STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONN.,
Jan. 18, '09.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I have to write a line, lazy as I am, to say how your
Poe article delighted me; and to say that I am in agreement with
substantially all you say about his literature. To me his prose is
unreadable--like Jane Austin's. No, there is a difference. I could read
his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It
seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

Another thing: you grant that God and circumstances sinned against Poe,
but you also grant that he sinned against himself--a thing which he
couldn't do and didn't do.

It is lively up here now. I wish you could come.

Yrs ever,
MARK

*****

To W. D. Howells, in New York:

STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT,
3 in the morning, Apl. 17, '09.
[Written with pencil].

My pen has gone dry and the ink is out of reach. Howells, Did you write
me day-before-day before yesterday, or did I dream it? In my mind's
eye I most vividly see your hand-write on a square blue envelop in the
mailpile. I have hunted the house over, but there is no such letter. Was
it an illusion?

I am reading Lowell's letter, and smoking. I woke an hour ago and am
reading to keep from wasting the time. On page 305, vol. I. I have just
margined a note:

"Young friend! I like that! You ought to see him now."

It seemed startlingly strange to hear a person call you young. It was a
brick out of a blue sky, and knocked me groggy for a moment. Ah me, the
pathos of it is, that we were young then. And he--why, so was he, but
he didn't know it. He didn't even know it 9 years later, when we saw him
approaching and you warned me, saying, "Don't say anything about age--he
has just turned fifty, and thinks he is old and broods over it."

[Well, Clara did sing! And you wrote her a dear letter.]

Time to go to sleep.

Yours ever,
MARK.

*****

To Daniel Kiefer:

[No date.]

DANL KIEFER ESQ. DEAR SIR,--I should be far from willing to have a
political party named after me.

I would not be willing to belon