A drop-letter came to me asking me to lecture here
for a church debt. I began to rage over the exceedingly cool
wording of the request, when Mrs. Clemens said: "I think I know that
church, and, if so, th