Roughing It

"Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs."

So wrote Mark Twain in the humorous account of his mail coach ride to the Wild West in Roughing It. That also happens to be a quote I include in my thesis. Just now I pulled down my paperback copy of the book to check the page number, and on that very page with the ham and eggs quote is the following handwritten note:

"I got whipped one night for just saying I was glad I was not a decendant of one of the pioneer women of California, but it did not change my mind. -HCS"

HCS was my great grandfather, and apparently he loved to read Mark Twain and take notes in the margins. In fact, his above quote is written in blue ink, but "women" is underlined in red pencil. It's neat to see how engaged he was with the book through his underlinings, scribblings, and asterisks. This is one book I'll keep for a long time.