I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog.  I love them as dearly as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots.  It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered them over three or four times the evening before.  Ponkapog still writes poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it.  Perhaps his best effort of late years is this: 

               “O soul, soul, soul of mine: 
               Soul, soul, soul of thine! 
               Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine,
               And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!”

This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch that he is become a sore affliction to all that know him.

But I must desist.  There are drafts here, everywhere and my gout is
something frightful.  My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder. 
                         God be with you. 
          
                              Hartford.

These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion of the city of Dublin.

One may imagine the joy of Howells and the others in this ludicrous extravaganza, which could have been written by no one but Mark Twain.  It will hardly take rank as prophecy, though certainly true forecast in it is not wholly lacking.

Clemens was now pretty well satisfied with his piloting story, but
he began to have doubts as to its title, “Old Times on the
Mississippi.”  It seemed to commit him to too large an undertaking.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Dec. 3, 1874.  My dear Howells,—­Let us change the heading to “Piloting on the Miss in the Old Times”—­or to “Steamboating on the M. in Old Times”—­or to “Personal Old Times on the Miss.”—­We could change it for Feb. if now too late for Jan.—­I suggest it because the present heading is too pretentious, too broad and general.  It seems to command me to deliver a Second Book of Revelation to the world, and cover all the Old Times the Mississippi (dang that word, it is worse than “type” or “Egypt “) ever saw—­whereas here I have finished Article No.  III and am about to start on No. 4. and yet I have spoken of nothing but of Piloting as a science so far; and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject.  And I don’t care to.  Any muggins can write about Old Times on the Miss. of 500 different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day—­and no man ever has tried to scribble about it yet.  Its newness pleases me all the time—­and it is about the only new subject I know of.  If I were to write fifty articles they would all be about pilots and piloting—­therefore let’s get the word Piloting into the heading.  There’s a sort of freshness about that, too. 
                                   Ys ever,
                                             mark.