April 11, 1878, Mark Twain sailed for Europe on the steamship Holsatia. He was accompanied by his family, and after drifting about for some months on foreign shores, settled down to spend the summer in Germany. In 1879 he returned to his home in Hartford, and after several months of work produced another book, A Tramp Abroad. This work had a ready and a very large sale, and has become quite popular. In 1881 he issued another book through a Boston house, The Prince and Pauper. This also has had a large sale in this and other countries. Among his other accomplishments Clemens is a politician, and has done good service on the stump for the Republican party. For all this he is the proud possessor of the title of Honorable. Many of the most ludicrous scenes in the works of Mark Twain are taken from life. The steamboat scene in the adventures of Colonel Sellers, was witnessed by him when a young man. His adventure with a dead man was in his father’s office in Missouri. His description of the horror creeping over him, as he saw a ghastly hand lying in the moonlight; how he tried to shut his eyes and tried to count, and opened them in time to see the dead man lying on the floor stiff and stark, with a ghastly wound in his side, and lastly how he beat a terrified retreat through the window, carrying the sash with him, is vividly remembered by every reader of The Gilded Age. The whole thing transpired just as Mark recorded it--the man was killed in a street fight almost in front of Mr. Clemens’ door, was taken in there while a _post mortem_ examination was held, and there left until the next morning. During the night Mark came in, and the scene he described was really enacted. The Clemens mansion in Hartford is a model of architectural beauty, and is elegantly finished in the interior. In the library, over the large fire-place, is a brass plate with the inscription in old English text: “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.” Mark does not use the library for his study, but does nearly all his writing in the billiard room at the top of the house. It is a long room, with sloping sides, is light and airy, and very quiet. In this room Mark writes at a plain table, with his reference books lying scattered about him. He makes it an invariable rule to do a certain amount of literary work every day, and his working hours are made continuous by his not taking a mid-day meal. He destroys much manuscript, and it is said he rewrote five hundred pages of one of his popular books. Mark is an industrious worker, and continues his labors the year round. In summer he retreats to his villa on the Hudson, or to a little cottage in the mountains near Elmira, New York. There he finds the most quiet solitude, and there he works undisturbed. Mark is fond of his home life, and of his three beautiful children. He has achieved a notable success as a lecturer, both in this country and in England.