Language wasn’t capable of conveying this woman’s disgust.  But the sense of what she said was, “He couldn’t have done any harm in the conservatory; so you must go and make the entire house free to him and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to the drawing-room.  If you had had Mr. Howells to help you I should have admired, but not have been astonished, because I should know that together you would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive such a stately blunder all by yourself is what I cannot understand.”

So, you see, even she knows how to appreciate our gifts....

I knocked off during these stirring hours, and don’t intend to go to work again till we go away for the summer, four or six weeks hence.  So I am writing to you, not because I have anything to say, but because you don’t have to answer and I need something to do this afternoon.

The rightful earl has——­
Friday, 7th.

Well, never mind about the rightful earl; he merely wanted to-borrow
money.  I never knew an American earl that didn’t.

After a trip to Boston, during which Mrs. Clemens did some bric-a-brac shopping, he wrote: 

Mrs. Clemens has two imperishable topics now:  the museum of andirons which she collected and your dinner.  It is hard to tell which she admires the most.  Sometimes she leans one way and sometimes the other; but I lean pretty steadily toward the dinner because I can appreciate that, whereas I am no prophet in andirons.  There has been a procession of Adams Express wagons filing before the door all day delivering andirons.

In a more serious vein he refers to the aged violinist Ole Bull and his wife, whom they had met during their visit, and their enjoyment of that gentle-hearted pair.

Clemens did some shorter work that spring, most of which found its way into the Atlantic.  “Edward Mills and George Benton,” one of the contributions of this time, is a moral sermon in its presentation of a pitiful human spectacle and misdirected human zeal.

It brought a pack of letters of approval, not only from laity, but the church, and in some measure may have helped to destroy the silly sentimentalism which manifested itself in making heroes of spectacular criminals.  That fashion has gone out, largely.  Mark Twain wrote frequently on the subject, though never more effectively than in this particular instance.  “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning” was another Atlantic story, a companion piece to “Mrs. McWilliams’s Experience with the Membranous Croup,” and in the same delightful vein—­a vein in which Mark Twain was likely to be at his best—­the transcription of a scene not so far removed in character from that in the “cat” letter just quoted:  something which may or may not have happened, but might have happened, approximately as set down.  Rose Terry Cooke wrote: