He still had violent rages now and then, remembering some of the most notable of his mistakes; and once, after denouncing himself, rather inclusively, as an idiot, he said: 

“I wish to God the lightning would strike me; but I’ve wished that fifty thousand times and never got anything out of it yet.  I have missed several good chances.  Mrs. Clemens was afraid of lightning, and would never let me bare my head to the storm.”

The element of humor was never lacking, and the rages became less violent and less frequent.

I was at Stormfield steadily now, and there was a regular routine of afternoon sessions of billiards or reading, in which we were generally alone; for Jean, occupied with her farming and her secretary labors, seldom appeared except at meal-times.  Occasionally she joined in the billiard games; but it was difficult learning and her interest was not great.  She would have made a fine player, for she had a natural talent for games, as she had for languages, and she could have mastered the science of angles as she had mastered tennis and French and German and Italian.  She had naturally a fine intellect, with many of her father’s characteristics, and a tender heart that made every dumb creature her friend.

Katie Leary, who had been Jean’s nurse, once told how, as a little child, Jean had not been particularly interested in a picture of the Lisbon earthquake, where the people were being swallowed up; but on looking at the next page, which showed a number of animals being overwhelmed, she had said: 

“Poor things!”

Katie said: 

“Why, you didn’t say that about the people!”

But Jean answered: 

“Oh, they could speak.”

One night at the dinner-table her father was saying how difficult it must be for a man who had led a busy life to give up the habit of work.

“That is why the Rogerses kill themselves,” he said.  “They would rather kill themselves in the old treadmill than stop and try to kill time.  They have forgotten how to rest.  They know nothing but to keep on till they drop.”

I told of something I had read not long before.  It was about an aged lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island.  He had not offered to hurt any one; but after wandering about a little, rather aimlessly, he had come to a picket-fence, and a moment later began pacing up and down in front of it, just the length of his cage.  They had come and led him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly into it.  I noticed that Jean was listening anxiously, and when I finished she said: 

“Is that a true story?”

She had forgotten altogether the point in illustration.  She was concerned only with the poor old beast that had found no joy in his liberty.

Among the letters that Clemens wrote just then was one to Miss Wallace, in which he described the glory of the fall colors as seen from his windows.