I have never revealed these facts before.I notice, too, that you are deceiving the people concerning your age.The printed portrait which you have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was 19.I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby for your grandson.Is it spreading, I wonder--this disposition of pilots to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan--they probably go to Sunday school now--but it will not deceive.
Yes, it is as you say.All of the procession but a fraction has passed.
It is time for us all to fall in.
Sincerely yours, S.L.CLEMENS.
To W.D.Howells, in New York:
HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I.NEUER MARKT 6
April 2, '99.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now;waiting, and strongly interested.You are old enough to be a weary man, with paling interests, but you do not show it.You do your work in the same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect way.I don't know how you can--but I suspect.I suspect that to you there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived.Since I wrote my Bible, (last year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs.Clemens loathes, and shudders over, and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so Ihave lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor praisefully about him any more.And I don't intend to try.I mean to go on writing, for that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much.(for I don't wish to be scalped, any more than another.)April 5.The Harper has come.I have been in Leipzig with your party, and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs.Marsh's encounter with the swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
But maybe that is your art.Maybe that is what you intend the reader to detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery.Then it is well done, perfectly done.I wrote my last travel book--[Following the Equator.]--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion through heaven.Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader.How I did loathe that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and India.
Evening.My tail hangs low.I thought I was a financier--and I bragged to you.I am not bragging, now.The stock which I sold at such a fine profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth $60,000 more than I sold it for.I feel just as if I had been spending $20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming extravagance.
Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to make a speech at a banquet.Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram from London asking for the speech for a New York paper.I (this is strictly private) sent it.And then I didn't make that speech, but another of a quite different character--a speech born of something which the introducer said.If that said speech got cabled and printed, you needn't let on that it was never uttered.
That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people.We were there a week and had a great time.At the banquet I heard their chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian.But the art of it!-it was superlative.
They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience--all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the effects.The English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young English women who earn their living teaching their language; and that there are.
others besides these.
For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night the concerts and operas.Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
(Correction.Mrs.Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)I am renewing my youth.I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last Saturday night.And I've been to a lot of football matches.
Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals ("Literature,"March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered disappointment for the third time--and will never fare any better, Ihope, for you are where you belong, by every right.She wanted to know who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her.Nor when the election will be completed and decided.
Next Morning.I have been reading the morning paper.I do it every morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race.I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.
(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea.('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!