e Hotel Normandy, but it
was a chilly, rainy spring, and the travelers gained a rather poor
impression of the French capital. Mark Twain's work did not go
well, at first, because of the noises of the street. But then he
found a quieter corner in the hotel and made better progress. In a
brief note to Aldrich he said: "I sleep like a lamb and write like a
lion--I mean the kind of a lion that writes--if any such." He
expected to finish the book in six weeks; that is to say, before
returning to America. He was looking after its illustrations
himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing
Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has
caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing
which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the
middle of a celebrated Biblical one--shall attribute it to Titian.
It needs to be engraved by a master."

The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to
find it little better in England. They had planned a journey to
Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good. In
after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the
trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs. Clemens.
He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going--the
continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely
possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their
sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that
only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey
to Scotland. From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor
Brown a good-by word.

*****

To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL.

Aug. (1879)

MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--During all the 15 months we have been spending on
the continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our
latest and most prized delight in a foreign land--but our hope has
failed, our plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded
itself, and our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was
thus frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up
the idea of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointmen