COLONEL SELLERS AT HOME.

BY MARK TWAIN.

WASHINGTON was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting-room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other's waists.

The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service. The Colonel's "stovepipe" hat was napless, and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too; but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself, and blandly sorry for other people's clothes. It was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers said:

"Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home-just consider yourself under your own shingles, my boy-I'll have a fire going in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let's have things cheerful--just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you'd been lost a century and we'd found you again !"

By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.

The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel's voice worked its way, and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand, and looked happy and proud and

grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and gospels, and whose graterul soul is being refreshed with the bread of life. By and by the children quieted down to listen: clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres. A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove— these things constituted the furniture of the room.

There was

no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasionally squareshaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster, which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house-but there

were none now.

There were no mantel ornaments-unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything, and traveled in company the rest of the way home.

"Remarkable clock !" said Sellers, and got up and wound it. "I've been offered-well, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered for that clock. Old Governor Hager never sees me but he says, 'Come, now, Colonel, name your price— I must have that clock!' But, my goodness! I'd as soon think of selling my wife! As I was saying to-silence in the court, now, she's begun to strike! You can't talk against her-you have to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say. Ah —well, as I was saying, when-she's beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twen-ah, that's all. Yes, as I was saying to old Judge -, go it, old girl, don't mind me. Now, how is that ?—isn't that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why, you might as well try to sleep in a thunder factory. Now just listen at that. She'll strike There a hundred and fifty now without stopping-you'll see. ain't another clock like that in Christendom."

Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting-though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the clock "buckled down to her work,” as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs. Sellers lifted upon Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:

"It belonged to his grandmother."

The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and, therefore, Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at the moment) :

"Indeed!"

"Yes, it did; didn't it, father?" exclaimed one of the twins. "She was my great-grandmother-and George's, too; wasn't she, father? You never saw her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis? Sis has seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deef-she's dead, now. Ain't she father?"

All the children chimed in now, with one general Babel of information about deceased-nobody offering to read the riot act, or seeming to discountenance the insurrection, or disapprove of it in any way-but the head twin drowned all the turmoil, and held his own agair st the field.

"It's our clock, now-and it's got wheels inside of it, and a thing that flutters every time she strikes-don't it, father! Greatgrandmother died before hardly any of us was born-she was an Old-School Baptist, and had warts all over her-you ask father if she didn't. She had an uncle once that was bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn't our uncle; I don't know what he was to us some kin or another, I reckon-father seen him a thousand times-hain't you, father! We used to have a calf that et apples, and just chawed up dish-rags like nothing; and if you stay here you'll see lots of funerals-won't he, Sis? Did you ever see a house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry-"

But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He began to tell about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital in a speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with him about-and soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the cold entirely. He was nearly as close to the stove as ne could get, and yet he could not persuade himself that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass door was still gently and serenely glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove, and the consequence was, he tripped the supporting poker, and the stove-door tumbled to the floor. And then there was a revelation-there was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow candle.

The poor youth blushed, and felt as if he must die with shame.

But the Colonel was only disconcerted for a moment-he straightway found his voice again:

"A little idea of my own, Washington-one of the greatest things in the world! You must write and tell your father about it-don't forget that, now! I have been reading up some European Scientific reports-friend of mine, Count Fugier, sent them to me-sends me all sorts of things from Paris-he thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came to the conclusion that it was a non-conductor, or something like that, and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless you, I saw in a moment what was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires !-no more slow torture and certain death for me, sir. What you want is the appearance of heat, not the heat itself that's the idea. Well, how to do it was the next thing. I just put my head to work, pegged away a couple of days, and here you are! Rheumatism? Why, a man can't any more start a case of rheumatism in this house than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy! Stove with a candle in it, and a transparent door-that's it-it has been the salvation of this family. Don't you fail to write your father about it, Washington. And tell him the idea is mine-I'm no more conceited than most people, I reckon, but you know it is human nature for a man to want credit for a thing like that."

He

Washington said with his blue lips that he would, but he said. in his secret heart that he would promote no such iniquity. tried to believe in the healthfulness of the invention, and succeeded tolerably well; but, after all, he could not feel that good health in a frozen body was any real improvement on the rheumatism.

The supper at Colonel Sellers's was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but it improved on acquaintance. That is to say, that what Washington regarded at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored locality in the earth, and only a favored few could get it;