in Barnum’s circus bills, thrown from his aged horse and brought home insensible:  Warner’s friend Max Yortzburgh, shot in the back by a locomotive and broken into 32 distinct pieces and his life threatened; and Mrs. Clemens, after writing all these cheerful things to Clara Spaulding, taken at midnight, and if the doctor had not been pretty prompt the contemplated Clemens would have called before his apartments were ready.

However, everybody is all right, now, except Yortzburg, and he is mending—­that is, he is being mended.  I knocked off, during these stirring times, and don’t intend to go to work again till we go away for the Summer, 3 or 6 weeks hence.  So I am writing to you not because I have anything to say, but because you don’t have to answer and I need something to do this afternoon.....

I have a letter from a Congressman this morning, and he says Congress couldn’t be persuaded to bother about Canadian pirates at a time like this when all legislation must have a political and Presidential bearing, else Congress won’t look at it.  So have changed my mind and my course; I go north, to kill a pirate.  I must procure repose some way, else I cannot get down to work again.

Pray offer my most sincere and respectful approval to the President—­is approval the proper word?  I find it is the one I most value here in the household and seldomest get.

With our affection to you both. 
                                   Yrs ever
          
                                   mark.

It was always dangerous to send strangers with letters of introduction to Mark Twain.  They were so apt to arrive at the wrong time, or to find him in the wrong mood.  Howells was willing to risk it, and that the result was only amusing instead of tragic is the best proof of their friendship.

To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.: 

June 9, ’80.  Well, old practical joker, the corpse of Mr. X——­has been here, and I have bedded it and fed it, and put down my work during 24 hours and tried my level best to make it do something, or say something, or appreciate something—­but no, it was worse than Lazarus.  A kind-hearted, well-meaning corpse was the Boston young man, but lawsy bless me, horribly dull company.  Now, old man, unless you have great confidence in Mr. X’s judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before he prints it.  For only think how true I was to you:  Every hour that he was here I was saying, gloatingly, “O G—­ d—–­ you, when you are in bed and your light out, I will fix you” (meaning to kill him)...., but then the thought would follow—­” No, Howells sent him—­he shall be spared, he shall be respected he shall travel hell-wards by his own route.”

Breakfast is frozen by this time, and Mrs. Clemens correspondingly hot. 
Good bye. 
                    Yrs ever,
                              mark.