Your letter struck me while I was meditating a project to beguile you, and John Hay and Joe Twichell, into a descent upon Chicago which I dream of making, to witness the re-union of the great Commanders of the Western Army Corps on the 9th of next month.  My sluggish soul needs a fierce upstirring, and if it would not get it when Grant enters the meeting place I must doubtless “lay” for the final resurrection.  Can you and Hay go?  At the same time, confound it, I doubt if I can go myself, for this book isn’t done yet.  But I would give a heap to be there.  I mean to heave some holiness into the Hartford primaries when I go back; and if there was a solitary office in the land which majestic ignorance and incapacity, coupled with purity of heart, could fill, I would run for it.  This naturally reminds me of Bret Harte—­but let him pass.

We propose to leave here for New York Oct. 21, reaching Hartford 24th or 25th.  If, upon reflection, you Howellses find, you can stop over here on your way, I wish you would do it, and telegraph me.  Getting pretty hungry to see you.  I had an idea that this was your shortest way home, but like as not my geography is crippled again—­it usually is. 
                                             Yrs ever
          
                                             Mark.

The “Reunion of the Great Commanders,” mentioned in the foregoing, was a welcome to General Grant after his journey around the world.  Grant’s trip had been one continuous ovation—­a triumphal march.  In ’79 most of his old commanders were still alive, and they had planned to assemble in Chicago to do him honor.  A Presidential year was coming on, but if there was anything political in the project there were no surface indications.  Mark Twain, once a Confederate soldier, had long since been completely “desouthernized”—­at least to the point where he felt that the sight of old comrades paying tribute to the Union commander would stir his blood as perhaps it had not been stirred, even in that earlier time, when that same commander had chased him through the Missouri swamps.  Grant, indeed, had long since become a hero to Mark Twain, though it is highly unlikely that Clemens favored the idea of a third term.  Some days following the preceding letter an invitation came for him to be present at the Chicago reunion; but by this time he had decided not to go.  The letter he wrote has been preserved.

To Gen. William E. Strong, in Chicago: 

FarmingtonAvenue, Hartford. 
Oct. 28, 1879. 
Gen.  Wm. E. Strong, CH’M,
and gentlemen of the committee: