There's a good deal of "fat" I've dictated, (from Jan. 9) 210,000 words,
and the "fat" adds about 50,000 more.

The "fat" is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or
editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little
old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which
you said "publish--and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction;
he'll do it." ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It reads quite
to suit me, without altering a word, now that it isn't to see print
until I am dead.

To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and
assigns burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006
A.D.--which I judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I
live 3 or 4 years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when
it comes out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other
dead pals. You are invited.

MARK.

His tendency to estimate the measure of the work he was doing, and
had completed, must have clung to him from his old printer days.

The chapter which was to get his heirs and assigns burned alive was
on the orthodox God, and there was more than one such chapter. In
the next letter he refers to two exquisite poems by Howells, and the
writer of these notes recalls his wonderful reading of them aloud.
'In Our Town' was a collection of short stories then recently issued
by William Allen White. Howells had recommended them.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Maine:

21 FIFTH AVE., Tuesday Eve.

DEAR HOWELLS,--It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things--I
don't know how to thank you enough. But I love you, that I know.

I read "After the Wedding" aloud and we felt all the pain of it and
the truth. It was very moving and very beautiful--would have been
over-comingly moving, at times, but for the haltings and pauses
compelled by the difficulties of MS--these were a protection, in that
they furnished me time to brace up my voice, and get a new start. Jean
wanted to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, and for "keeps," too, I
suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.

I like "In Our Town," particularly that Colonel, of the Lookout Mountain
Oration, and very particularly pages 212-16. I wrote and told White so.

After "After the Wedding" I read "The M