Livy is up, and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter days and nights, but I am a bachelor up stairs and don’t have to jump up and get the soothing syrup—­though I would as soon do it as not, I assure you. (Livy will be certain to read this letter.)

Tell Harmony (Mrs. T.) that I do hold the baby, and do it pretty handily, too, although with occasional apprehensions that his loose head will fall off.  I don’t have to quiet him—­he hardly ever utters a cry.  He is always thinking about something.  He is a patient, good little baby.

Smoke?  I always smoke from 3 till 5 Sunday afternoons—­and in New York the other day I smoked a week, day and night.  But when Livy is well I smoke only those two hours on Sunday.  I’m “boss” of the habit, now, and shall never let it boss me any more.  Originally, I quit solely on Livy’s account, (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in the matter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if she wished it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral,) and I stick to it yet on Livy’s account, and shall always continue to do so, without a pang.  But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. didn’t mind it if I remember rightly.  Ah, it is turning one’s back upon a kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent to make the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable as well as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain’t any sufficient excuse for it!  Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile word upon—­they little knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it!  But I won’t persuade you, Twichell—­I won’t until I see you again—­but then we’ll smoke for a week together, and then shut off again.

I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got so homesick I couldn’t.  But maybe I’ll come soon.

No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick.

I didn’t know Warner had a book out.

We send oceans and continents of love—­I have worked myself down, today. 
                              Yrs always
          
                              Mark.

With his establishment in Buffalo, Clemens, as already noted, had persuaded his sister, now a widow, and his mother, to settle in Fredonia, not far away.  Later, he had found a position for Orion, as editor of a small paper which Bliss had established.  What with these several diversions and the sorrows and sicknesses of his own household, we can readily imagine that literary work had been performed under difficulties.  Certainly, humorous writing under such disturbing conditions could not have been easy, nor could we expect him to accept an invitation to be present and make a comic speech at an agricultural dinner, even though Horace Greeley would preside.  However, he sent to the secretary of the association a letter which might be read at the gathering: 

To A. B. Crandall, in Woodberry Falls, N. Y., to be read
at an agricultural dinner: