es down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly
blemishless piety, the Apostles were mere policemen to Cable; so with
this in mind you must imagine him at a midnight dinner in Boston the
other night, where we gathered around the board of the Summerset Club;
Osgood, full, Boyle O'Reilly, full, Fairchild responsively loaded, and
Aldrich and myself possessing the floor, and properly fortified. Cable
told Mrs. Clemens when he returned here, that he seemed to have been
entertaining himself with horses, and had a dreamy idea that he must
have gone to Boston in a cattle-car. It was a very large time. He called
it an orgy. And no doubt it was, viewed from his standpoint.

I wish I were in Switzerland, and I wish we could go to Florence; but we
have to leave these delights to you; there is no helping it. We all join
in love to you and all the family.

Yours as ever
MARK.

XXIII. LETTERS, 1883, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. A GUEST OF THE MARQUIS OF
LORNE. THE HISTORY GAME. A PLAY BY HOWELLS AND MARK TWAIN.

Mark Twain, in due season, finished the Mississippi book and placed
it in Osgood's hands for publication. It was a sort of partnership
arrangement in which Clemens was to furnish the money to make the
book, and pay Osgood a percentage for handling it. It was, in fact,
the beginning of Mark Twain's adventures as a publisher.

Howells was not as happy in Florence as he had hoped to be. The
social life there overwhelmed him. In February he wrote: "Our two
months in Florence have been the most ridiculous time that ever even
half-witted people passed. We have spent them in chasing round
after people for whom we cared nothing, and being chased by them.
My story isn't finished yet, and what part of it is done bears the
fatal marks of haste and distraction. Of course, I haven't put pen
to paper yet on the play. I wring my hands and beat my breast when
I think of how these weeks have been wasted; and how I have been
forced to waste them by the infernal social circumstances from which
I couldn't escape."

Clemens, now free from the burden of his own book, was light of
heart and full of ideas and news; also of sympathy and appreciation.
Howells's story of this time was "A Woman's Reason." Governor
Jewell, of this letter, was Marshall Jewell