a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of
the day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time. Last
evening Livy said with deep concern, "O dear, I believe an abscess is
forming in your ear."

I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the
head--

"Tis said that abscess conquers love,
But O believe it not."

This made a coolness.

Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a
hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or bathostic)
letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student;
and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so
booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms
about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the
sun one brief tremendous moment with the world's eyes upon him, and
then--f-z-t-! where is he? Why the only long thing, the only real thing
about the whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and
hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level,
it seems, with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke
and mist that lie along its remote verge.

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
fi