Clemens meets Etta in Washington Square—Recalls ball-room in Virginia City forty-four years ago—Orion resumed; he invents wood-sawing machine; invents steam canal-boat; his funny experience in bath-tub—Bill Nye’s story—Orion’s autobiography—His death.

This house is No. 21 Fifth Avenue, and stands on the corner of 9th street within a couple of hundred yards of Washington Square. It was built fifty or sixty years ago by Renwick, the architect of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. It is large, and every story has good and spacious rooms. Something more than a year ago, Clara and Katy, (the housekeeper,) examined it and greatly liked it. They did not superficially examine it, but examined it in detail, and the more they searched it the better they liked it. It was then my turn to act, and instead of taking it for a year, with an option or two, I took it for three years and signed the contract. We put the furniture in, then moved in ourselves, and made a discovery straightway. There was not a window in the whole house, either on the Fifth Avenue front or on the long 9th street side, that had ever known what a ray of sunshine was like. It was a bad business, and too late to correct it. The entire house is in shadow at all seasons of the year except dead summertime. The sun gets in then, but as there wouldn’t ever be anybody in the house at that time of the year, it is no advantage.

Nobody thrives in this house. Nobody profits by our sojourn in it except the doctors. They seem to be here all the time. We must move out and find a house with some sunshine in it.

Yesterday I went down to Washington Square, turned out to the left to look at a house that stands on the corner of the Square and University Place. Presently I stepped over to the corner of the Square to take a general look at the frontage of the house. While crossing the street I met a woman, and was conscious that she recognized me, and it seemed to me that there was something in her face that was familiar to me. I had the instinct that she would turn and follow me and speak to me, and the instinct was right. She was a fat little woman, with a gentle and kindly but aged and homely face, and she had white hair, and was neatly but poorly dressed. She said,

“Aren’t you Mr. Clemens?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am.”

She said, “Where is your brother Orion?”

“Dead,” I said.

“Where is his wife?”

“Dead,” I said; and added, “I seem to know you, but I cannot place you.”

She said “Do you remember Etta Booth?”

I had known only one Etta Booth in my lifetime, and that one rose before me in an instant, and vividly. It was almost as if she stood alongside of this fat little antiquated dame in the bloom and diffidence and sweetness of her thirteen years, her hair in plaited braids down her back and her fire-red frock stopping short at her knees. Indeed I remembered Etta very well. And immediately another vision rose before me, with that child in the centre of it and accenting its sober tint like a torch with her red frock. But it was not a quiet vision; not a reposeful one. The scene was a great ball-room in some ramshackle building in Gold Hill or Virginia City, Nevada. There were two or three hundred stalwart men present and dancing with cordial energy. And in the midst of the turmoil Etta’s crimson frock was swirling and flashing; and she was the only dancer of her sex on the floor. Her mother, large, fleshy, pleasant and smiling, sat on a bench against the wall in lonely and honored state and watched the festivities in placid contentment. She and Etta were the only persons of their sex in the ball-room. Half of the men represented ladies, and they had a handkerchief tied around the left arm so that they could be told from the men. I did not dance with Etta, for I was a lady myself. I wore a revolver in my belt, and so did all the other ladies—likewise the gentlemen.