Don’t answer—­I spare the sick.

XXII.

Letters, 1882, mainly to Howells.  Wasted fury.  Old scenes revisited.
The Mississippi book

A man of Mark Twain’s profession and prominence must necessarily be the subject of much newspaper comment.  Jest, compliment, criticism —­none of these things disturbed him, as a rule.  He was pleased that his books should receive favorable notices by men whose opinion he respected, but he was not grieved by adverse expressions.  Jests at his expense, if well written, usually amused him; cheap jokes only made him sad; but sarcasms and innuendoes were likely to enrage him, particularly if he believed them prompted by malice.  Perhaps among all the letters he ever wrote, there is none more characteristic than this confession of violence and eagerness for reprisal, followed by his acknowledgment of error and a manifest appreciation of his own weakness.  It should be said that Mark Twain and Whitelaw Reid were generally very good friends, and perhaps for the moment this fact seemed to magnify the offense.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Hartford, Jan. 28 ’82.  My dear Howells,—­Nobody knows better than I, that there are times when swearing cannot meet the emergency.  How sharply I feel that, at this moment.  Not a single profane word has issued from my lips this mornin —­I have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual would swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances.  But I will tell you about it.

About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend, approaching his revelation cautiously, intimated that the N. Y. Tribune was engaged in a kind of crusade against me.  This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but no matter, it made me very angry.  I asked many questions, and gathered, in substance, this:  Since Reid’s return from Europe, the Tribune had been flinging sneers and brutalities at me with such persistent frequency “as to attract general remark.”  I was an angered—­which is just as good an expression, I take it, as an hungered.  Next, I learned that Osgood, among the rest of the “general,” was worrying over these constant and pitiless attacks.  Next came the testimony of another friend, that the attacks were not merely “frequent,” but “almost daily.”  Reflect upon that:  “Almost daily” insults, for two months on a stretch.  What would you have done?

As for me, I did the thing which was the natural thing for me to do, that is, I set about contriving a plan to accomplish one or the other of two things:  1.  Force a peace; or 2.  Get revenge.  When I got my plan finished, it pleased me marvelously.  It was in six or seven sections, each section to be used in its turn and by itself; the assault to begin at once with No. 1, and the rest to follow, one after the other, to keep the communication open while I wrote my biography of Reid.  I meant to wind up with this latter great work, and then dismiss the subject for good.