also of their riders.  If he invested in an election, he knew all about the candidates.  He had agents among his own race, and among the whites as well, to supply him with information.  He kept them faithful to him by lending them money—­at ruinous interest.  He buttonholed Mark Twain’s callers while he was removing their coats concerning the political situation, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Clemens, who protested, though vainly, for the men liked George and his ways, and upheld him in his iniquities.

Mrs. Clemens’s disapproval of George reached the point, now and then, where she declared he could not remain.

She even discharged him once, but next morning George was at the breakfast-table, in attendance, as usual.  Mrs. Clemens looked at him gravely: 

“George,” she said, “didn’t I discharge you yesterday?”

“Yes, Mis’ Clemens, but I knew you couldn’t get along without me, so I thought I’d better stay a while.”

In one of the letters to Howells, Clemens wrote: 

When George first came he was one of the most religious of men.  He had but one fault—­young George Washington’s.  But I have trained him; and now it fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens’s heart to hear him stand at that front door and lie to an unwelcome visitor.

George was a fine diplomat.  He would come up to the billiard-room with a card or message from some one waiting below, and Clemens would fling his soul into a sultry denial which became a soothing and balmy subterfuge before it reached the front door.

The “slave” must have been setting the table in good season, for the Clemens breakfasts were likely to be late.  They usually came along about nine o’clock, by which time Howells and John were fairly clawing with hunger.

Clemens did not have an early appetite, but when it came it was a good one.  Breakfast and dinner were his important meals.  He seldom ate at all during the middle of the day, though if guests were present he would join them at luncheon-time and walk up and down while they were eating, talking and gesticulating in his fervent, fascinating way.  Sometimes Mrs. Clemens would say: 

“Oh, Youth, do come and sit down with us.  We can listen so much better.”

But he seldom did.  At dinner, too, it was his habit, between the courses, to rise from the table and walk up and down the room, waving his napkin and talking!—­talking in a strain and with a charm that he could never quite equal with his pen.  It’s the opinion of most people who knew Mark Twain personally that his impromptu utterances, delivered with that ineffable quality of speech, manifested the culmination of his genius.