S. L. CLEMENS.


To W. D. Howells, in New York:

HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I. NEUER MARKT 6
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