destroyed it, for no trace of the MS. exists to-day. Howells
could not join in these ventures, for he was otherwise
occupied and had sickness in his household.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Jan. 7, '84.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--"O my goodn's", as Jean says. You have now encountered
at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author. The scarlet
fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may
desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but
the scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till
you be all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to
cheer you.

The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I
believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me.

You folks have our most sincere sympathy. Oh, the intrusion of this
hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.

My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich
Islands: the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with
notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that
unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating
people. And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a
but-little considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly
you are born in you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler
religious folly may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and
abolished and obliterated it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age,
and the heroine at 4, in the midst of the ancient idolatrous system,
with its picturesque and amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months
before the arrival of the missionaries and the erection of a shallow
Christianity upon the ruins of the old paganism. Then these two will
become educated Christians, and highly civilized.

And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale's leper business. When
we came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all
ready to our hand.

Yrs Ever
MARK.

He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells
were to dramatize later. His head filled up with other projects,
such as publishing plans, reading-tours, and the like. The
type-setting machine does not appear in the letters of this period,
but it was an impo