My Dear Mother—It was real good of you to write me these delightful things from your sick bed; but then you always are good to me, sick or well, & you never have written me a letter that failed to give me pleasure ( & a deal of it, too, nor has the sight of your handwriting on an envelop ever been other than a delight to me. The handwriting of a friend generally gives me a pang, because I’ve got to answer the letter—but never yours nor my Mollie dear’s—for I say within myself, “These will I enjoy without alloyⒶemendation, & the answering them will I shirk till a convenient season, or wait till they write again.” By this unprincipled process I have robbed yours & Mollie’s letters of all terrors—therefore, please use a little exertion & see if you can’t make them more frequent. I don’t imagine that either of you have anything to do. I will confess that I seldom answer other friends’ letters at all. Usually, if they are from abroad, I don’t even think of answering them. Now I have a reason for all this conduct, & it is this: If I don’t feel like writing, it is up-hill work; if I do feel like it I write too much & kill a day’s work. (You perceive I grow in W wisdom every day.)

No newspaper has interviewed me for a year. The Sun’s article was manufactured out of whole cloth. I am pretty dull in some things, & very likely the Atlantic speech was in ill taste; but that is the worst that can be said of it. I am sincerely sorry if it in any wise hurt those great potes poets’ feelings—I never wanted to do that. But nobody has ever convinced me that that speech was not a good one——for me; above my average, considerably. I could as easily have substituted the names of Shakspeare, Beaumont & Ben Jonson, (since the absurd situation was where the humor lay,) & all those looking for it would have s lay,) & all these critics would have discovered the merit of it, then. But my purpose was clean, my conscience clear, & I saw no need of it. Why anybody should think three poets insulted because three fantastic tramps choose to personate them & use their language, passes my comprehension. Nast says it is very much the best speech & the most humorous situation I have contrived.

But nothing which I have said or written as to what I think or feel about that performance has appeared in print. Any “remarks” you may have seen were manufactured—I didn’t utter them.

I have been trying my level best to persuade Nast to make a big lecture tour with me—he to draw pictures & I d to do all the talking; he to portray & I to explainⒶemendation. I didn’t see why we shouldn’t divide $100,000 in 100 nights in these hard times., & then retire from public life. But he hates the platform—says there is not money enough in the world to hire him to show his face to an audience again.

What am I writing? A historical tale, of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it—for it will appear without my name—such grave & stately work being considered by the world to be above my proper level. I have been studying for it, off & on, for a year & a half. I swear the Young Girls’ Club to secresyⒶemendation & read the MS to them, half a dozen chapters at a time, at their meetings. They profess to be very much fascinated with it; so do Livy, & Susie Warner. If you & Mollie will come, I try I will try to wring some compliments from you, too.

Of course I am doing some bread-&-butter work, too. To-witⒶemendation, a novel of the present day—about half finished. A talented young fellow here is dramatising it from my MS (I have just finished polishing up & hurling a few sentences into his 1st Act here & there, this afternoon.) I expect to put the play & the chief character, into the hands of Sol Smith Russell.

I have two other books (pretty quaint ones) begun, but am not going to continue them until summer.

A day or two ago I sent Dan a little bundle of stuff (including the Bermuda Sketches,) to make into a 10-cent advertising-primer for my Scrap-Book. That Scrap-Book is booming, now, & promises to kill all the other Scrap-books in the world. Dan can’t fill keep up with the orders; he is adding new machinery. The firm are as charmed as if they had found the philosopher’s stone. One member They have declined a liberal English offer for Exclusive right on a royalty. So one of the firm will go to London & take a room & up permanent residence, within a month., & proceed to Scrap-Book the eastern hemisphere. They have secured 14 eligible feet in the Paris Exposition & another member of the firm will remain there & Scrap-book the French. It seems funny that y an invention which cost me five-minutes’ thought, in a railway car one day, should in this little while be paying me an income as large as any salary I ever received on a newspaper. My royalty on each book is very trifling—so the sales are already very great.

Livy & the children are in good health, & as we can’t get to you we send you our love & beg you & Mollie & Mr. Fairbanks to hurry here & see us, before we take wing for——(but that would be telling.)

My love to John Hay & his wife, if they’ll take it.