It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the steamer Gallic.  In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken on a “traveled look” and had added gray hairs.  A New York paper said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray.

Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris—­in fact, it seemed to him far from complete—­and he settled down rather grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm.  When, after a few days no word of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead or only sleeping.  Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had been sleeping “The sleep of a torpid conscience.  I will feign that I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours, and I am tremendously glad that you are home again.  When and where shall we meet?  Have you come home with your pockets full of Atlantic papers?” Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual, not without the prospect of other plans.  Orion, as literary material, never failed to excite him.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Elmira, Sept. 15, 1879.  My dear Howells,—­When and where?  Here on the farm would be an elegant place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far.  So we will say Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November.  The date of our return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence, I judge.  I hope to finish my book here before migrating.

I think maybe I’ve got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there’s none in Ms, I believe.

Say—­a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the broad-comedy cuss.  I don’t know anything about his ability, but his letter serves to remind me of our old projects.  If you haven’t used Orion or Old Wakeman, don’t you think you and I can get together and grind out a play with one of those fellows in it?  Orion is a field which grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing of religion or other guano.  Drop me an immediate line about this, won’t you?  I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts.  Poor old chap, he is good material.  I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more.

(Mem.  Orion’s wife has followed him into the outer darkness, after 30 years’ rabid membership in the Presbyterian Church.)

Well, with the sincerest and most abounding love to you and yours, from
all this family, I am,
                         Yrs ever
                                   mark.