Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and—­but no more of this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence.  And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them.  No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion.  Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us are shadows, these many, many years.  Yes, and your time cometh!

Mark.

At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end September 19th.  It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving.  The book by Aldrich here mentioned was ‘The Stillwater Tragedy.’

To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.: 

Elmira, Sept. 15, ’80.  My dear Aldrich,—­Thank you ever so much for the book—­I had already finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs. Clemens just right, for she is having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read it.  Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like it.

I finished a story yesterday, myself.  I counted up and found it between sixty and eighty thousand words—­about the size of your book.  It is for boys and girls—­been at work at it several years, off and on.

I hope Howells is enjoying his journey to the Pacific.  He wrote me that you and Osgood were going, also, but I doubted it, believing he was in liquor when he wrote it.  In my opinion, this universal applause over his book is going to land that man in a Retreat inside of two months.  I notice the papers say mighty fine things about your book, too.  You ought to try to get into the same establishment with Howells.  But applause does not affect me—­I am always calm—­this is because I am used to it.

Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you.  Mrs. Clemens asks me to
send her warmest regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich—­which I do, and add
those of
                    Yrs ever
                              mark.

While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning Call.  Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic.  But Soule’s gift had never been an important one.  Now, in his old age, he found his fame still local, and