has never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in
art it means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this
fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of
many and many a chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me
profit sometimes; I was the only man out of 3,200 who got his money
back on those two operas.

His third letter was from Marienbad, in Bohemia, another
"health-factory," as he calls it, and is of the same general character
as those preceding. In his fourth letter he told how he himself took
charge of the family fortunes and became courier from Aix to Bayreuth.
It is a very delightful letter, most of it, and probably not greatly
burlesqued or exaggerated in its details. It is included now in the
"Complete Works," as fresh and delightful as ever. They returned to
Germany at the end of August, to Nuremberg, which he notes as the "city
of exquisite glimpses," and to Heidelberg, where they had their old
apartment of thirteen years before, Room 40 at the Schloss Hotel, with
its wonderful prospect of wood and hill, and the haze-haunted valley of
the Rhine. They remained less than a week in that beautiful place, and
then were off for Switzerland, Lucerne, Brienz, Interlaken, finally
resting at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, on beautiful Lake
Leman.

Clemens had agreed to write six of the newspaper letters, and he had by
this time finished five of them, the fifth being dated from Interlaken,
its subject, "Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty." He wrote to Hall that
it was his intention to write another book of travel and to take a year
or two to collect the material. The Century editors were after him for
a series after the style of Innocents Abroad. He considered this
suggestion, but declined by cable, explaining to Hall that he intended
to write for serial publication no more than the six newspaper letters.
He said:

To write a book of travel would be less trouble than to write six
detached chapters. Each of these letters requires the same variety
of treatment and subject that one puts into a book; but in the book
each chapter doesn't have to be rounded and complete in itself.

He suggested that the six letters be gathered into a small volume which
would contain about thirty-five or forty thousand words, to be sold as
low as twenty-five cents, but this idea appears to have been dropped.

At Ouchy Clemens conceived the