ver saw any writer take note of before. And
they are set before the reader with amazing accuracy. How very drunk,
and how recently drunk, and how altogether admirably drunk you must have
been to enable you to contrive that masterpiece!

Why I didn't notice that that religious interview between Marcia and
Mrs. Halleck was so deliciously humorous when you read it to me--but
dear me, it's just too lovely for anything. (Wrote Clark to collar it
for the "Library.")

Hang it, I know where the mystery is, now; when you are reading, you
glide right along, and I don't get a chance to let the things soak home;
but when I catch it in the magazine, I give a page 20 or 30 minutes in
which to gently and thoroughly filter into me. Your humor is so very
subtle, and elusive--(well, often it's just a vanishing breath of
perfume which a body isn't certain he smelt till he stops and takes
another smell) whereas you can smell other...

(Remainder obliterated.)

Among Mark Twain's old schoolmates in Hannibal was little Helen
Kercheval, for whom in those early days he had a very tender spot
indeed. But she married another schoolmate, John Garth, who in time
became a banker, highly respected and a great influence. John and
Helen Garth have already been mentioned in the letter of May 17th.

*****

To John Garth, in Hannibal:

HARTFORD, July 3 '82.

DEAR JOHN,--Your letter of June 19 arrived just one day after we ought
to have been in Elmira, N. Y. for the summer: but at the last moment the
baby was seized with scarlet fever. I had to telegraph and countermand
the order for special sleeping car; and in fact we all had to fly around
in a lively way and undo the patient preparations of weeks--rehabilitate
the dismantled house, unpack the trunks, and so on. A couple of days
later, the eldest child was taken down with so fierce a fever that
she was soon delirious--not scarlet fever, however. Next, I myself was
stretched on the bed with three diseases at once, and all of them fatal.
But I never did care for fatal diseases if I could only have privacy and
room to express myself concerning them.

We gave early warning, and of course nobody has entered the house in
all this time but one or two reckless old bachelors--and they probably
wanted to carry the disease to the children of former flames of theirs.
The house is still in quarantine and must remain so for a week