第224章

DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though Ishall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure moment.Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a hundred years ago, Mrs.Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any in--the years, anyway." That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get rid of a virtue.....

I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone.

Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs.Clemens has come with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till another figuring-up was necessary.Last night she figured up for her own satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the bank.I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking 4 ?centers before.

At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the Mouse-Trap played and well played.I thought the house would kill itself with laughter.By George they played with life! and it was most devastatingly funny.And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted them.The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls.Then there was a nigger-minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too, for the nigger-show was always a passion of mine.This one was created and managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was the middle man.There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be one or the other.

It's quite true--I don't read you "as much as I ought," nor anywhere near half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.

I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete, but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the papers.I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey begins, and that will not happen again.The last chance at a bound book of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your short things, by the Harpers.I read the whole book twice through and some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is admiring it yet.Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know where they get them.

Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to live in New York.We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and expenses.But perhaps nothing will come of it.We do afford to live in the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).

Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us of "The days when we went gipsying A long time ago."Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us others and will not look our way.We saw the "Master of Palmyra" last night.How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human grand-folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!

With love from all of us to all of you.

MARK.