be in Hartford, where I have already hired
a hall; the admission fee will be but a trifle.

It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotations of the
Affection Board brought about by throwing this new security on the
market. Four weeks ago the children still put Mama at the head of
the list right along, where she had always been. But now:

Jean
Mama
Motley |cats
Fraulein |
Papa

That is the way it stands now. Mama is become No. 2; I have dropped
from No. 4, and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip
and tuck between me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I
didn't stand any more show.

Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a
hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or
bathostic) letters, written in that dim (no, vanished) past, when he
was a student. And Lord! to think that this boy, who is so real to
me now, and so booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life,
and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame
and stood against the sun one brief, tremendous moment with the
world's eyes on him, and then----fzt! where is he? Why, the only
long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business, is
the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has
drifted by since then; a vast, empty level, it seems, with a
formless specter glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that
lie along its remote verge.

Well, we are all getting along here first-rate. Livy gains strength
daily and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and----But no
more of this. Somebody may be reading this letter eighty years
hence. And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding
this yellow paper in your hand in 1960), save yourself the trouble
of looking further. I know how pathetically trivial our small
concerns would seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane
them. No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion. Suffice it you
to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind
now, and once more tooth less; and the rest of us are shadows these
many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh!
MARK.

It is the ageless story. He too had written his youthful letter