the summer
at very moderate rates indeed. Weggis is a beautiful spot, looking
across the blue water to Mount Pilatus, the lake shore dotted with white
villages. Down by the water, but a few yards from the cottage--for it
was scarcely a villa except by courtesy--there was a little inclosure,
and a bench under a large tree, a quiet spot where Clemens often sat
to rest and smoke. The fact is remembered there to-day, and recorded. A
small tablet has engraved upon it "Mark Twain Ruhe." Farther along
the shore he discovered a neat, white cottage were some kindly
working-people agreed to rent him an upper room for a study. It was a
sunny room with windows looking out upon the lake, and he worked there
steadily. To Twichell he wrote:

This is the charmingest place we have ever lived in for repose and
restfulness, superb scenery whose beauty undergoes a perpetual change
from one miracle to another, yet never runs short of fresh surprises and
new inventions. We shall always come here for the summers if we can.

The others have climbed the Rigi, he says, and he expects to some day if
Twichell will come and climb it with him. They had climbed it together
during that summer vagabondage, nineteen years before.

He was full of enthusiasm over his work. To F. H. Skrine, in London,
he wrote that he had four or five books all going at once, and his
note-book contains two or three pages merely of titles of the stories he
proposed to write.

But of the books begun that summer at Weggis none appears to have been
completed. There still exists a bulky, half-finished manuscript about
Tom and Huck, most of which was doubtless written at this time, and
there is the tale already mentioned, the "dream" story; and another tale
with a plot of intricate psychology and crime; still another with the
burning title of "Hell-Fire Hotchkiss"--a story of Hannibal life--and
some short stories. Clemens appeared to be at this time out of tune with
fiction. Perhaps his long book of travel had disqualified his invention.
He realized that these various literary projects were leading nowhere,
and one after another he dropped them. The fact that proofs of the big
book were coming steadily may also have interfered with his creative
faculty.

As was his habit, Clemens formed the acquaintance of a number of the
native residents, and enjoyed talking to them about their business and
daily affairs. They were usually proud and glad of these attentions,
quick to see