and
nightly emancipation from the world's slaveries and gross interests, you
have received a bigger wage than any man in the land, you have dreamed a
splendid dream and had it come true, and to-day you could not afford
to trade fortunes with anybody--not even with another scientist, for he
must divide his spoil with his guild, whereas essentially the world you
have discovered is your own and must remain so.

It is all just magnificent, Joe! And no one is prouder or gladder than

Yours always
MARK.

At York Harbor, Maine, where they had taken a cottage for the
summer--a pretty place, with Howells not far distant, at Kittery
Point--Mrs. Clemens's health gave way. This was at a period when
telegraphic communication was far from reliable. The old-time
Western Union had fallen from grace; its "system" no longer
justified the best significance of that word. The new day of
reorganization was coming, and it was time for it. Mark Twain's
letter concerning the service at York Harbor would hardly be
warranted today, but those who remember conditions of that earlier
time will agree that it was justified then, and will appreciate its
satire.

*****

To the President of The Western Union, in New York:

"THE PINES"
YORK HARBOR, MAINE.

DEAR SIR,--I desire to make a complaint, and I bring it to you, the head
of the company, because by experience I know better than to carry it to
a subordinate.

I have been here a month and a half, and by testimony of friends,
reinforced by personal experience I now feel qualified to claim as an
established fact that the telegraphic service here is the worst in the
world except that Boston.

These services are actually slower than was the New York and Hartford
service in the days when I last complained to you--which was fifteen
or eighteen years ago, when telegraphic time and train time between the
mentioned points was exactly the same, to-wit, three hours and a half.
Six days ago--it was that raw day which provoked so much comment--my
daughter was on her way up from New York, and at noon she telegraphed
me from New Haven asking that I meet her with a cloak at Portsmouth. Her
telegram reached me four hours and a quarter later--just 15 minutes too
late for me to catch my train and meet her.

I judg