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Complete Letters of Mark Twain
*****
To Mr. Henry Alden:
Alden, – dear and ancient friend – it is a solemn moment. You have now reached the age of discretion. You have been a long time arriving. Many years ago you docked me on an article because the subject was too old; later, you docked me on an article because the subject was too new; later still, you docked me on an article because the subject was betwixt and between. Once, when I wrote a Letter to Queen Victoria, you did not put it in the respectable part of the Magazine, but interred it in that potter’s field, the Editor’s Drawer. As a result, she never answered it. How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember, with charity, that his intentions were good.
You will reform, now, Alden. You will cease from these economies, and you will be discharged. But in your retirement you will carry with you the admiration and earnest good wishes of the oppressed and toiling scribes. This will be better than bread. Let this console you when the bread fails.
You will carry with you another thing, too – the affection of the scribes; for they all love you in spite of your crimes. For you bear a kind heart in your breast, and the sweet and winning spirit that charms away all hostilities and animosities, and makes of your enemy your friend and keeps him so. You have reigned over us thirty-six years, and, please God, you shall reign another thirty-six—“and peace to Mahmoud on his golden throne!”
Always yours,
Mark.
A copyright bill was coming up in Washington and a delegation of authors went down to work for it. Clemens was not the head of the delegation, but he was the most prominent member of it, as well as the most useful. He invited the writer to accompany him, and elsewhere I have told in detail the story of that excursion,[49] which need be but briefly touched upon here.
His work was mainly done aside from that of the delegation. They had him scheduled for a speech, however, which he made without notes and with scarcely any preparation. Meantime he had applied to Speaker Cannon for permission to allow him on the floor of the House, where he could buttonhole the Congressmen. He was not eligible to the floor without having received the thanks of Congress, hence the following letter:
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To Hon. Joseph Cannon, House of Representatives:
Dec. 7, 1906.
Dear uncle Joseph, – Please get me the thanks of the Congress – not next week but right away. It is very necessary. Do accomplish this for your affectionate old friend right away; by persuasion, if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of the support, encouragement and protection of one of the nation’s most valuable assets and industries – its literature. I have arguments with me, also a barrel, with liquid in it.
Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don’t wait for others; there isn’t time. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy-one years and I am entitled to thanks. Congress knows it perfectly well and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the Sergeant-at-Arms quick. When shall I come? With love and a benediction.
Mark Twain.
This was mainly a joke. Mark Twain did not expect any “thanks,” but he did hope for access to the floor, which once, in an earlier day, had been accorded him. We drove to the Capitol and he delivered his letter to “Uncle Joe” by hand. “Uncle Joe” could not give him the privilege of the floor; the rules had become more stringent. He declared they would hang him if he did such a thing. He added that he had a private room down-stairs, where Mark Twain might establish headquarters, and that he would assign his colored servant, Neal, of long acquaintanceship with many of the members, to pass the word that Mark Twain was receiving.
The result was a great success. All that afternoon members of Congress poured into the Speaker’s room and, in an atmosphere blue with tobacco smoke, Mark Twain talked the gospel of copyright to his heart’s content.
The bill did not come up for passage that session, but Mark Twain lived to see his afternoon’s lobbying bring a return. In 1909, Champ Clark, and those others who had gathered around him that afternoon, passed a measure that added fourteen years to the copyright term.
The next letter refers to a proposed lobby of quite a different sort.
*****
To Helen Keller, in Wrentham, Mass.:
21 Fifth Avenue,
Dec. 23, ’06.
Dear Helen Keller, – … You say, “As a reformer, you know that ideas must be driven home again and again.”
Yes, I know it; and by old experience I know that speeches and documents and public meetings are a pretty poor and lame way of accomplishing it. Last year I proposed a sane way – one which I had practiced with success for a quarter of a century – but I wasn’t expecting it to get any attention, and it didn’t.
Give me a battalion of 200 winsome young girls and matrons, and let me tell them what to do and how to do it, and I will be responsible for shining results. If I could mass them on the stage in front of the audience and instruct them there, I could make a public meeting take hold of itself and do something really valuable for once. Not that the real instruction would be done there, for it wouldn’t; it would be previously done privately, and merely repeated there.
But it isn’t going to happen – the good old way will be stuck to: there’ll be a public meeting: with music, and prayer, and a wearying report, and a verbal description of the marvels the blind can do, and 17 speeches – then the call upon all present who are still alive, to contribute. This hoary program was invented in the idiot asylum, and will never be changed. Its function is to breed hostility to good causes.
Some day somebody will recruit my 200—my dear beguilesome Knights of the Golden Fleece – and you will see them make good their ominous name.
Mind, we must meet! not in the grim and ghastly air of the platform, mayhap, but by the friendly fire – here at 21.
Affectionately your friend,
S. L. Clemens.
They did meet somewhat later that winter in the friendly parlors of No. 21, and friends gathered in to meet the marvelous blind girl and to pay tribute to Miss Sullivan (Mrs. Macy) for her almost incredible achievement.
XLVI. Letters 1907-08. A Degree From Oxford. The New Home At Redding
The author, J. Howard Moore, sent a copy of his book, The Universal Kinship, with a letter in which he said: “Most humorists have no anxiety except to glorify themselves and add substance to their pocket-books by making their readers laugh. You have shown, on many occasions, that your mission is not simply to antidote the melancholy of a world, but includes a real and intelligent concern for the general welfare of your fellowman.”
The Universal Kinship was the kind of a book that Mark Twain appreciated, as his acknowledgment clearly shows.
*****
To Mr. J. Howard Moore:
Feb. 2, ’07.
Dear Mr. Moore, The book has furnished me several days of deep pleasure and satisfaction; it has compelled my gratitude at the same time, since it saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished opinions and reflections and resentments by doing it lucidly and fervently and irascibly for me.
There is one thing that always puzzles me: as inheritors of the mentality of our reptile ancestors we have improved the inheritance by a thousand grades; but in the matter of the morals which they left us we have gone backward as many grades. That evolution is strange, and to me unaccountable and unnatural. Necessarily we started equipped with their perfect and blemishless morals; now we are wholly destitute; we have no real, morals, but only artificial ones – morals created and preserved by the forced suppression of natural and hellish instincts. Yet we are dull enough to be vain of them. Certainly we are a sufficiently comical invention, we humans.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. Clemens.
Mark Twain’s own books were always being excommunicated by some librarian, and the matter never failed to invite the attention and amusement of the press, and the indignation of many correspondents. Usually the books were Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the morals of which were not regarded as wholly exemplary. But in 1907 a small library, in a very small town, attained a day’s national notoriety by putting the ban on Eve’s Diary, not so much on account of its text as for the chaste and exquisite illustrations by Lester Ralph. When the reporters came in a troop to learn about it, the author said: “I believe this time the trouble is mainly with the pictures. I did not draw them. I wish I had – they are so beautiful.”
Just at this time, Dr. William Lyon Phelps, of Yale, was giving a literary talk to the Teachers’ Club, of Hartford, dwelling on the superlative value of Mark Twain’s writings for readers old and young. Mrs. F. G. Whitmore, an old Hartford friend, wrote Clemens of the things that Phelps had said, as consolation for Eve’s latest banishment. This gave him a chance to add something to what he had said to the reporters.
*****
To Mrs. Whitmore, in Hartford:
Feb. 7, 1907.
Dear Mrs. Whitmore, – But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me. But even if it angered me such words as those of Professor Phelps would take the sting all out. Nobody attaches weight to the freaks of the Charlton Library, but when a man like Phelps speaks, the world gives attention. Some day I hope to meet him and thank him for his courage for saying those things out in public. Custom is, to think a handsome thing in private but tame it down in the utterance.
I hope you are all well and happy; and thereto I add my love.
Sincerely yours,
S. L. Clemens.
In May, 1907, Mark Twain was invited to England to receive from Oxford the degree of Literary Doctor. It was an honor that came to him as a sort of laurel crown at the end of a great career, and gratified him exceedingly. To Moberly Bell, of the London Times, he expressed his appreciation. Bell had been over in April and Clemens believed him concerned in the matter.
*****
To Moberly Bell, in London:
21 Fifth Avenue, May 3, ’07
Dear Mr. Bell, – Your hand is in it! and you have my best thanks. Although I wouldn’t cross an ocean again for the price of the ship that carried me, I am glad to do it for an Oxford degree. I shall plan to sail for England a shade before the middle of June, so that I can have a few days in London before the 26th.
Sincerely,
S. L. Clemens.
He had taken a house at Tuxedo for the summer, desiring to be near New York City, and in the next letter he writes Mr. Rogers concerning his London plans. We discover, also, in this letter that he has begun work on the Redding home and the cost is to come entirely out of the autobiographical chapters then running in the North American Review. It may be of passing interest to note here that he had the usual house-builder’s fortune. He received thirty thousand dollars for the chapters; the house cost him nearly double that amount.
*****
To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
Tuxedo Park,
May 29, ’07.
Dear admiral, – Why hang it, I am not going to see you and Mrs. Rogers at all in England! It is a great disappointment. I leave there a month from now – June 29. No, I shall see you; for by your itinerary you are most likely to come to London June 21st or along there. So that is very good and satisfactory. I have declined all engagements but two – Whitelaw Reid (dinner) June 21, and the Pilgrims (lunch), June 25. The Oxford ceremony is June 26. I have paid my return passage in the Minne-something, but it is just possible that I may want to stay in England a week or two longer – I can’t tell, yet. I do very much want to meet up with the boys for the last time.
I have signed the contract for the building of the house on my Connecticut farm and specified the cost limit, and work has been begun. The cost has to all come out of a year’s instalments of Autobiography in the N. A. Review.
Clara, is winning her way to success and distinction with sure and steady strides. By all accounts she is singing like a bird, and is not afraid on the concert stage any more.
Tuxedo is a charming place; I think it hasn’t its equal anywhere.
Very best wishes to you both.
S. L. C.
The story of Mark Twain’s extraordinary reception and triumph in England has been told.[50] It was, in fact, the crowning glory of his career. Perhaps one of the most satisfactory incidents of his sojourn was a dinner given to him by the staff of Punch, in the historic offices at 10 Bouverie Street where no other foreign visitor had been thus honored – a notable distinction. When the dinner ended, little joy Agnew, daughter of the chief editor, entered and presented to the chief guest the original drawing of a cartoon by Bernard Partridge, which had appeared on the front page of Punch. In this picture the presiding genius of the paper is offering to Mark Twain health, long life, and happiness from “The Punch Bowl.”
A short time after his return to America he received a pretty childish letter from little Miss Agnew acknowledging a photograph he had sent her, and giving a list of her pets and occupations. Such a letter always delighted Mark Twain, and his pleasure in this one is reflected in his reply.
*****
To Miss Joy Agnew, in London:
Tuxedo Park, new York.
Unto you greetings and salutation and worship, you dear, sweet little rightly-named Joy! I can see you now almost as vividly as I saw you that night when you sat flashing and beaming upon those sombre swallow-tails.
“Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.”
Oh, you were indeed the only one – there wasn’t even the remotest chance of competition with you, dear! Ah, you are a decoration, you little witch!
The idea of your house going to the wanton expense of a flower garden! – aren’t you enough? And what do you want to go and discourage the other flowers for? Is that the right spirit? is it considerate? is it kind? How do you suppose they feel when you come around – looking the way you look? And you so pink and sweet and dainty and lovely and supernatural? Why, it makes them feel embarrassed and artificial, of course; and in my opinion it is just as pathetic as it can be. Now then you want to reform – dear – and do right.
Well certainly you are well off, Joy:
3 bantams; 3 goldfish; 3 doves; 6 canaries; 2 dogs; 1 cat;
All you need, now, to be permanently beyond the reach of want, is one more dog – just one more good, gentle, high principled, affectionate, loyal dog who wouldn’t want any nobler service than the golden privilege of lying at your door, nights, and biting everything that came along – and I am that very one, and ready to come at the dropping of a hat.
Do you think you could convey my love and thanks to your “daddy” and Owen Seaman and those other oppressed and down-trodden subjects of yours, you darling small tyrant?
On my knees! These – with the kiss of fealty from your other subject—
Mark Twain.
Elinor Glyn, author of Three Weeks and other erotic tales, was in America that winter and asked permission to call on Mark Twain. An appointment was made and Clemens discussed with her, for an hour or more, those crucial phases of life which have made living a complex problem since the days of Eve in Eden. Mrs. Glyn had never before heard anything like Mark Twain’s wonderful talk, and she was anxious to print their interview. She wrote what she could remember of it and sent it to him for approval. If his conversation had been frank, his refusal was hardly less so.
*****
To Mrs. Elinor Glyn, in New York:
Jan. 22, ’08.
Dear Mrs. Glyn, It reads pretty poorly – I get the sense of it, but it is a poor literary job; however, it would have to be that because nobody can be reported even approximately, except by a stenographer. Approximations, synopsized speeches, translated poems, artificial flowers and chromos all have a sort of value, but it is small. If you had put upon paper what I really said it would have wrecked your type-machine. I said some fetid, over-vigorous things, but that was because it was a confidential conversation. I said nothing for print. My own report of the same conversation reads like Satan roasting a Sunday school. It, and certain other readable chapters of my autobiography will not be published until all the Clemens family are dead – dead and correspondingly indifferent. They were written to entertain me, not the rest of the world. I am not here to do good – at least not to do it intentionally. You must pardon me for dictating this letter; I am sick a-bed and not feeling as well as I might.
Sincerely Yours,
S. L. Clemens.
Among the cultured men of England Mark Twain had no greater admirer, or warmer friend, than Andrew Lang. They were at one on most literary subjects, and especially so in their admiration of the life and character of Joan of Arc. Both had written of her, and both held her to be something almost more than mortal. When, therefore, Anatole France published his exhaustive biography of the maid of Domremy, a book in which he followed, with exaggerated minuteness and innumerable footnotes, every step of Joan’s physical career at the expense of her spiritual life, which he was inclined to cheapen, Lang wrote feelingly, and with some contempt, of the performance, inviting the author of the Personal Recollections to come to the rescue of their heroine. “Compare every one of his statements with the passages he cites from authorities, and make him the laughter of the world” he wrote. “If you are lazy about comparing I can make you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that they say. When I tell you that he thinks the Epiphany (January 6, Twelfth Night) is December 25th – Christmas Day-you begin to see what an egregious ass he is. Treat him like Dowden, and oblige”—a reference to Mark Twain’s defense of Harriet Shelley, in which he had heaped ridicule on Dowden’s Life of the Poet – a masterly performance; one of the best that ever came from Mark Twain’s pen.
Lang’s suggestion would seem to have been a welcome one.
*****
To Andrew Lang, in London:
New York, April 25, 1908.
Dear Mr. Lang, – I haven’t seen the book nor any review of it, but only not very-understandable references to it – of a sort which discomforted me, but of course set my interest on fire. I don’t want to have to read it in French – I should lose the nice shades, and should do a lot of gross misinterpreting, too. But there’ll be a translation soon, nicht wahr? I will wait for it. I note with joy that you say: “If you are lazy about comparing, (which I most certainly am), I can make you a complete set of what the authorities say, and of what this amazing novelist says that they say.”
Ah, do it for me! Then I will attempt the article, and (if I succeed in doing it to my satisfaction,) will publish it. It is long since I touched a pen (3 1/2 years), and I was intending to continue this happy holiday to the gallows, but – there are things that could beguile me to break this blessed Sabbath.
Yours very sincerely,
S. L. Clemens.
Certainly it is an interesting fact that an Englishman – one of the race that burned Joan – should feel moved to defend her memory against the top-heavy perversions of a distinguished French author.
But Lang seems never to have sent the notes. The copying would have been a tremendous task, and perhaps he never found the time for it. We may regret to-day that he did not, for Mark Twain’s article on the French author’s Joan would have been at least unique.
Samuel Clemens could never accustom himself to the loss of his wife. From the time of her death, marriage-which had brought him his greatest joy in life-presented itself to him always with the thought of bereavement, waiting somewhere just behind. The news of an approaching wedding saddened him and there was nearly always a somber tinge in his congratulations, of which the following to a dear friend is an example:
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To Father Fitz-Simon, in Washington:
June 5, ’08.
Dear father Fitz-Simon, – Marriage – yes, it is the supreme felicity of life, I concede it. And it is also the supreme tragedy of life. The deeper the love the surer the tragedy. And the more disconsolating when it comes.
And so I congratulate you. Not perfunctorily, not lukewarmly, but with a fervency and fire that no word in the dictionary is strong enough to convey. And in the same breath and with the same depth and sincerity, I grieve for you. Not for both of you and not for the one that shall go first, but for the one that is fated to be left behind. For that one there is no recompense. – For that one no recompense is possible.
There are times – thousands of times – when I can expose the half of my mind, and conceal the other half, but in the matter of the tragedy of marriage I feel too deeply for that, and I have to bleed it all out or shut it all in. And so you must consider what I have been through, and am passing through and be charitable with me.
Make the most of the sunshine! and I hope it will last long – ever so long.
I do not really want to be present; yet for friendship’s sake and because I honor you so, I would be there if I could.
Most sincerely your friend,
S. L. Clemens.
The new home at Redding was completed in the spring of 1908, and on the 18th of June, when it was entirely fitted and furnished, Mark Twain entered it for the first time. He had never even seen the place nor carefully examined plans which John Howells had made for his house. He preferred the surprise of it, and the general avoidance of detail. That he was satisfied with the result will be seen in his letters. He named it at first “Innocence at Home”; later changing this title to “Stormfield.”
The letter which follows is an acknowledgment of an interesting souvenir from the battle-field of Tewksbury (1471), and some relics of the Cavalier and Roundhead Regiments encamped at Tewksbury in 1643.
*****
To an English admirer:
Innocence at home, Redding, Connecticut,
Aug. 15, ’08.
Dear sir, – I highly prize the pipes, and shall intimate to people that “Raleigh” smoked them, and doubtless he did. After a little practice I shall be able to go further and say he did; they will then be the most interesting features of my library’s decorations. The Horse-shoe is attracting a good deal of attention, because I have intimated that the conqueror’s horse cast it; it will attract more when I get my hand in and say he cast it, I thank you for the pipes and the shoe; and also for the official guide, which I read through at a single sitting. If a person should say that about a book of mine I should regard it as good evidence of the book’s interest.
Very truly yours,
S. L. Clemens.
In his philosophy, What Is Man? and now and again in his other writings, we find Mark Twain giving small credit to the human mind as an originator of ideas. The most original writer of his time, he took no credit for pure invention and allowed none to others. The mind, he declared, adapted, consciously or unconsciously; it did not create. In a letter which follows he elucidates this doctrine. The reference in it to the “captain” and to the kerosene, as the reader may remember, have to do with Captain “Hurricane” Jones and his theory of the miracles of “Isaac and of the prophets of Baal,” as expounded in Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion.
By a trick of memory Clemens gives The Little Duke as his suggestion for The Prince and the Pauper; he should have written The Prince and the Page, by the same author.
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To Rev. F. Y. Christ, in New York:
Redding, Conn., Aug., ’08.
Dear sir, – You say “I often owe my best sermons to a suggestion received in reading or from other exterior sources.” Your remark is not quite in accordance with the facts. We must change it to—“I owe all my thoughts, sermons and ideas to suggestions received from sources outside of myself.” The simplified English of this proposition is—“No man’s brains ever originated an idea.” It is an astonishing thing that after all these ages the world goes on thinking the human brain machinery can originate a thought.
It can’t. It never has done it. In all cases, little and big, the thought is born of a suggestion; and in all cases the suggestions come to the brain from the outside. The brain never acts except from exterior impulse.
A man can satisfy himself of the truth of this by a single process, – let him examine every idea that occurs to him in an hour; a day; in a week – in a lifetime if he please. He will always find that an outside something suggested the thought, something which he saw with his eyes or heard with his ears or perceived by his touch – not necessarily to-day, nor yesterday, nor last year, nor twenty years ago, but sometime or other. Usually the source of the suggestion is immediately traceable, but sometimes it isn’t.
However, if you will examine every thought that occurs to you for the next two days, you will find that in at least nine cases out of ten you can put your finger on the outside suggestion – And that ought to convince you that No. 10 had that source too, although you cannot at present hunt it down and find it.
The idea of writing to me would have had to wait a long time if it waited until your brain originated it. It was born of an outside suggestion – Sir Thomas and my old Captain.
The hypnotist thinks he has invented a new thing – suggestion. This is very sad. I don’t know where my captain got his kerosene idea. (It was forty-one years ago, and he is long ago dead.) But I know that it didn’t originate in his head, but it was born from a suggestion from the outside.
Yesterday a guest said, “How did you come to think of writing ’The Prince and the Pauper?’” I didn’t. The thought came to me from the outside – suggested by that pleasant and picturesque little history-book, Charlotte M. Yonge’s “Little Duke,” I doubt if Mrs. Burnett knows whence came to her the suggestion to write “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” but I know; it came to her from reading “The Prince and the Pauper.” In all my life I have never originated an idea, and neither has she, nor anybody else.
Man’s mind is a clever machine, and can work up materials into ingenious fancies and ideas, but it can’t create the material; none but the gods can do that. In Sweden I saw a vast machine receive a block of wood, and turn it into Mark.table matches in two minutes. It could do everything but make the wood. That is the kind of machine the human mind is. Maybe this is not a large compliment, but it is all I can afford…..
Your friend and well-wisher,
S. L. Clemens.
*****
To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in Fair Hawn, Mass.:
Redding, Conn, Aug. 12, 1908.
Dear Mrs. Rogers, I believe I am the wellest man on the planet to-day, and good for a trip to Fair Haven (which I discussed with the Captain of the New Bedford boat, who pleasantly accosted me in the Grand Central August 5) but the doctor came up from New York day before yesterday, and gave positive orders that I must not stir from here before frost. It is because I was threatened with a swoon, 10 or 12 days ago, and went to New York a day or two later to attend my nephew’s funeral and got horribly exhausted by the heat and came back here and had a bilious collapse. In 24 hours I was as sound as a nut again, but nobody believes it but me.
This is a prodigiously satisfactory place, and I am so glad I don’t have to go back to the turmoil and rush of New York. The house stands high and the horizons are wide, yet the seclusion is perfect. The nearest public road is half a mile away, so there is nobody to look in, and I don’t have to wear clothes if I don’t want to. I have been down stairs in night-gown and slippers a couple of hours, and have been photographed in that costume; but I will dress, now, and behave myself.
That doctor had half an idea that there is something the matter with my brain… Doctors do know so little and they do charge so much for it. I wish Henry Rogers would come here, and I wish you would come with him. You can’t rest in that crowded place, but you could rest here, for sure! I would learn bridge, and entertain you, and rob you.
With love to you both,
Ever yours,
S. L. C.
In the foregoing letter we get the first intimation of Mark Twain’s failing health. The nephew who had died was Samuel E. Moffett, son of Pamela Clemens. Moffett, who was a distinguished journalist – an editorial writer on Collier’s Weekly, a man beloved by all who knew him – had been drowned in the surf off the Jersey beach.
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To W. D. Howells, Kittery Point, Maine:
Aug. 12, ’08.
Dear Howells, – Won’t you and Mrs. Howells and Mildred come and give us as many days as you can spare, and examine John’s triumph? It is the most satisfactory house I am acquainted with, and the most satisfactorily situated.
But it is no place to work in, because one is outside of it all the time, while the sun and the moon are on duty. Outside of it in the loggia, where the breezes blow and the tall arches divide up the scenery and frame it.
It’s a ghastly long distance to come, and I wouldn’t travel such a distance to see anything short of a memorial museum, but if you can’t come now you can at least come later when you return to New York, for the journey will be only an hour and a half per express-train. Things are gradually and steadily taking shape inside the house, and nature is taking care of the outside in her ingenious and wonderful fashion – and she is competent and asks no help and gets none. I have retired from New York for good, I have retired from labor for good, I have dismissed my stenographer and have entered upon a holiday whose other end is in the cemetery.
