hment.

We have seen lots of nice people, and have been most pleasantly made
of; but I would rather have you smoke in my face and talk for half a
day, just for pleasure, than to go to the best house or club in
London.

Clemens answered:

Yes, it would be more profitable to me to do that because, with your
society to help me, I should swiftly finish this now apparently
interminable book. But I cannot come, because I am not boss here,
and nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens away from home in the
winter season.

This was in November, and he had broken all restrictions as to time. He
declared that he had never had such a fight over any book before, and
that he had told Osgood and everybody concerned that they must wait.

I have said with sufficient positiveness that I will finish the book
at no particular date; that I will not hurry it; that I will not
hurry myself; that I will take things easy and comfortably--write
when I choose to write, leave it alone when I do so prefer...
I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where it
ought to be, and that is where it must remain; to follow any other
policy would be to make the book worse than it already is. I ought
to have finished it before showing it to anybody, and then sent it
across the ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for you seem to be a
great many shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I had
thought of this thing earlier I would have acted upon it and taken
the tuck somewhat out of your joyousness.

It was a long, heartfelt letter. Near the end of it he said:

Cable has been here, creating worshipers on all hands. He is a
marvelous talker on a deep subject. I do not see how even Spencer
could unwind a thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in
cleaner, clearer, crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his
faculty. You know that when it comes down to moral honesty, limpid
innocence, and utterly blemishless piety, the apostles were mere
policemen to Cable; so with this in mind you must imagine him at a
midnight dinner in Boston the other night, where we gathered around
the board of the Summerset Club: Osgood full, Boyle O'Reilly full,
Fairchild responsively loaded, and Aldrich and myself possessing the
floor and properly fortified. Cable told Mrs. Clemens, when he
returned here, that he seemed to h