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cots.twain.IMG.0585.jpg Mr. Samuel L.
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I suppose you are through with your summer's work by this time; and therefore I make
bold to do what I have wanted to do for ever so many weeks—namely, to write and
inquire how you are coming on in a general way, and particularly with
regard to lumbago. Did our Uncle James Osgood send you any notice
of the White Elephant? If he didn't he's an awful man, and if he keeps on being so
awful, he will go somewhere else besides Europe. I see that
Mr. Howells has the same idea of your humor—rather of its
artistic permanence— that I advanced in [?] the
notice referred to.—I think you might have
written and thanked me for not going to Hartford. The truth
is, I got no further than New York. I took in the farewell
dinner of the Tile Club and that settled it. Think of a man
sitting sober and quiet the whole evening and watching seventeen or
eighteen people go to pieces right under his nose. I came back home,
and here I have been ever since; and what's more, politics have been so brisk I
haven't done any literary work. Still you are not safe. I am coming to
Hartford some day and spend an afternoon with you and
Mr. Twitchell
By the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, in conjunction with the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.