And to offset that one jest, the Tribune paid me one compliment Dec. 23, by publishing my note declining the New York New England dinner, while merely (in the same breath,) mentioning that similar letters were read from General Sherman and other men whom we all know to be persons of real consequence.

Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small mouse it is, God knows.  And my three weeks’ hard work have got to go into the ignominious pigeon-hole.  Confound it, I could have earned ten thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble.  However, I shouldn’t have done it, for I am too lazy, now, in my sere and yellow leaf, to be willing to work for anything but love.....  I kind of envy you people who are permitted for your righteousness’ sake to dwell in a boarding house; not that I should always want to live in one, but I should like the change occasionally from this housekeeping slavery to that wild independence.  A life of don’t-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what I have asked for in many a secret prayer.  I shall come by and by and require of you what you have offered me there. 
                                        Yours ever,
          
                                        Mark.

Howells, who had already known something of the gathering storm, replied:  “Your letter was an immense relief to me, for although I had an abiding faith that you would get sick of your enterprise, I wasn’t easy until I knew that you had given it up.”

Joel Chandler Harris appears again in the letters of this period.  Twichell, during a trip South about this time, had called on Harris with some sort of proposition or suggestion from Clemens that Harris appear with him in public, and tell, or read, the Remus stories from the platform.  But Harris was abnormally diffident.  Clemens later pronounced him “the shyest full-grown man” he had ever met, and the word which Twichell brought home evidently did not encourage the platform idea.

To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta: 

Hartford, Apl. 2, ’82. 
Private.

My dear Mr. Harris,—­Jo Twichell brought me your note and told me of his talk with you.  He said you didn’t believe you would ever be able to muster a sufficiency of reckless daring to make you comfortable and at ease before an audience.  Well, I have thought out a device whereby I believe we can get around that difficulty.  I will explain when I see you.

Jo says you want to go to Canada within a month or six weeks—­I forget just exactly what he did say; but he intimated the trip could be delayed a while, if necessary.  If this is so, suppose you meet Osgood and me in New Orleans early in May—­say somewhere between the 1st and 6th?

It will be well worth your while to do this, because the author who goes to Canada unposted, will not know what course to pursue [to secure copyright] when he gets there; he will find himself in a hopeless confusion as to what is the correct thing to do.  Now Osgood is the only man in America, who can lay out your course for you and tell you exactly what to do.  Therefore, you just come to New Orleans and have a talk with him.