Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and his wife have gone to chaperon them.  They gave me a chance to go, but there are no snow mountains that I want to look at.  Three hours out, three hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance; yelling conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and if it’s my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on.  The terms seemed too severe.  Snow mountains are too dear at the price ....

For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as soon as I could afford it.  At last I can afford it, and have put the pot-boiler pen away.  What I have been wanting is a chance to write a book without reserves—­a book which should take account of no one’s feelings, and no one’s prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions, delusions; a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the plainest language and without a limitation of any sort.  I judged that that would be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.

It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk:  Twice I didn’t start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found it out.  But I am sure it is started right this time.  It is in tale-form.  I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he is constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities and his place among the animals.

So far, I think I am succeeding.  I let the madam into the secret day before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening chapters.  She said—­

“It is perfectly horrible—­and perfectly beautiful!”

“Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think.”

I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump
into it. 
                         Yours ever
          
                              mark.

The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger.  It was not finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until after his death.  Six years later (1916) it was published serially in Harper’s Magazine, and in book form.

The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in earlier years.  Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing incident of one of their entertainments.

To W. D. Howells, in America: