assemblage of brains and
fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more
than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight.
There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches.
I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and
show them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong
I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work
on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture
there a month or two when I return from Australia.

There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife
of His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian
Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me
in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me
and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have
a great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we
would find him ready. I have a letter from her this morning enclosing
a letter of introduction to the Admiral. I already know the Admiral
commanding in the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out
there. He sleeps with my books under his pillow. P'raps it is the only
way he can sleep.

According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of
course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend
June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture
in San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia
before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of
November. We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and
they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.

Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
finances a little easier.

With a power of love to you all,
S. L. CLEMENS.

There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
he wrote: "I am tired to death all the time:" To a man of less
vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
under such circumstances this condition woul