has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one brief, tremendous moment with the world’s eyes on him, and then——­fzt! where is he?  Why, the only long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business, is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast, empty level, it seems, with a formless specter glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that lie along its remote verge.

Well, we are all getting along here first-rate.  Livy gains strength daily and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and——­But no more of this.  Somebody may be reading this letter eighty years hence.  And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960), save yourself the trouble of looking further.  I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns would seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them.  No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion.  Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind now, and once more tooth less; and the rest of us are shadows these many, many years.  Yes, and your time cometh! 
          
                            Mark.

It is the ageless story.  He too had written his youthful letters, and later had climbed the Alps of fame and was still outlined against the sun.  Happily, the little child was to evade that harsher penalty—­the unwarranted bitterness and affront of a lingering, palsied age.

Mrs. Clemens, in a letter somewhat later, set down a thought similar to his: 

“We are all going so fast.  Pretty soon we shall have been dead a hundred years.”

Clemens varied his work that summer, writing alternately on ’The Prince and the Pauper’ and on the story about ‘Huck Finn’, which he had begun four years earlier.

He read the latter over and found in it a new interest.  It did not fascinate him, as did the story of the wandering prince.  He persevered only as the spirit moved him, piling up pages on both the tales.

He always took a boy’s pride in the number of pages he could complete at a sitting, and if the day had gone well he would count them triumphantly, and, lighting a fresh cigar, would come tripping down the long stair that led to the level of the farm-house, and, gathering his audience, would read to them the result of his industry; that is to say, he proceeded with the story of the Prince.  Apparently he had not yet acquired confidence or pride enough in poor Huck to exhibit him, even to friends.

The reference (in the letter to Twichell) to the cats at the farm introduces one of the most important features of that idyllic resort.  There were always cats at the farm.  Mark Twain himself dearly loved cats, and the children inherited this passion.  Susy once said: 

“The difference between papa and mama is, that mama loves morals and papa loves cats.”