am II can be beguiled into making charges which should not be
ventured upon except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.

MARK.

The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
luxurious, circumstances. The hard work and good fortune which had
enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
characteristic and interesting.

*****

To W. D. Howells, in New York:

HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L. NEVER MARKT 6
Dec. 30, '98.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though
I shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another
leisure moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how
indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a
hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your
letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any
in--the years, anyway." That remark diseased me with a habit which has
cost me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts
and buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get
rid of a virtue.....

I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much
care to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children
in difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now
having peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as
anyone. Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has
come with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she
keeps the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the
clouds were lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept
me going till another figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured
up for her own satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and
furniture in Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an
income which represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000
cash in the bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I
was smoking 4 1/2 centers before.

At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the
Mouse-Trap played and