Mark Twain's House

I've been meaning to post this picture of Mark Twain's House ever since I visited it last Spring in Hartford, Connecticut. It's well worth the visit, if only to check out the writing room — Twain's office, which takes up the bulk of the home's third floor, included a pool table, a writing desk, a typewriter, and two balconies for fresh air. The home's entire interior was designed by Tiffany, including the stencils of interleaved pipes and cigars on the writing room ceiling. Clemens both wrote and entertained writer friends in the room, and said of it, “There ought to be a room in this house to swear in. It's dangerous to repress an emotion like that.”

While in Hartford, I'd also recommend a visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum, the oldest public art museum in the country. It's kind of like a mini-Louvre, with an exquisite collection of masterpieces from many different periods.

At the start of the summer, I also visited the Robert Frost Farm in Concord, New Hampshire. Although Frost is not necessarily one of my favorite poets, it's probably the best “dead author site” I've visited — there's a nature trail on the grounds that includes site-specific placements of Frost poems on wooden plaques (i.e. “The Road Not Taken” can be read at a point on the trail where the path diverges). The day my parents and I were there, the house was closed and there was no one else around. It was an idyllic and contemplative walk in the woods, which seemed appropriate.