before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
chapters. She said--

"It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!"

"Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think."

I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump
into it.
Yours ever
MARK.


The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger. It was not
finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
after his death. Six years later (1916) it was published serially
in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.

The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
earlier years. Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
incident of one of their entertainments.


To W. D. Howells, in America:

LONDON, July 3, '99