for I
have had 60 years' experience.

No, that is not what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than
anybody else. I judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents
I know it to be either foreign or half foreign & unsmokable--by me.
I have many boxes of Havana cigars, of all prices from 20 cents
apiece up to $1.66 apiece; I bought none of them, they were all
presents; they are an accumulation of several years. I have never
smoked one of them & never shall; I work them off on the visitor.
You shall have a chance when you come.

He smoked a pipe a good deal, and he preferred it to be old and violent;
and once, when he had bought a new, expensive English brier-root he
regarded it doubtfully for a time, and then handed it over to me,
saying:

"I'd like to have you smoke that a year or two, and when it gets so you
can't stand it, maybe it will suit me."

I am happy to add that subsequently he presented me with the pipe
altogether, for it apparently never seemed to get qualified for his
taste, perhaps because the tobacco used was too mild.

One day, after the dictation, word was brought up that a newspaper man
was down-stairs who wished to see him concerning a report that Chauncey
Depew was to resign his Senatorial seat and Mark Twain was to be
nominated in his place. The fancy of this appealed to him, and the
reporter was allowed to come up. He was a young man, and seemed rather
nervous, and did not wish to state where the report had originated. His
chief anxiety was apparently to have Mark Twain's comment on the matter.
Clemens said very little at the time. He did not wish to be a Senator;
he was too busy just now dictating biography, and added that he didn't
think he would care for the job, anyway. When the reporter was gone,
however, certain humorous possibilities developed. The Senatorship
would be a stepping-stone to the Presidency, and with the combination
of humorist, socialist, and peace-patriot in the Presidential chair the
nation could expect an interesting time. Nothing further came of the
matter. There was no such report. The young newspaper man had invented
the whole idea to get a "story" out of Mark Twain. The item as printed
next day invited a good deal of comment, and Collier's Weekly made it
a text for an editorial on his mental vigor and general fitness for the
place.

If it happened that he had no particular engagement for the afternoon,
he liked to walk o