er.
With love,
Yours, MARK.

Hartford, March 16, 1880.

Possibly Twichell had vague doubts concerning a book of which he was so
large a part, and its favorable reception by the critics and the public
generally was a great comfort. When the Howells letter was read to him
he is reported as having sat with his hands on his knees, his head bent
forward--a favorite attitude--repeating at intervals:

"Howells said that, did he? Old Howells said that!"

There have been many and varying opinions since then as to the literary
merits of 'A Tramp Abroad'. Human tastes differ, and a "mixed" book of
this kind invites as many opinions as it has chapters. The word
"uneven" pretty safely describes any book of size, but it has a special
application to this one. Written under great stress and uncertainty of
mind, it could hardly be uniform. It presents Mark Twain at his best,
and at his worst. Almost any American writer was better than Mark Twain
at his worst: Mark Twain at his best was unapproachable.

It is inevitable that 'A Tramp Abroad' and 'The Innocents Abroad' should
be compared, though with hardly the warrant of similarity. The books are
as different as was their author at the periods when they were written.
'A Tramp Abroad' is the work of a man who was traveling and observing
for the purpose of writing a book, and for no other reason. The
Innocents Abroad was written by a man who was reveling in every scene
and experience, every new phase and prospect; whose soul was alive to
every historic association, and to every humor that a gay party of young
sight-seers could find along the way. The note-books of that trip fairly
glow with the inspiration of it; those of the later wanderings are
mainly filled with brief, terse records, interspersed with satire and
denunciation. In the 'Innocents' the writer is the enthusiast with a
sense of humor. In the 'Tramp' he has still the sense of humor, but
he has become a cynic; restrained, but a cynic none the less. In the
'Innocents' he laughs at delusions and fallacies--and enjoys them. In
the 'Tramp' he laughs at human foibles and affectations--and wants to
smash them. Very often he does not laugh heartily and sincerely at all,
but finds his humor in extravagant burlesque. In later life his gentler
laughter, his old, untroubled enjoyment of human weakness, would return,
but just now he was in that middle period, when the "damned human race"
amused him