eople here don't mind snow; they were all out, plodding
around on their affairs--especially the children, who were wallowing
around everywhere, like snow images, and having a mighty good time.
I wish I could describe the winter costume of the young girls, but I
can't. It is grave and simple, but graceful and pretty--the top of it is
a brimless fur cap. Maybe it is the costume that makes pretty girls seem
so monotonously plenty here. It was a kind of relief to strike a homely
face occasionally.

You descend into some of the streets by long, deep stairways; and in the
strong moonlight, last night, these were very picturesque. I did wish
you were here to see these things. You couldn't by any possibility sleep
in these beds, though, or enjoy the food.

Good night, sweetheart, and give my respects to the cubs.

SAML.

It had been hoped that W. D. Howells would join the Canadian
excursion, but Howells was not very well that autumn. He wrote that
he had been in bed five weeks, "most of the time recovering; so you
see how bad I must have been to begin with. But now I am out of any
first-class pain; I have a good appetite, and I am as abusive and
peremptory as Guiteau." Clemens, returning to Hartford, wrote him a
letter that explains itself.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Dec. 16 '81.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It was a sharp disappointment--your inability to
connect, on the Canadian raid. What a gaudy good time we should have
had!

Disappointed, again, when I got back to Boston; for I was promising
myself half an hour's look at you, in Belmont; but your note to Osgood
showed that that could not be allowed out yet.

The Atlantic arrived an hour ago, and your faultless and delicious
Police Report brought that blamed Joe Twichell powerfully before me.
There's a man who can tell such things himself (by word of mouth,) and
has as sure an eye for detecting a thing that is before his eyes, as
any man in the world, perhaps--then why in the nation doesn't he report
himself with a pen?

One of those drenching days last week, he slopped down town with his
cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat
woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry
show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and
was cleaning up and fixi