To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Apl. 4, ’91.  Dear Howells,—­I’m ashamed.  It happened in this way.  I was proposing to acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph, so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can’t write literature with it, because it hasn’t any ideas and it hasn’t any gift for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as grave and unsmiling as the devil.

I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better.  Then I resigned.

I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer—­and some time I will experiment in that line.

The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me.  But it flies too high for me.  Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly.  I’m going to try to mail it back to you to-day—­I mean I am going to charge my memory.  Charging my memory is one of my chief industries ....

With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to
the proprieties. 
                              Yrs ever
          
                              mark.

P. S.—­I’m sending that ancient “Mental Telegraphy” article to Harper’s
—­with a modest postscript.  Probably read it to you years ago. 
                                        S. L. C.

The “little book” mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.  “Mental Telegraphy” appeared in Harper’s Magazine, and is now included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain’s books.  It was written in 1878.

Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington.  On receipt of the news of the type-setter’s collapse he sent a consoling word.  Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance, and possibly hold him in some measure to blame.  But it was generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage; the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.

The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following
letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence
Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.

To Joe T. Goodman: