NOTEBOOK

Dream of being a knight errant in armor in the Middle
Ages. Have the notions and habits of thought of the pres-
ent day mixed with the necessities of that. No pockets in
the armor. Can't scratch. Cold in the head—can't blow—
can't get a handkerchief, can't use iron sleeve. Iron gets
redhot in the sun—leaks in the rain, gets white with frost
and freezes me solid in winter. Makes disagreeable clatter
when I enter church. Can't dress or undress myself. Al-
ways getting struck by lightning. Fall down and can't get
up.

Written across this pencil-note is another in
ink, made five years later.

Fall of '84—while Cable and I were giving readings,
Cable got a Morte d'Arthur and gave it to me to read.
I began to make notes in my head, for a book. Nov. n,
1886, I read the first chapter (all that was then written)
at Governors Island, and closed the reading with an out-
line of the probable contents of the future book. Wrote
a book "The Yankee at Arthur's Court" in '87 and '88,
and published it in December 1889 (shall, anyway).

I have not railroaded to speak of for fifteen years but
have stayed at home. This morning the usual new bride
got aboard the train, and she began as usual her furtive
love tappings and pettings, proud that he was hers and
willing that everybody should know it and envy her, and
when she wanted to ask him what time it was, or any
little this-worldly trifle, she would hitch her chin on his
shoulder and wall her worshiping eyes up, just in the
same old soft, sweet, railroad honeymoon way which I
remembered so well; and he, well he stood it in the same
old patient, suffering, surfeited shame-faced martyrlike
way of the railroading bridegroom of the bygone times,
and wondered no doubt how he could ever have thought
he knew anything about courting and keeping it up, for