His Southern raising had given him an understanding of their humors, their native emotions which made these riots a spiritual gratification.  He would slip around among the shrubbery and listen to the noise and strife of battle, and hug himself with delight.  Sometimes they resorted to missiles—­stones, tinware—­even dressed poultry which Auntie Cord was preparing for the oven.  Lewis was very black, Auntie Cord was a bright mulatto, Lewis’s’ wife several shades lighter.  Wherever the discussion began it promptly shaded off toward the color-line and insult.  Auntie Cord was a Methodist; Lewis was a Dunkard.  Auntie Cord was ignorant and dogmatic; Lewis could read and was intelligent.  Theology invariably led to personality, and eventually to epithets, crockery, geology, and victuals.  How the greatest joker of the age did enjoy that summer warfare!

The fun was not all one-sided.  An incident of that summer probably furnished more enjoyment for the colored members of the household than it did for Mark Twain.  Lewis had some fowls, and among them was a particularly pestiferous guinea-hen that used to get up at three in the morning and go around making the kind of a noise that a guinea-hen must like and is willing to get up early to hear.  Mark Twain did not care for it.  He stood it as long as he could one morning, then crept softly from the house to stop it.

It was a clear, bright night; locating the guinea-hen, he slipped up stealthily with a stout stick.  The bird was pouring out its heart, tearing the moonlight to tatters.  Stealing up close, Clemens made a vicious swing with his bludgeon, but just then the guinea stepped forward a little, and he missed.  The stroke and his explosion frightened the fowl, and it started to run.  Clemens, with his mind now on the single purpose of revenge, started after it.  Around the trees, along the paths, up and down the lawn, through gates and across the garden, out over the fields, they raced, “pursuer and pursued.”  The guinea nor longer sang, and Clemens was presently too exhausted to swear.  Hour after hour the silent, deadly hunt continued, both stopping to rest at intervals; then up again and away.  It was like something in a dream.  It was nearly breakfast-time when he dragged himself into the house at last, and the guinea was resting and panting under a currant-bush.  Later in the day Clemens gave orders to Lewis to “kill and eat that guinea-hen,” which Lewis did.  Clemens himself had then never eaten a guinea, but some years later, in Paris, when the delicious breast of one of those fowls was served him, he remembered and said: 

“And to think, after chasing that creature all night, John Lewis got to eat him instead of me.”