ness snarls & make him read interminable
bile-irruptions besides; I can't use Howells, he is busy & old & lazy,
& won't stand it; I dasn't use Clara, there's things I have to say which
she wouldn't put up with--a very dear little ashcat, but has claws. And
so--you're It.

[See the preface to the "Autobiography of Mark Twain": 'I am writing
from the grave. On these terms only can a man be approximately
frank. He cannot be straitly and unqualifiedly frank either in the
grave or out of it.' D.W.]

CCXXXV. A SUMMER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

He took for the summer a house at Dublin, New Hampshire, the home of
Henry Copley Greene, Lone Tree Hill, on the Monadnock slope. It was in a
lovely locality, and for neighbors there were artists, literary people,
and those of kindred pursuits, among them a number of old friends.
Colonel Higginson had a place near by, and Abbott H. Thayer, the
painter, and George de Forest Brush, and the Raphael Pumpelly family,
and many more.

Colonel Higginson wrote Clemens a letter of welcome as soon as the news
got out that he was going to Dublin; and Clemens, answering, said:

I early learned that you would be my neighbor in the summer & I
rejoiced, recognizing in you & your family a large asset. I hope
for frequent intercourse between the two households. I shall have
my youngest daughter with me. The other one will go from the rest-
cure in this city to the rest-cure in Norfolk, Connecticut; & we
shall not see her before autumn. We have not seen her since the
middle of October.

Jean, the younger daughter, went to Dublin & saw the house & came
back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old--manifestly there
is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were
shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near 40 years ago.

Aldrich was here half an hour ago, like a breeze from over the
fields, with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired
wanting for that man to get old.

They went to Dublin in May, and became at once a part of the summer
colony which congregated there. There was much going to and fro
among the different houses, pleasant afternoons in the woods,
mountain-climbing for Jean, and everywhere a spirit of fine,
unpretentious comradeship.

The Copley Greene house was romantically situated, with a charming
outlook. Clemens wrote to Twichell:

We like it here in the mountains, in the shadows of M