to my den. Now the call is loud and decided at
last. So to-morrow I shall begin regular, steady work, and stick to
it till the middle of July or August 1st, when I look for Twichell;
we will then walk about Germany two or three weeks, and then I'll go
to work again (perhaps in Munich).

The walking tour with Twichell had been contemplated in the scheme for
gathering book material, but the plan for it had not been completed when
he left Hartford. Now he was anxious that they should start as soon as
possible. Twichell, receiving the news in Hartford, wrote that it was a
great day for him: that his third son had been happily born early that
morning, and now the arrival of this glorious gift of a tramp through
Germany and Switzerland completed his blessings.

I am almost too joyful for pleasure [he wrote]. I labor with my
felicities. How I shall get to sleep to-night I don't know, though
I have had a good start, in not having slept much last night. Oh,
my! do you realize, Mark, what a symposium it is to be? I do. To
begin with, I am thoroughly tired and the rest will be worth
everything. To walk with you and talk with you for weeks together
--why, it's my dream of luxury. Harmony, who at sunrise this morning
deemed herself the happiest woman on the Continent when I read your
letter to her, widened her smile perceptibly, and revived another
degree of strength in a minute. She refused to consider her being
left alone; but: only the great chance opened to me.

SHOES--Mark, remember that ever so much of our pleasure depends upon
your shoes. Don't fail to have adequate preparation made in that
department.

Meantime, the struggle with the "awful German language" went on. It was
a general hand-to-hand contest. From the head of the household down
to little Clara not one was exempt. To Clemens it became a sort of
nightmare. Once in his note-book he says:

"Dreamed all bad foreigners went to German heaven; couldn't talk, and
wished they had gone to the other place"; and a little farther along, "I
wish I could hear myself talk German."

To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, he reported their troubles:

Clara Spaulding is working herself to death with her German; never
loses an instant while she is awake--or asleep, either, for that
matter; dreams of enormous serpents, who poke their heads up under
her arms and glare upon her with red-hot eyes, and inqu