an and he has a fine sense of humor. It
is the Emperor's personality and the confidence all ranks have in
him that preserve the real political serenity in what has an outside
appearance of being the opposite. He is a man as well as an emperor--an
emperor and a man."

Clemens and Howells were corresponding with something of the old-time
frequency. The work that Mark Twain was doing--thoughtful work with
serious intent--appealed strongly to Howells. He wrote:

You are the greatest man of your sort that ever lived, and there is
no use saying anything else.... You have pervaded your
century almost more than any other man of letters, if not more; and
it is astonishing how you keep spreading.... You are my
"shadow of a great rock in a weary land" more than any other writer.

Clemens, who was reading Howells's serial, "Their Silver-Wedding
journey," then running in Harper's Magazine, responded:

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 &
delicious & forceful & searching & perfect way. I don't know how
you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to you there is still
dignity in human life, & that man is not a joke--a poor joke--the
poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible--[The
"Gospel," What is Man?]--(last year), which Mrs. Clemens loathes &
shudders over & 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, & so I have lost my pride in him & can't write gaily nor
praisefully about him any more....

Next morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every
morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities
& basenesses & hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization &
cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of
the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do
not despair.

He was not greatly changed. Perhaps he had fewer illusions and less
iridescent ones, and certainly he had more sorrow; but the letters to
Howells do not vary greatly from those written twenty-five years before.
There is even in them a touch of the old pretense as to Mrs. Clemens's
violence.

I mustn't stop to play now or I shall never get those helfiard letters
answered. (That is not my spelling. It is Mrs. Clemens's, I