Mark Twain's Letters – Volume 2 (1867-1875)

The things you have written in the Publisher are tip-top.

In haste,

Yr Bro

SAM

There are no further letters until the end of April, by which time the situation had improved. Clemens had sold his interest in the Express (though at a loss), had severed his magazine connection, and was located at Quarry Farm, on a beautiful hilltop above Elmira, the home of Mrs. Clemens’s sister, Mrs. Theodore Crane. The pure air and rest of that happy place, where they were to spend so many idyllic summers, had proved beneficial to the sick ones, and work on the new book progressed in consequence. Then Mark Twain’s old editor, “Joe” Goodman, came from Virginia City for a visit, and his advice and encouragement were of the greatest value. Clemens even offered to engage Goodman on a salary, to remain until he had finished his book. Goodman declined the salary, but extended his visit, and Mark Twain at last seems to have found himself working under ideal conditions. He jubilantly reports his progress.

To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

ELMIRA, Monday. May 15th 1871

FRIEND BLISS, – Yrs rec’d enclosing check for $703.35 The old “Innocents” holds out handsomely.

I have MS. enough on hand now, to make (allowing for engravings) about 400 pages of the book – consequently am two-thirds done. I intended to run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and take it along; because it has chapters in it that ought by all means to be in the prospectus; but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work, now (a thing I have not experienced for months) that I can’t bear to lose a single moment of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg away as long as it lasts. My present idea is to write as much more as I have already written, and then cull from the mass the very best chapters and discard the rest. I am not half as well satisfied with the first part of the book as I am with what I am writing now. When I get it done I want to see the man who will begin to read it and not finish it. If it falls short of the “Innocents” in any respect I shall lose my guess.

When I was writing the “Innocents” my daily stunt was 30 pages of MS and I hardly ever got beyond it; but I have gone over that nearly every day for the last ten. That shows that I am writing with a red-hot interest. Nothing grieves me now – nothing troubles me, nothing bothers me or gets my attention – I don’t think of anything but the book, and I don’t have an hour’s unhappiness about anything and don’t care two cents whether school keeps or not. It will be a bully book. If I keep up my present lick three weeks more I shall be able and willing to scratch out half of the chapters of the Overland narrative – and shall do it.

You do not mention having received my second batch of MS, sent a week or two ago – about 100 pages.

If you want to issue a prospectus and go right to canvassing, say the word and I will forward some more MS – or send it by hand – special messenger. Whatever chapters you think are unquestionably good, we will retain of course, so they can go into a prospectus as well one time as another. The book will be done soon, now. I have 1200 pages of MS already written and am now writing 200 a week – more than that, in fact; during the past week wrote 23 one day, then 30, 33, 35, 52, and 65. – How’s that?

It will be a starchy book, and should be full of snappy pictures – especially pictures worked in with the letterpress. The dedication will be worth the price of the volume – thus:

To the Late Cain

This Book is Dedicated:

Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect; not on account of sympathy with him, for his bloody deed placed him without the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking: but out of a mere human commiseration for him that it was his misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea.

I think it will do. Yrs. CLEMENS.

P. S. – The reaction is beginning and my stock is looking up. I am getting the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am flooded with lecture invitations, and one periodical offers me $6,000 cash for 12 articles, of any length and on any subject, treated humorously or otherwise.

The suggested dedication “to the late Cain” may have been the humoristic impulse of the moment. At all events, it did not materialize.

Clemens’s enthusiasm for work was now such that he agreed with Redpath to return to the platform that autumn, and he began at once writing lectures. His disposal of the Buffalo paper had left him considerably in debt, and platforming was a sure and quick method of retrenchment. More than once in the years ahead Mark Twain would return to travel and one-night stands to lift a burden of debt. Brief letters to Redpath of this time have an interest and even a humor of their own.

Letters to James Redpath, in Boston:

ELMIRA, June 27, 1871.

DEAR RED, – Wrote another lecture – a third one-today. It is the one I am going to deliver. I think I shall call it “Reminiscences of Some Pleasant Characters Whom I Have Met,” (or should the “whom” be left out?) It covers my whole acquaintance – kings, lunatics, idiots and all. Suppose you give the item a start in the Boston papers. If I write fifty lectures I shall only choose one and talk that one only.

No sir: Don’t you put that scarecrow (portrait) from the Galaxy in, I won’t stand that nightmare.

Yours,

MARK.

ELMIRA, July 10, 1871.

DEAR REDPATH, – I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can’t be made to do it in any possible way.

Success to Fall’s carbuncle and many happy returns.

Yours,

MARK.

To Mr. Fall, in Boston:

ELMIRA, N. Y. July 20, 1871.

FRIEND FALL, – Redpath tells me to blow up. Here goes! I wanted you to scare Rondout off with a big price. $125 ain’t big. I got $100 the first time I ever talked there and now they have a much larger hall. It is a hard town to get to – I run a chance of getting caught by the ice and missing next engagement. Make the price $150 and let them draw out.

Yours

MARK

Letters to James Redpath, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Tuesday Aug. 8, 1871.

DEAR RED, – I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener. People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo. See? Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigid instructions to confine me to New England; next week, send me to Arizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you full untrammelled swing; and the week following modify it. You must try to keep the run of my mind, Redpath, it is your business being the agent, and it always was too many for me. It appears to me to be one of the finest pieces of mechanism I have ever met with. Now about the West, this week, I am willing that you shall retain all the Western engagements. But what I shall want next week is still with God.

Let us not profane the mysteries with soiled hands and prying eyes of sin.

Yours,

MARK.

P. S. Shall be here 2 weeks, will run up there when Nasby comes.

ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 15, 1871.

DEAR REDPATH, – I wish you would get me released from the lecture at Buffalo. I mortally hate that society there, and I don’t doubt they hired me. I once gave them a packed house free of charge, and they never even had the common politeness to thank me. They left me to shift for myself, too, a la Bret Harte at Harvard. Get me rid of Buffalo! Otherwise I’ll have no recourse left but to get sick the day I lecture there. I can get sick easy enough, by the simple process of saying the word – well never mind what word – I am not going to lecture there.

Yours,

MARK.

BUFFALO, Sept. 26, 1871.

DEAR REDPATH, – We have thought it all over and decided that we can’t possibly talk after Feb. 2.

We shall take up our residence in Hartford 6 days from now

Yours

MARK.

XI. LETTERS 1871-72. REMOVAL TO HARTFORD. A LECTURE TOUR. “ROUGHING IT.” FIRST LETTER TO HOWELLS

The house they had taken in Hartford was the Hooker property on Forest Street, a handsome place in a distinctly literary neighborhood. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and other well-known writers were within easy walking distance; Twichell was perhaps half a mile away.

 

It was the proper environment for Mark Twain. He settled his little family there, and was presently at Redpath’s office in Boston, which was a congenial place, as we have seen before. He did not fail to return to the company of Nasby, Josh Billings, and those others of Redpath’s “attractions” as long and as often as distance would permit. Bret Harte, who by this time had won fame, was also in Boston now, and frequently, with Howells, Aldrich, and Mark Twain, gathered in some quiet restaurant corner for a luncheon that lasted through a dim winter afternoon – a period of anecdote, reminiscence, and mirth. They were all young then, and laughed easily. Howells, has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young Californian – a gathering at which James T. Fields was present “Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly.” But a lecture circuit cannot be restricted to the radius of Boston. Clemens was presently writing to Redpath from Washington and points farther west.

To James Redpath, in Boston:

WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 1871.

DEAR RED, – I have come square out, thrown “Reminiscences” overboard, and taken “Artemus Ward, Humorist,” for my subject. Wrote it here on Friday and Saturday, and read it from MS last night to an enormous house. It suits me and I’ll never deliver the nasty, nauseous “Reminiscences” any more.

Yours,

MARK.

The Artemus Ward lecture lasted eleven days, then he wrote:

To Redpath and Fall, in Boston:

BUFFALO DEPOT, Dec. 8, 1871.

REDPATH & FALL, BOSTON, – Notify all hands that from this time I shall talk nothing but selections from my forthcoming book “Roughing It.” Tried it last night. Suits me tip-top.

SAM’L L. CLEMENS.

The “Roughing It” chapters proved a success, and continued in high

favor through the rest of the season.

To James Redpath, in Boston:

LOGANSPORT, IND. Jan. 2, 1872.

FRIEND REDPATH, – Had a splendid time with a splendid audience in Indianapolis last night – a perfectly jammed house, just as I have had all the time out here. I like the new lecture but I hate the “Artemus Ward” talk and won’t talk it any more. No man ever approved that choice of subject in my hearing, I think.

Give me some comfort. If I am to talk in New York am I going to have a good house? I don’t care now to have any appointments cancelled. I’ll even “fetch” those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture.

Have paid up $4000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list. Shall begin to pay you in a few days and then I shall be a free man again.

Yours,

MARK.

With his debts paid, Clemens was anxious to be getting home. Two weeks following the above he wrote Redpath that he would accept no more engagements at any price, outside of New England, and added, “The fewer engagements I have from this time forth the better I shall be pleased.” By the end of February he was back in Hartford, refusing an engagement in Boston, and announcing to Redpath, “If I had another engagement I’d rot before I’d fill it.” From which we gather that he was not entirely happy in the lecture field. As a matter of fact, Mark Twain loathed the continuous travel and nightly drudgery of platform life. He was fond of entertaining, and there were moments of triumph that repaid him for a good deal, but the tyranny of a schedule and timetables was a constant exasperation.

Meantime, Roughing It had appeared and was selling abundantly. Mark Twain, free of debt, and in pleasant circumstances, felt that the outlook was bright. It became even more so when, in March, the second child, a little girl, Susy, was born, with no attending misfortunes. But, then, in the early summer little Langdon died. It was seldom, during all of Mark Twain’s life, that he enjoyed more than a brief period of unmixed happiness.

It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters – a kind of tender playfulness that answered to something in Howells’s make-up, his sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured so amusingly to the world.

To William Dean Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, June 15, 1872.

FRIEND HOWELLS, – Could you tell me how I could get a copy of your portrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about it as being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in that journal, that I feel a strong desire to see it. Is it suitable for framing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but they say that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the edition and now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which has now begun. Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not be without that portrait for any consideration. He says his children get up in the night and yell for it. I would give anything for a copy of that portrait to put up in my parlor. I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bret Harte’s, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms that come every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened and humbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to put up alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more souls to earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than any other kind of warning would. Where in the nation can I get that portrait? Here are heaps of people that want it, – that need it. There is my uncle. He wants a copy. He is lying at the point of death. He has been lying at the point of death for two years. He wants a copy – and I want him to have a copy. And I want you to send a copy to the man that shot my dog. I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct.

Now you send me that portrait. I am sending you mine, in this letter; and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired. People who are judges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not been equalled in this country, and an expression which has not been approached in any.

Yrs truly,

S. L. CLEMENS.

P. S. 62,000 copies of “Roughing It” sold and delivered in 4 months.

The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that year. The sea air was prescribed for Mrs. Clemens and the baby, and they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall. Clemens wrote very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form. His mind, however, was otherwise active. He was always more or less given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of one which he brought to comparative perfection. He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this was his purpose of a projected trip to England.

To Orion Clemens, in Hartford:

FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN.

Aug. 11, 1872.

MY DEAR BRO. – I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21.

But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention – hence this note, which you will preserve. It is this – a self-pasting scrap-book – good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not come along and ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elastic veststrap.

The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1. One never has paste or gum tragacanth handy; 2. Mucilage won’t stick, or stay, 4 weeks; 3. Mucilage sucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable; 4. To daub and paste 3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and tiresome. My idea is this: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or coated with gum-stickum of some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush, rag or tongue, and dab on your scraps like postage stamps.

Lay on the gum in columns of stripes.

Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broad as your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2 stripes – so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gum than your scrap or scraps will cover – then you may shut up the book and the leaves won’t stick together.

Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter – postmark ought to be good evidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention.

I’ll put it into Dan Slote’s hands and tell him he must send you all over America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers – so don’t buy into a newspaper. The name of this thing is “Mark Twain’s Self-Pasting Scrapbook.”

All well here. Shall be up a P. M. Tuesday. Send the carriage.

Yr Bro.

S. L. CLEMENS.

The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City shipmate, who was engaged in the blank-book business, the firm being Slote & Woodman, located at 119 and 121 William Street, New York.

XII. LETTERS 1872-73. MARK TWAIN IN ENGLAND. LONDON HONORS. ACQUAINTANCE WITH DR. JOHN BROWN. A LECTURE TRIUMPH. “THE GILDED AGE”

Clemens did, in fact, sail for England on the given date, and was lavishly received there. All literary London joined in giving him a good time. He had not as yet been received seriously by the older American men of letters, but England made no question as to his title to first rank. Already, too, they classified him as of the human type of Lincoln, and reveled in him without stint. Howells writes: “In England, rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. Lord Mayors, Lord Chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts.”

He was treated so well and enjoyed it all so much that he could not write a book – the kind of book he had planned. One could not poke fun at a country or a people that had welcomed him with open arms. He made plenty of notes, at first, but presently gave up the book idea and devoted himself altogether to having a good time. He had one grievance – a publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing the title, Screamers and Eye-openers, by Mark Twain. They besieged him to lecture in London, and promised him overflowing houses. Artemus Ward, during his last days, had earned London by storm with his platform humor, and they promised Mark Twain even greater success. For some reason, however, he did not welcome the idea; perhaps there was too much gaiety. To Mrs. Clemens he wrote:

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

LONDON, Sep. 15, 1872.

Livy, darling, everybody says lecture-lecture-lecture – but I have not the least idea of doing it – certainly not at present. Mr. Dolby, who took Dickens to America, is coming to talk business to me tomorrow, though I have sent him word once before, that I can’t be hired to talk here, because I have no time to spare.

There is too much sociability – I do not get along fast enough with work. Tomorrow I lunch with Mr. Toole and a Member of Parliament – Toole is the most able Comedian of the day. And then I am done for a while. On Tuesday I mean to hang a card to my keybox, inscribed – “Gone out of the City for a week” – and then I shall go to work and work hard. One can’t be caught in a hive of 4,000,000 people, like this.

I have got such a perfectly delightful razor. I have a notion to buy some for Charley, Theodore and Slee – for I know they have no such razors there. I have got a neat little watch-chain for Annie – $20.

I love you my darling. My love to all of you.

SAML.

That Mark Twain should feel and privately report something of his triumphs we need not wonder at. Certainly he was never one to give himself airs, but to have the world’s great literary center paying court to him, who only ten years before had been penniless and unknown, and who once had been a barefoot Tom Sawyer in Hannibal, was quite startling. It is gratifying to find evidence of human weakness in the following heart-to-heart letter to his publisher, especially in view of the relating circumstances.

To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

LONDON, Sept. 28, 1872.

FRIEND BLISS, – I have been received in a sort of tremendous way, tonight, by the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the Sheriffs of London – mine being (between you and me) a name which was received with a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when the long list of guests was called.

I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support and assistance of my excellent friend Sir John Bennett – and I want you to paste the enclosed in a couple of the handsomest copies of the “Innocents” and “Roughing It,” and send them to him. His address is

“Sir John Bennett,

Cheapside,

London.”

Yrs Truly

S. L. CLEMENS

The “relating circumstances” were these: At the abovementioned dinner there had been a roll-call of the distinguished guests present, and each name had been duly applauded. Clemens, conversing in a whisper with his neighbor, Sir John Bennett, did not give very close attention to the names, applauding mechanically with the others.

Finally, a name was read that brought out a vehement hand-clapping. Mark Twain, not to be outdone in cordiality, joined vigorously, and kept his hands going even after the others finished. Then, remarking the general laughter, he whispered to Sir John: “Whose name was that we were just applauding?” “Mark Twain’s.” We may believe that the “friendly support” of Sir John Bennett was welcome for the moment. But the incident could do him no harm; the diners regarded it as one of his jokes, and enjoyed him all the more for it.

He was ready to go home by November, but by no means had he had enough of England. He really had some thought of returning there permanently. In a letter to Mrs. Crane, at Quarry Farm, he wrote: “If you and Theodore will come over in the Spring with Livy and me, and spend the summer you will see a country that is so beautiful that you will be obliged to believe in Fairyland… and Theodore can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of all the centuries that have dragged their lagging decades over England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you over.” In a letter home, to his mother and sister, we get a further picture of his enjoyment.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett:

LONDON, Nov. 6, 1872.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, – I have been so everlasting busy that I couldn’t write – and moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that I couldn’t have written anyhow. I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven’t done much but attend dinners and make speeches. But have had a jolly good time and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they make a stranger feel entirely at home – and they laugh so easily that it is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here. I have made hundreds of friends; and last night in the crush of the opening of the New Guild-hall Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face every few steps. Nearly 4,000 people, of both sexes, came and went during the evening, so I had a good opportunity to make a great many new acquaintances.

Livy is willing to come here with me next April and stay several months – so I am going home next Tuesday. I would sail on Saturday, but that is the day of the Lord Mayor’s annual grand state dinner, when they say 900 of the great men of the city sit down to table, a great many of them in their fine official and court paraphernalia, so I must not miss it. However, I may yet change my mind and sail Saturday. I am looking at a fine Magic lantern which will cost a deal of money, and if I buy it Sammy may come and learn to make the gas and work the machinery, and paint pictures for it on glass. I mean to give exhibitions for charitable purposes in Hartford, and charge a dollar a head.

In a hurry,

Ys affly

SAM

He sailed November 12th on the Batavia, arriving in New York two weeks later. There had been a presidential election in his absence. General Grant had defeated Horace Greeley, a result, in some measure at least, attributed to the amusing and powerful pictures of the cartoonist, Thomas Nast. Mark Twain admired Greeley’s talents, but he regarded him as poorly qualified for the nation’s chief executive. He wrote:

To Th. Nast, in Morristown, N. J.:

HARTFORD, Nov. 1872.

Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for Grant – I mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those pictures were simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to hold his head up and be honestly proud of his share in this year’s vast events that man is unquestionably yourself. We all do sincerely honor you, and are proud of you.

MARK TWAIN

Perhaps Mark Twain was too busy at this time to write letters. His success in England had made him more than ever popular in America, and he could by no means keep up with the demands on him. In January he contributed to the New York Tribune some letters on the Sandwich Islands, but as these were more properly articles they do not seem to belong here.

He refused to go on the lecture circuit, though he permitted Redpath to book him for any occasional appearance, and it is due to one of these special engagements that we have the only letter preserved from this time. It is to Howells, and written with that exaggeration with which he was likely to embellish his difficulties. We are not called upon to believe that there were really any such demonstrations as those ascribed to Warner and himself.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

FARMINGTON AVE, Hartford Feb. 27.

MY DEAR HOWELLS, – I am in a sweat and Warner is in another. I told Redpath some time ago I would lecture in Boston any two days he might choose provided they were consecutive days —

I never dreamed of his choosing days during Lent since that was his special horror – but all at once he telegraphs me, and hollers at me in all manner of ways that I am booked for Boston March 5 of all days in the year – and to make matters just as mixed and uncertain as possible, I can’t find out to save my life whether he means to lecture me on the 6th or not.

Warner’s been in here swearing like a lunatic, and saying he had written you to come on the 4th, – and I said, “You leather-head, if I talk in Boston both afternoon and evening March 5, I’ll have to go to Boston the 4th,” – and then he just kicked up his heels and went off cursing after a fashion I never heard of before.

Now let’s just leave this thing to Providence for 24 hours – you bet it will come out all right.

Yours ever

MARK.

He was writing a book with Warner at this time – The Gilded Age – the two authors having been challenged by their wives one night at dinner to write a better book than the current novels they had been discussing with some severity. Clemens already had a story in his mind, and Warner agreed to collaborate in the writing. It was begun without delay. Clemens wrote the first three hundred and ninety-nine pages, and read there aloud to Warner, who took up the story at this point and continued it through twelve chapters, after which they worked alternately, and with great enjoyment. They also worked rapidly, and in April the story was completed. For a collaboration by two men so different in temperament and literary method it was a remarkable performance. Another thing Mark Twain did that winter was to buy some land on Farmington Avenue and begin the building of a home. He had by no means given up returning to England, and made his plans to sail with Mrs. Clemens and Susy in May. Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira – [Later Mrs. John B. Stanchfield, of New York.] – a girlhood friend of Mrs. Clemens – was to accompany them. The Daily Graphic heard of the proposed journey, and wrote, asking for a farewell word. His characteristic reply is the only letter of any kind that has survived from that spring.

To the Editor of “The Daily Graphic,” in New York City:

HARTFORD, Apl. 17, 1873.

ED. GRAPHIC, – Your note is received. If the following two lines which I have cut from it are your natural handwriting, then I understand you to ask me “for a farewell letter in the name of the American people.” Bless you, the joy of the American people is just a little premature; I haven’t gone yet. And what is more, I am not going to stay, when I do go.

Yes, it is true. I am only going to remain beyond the sea, six months, that is all. I love stir and excitement; and so the moment the spring birds begin to sing, and the lagging weariness of summer to threaten, I grow restless, I get the fidgets; I want to pack off somewhere where there’s something going on. But you know how that is – you must have felt that way. This very day I saw the signs in the air of the coming dullness, and I said to myself, “How glad I am that I have already chartered a steamship!” There was absolutely nothing in the morning papers. You can see for yourself what the telegraphic headings were:

BY TELEGRAPH

A Father Killed by His Son

A Bloody Fight in Kentucky

A Court House Fired, and Negroes Therein Shot while Escaping

A Louisiana Massacre

An Eight-year-old murderer

Two to Three Hundred Men Roasted Alive!

A Town in a State of General Riot

A Lively Skirmish in Indiana (and thirty other similar headings.)

The items under those headings all bear date yesterday, Apl. 16 (refer to your own paper) – and I give you my word of honor that that string of commonplace stuff was everything there was in the telegraphic columns that a body could call news. Well, said I to myself this is getting pretty dull; this is getting pretty dry; there don’t appear to be anything going on anywhere; has this progressive nation gone to sleep? Have I got to stand another month of this torpidity before I can begin to browse among the lively capitals of Europe?