--and that is all; for the foreign criticisms
do not count, they being matters of news, and proper for publication in
anybody's newspaper.

And to offset that one jest, the Tribune paid me one compliment Dec. 23,
by publishing my note declining the New York New England dinner, while
merely (in the same breath,) mentioning that similar letters were read
from General Sherman and other men whom we all know to be persons of
real consequence.

Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small
mouse it is, God knows. And my three weeks' hard work have got to go
into the ignominious pigeon-hole. Confound it, I could have earned ten
thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble. However, I shouldn't
have done it, for I am too lazy, now, in my sere and yellow leaf, to be
willing to work for anything but love..... I kind of envy you people who
are permitted for your righteousness' sake to dwell in a boarding house;
not that I should always want to live in one, but I should like
the change occasionally from this housekeeping slavery to that wild
independence. A life of don't-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what
I have asked for in many a secret prayer. I shall come by and by and
require of you what you have offered me there.

Yours ever,
MARK.

Howells, who had already known something of the gathering storm,
replied: "Your letter was an immense relief to me, for although I
had an abiding faith that you would get sick of your enterprise,
I wasn't easy until I knew that you had given it up."

Joel Chandler Harris appears again in the letters of this period.
Twichell, during a trip South about this time, had called on Harris
with some sort of proposition or suggestion from Clemens that Harris
appear with him in public, and tell, or read, the Remus stories from
the platform. But Harris was abnormally diffident. Clemens later
pronounced him "the shyest full-grown man" he had ever met, and the
word which Twichell brought home evidently did not encourage the
platform idea.

*****

To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:

HARTFORD, Apl. 2, '82.

Private.

MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--Jo Twichell brought me your note and told me of
his talk with you. He said you didn't believe you would ever be able to
muster a su