her.

I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with
change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new
buttons on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but
agreeing with a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed.
It is weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to
hear you discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:

"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think
that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has
passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth
jotting down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For
my part, I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting
than native opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the
country struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying
that a foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to
impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing
way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to
deny and refute; I would do as much for you.

It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one
of your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent,
I wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist
in seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of
your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier
days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.

NOTICE.

Persons attempting to find a motive in
this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it
will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.

The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must
not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the
life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have
you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. Bu