The Chicago speech arrived an hour too late, but I was all right anyway,
for I found that my memory had been able to correct all the errors. 
I read it to the Saturday Club (of young girls) and told them to remember
that it was doubtful if its superior existed in our language. 
                              Truly Yours,
                                   S. L. Clemens.

The reader may remember Mark Twain’s Whittier dinner speech of 1877, and its disastrous effects.  Now, in 1879, there was to be another Atlantic gathering:  a breakfast to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to which Clemens was invited.  He was not eager to accept; it would naturally recall memories of two years before, but being urged by both Howells and Warner, he agreed to attend if they would permit him to speak.  Mark Twain never lacked courage and he wanted to redeem himself.  To Howells he wrote: 

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Nov. 28, 1879.  My dear Howells,—­If anybody talks, there, I shall claim the right to say a word myself, and be heard among the very earliest—­else it would be confoundedly awkward for me—­and for the rest, too.  But you may read what I say, beforehand, and strike out whatever you choose.

Of course I thought it wisest not to be there at all; but Warner took the opposite view, and most strenuously.

Speaking of Johnny’s conclusion to become an outlaw, reminds me of Susie’s newest and very earnest longing—­to have crooked teeth and glasses—­“like Mamma.”

I would like to look into a child’s head, once, and see what its
processes are. 
                    Yrs ever,
                         S. L. Clemens.

The matter turned out well.  Clemens, once more introduced by Howells—­this time conservatively, it may be said—­delivered a delicate and fitting tribute to Doctor Holmes, full of graceful humor and grateful acknowledgment, the kind of speech he should have given at the Whittier dinner of two years before.  No reference was made to his former disaster, and this time he came away covered with glory, and fully restored in his self-respect.

XX.

Letters of 1880, chiefly to Howells.  “The prince and the pauper.”  Mark twain mugwump society

The book of travel,—­[A Tramp Abroad.]—­which Mark Twain had hoped to finish in Paris, and later in Elmira, for some reason would not come to an end.  In December, in Hartford, he was still working on it, and he would seem to have finished it, at last, rather by a decree than by any natural process of authorship.  This was early in January, 1880.  To Howells he reports his difficulties, and his drastic method of ending them.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: