In reference to your question about Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Mark
Twain once said, "To us, our house was not unsentient matter--it had a
heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals, and
solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its
confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.
We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and
speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could not enter it unmoved."
     from "Mark Twain's House," The Mark Twain Memorial, 1977