But you perceive that although I am not a Pioneer, I have had a sufficiently variegated time of it to enable me to talk Pioneer like a native, and feel like a Forty-Niner.Therefore, I cordially welcome you to your old-remembered homes and your long deserted firesides, and close this screed with the sincere hope that your visit here will be a happy one, and not embittered by the sorrowful surprises that absence and lapse of years are wont to prepare for wanderers; surprises which come in the form of old friends missed from their places; silence where familiar voices should be; the young grown old; change and decay everywhere; home a delusion and a disappointment; strangers at hearthstone; sorrow where gladness was; tears for laughter; the melancholy-pomp of death where the grace of life has been!
With all good wishes for the Returned Prodigals, and regrets that Icannot partake of a small piece of the fatted calf (rare and no gravy,)I am yours, cordially, MARK TWAIN.
In the next letter we find him in the midst of a sort of confusion of affairs, which, in one form or another, would follow him throughout the rest of his life.It was the price of his success and popularity, combined with his general gift for being concerned with a number of things, and a natural tendency for getting into hot water, which becomes more evident as the years and letters pass in review.Orion Clemens, in his attempt to save money for the government, had employed methods and agents which the officials at Washington did not understand, and refused to recognize.Instead of winning the credit and commendation he had expected, he now found himself pursued by claims of considerable proportions.The "land"referred to is the Tennessee tract, the heritage which John Clemens had provided for his children.Mark Twain had long since lost faith in it, and was not only willing, but eager to renounce his rights.
"Nasby" is, of course, David R.Locke, of the Toledo Blade, whose popularity at this time both as a lecturer and writer was very great.Clemens had met him here and there on their platform tour, and they had become good friends.Clemens, in fact, had once proposed to Nasby a joint trip to the Pacific coast.
The California idea had been given up, but both Mark Twain and Nasby found engagements enough, and sufficient profit east of the Mississippi.Boston was often their headquarters that winter ('69and '70), and they were much together."Josh Billings," another of Redpath's lecturers, was likewise often to be found in the Lyceum offices.There is a photograph of Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh Billings together.
Clemens also, that winter, met William Dean Howells, then in the early days of his association with the Atlantic Monthly.The two men, so widely different, became firm friends at sight, and it was to Howells in the years to come that Mark Twain would write more letters, and more characteristic letters, than to any other living man.Howells had favorably reviewed 'The Innocents Abroad,' and after the first moment of their introduction had passed Clemens said: "When I read that review of yours I felt like the woman who said that she was so glad that her baby had come white." It was not the sort of thing that Howells would have said, but it was the sort of thing that he could understand and appreciate from Mark Twain.
In company with Nasby Clemens, that season, also met Oliver Wendell Holmes.Later he had sent Holmes a copy of his book and received a pleasantly appreciative reply."I always like," wrote Holmes, "to hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar, or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd....Ihope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your travels." A wish that was realized in due time, though it is doubtful if Doctor Holmes or any one else at the moment believed that a book of that nature and price (it was $3.50 a copy) would ever reach such a sale.
To Mrs.Moffett, in St.Louis:
BOSTON, Nov.9, 1869.
MY DEAR SISTER,--Three or four letters just received from home.My first impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money he wants, but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defrauded the government out of money, why pay, simply because the government chooses to consider him in its debt? No: Right is right.The idea don't suit me.Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, and tell them he has no money.If they make his sureties pay, then I will make the sureties whole, but I won't pay a cent of an unjust claim.You talk of disgrace.To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one's self to be bullied into paying that which is unjust.
Ma thinks it is hard that Orion's share of the land should be swept away just as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becoming valuable.Let her rest easy on that point.This letter is his ample authority to sell my share of the land immediately and appropriate the proceeds--giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first, or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the future he shall be able to do it.Now, I want no hesitation in this matter.Irenounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, provided it is sold just as suddenly as he can sell it.
