haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner; have only
moped around. But I'm going to try tomorrow. How could I ever have.

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and
all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Livy and I join in the warmest regards to you and yours,

Yrs ever,
MARK.

Longfellow, in his reply, said: "I do not believe anybody
was much hurt. Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he
was not. So I think you may dismiss the matter from your
mind without further remorse."

Holmes wrote: "It never occurred to me for a moment to take
offense, or feel wounded by your playful use of my name."

Miss Ellen Emerson replied for her father (in a letter to
Mrs. Clemens) that the speech had made no impression upon
him, giving at considerable length the impression it had
made on herself and other members of the family.

Clearly, it was not the principals who were hurt, but only those who
held them in awe, though one can realize that this would not make it
much easier for Mark Twain.

XVIII. LETTERS FROM EUROPE, 1878-79. TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL. WRITING A
NEW TRAVEL BOOK. LIFE IN MUNICH.

Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything
to do with Mark Twain's resolve to spend a year or two in Europe
cannot be known now. There were other good reasons for going, one
in particular being a demand for another book of travel. It was
also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days
were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work. He
had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise
that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion
of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than
assessment and vexation.

Clemens's mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his
wife, in Iowa.

*****

To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

HARTFORD, Feb. 17, 1878

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole
world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time. My conscience
blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not
writing other folks.

Life has co