Charley Warren Stoddard has gone to the Sandwich Islands permanently.  Lucky devil.  It is the only supremely delightful place on earth.  It does seem that the more advantage a body doesn’t earn, here, the more of them God throws at his head.  This fellow’s postal card has set the vision of those gracious islands before my mind, again, with not a leaf withered, nor a rainbow vanished, nor a sun-flash missing from the waves, and now it will be months, I reckon, before I can drive it away again.  It is beautiful company, but it makes one restless and dissatisfied.

With love and thanks,
                         Yrs ever,
                                   Mark.

The review mentioned in this letter was of The Prince and the Pauper.  What the queer “blunder” about the baronet was, the present writer confesses he does not know; but perhaps a careful reader could find it, at least in the early edition; very likely it was corrected without loss of time.

Clemens now and then found it necessary to pay a visit to Canada in the effort to protect his copyright.  He usually had a grand time on these trips, being lavishly entertained by the Canadian literary fraternity.  In November, 1881, he made one of these journeys in the interest of The Prince and the Pauper, this time with Osgood, who was now his publisher.  In letters written home we get a hint of his diversions.  The Monsieur Frechette mentioned was a Canadian poet of considerable distinction.  “Clara” was Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, who had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Europe in 1873, and again in 1878.  Later she became Mrs. John B. Staachfield, of New York City.  Her name has already appeared in these letters many times.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: 

Montreal, Nov. 28 ’81.  Livy darling, you and Clara ought to have been at breakfast in the great dining room this morning.  English female faces, distinctive English costumes, strange and marvelous English gaits—­and yet such honest, honorable, clean-souled countenances, just as these English women almost always have, you know.  Right away—­

But they’ve come to take me to the top of Mount Royal, it being a cold,
dry, sunny, magnificent day.  Going in a sleigh. 
                         Yours lovingly,
                                        SAML.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: 

Montreal, Sunday, November 27, 1881.  Livy dear, a mouse kept me awake last night till 3 or 4 o’clock—­so I am lying abed this morning.  I would not give sixpence to be out yonder in the storm, although it is only snow.

[The above paragraph is written in the form of a rebus illustrated with various sketches.]

There—­that’s for the children—­was not sure that they could read writing; especially jean, who is strangely ignorant in some things.