AMPERSAND, N. Y., Aug. 28.

DEAR JOE,--Just a word, to scoff at you, with your extravagant
suggestion that I read the biography of Phillips Brooks--the very
dullest book that has been printed for a century. Joe, ten pages of
Mrs. Cheney's masterly biography of her fathers--no, five pages of
it--contain more meat, more sense, more literature, more brilliancy,
than that whole basketful of drowsy rubbish put together. Why, in that
dead atmosphere even Brooks himself is dull--he wearied me; oh how he
wearied me!

We had a noble good time in the Yacht, and caught a Chinese missionary
and drowned him.

Love from us all to you all.
MARK.

The assassination of President McKinley occurred September 6, 1901.
Such an event would naturally stir Mark Twain to comment on human
nature in general. His letter to Twichell is as individual as it is
sound in philosophy. At what period of his own life, or under what
circumstances, he made the long journey with tragic intent there is
no means of knowing now. There is no other mention of it elsewhere
in the records that survive him.

*****

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

AMPERSAND, Tuesday, (Sept. 10, 1901)

DEAR JOE,--It is another off day, but tomorrow I shall resume work to a
certainty, and bid a long farewell to letter-scribbling.

The news of the President looks decidedly hopeful, and we are all glad,
and the household faces are much improved, as to cheerfulness. Oh, the
talk in the newspapers! Evidently the Human Race is the same old Human
Race. And how unjust, and unreflectingly discriminating, the talkers
are. Under the unsettling effects of powerful emotion the talkers are
saying wild things, crazy things--they are out of themselves, and do not
know it; they are temporarily insane, yet with one voice they
declare the assassin sane--a man who has been entertaining fiery and
reason--debauching maggots in his head for weeks and months. Why, no one
is sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it.
Our insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying
forms--fortunately harmless forms as a rule--but in whatever form
they occur an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us
distinctly over the sanity-line for a little while; and then if our form
happens to be of the murder