ail, and I do not know why it happened. Wealthy men and women
manifested an interest; but there was some hitch somewhere, and the
Children's Theater exists to-day only as history.--[In a letter to a
Mrs. Amelia Dunne Hookway, who had conducted some children's plays at
the Howland School, Chicago, Mark Twain once wrote: "If I were going to
begin life over again I would have a children's theater and watch it,
and work for it, and see it grow and blossom and bear its rich moral and
intellectual fruitage; and I should get more pleasure and a saner and
healthier profit out of my vocation than I should ever be able to get
out of any other, constituted as I am. Yes, you are easily the most
fortunate of women, I think."]

It was at a dinner at The Players--a small, private dinner given by Mr.
George C. Riggs-that I saw Edward L. Burlingame and Mark Twain for the
only time together. They had often met during the forty-two years that
had passed since their long-ago Sandwich Island friendship; but only
incidentally, for Mr. Burlingame cared not much for great public
occasions, and as editor of Scribner's Magazine he had been somewhat out
of the line of Mark Twain's literary doings.

Howells was there, and Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, and David Bispham, John
Finley, Evan Shipman, Nicholas Biddle, and David Munro. Clemens told
that night, for the first time, the story of General Miles and the
three-dollar dog, inventing it, I believe, as he went along, though for
the moment it certainly did sound like history. He told it often after
that, and it has been included in his book of speeches.

Later, in the cab, he said:

"That was a mighty good dinner. Riggs knows how to do that sort of
thing. I enjoyed it ever so much. Now we'll go home and play billiards."

We began about eleven o'clock, and played until after midnight. I
happened to be too strong for him, and he swore amazingly. He vowed that
it was not a gentleman's game at all, that Riggs's wine had demoralized
the play. But at the end, when we were putting up the cues, he said:

"Well, those were good games. There is nothing like billiards after
all."

We did not play billiards on his birthday that year. He went to the
theater in the afternoon; and it happened that, with Jesse Lynch
Williams, I attended the same performance--the "Toy-Maker of
Nuremberg"--written by Austin Strong. It proved to be a charming play,
and I could see that Clemens was enjoying it. He sat in a box nex