SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.

DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you. I learned a
trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago. I
meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized
the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences,
then remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory
introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously
using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to
carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that
I was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch
presently. It was a beautiful success. I knew the substance of the
sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest
of it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the
snap and go and freshness of an impromptu. I was to read several pieces,
and I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience
thought I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and
was going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so
I always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it
had begun. I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time
over again. It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented.
Try it. You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment. Their
attention is fixed, and never wavers. And that is not the case where one
reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly
exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he
is not improvising, but reciting from memory. And in the heat of
telling a thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the
happiest suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then! Try it. Such a
phrase has a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could
not exhibit if prepared beforehand, and it "fetches" an audience in
such an enthusing and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase
breeds another one, sure.

Your September instalment--["Their Silver Wedding journey."]--was
delicious--every word of it. You haven't lost any of your splendid art.
Callers have arrived.

With love
MARK.

"Yes," wrote Howells, "if I were a great histrionic artist like you