Mark.

From Switzerland the Clemens party worked down into Italy, sight-seeing, a diversion in which Mark Twain found little enough of interest.  He had seen most of the sights ten years before, when his mind was fresh.  He unburdened himself to Twichell and to Howells, after a period of suffering.

To J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: 

Rome, Nov. 3, ’78. 
Dear Joe,--.....I have received your several letters, and we have
prodigiously enjoyed them.   How I do admire a man who can sit down and
whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing—­or something
else as full of pleasure and as void of labor.   I can’t do it; else, in
common decency, I would when I write to you.   Joe, if I can make a book
out of the matter gathered in your company over here, the book is safe;
but I don’t think I have gathered any matter before or since your visit
worth writing up.   I do wish you were in Rome to do my sightseeing for
me.   Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more.   That
is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in; but there
are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living. 
Livy and Clara Spaulding are having a royal time worshiping the old
Masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.

A friend waits for me.  A power of love to you all. 
          
                                        Amen. 
          
                                             Mark.

In his letter to Howells he said:  “I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man can’t write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters.  In truth, I don’t ever seem to be in a good-enough humor with anything to satirize it.  No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp.  I have got in two or three chapters about Wagner’s operas, and managed to do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me!”

From Italy the Clemens party went to Munich, where they had arranged in advance for winter quarters.  Clemens claims, in his report of the matter to Howells, that he took the party through without the aid of a courier, though thirty years later, in some comment which he set down on being shown the letter, he wrote concerning this paragraph:  “Probably a lie.”  He wrote, also, that they acquired a great affection for Fraulein Dahlweiner:  “Acquired it at once and it outlasted the winter we spent in her house.”

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: