April 2, '99.

DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due
now; waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary
man, with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work
in the same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and
perfect way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to
you there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a
poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible,
(last year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders
over, and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any
part of it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was
before; and so I have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor
praisefully about him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go
on writing, for that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much (for
I don't wish to be scalped, any more than another.)

April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party,
and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the
swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding
Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.

Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting
glimpses which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age;
indifference to sights and things once brisk with interest;
tasteless stale stuff which used to be champagne; the boredom
of travel: the secret sigh behind the public smile, the private
What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!

But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well
done, perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book--[Following the
Equator.]--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an
excursion through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying
cheerfulness fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How
I did loathe that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and
India.

Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier--and I bragged
to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a fine
profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth
$60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been spending
$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming