fast enough with work.
Tomorrow I lunch with Mr. Toole and a Member of Parliament--Toole is
the most able Comedian of the day. And then I am done for a while. On
Tuesday I mean to hang a card to my keybox, inscribed--"Gone out of the
City for a week"--and then I shall go to work and work hard. One can't
be caught in a hive of 4,000,000 people, like this.

I have got such a perfectly delightful razor. I have a notion to buy
some for Charley, Theodore and Slee--for I know they have no such razors
there. I have got a neat little watch-chain for Annie--$20.

I love you my darling. My love to all of you.

SAML.

That Mark Twain should feel and privately report something of his
triumphs we need not wonder at. Certainly he was never one to give
himself airs, but to have the world's great literary center paying
court to him, who only ten years before had been penniless and
unknown, and who once had been a barefoot Tom Sawyer in Hannibal,
was quite startling. It is gratifying to find evidence of human
weakness in the following heart-to-heart letter to his publisher,
especially in view of the relating circumstances.

*****

To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford:

LONDON, Sept. 28, 1872.

FRIEND BLISS,--I have been received in a sort of tremendous way,
tonight, by the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of the
Sheriffs of London--mine being (between you and me) a name which was
received with a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when the
long list of guests was called.

I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support and
assistance of my excellent friend Sir John Bennett--and I want you
to paste the enclosed in a couple of the handsomest copies of the
"Innocents" and "Roughing It," and send them to him. His address is

"Sir John Bennett,
Cheapside,
London."

Yrs Truly
S. L. CLEMENS.

The "relating circumstances" were these: At the abovementioned
dinner there had been a roll-call of the distinguished guests
present, and each name had been duly applauded. Clemens, conversing
in a whisper with his neighbor, Sir John Bennett, did not give very
close attention to the names, applauding mechanically with the
others.