editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.

My dear Clemens:

The fotograf is a wonderful success, and Mrs. Howells and I are exultantly grateful. We’ve got it framed to match Warner’s, and it turns its eagle-eye away from me towards Boston, on my study mantel-piece. Apparently it is looking for Twichell, and I hope it will soon see him coming. (Read this poetic passage to him—that he may not forget the picture he promised us.)—By even post with this, I expect to send my book to Mrs Clemens with the hope that she will accept it. Please tell her that her liking it as it went through the magazine was a great comfort and pleasure to me.

We had a curious sort of fish-symposium yesterday in a little wooden house that hangs amphibiously on to the side of the South Boston Bridge, and belongs to a Boat Club that hasn’t got any boat. The dinner was given by Underwood (“Lord of Himself,”) and Osgood. Aldrich was there, and we had a good time that asked nothing but to be crowned by the presence of you and Twichell. I hope you’re getting ready the second paper of reminiscences, for we’ve announced it for February. If I might put in my jaw at this point, I should say, stick to actual fact and character in the thing, and give things in detail. All that belongs to the old river life is novel and is now mostly historical. Don’t write at any supposed Atlantic audience, but yarn it off as if into my sympathetic ear. Don’t be afraid of rests or pieces of dead color. I fancied a sort of hurried and anxious air in the first.