They remained for a time in London--a period of honors and entertainment. If Mark Twain had been a lion on his first visit, he was hardly less than royalty now. His rooms at the Langham Hotel were like a court. The nation's most distinguished men--among them Robert Browning, Sir John Millais, Lord Houghton, and Sir Charles Dilke--came to pay their respects. Authors were calling constantly. Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins could not get enough of Mark Twain. Reade proposed to join with him in writing a novel, as Warner had done. Lewis Carroll did not call, being too timid, but they met the author of "Alice in Wonderland" one night at a dinner, "the shyest full-grown man, except Uncle Remiss, I ever saw," Mark Twain once declared. At Quarry Farm that summer Mark Twain began the writing of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." He had been planning for some time to set down the story of those far-off days along the river-front at Hannibal, with John Briggs, Tom Blankenship, and the rest of that graceless band, and now in the cool luxury of a little study which Mrs. Crane had built for him on the hillside he set himself to spin the fabric of his youth. The study was a delightful place to work. It was octagonal in shape, with windows on all sides, something like a pilot-house. From any direction the breeze could come, and there were fine views. To Twichell he wrote: "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet." The terms of Samuel Clemens's apprenticeship were the usual thing for that day: board and clothes--"more board than clothes, and not much of either," Mark Twain used to say. "If your memory extends so far back, you will recall a little sandy- haired boy of nearly a quarter of a century ago, in the printing-office at Hannibal, over the Brittingham drug-store, mounted upon a little box at the case, who used to love to sing so well the statement of the poor drunken man who was supposed to have fallen by the wayside, 'If ever I get up again, I'll stay up--if I kin.'" "Do you swear?"--"N-not for amusement; only under pressure." "When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter." TWAIN'S LETTERS V1 1835-1866 by A. B. Paine[mt1lt10.txt] #3193