I have just read your letter and it grieves me to see that you are seriously troubled about what seems to me a trifling matter. It never occurred to me for a moment to take offence, or to feel wounded by your playful use of my name. I have not seen Emerson or Longfellow since the dinner and cannot say whether they were more sensitive than I was or not. I have heard some mild questioning as to whether even in fun it was in good taste to associate the names of the authors with the absurdly unlike personalities attributed to them, but it seemed to be an open question. Two of my friends, gentlemen of education and the highest social standing were infinitely amused by your sketch and stoutly defended it against the charge of impropriety. More than this, one of the cleverest and best known ladies we have among us was highly delighted with it. The idea was a very amusing one and with a little less of broad farce about it might have pleased everybody as it did so many. Any man who knows your bonhommie and evident kindness of disposition would never think of supposing you meant to strike anything with the heat-lightning of your wit and humour.

Don’t think too much of this, my dear Mr. Clemens, nor let wife or babe fret under the feeling that you have said anything to be harshly remembered against you. The world owes you too large a debt for the infinite pleasure and amusement you have furnished to both hemispheres to quarrel with you because your invention has for once led you a little farther than what some would consider the proper limit of its excursions.

With the same cordial regards as always, I am

At New Years our family always meets to spend two days together. Today my Father came last and brought with him Mr Clemens’s letter, so that I read it to the assembled family, and I have come right up stairs to write to you about it. My sister said “Oh let Father write!” but my Mother said “No, don’t wait for him. Go now, don’t stop to pick that up, go this minute and write. I think that is a noble letter. Tell them so.” First let me say that no shadow of indignation has ever been in any of our minds. The night of the dinner, my Father says, he did not hear Mr Clemens’s speech he was so far off, and my Mother says that when she read it to him the next day it amused him. But what you will want is to know without any softening how we did feel. We were disappointed. We have liked almost everything we have ever seen over Mark Twain’s signature. It has made us like the man, and we have delighted in the fun. Father has often asked us to repeat certain passages of “The Innocents Abroad,” and of a speech at a London dinner in 1872, and we all expect both to approve and to enjoy when we see his name. Therefore when we read this speech it was a real disappointment. I said to my brother that it didn’t seem good or funny, and he said “No it was unfortunate. Still some of those quotations were very good,” and he gave them with relish and my Father laughed, though never having seen a card in his life, he couldn’t understand them like his children. My sister says“ When I read the speech I only felt sorry for Mr Clemens, for I was sure that someday he would regret it, and I couldn’t bear to think he would have to.” My Mother read it lightly and had hardly any second thoughts about it. To my Father it is as if it had not been, he never quite heard, never quite understood it, and he forgets easily and entirely. I think it doubtful whether he writes to Mr Clemens for he is old and long ago gave up answering letters. I think you can see just how bad, and how little bad, it was as far as we are concerned, and this lovely heart-breaking letter makes up for our disappointment in our much-liked author, and restores our former feeling about him.

I am a little troubled, that you should be so much troubled about a matter of such slight importance. The newspapers have made all the mischief. A bit of humor at a dinner table is one thing; a report of it in the morning papers is another. One needs the lamp-light, and the scenery. These failing, what was meant in jest, assumes a serious aspect.

I do not believe that anybody was much hurt. Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he was not. So I think you may dismiss the matter from your mind, without further remorse. It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much

With kind regards to Mrs Clemens,