Jean
                    Mamma
                    Motley [a cat]
                    Fraulein [another]
                    Papa

That is the way it stands, now Mamma is become No. 2; I have dropped from No. 4., and am become No. 5.  Some time ago it used to be nip and tuck between me and the cats, but after the cats “developed” I didn’t stand any more show.

I’ve got a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of the day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time.  Last evening Livy said with deep concern, “O dear, I believe an abscess is forming in your ear.”

I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the head—­

          “Tis said that abscess conquers love,
          But O believe it not.”

This made a coolness.

Been reading Daniel Webster’s Private Correspondence.  Have read a hundred of his diffuse, conceited, “eloquent,” bathotic (or bathostic) letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student; and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one brief tremendous moment with the world’s eyes upon him, and then—­f-z-t-! where is he?  Why the only long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level, it seems, with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that lie along its remote verge.

Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and—­but no more of this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence.  And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them.  No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion.  Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us are shadows, these many, many years.  Yes, and your time cometh!

Mark.

At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end September 19th.  It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving.  The book by Aldrich here mentioned was ‘The Stillwater Tragedy.’

To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.: 

Elmira, Sept. 15, ’80.  My dear Aldrich,—­Thank you ever so much for the book—­I had already finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs. Clemens just right, for she is having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read it.  Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like it.