It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or
Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look at
the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance
of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination
call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't
altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.

Well, that's loss. To have house and Bible shrink so, under the
disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment. But there are
compensations. You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets
and corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the
field. Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi. I haven't got him
in focus yet, but I've got Browning....

Ys Ever
MARK.

Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to
absentmindedness. He was always forgetting engagements, or getting
them wrong. Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the
mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably
for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all. It was only
when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place
the week before. It was always dangerous for him to make
engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience.
We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies.

*****

To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington:

HARTFORD, Nov. 6, 1887.

MY DEAR MADAM,--I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this
house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run
itself without the help of the major half it gets aground. Last night
when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open
the Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate
women, I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my
chance. I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of
my mind. If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the
administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but
I never thought of that. So when I did lay it before her, later, I
realized once more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a
combination to try to manage affairs which