We were fortunate enough to catch several male puffins, which were so ingenuous as to eat the carpet-tacks we offered them. The puffin (_Thalassidroma buleverii_), is easily distinguishable from the more effete robin of America because the two birds are similar in no essential points. This makes it convenient for the naturalist, who might otherwise get them mixed. Puffins are hunted principally for their companionable qualities, a domesticated puffin being held the equal--if not quite--of the average Dobrudjan housewife in many respects, such as, for instance, self-respect. It was late in the afternoon of the third day, when we finally reached Dimbovitza, and the cool _llemla_ was indeed refreshing. It had been, we one and all agreed, a most interesting trip, and we vowed that we should not forget our Three Days in the Dobrudja. Dead Leaves "Ain't you got them dishes done up yet, Irma?" A petulant voice from what, in Central New England, is called the "sittin' room," penetrated the cool silence of the farm-house kitchen. Irma Hathaway passed her hand heavily before her eyes. "Yes, Ma," she replied wearily, as she threw a cup at the steel engraving of "The Return of the Mayflower" which hung on the kitchen wall. She wondered when she would die. A cold wind blew along the corridor which connected the kitchen with the wood-shed. Then, as if disgruntled, it blew back again, like a man returning to his room after a fresh handkerchief. Irma shuddered. It was all so inexplicably depressing. For eighteen years the sun had never been able to shine in Bemis Corners. God knows it had tried. But there had always been something imponderable, something monstrously bleak, which had thrown itself, like a great cloak, between the warm light of that body and the grim reality of Bemis Corners. "If Eben had only known," thought Irma, and buried her face in the soapy water. Some one entered the room from the wood-shed, stamping the snow from his boots. She knew, without looking up, that it was Ira. "Why hev you come?" she said softly, lifting her moist eyes to him. It was not Ira. It was the hired man. She sobbed pitifully and leaped upon the roller-towel which hung on the door, pulling it round and round like a captive squirrel in a revolving cage. "It ain't no use," she moaned. And, through the cadavers of the apple-trees in the orchard behind the house, there rattled a wind from the sea, the sea to which men go down in ships never to return, telling of sorrow and all that sort of thing. "Fate," some people call it. To Irma Hathaway it was all the same. June, July, August _Tulips, crocuses and chard,_ _And the wax bean_ _In the back yard._ _And the open road to the land of dreams,_ _With the heavy swirl_ _Of the singing streams._ _Oh! boy!_ Unpublished Letters of Mark Twain _With a foreword by Albert Bigelow Paine_[1] FOREWORD