Elmira, July 24, ’89.  Dear Howells,—­I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately disappointed.  I even did a heroic thing:  shipped my book off to New York lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it.  Not that I think you wouldn’t like to read it, for I think you would; but not on a holiday that’s not the time.  I see how you were situated—­another familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion—­and of course we could not help ourselves.  Well, just think of it:  a while ago, while Providence’s attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church’s on the Hudson, that Johnstown dam got loose.  I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh.  Well, I’m not going to despair; we’ll manage a meet yet.

I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have to come back here and fetch the family.  And, along there in August, some time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time.  I have noticed that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen. 
                                   Ys Ever
          
                                   mark.

Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should see his Ms., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of his more violent fulminations and wild fancies.  However this may be, further postponement was soon at an end.  Mrs. Clemens’s eyes troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells and Edmund Clarence Stedman.  Howells wrote that even if he hadn’t wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author’s sake, he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens’s.  Whereupon the proofs were started in his direction.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Elmira, Aug. 24, ’89.  Dear Howells,—­If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study, I shall be glad and proud—­and the sooner it gets in, the better for the book; though I don’t suppose you can get it in earlier than the November number—­why, no, you can’t get it in till a month later than that.  Well, anyway I don’t think I’ll send out any other press copy—­except perhaps to Stedman.  I’m not writing for those parties who miscall themselves critics, and I don’t care to have them paw the book at all.  It’s my swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass to the cemetery unclodded.

I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had some (though not revises,) this morning.  I’m sure I’m going to be charmed with Beard’s pictures.  Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age art-dinner-table scene. 
                              Ys sincerely
                                             mark.