It
might have been here always."
There were guests that first evening--a small home dinner-party--and a
little later at the foot of the garden some fireworks were set off by
neighbors inspired by Dan Beard, who had recently located in Redding.
Mark Twain, watching the rockets that announced his arrival, said,
gently:
"I wonder why they go to so much trouble for me. I never go to any
trouble for anybody."
The evening closed with billiards, hilarious games, and when at midnight
the cues were set in the rack no one could say that Mark Twain's first
day in his new home had not been a happy one.
LXVI
LIFE AT STORMFIELD
Mark Twain loved Stormfield. Almost immediately he gave up the idea of
going back to New York for the winter, and I think he never entered the
Fifth Avenue house again. The quiet and undisturbed comfort of
Stormfield came to him at the right time of life. His day of being the
"Belle of New York" was over. Now and then he attended some great
dinner, but always under protest. Finally he refused to go at all. He
had much company during that first summer--old friends, and now and again
young people, of whom he was always fond. The billiard-room he called
"the aquarium," and a frieze of Bermuda fishes, in gay prints, ran around
the walls.
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