What do the newspapers say about Harte’s appointment? Billiardly-speaking, the President (through persuasion of Evarts, I judge,) scored 400 points on each, when he appointed Lowell & Taylor—but when he appointed Harte he simply pocketed his own ball. Now just take a realizing sense of what this fellow is, when one names things by their sim plain dictionary names—to wit: Harte is a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward, a Jeremy Diddler, he is brim full of treachery, & he conceals his Jewish birth as carefully as if he considered it a disgrace. How do I know? By the best of all evidence, personal observation. With one exception: I don’t know him, myself, to be a thief, but John Carmany, publisher of the Overland Monthly, charges him with stealing money delivered to him to be paid to contributors, & the defrauded contributors back Mr. Carmany. I think Charley Stoddard said Harte had never ventured to deny this in print, though W. A. Kendall, who published the charge in the San Francisco Chronicle, not only invited him to deny it, but dared him to do it. O, the loveliness of putting Harte into the public service, after removing Geo. H. Butler from it for lack of character! If he had only been made a home official, I think I could stand it; but to send this nasty creature to puke upon the American name in a foreign land is too much.

I don’t deny that I feel personally snubbed; for it seems only fair that after the letter I wrote last summer the President should not have silently ignored my testimony, but should have given me a chance to prove what I had said against Harte. I think I could have piled up facts enough to show that Harte was fitted for the highest office in the gift of the city of New York.

Now there’s one thing that shan’t happen. Harte shan’t swindle the Germans ifⒶemendation I can help. it. Tell me what German town he is to filthify with his presence; then I will write the authorities there that he is a persistent borrower who never pays. They need not believe it unless they choose—that is their affair, not mine.

Have you heard any literary men express an opinion about the appointment? Who were they—& what said they?

Ah, don’t I wish I could venture to write for the Atlantic! The only thing in the way is Canada. If Mr. Houghton can copyrightⒶemendation my stuff in Canada & hold it himself, & will prosecute & stop any infringement, I shall be glad enough to write; but I can’t trust any more Canadians after my late experience. I suppose they are all born pirates. I do not know that I have any printable stuff just now—separatable stuff, that is,—but I shall have, by & by. It is very gratifying to hear that it is wanted by anybody. I stand always prepared to hear the reverse, & am constantly surprised that it is delayed so long. Consequently it is not going to astonish me when it comes.

Mrs. Clemens, who even reads note-books in her hunger for culture, was rather startled to run across this paragraph in mine., last night:

“Have all sorts of heavens—have a gate for each sort. Wakeman visits these various heavens. One gate where they receive a bar-keeper with artillery salutes, swarms of angels in the sky, & a noble torch-lightⒶemendation procession. He thinks he is the lion of Heaven. Procession over, he drops at once into solid obscurity. But the roughest part of it is, that he has to do 30 weeks’ penance—day & night he must carry a torch & shout himself hoarse to do honor to some poor scrub whom he wishes had gone to hell.”

I wish I was writing that Wakeman book, but I suppose I shan’t get at it again before next year.

Privately, Private I have some good news to tell you. That is, I believe it will gratify you—in fact I am sure it will—though I am not acquainted with a great many people wou whom it would please. It is this: we’ve quit feeling poor! Isn’t that splendid? You know that for two years we have ing been coming to want, every little while, & have straightway gone to economising. Well, the annual report from the coal firm came y Yesterday, & with that as a basis, we fell to figuring & discovered that ne we have more than income enough, to from investments, to live in Hartford on a generous scale. Well, now that we are fixed at last, of course the communists & the asinine government will go to work & smash it all. No matter, we have resolved to quit feeling poor for a little while, any way. This thing was so gratifying to me that my first impulse was to run to you with it.

Drat this German tongue, I never shall be able to learn it. I think I could learn a little conversational stuff, maybe, if I could attend to it, but I found I couldn’t spare the time. I took lessons two weeks & got so I could understand the talk going on around me, & even answer back, after a fashion. But I neither talk nor listen, now, so I can’t even understand the language any more. Mrs. Clemens is getting along fast, & Miss Spaulding & our little Susie talk the devilish tongue without difficulty. But the Bay scorns the language. The nurse & the governess blandish around her in vain. She maintains the calm & peris sistent attitude of not caring a damn for German. There is a good deal of character in the Bay—such as it is.

Look here, Howells, when I choose to gratify my passions by writing great long letters to you, you are not to consider anything but the briefest answers necessary—& not even those when you have got things to do. Don’t forget that. A lengthy letter from me you is a great prize & a welcome, but it gives me a reproach, because I seem to have robbed a busy man of time which he ought not to have spared.

Well, good bye & good luck attend you. We both send love to you & yours.