lready
aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay. We shall
sell the horses and shut up the house. We wish to provide a place for
our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,
diligent, and unusually bright and capable. You spoke of hiring a
colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would
soon learn that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by
the middle or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with
the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he
would like to try?

I have not said anything to him about it yet.

Yours
S. L. C.

It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful
establishment. Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of
their household help had been like members of the family. We may
guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain
cheerful.

Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to
be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it
from the papers, and wrote for information. Likely enough Clemens
had not until then had the courage to confess.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, May 20, '91.

DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths
somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe.
The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and
little-visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you
get to it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach. Come, get "sick
or sorry enough" and join us. We shall be a little while at that bath,
and the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute
Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don't know
how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it. I'm
going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind,
without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any
charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except
heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of
those.

I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its
lines when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of