an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition would have been, “It has been in print.”  It makes me as mad as the very Old Harry every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape I have had at his hands.  Confound Mr. Chew, with all my heart!  I’m willing that he should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming over his cold victuals—­cheerfully willing to that—­but no more.  If I had had him near when his letter came, I would have got out my tomahawk and gone for him.  He didn’t tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow.

I wish to goodness you were here this moment—­nobody in our parlor but Livy and me,—­and a very good view of London to the fore.  We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor, our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor having a noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland Place and the crook that joins it to Regent Street.)

9 P.M.  Full twilight—­rich sunset tints lingering in the west.

I am not going to write anything—­rather tell it when I get back.  I love
you and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I’ve got, anyway.  And I
mean to keep that fresh all the time. 
                                   Lovingly
          
                                   Mark.

P. S.—­Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy’s Diary, and smoking.

Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period.  Mark Twain, now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a court.  Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, and Charles Kingsley hastened to call.  Kingsley and others gave him dinners.  Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote:  “It is perfectly discouraging to try to write you.”

The continuous excitement presently told on her.  In July all further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little family to Scotland, for quiet and rest.  They broke the journey at York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter remaining from this time.

Part of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y.: 

For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, with its crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew no wheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper stories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary’s Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish