Clemens made his shot, then very softly said:
"If he had stayed another five minutes I should have offered him
twenty-five cents to go."
But a moment later he glared at me.
"Why in nation did you offer him your cue?"
"Wasn't that the courteous thing to do?" I asked.
"No!" he ripped out. "The courteous and proper thing would have been to
strike him dead. Did you want to saddle that disaster upon us for life?"
He was blowing off steam, and I knew it and encouraged it. My impulse
was to lie down on the couch and shout with hysterical laughter, but I
suspected that would be indiscreet. He made some further comment on the
propriety of offering a visitor a cue, and suddenly began to sing a
travesty of an old hymn:
"How tedious are they
Who their sovereign obey,"
and so loudly that I said:
"Aren't you afraid he'll hear you and come back?" Whereupon he pretended
alarm and sang under his breath, and for the rest of the evening was in
boundless good-humor.
I have recalled this incident merely as a sample of things that were
likely to happen at any time in his company, and to show the difficulty
one might find in fitting himself to his varying moods. He was not to be
learned in a day, or a week, or a month; some of those who knew him
longest did not learn him at all.
We celebrated his seventy-first birthday by playing billiards all day. He
invented a new game for the occasion; inventing rules for it with almost
every shot.
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