There was still another form, brief and expressive: 

Dear colonel,—­No, this is a love-feast; when you call a lodge of sorrow send for me.  Mark.

Clemens’s war sentiment was given the widest newspaper circulation, and brought him many letters, most of them applauding his words.  Charles Francis Adams wrote him: 

    It attracted my attention because it so exactly expresses the views
    I have myself all along entertained.

And this was the gist of most of the expressed sentiments which came to him.

Clemens wrote a number of things that summer, among them a little essay entitled, “The Privilege of the Grave”—­that is to say, free speech.  He was looking forward, he said, to the time when he should inherit that privilege, when some of the things he had said, written and laid away, could be published without damage to his friends or family.  An article entitled, “Interpreting the Deity,” he counted as among the things to be uttered when he had entered into that last great privilege.  It is an article on the reading of signs and auguries in all ages to discover the intentions of the Almighty, with historical examples of God’s judgments and vindications.  Here is a fair specimen.  It refers to the chronicle of Henry Huntington: 

All through this book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of God and with the reasons for the intentions.  Sometimes very often, in fact—­the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of time that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one intention, and get the thing right every time, when there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions.  Sometimes a man offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years later; meantime he has committed a million other crimes:  no matter, Henry can pick out the one that brought the worms.  Worms were generally used in those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people.  This has gone out now, but in the old times it was a favorite.  It always indicated a case of “wrath.”  For instance: 

“The just God avenging Robert Fitzhildebrand’s perfidity, a worm grew in his vitals which, gradually gnawing its way through his intestines, fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end” (p. 400).

    It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it
    was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath.  Some
    authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.

The entire article is in this amusing, satirical strain, and might well enough be printed to-day.  It is not altogether clear why it was withheld, even then.

He finished his Eve’s Diary that summer, and wrote a story which was originally planned to oblige Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, to aid her in a crusade against bullfighting in Spain.  Mrs. Fiske wrote him that she had read his dog story, written against the cruelties of vivisection, and urged him to do something to save the horses that, after faithful service, were sacrificed in the bull-ring.  Her letter closed: