man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a
provocation? I am sure I can't. What the devil can those friends of mine
have been thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out
into two months of daily sneers and affronts? The whole offense, boiled
down, amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark of the Tribune about
my book--not me between Nov. 1 and Dec. 20; and a couple of foreign
criticisms (of my writings, not me,) between Nov. 1 and Jan. 26! If I
can't stand that amount of friction, I certainly need reconstruction.
Further boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply
this: one jest from the Tribune (one can make nothing more serious than
that out of it.) One jest--and that is all; for the foreign criticisms
do not count, they being matters of news, and proper for publication in
anybody's newspaper.

And to offset that one jest, the Tribune paid me one compliment Dec. 23,
by publishing my note declining the New York New England dinner, while
merely (in the same breath,) mentioning that similar letters were read
from General Sherman and other men whom we all know to be persons of
real consequence.

Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small
mouse it is, God knows. And my three weeks' hard work have got to go
into the ignominious pigeon-hole. Confound it, I could have earned ten
thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble. However, I shouldn't
have done it, for I am too lazy, now, in my sere and yellow leaf, to be
willing to work for anything but love..... I kind of envy you people who
are permitted for your righteousness' sake to dwell in a boarding house;
not that I should always want to live in one, but I should like
the change occasionally from this housekeeping slavery to that wild
independence. A life of don't-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what
I have asked for in many a secret prayer. I shall come by and by and
require of you what you have offered me there.

Yours ever,
MARK.

Howells, who had already known something of the gathering storm,
replied: "Your letter was an immense relief to me, for although I
had an abiding faith that you would get sick of your enterprise,
I wasn't easy until I knew that you had given it up."

Joel Chandler Harris appears again in the letters of this period.
Twichell, during a tri