I am trying to add to the “assets” which you estimate so generously.  No, I am not.  The thought is not in my mind.  My purpose is other.  I am working, but it is for the sake of the work—­the “surcease of sorrow” that is found there.  I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when I use that magic.  This book will not long stand between it and me, now; but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most.  Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along—­in fact have reached exactly the same stage in their journey:  19,000 words each.  The present one will contain 180,000 words—­130,000 are done.  I am well protected; but Livy!  She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me.  She does not see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her.  She sits solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened, and why.  We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her comrade—­had to be driven from her loving persecutions—­sometimes at 1 in the morning.  To Livy the persecutions were welcome.  It was heaven to her to be plagued like that.  But it is ended now.  Livy stands so in need of help; and none among us all could help her like you.

Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk.  I hope so.  We could have such talks!  We are all grateful to you and Harmony—­how grateful it is not given to us to say in words.  We pay as we can, in love; and in this coin practicing no economy. 
                         Good bye, dear old Joe! 
          
                                        Mark.

The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of business, but in one of them he said:  “I am going to write with all my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the promptest kind of a way and no fooling around.”  And in one he wrote:  “You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest.”

To W. D. Howells, in New York

London, Feb. 23, ’97.  Dear Howells,-I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.  The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan.  I don’t mean that I am miserable; no—­worse than that—­indifferent.  Indifferent to nearly everything but work.  I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it.  I do it without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.