er Clemens nor his wife had felt that they could
return to Buffalo. The home there was sold--its contents packed and
shipped. They did not see it again.

His book finished, Mark Twain lectured pretty steadily that winter, often
in the neighborhood of Boston, which was lecture headquarters. Mark
Twain enjoyed Boston. In Redpath's office one could often meet and "swap
stories" with Josh Billings (Henry W. Shaw) and Petroleum V. Nasby (David
R. Locke)--well-known humorists of that day--while in the strictly
literary circle there were William Dean Howells, Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
Bret Harte (who by this time had become famous and journeyed eastward),
and others of their sort. They were all young and eager and merry, then,
and they gathered at luncheons in snug corners and talked gaily far into
the dimness of winter afternoons. Harte had been immediately accorded a
high place in the Boston group. Mark Twain as a strictly literary man
was still regarded rather doubtfully by members of the older set--the
Brahmins, as they were called--but the young men already hailed him
joyfully, reveling in the fine, fearless humor of his writing, his
wonderful talk, his boundless humanity.

XXXIII.

IN ENGLAND

Mark Twain closed his lecture season in February (1872), and during the
same month his new book, "Roughing It," came from the press. He disliked
the lecture platform, and he felt that he could now abandon it. He had
made up his loss in Buffalo and something besides. Furthermore, the
advance sales on his book had been large.

"Roughing It," in fact, proved a very successful book. Like "The
Innocents Abroad," it was the first of its kind, fresh in its humor and
description, true in its picture of the frontier life he had known. In
three months forty thousand copies had been sold, and now, after more
than forty years, it is still a popular book. The life it describes is
all gone-the scenes are changed. It is a record of a vanished time--a
delightful history--as delightful to-day as ever.

Eighteen hundred and seventy-two was an eventful year for Mark Twain. In
March his second child, a little girl whom they named Susy, was born, and
three months later the boy, Langdon, died. He had never been really
strong, and a heavy cold and diphtheria brought the end.

Clemens did little work that summer. He took his family to Saybrook,
Connecticut, for the sea air, and near the end of August, when Mrs.
Clemens had regained strength and