Your & Mrs. Howells’s praises have been the greatest uplifting I ever had. When a body is not even remotely expecting such things, how the surprise takes the breath away! We had been interpreting your stillness to be melancholy & depression caused by that book. This is honest. Why everything looks brighter, now. It

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A check for untold cash could not have made our hearts sing as your letter has done.

I long ago forbade any copies to go to anybody connected with the press except you & David Gray—couldn’t send to Warner without sending to the others here. You were the three men whom I could trust to say the good thing if it could be honestly said; or be & remain charitably silent. I am justified in being afraid of the general press, because they it killed the “Gilded Age” before you had a change chance to point out that there were merits in that book. Now that The sale ceased almost utterly until the adverse criticisms were forgotten—then began again, & has kept smoothly on. During the past 12 months (to Jan. 1) it has sold a trifle over 1500 copies—not greatly behind Innocents & Tom Sawyer, each of which sold a fraction mo under 2200 copies—& hardly any behind Roughing It, which sold 1800.

Tauchnitz proposes to use casts of our pictures & issue an illustrated edition of the new book in addition to putting it in the “Series.” So I judge the advance sheets have favorably impressed him.

When Mrs. Clemens read about your being so “many promises deep,” she made that noise which one creates by suddenly detaching the tongue from the roof of the mouth, & which eloquently expresses aggravation. That did not deceive the Recording Angel a bit; I knew the entry that was being set down op in the Go great book opposite the name Livy L. Clemens, to-wit: “March 24, 1880—at breakfast—unarticulated remark reflecting the thought, ‘Damn those Warners.’”

ToⒶemendation get this woman to give up the baneful habit of underhanded swearing, is one of those things which I have long ago been obliged to give up, as being among the reforms which cannot be accomplished. But the poor children don’t suspect, I thank God for that.

What she said afterward, (shot full of silent oaths & curses & general blasphemy which made my flesh crawl & my hair stand,) was this:

“That is an old debt, & I suppose one must allow that it is just to pay it—though it does seem unfair, somehow—but why have the Warners allowed it to run so long?—here we have been away a year & a half; they have had abundance of time to collect—it does seem to me right down hard; I believe such indebtednesses should come under some sort of law of limitation, like moneyed ones.”

There was reason in that. The first time Susie Warner is sick again, I’ll telegraph you & you come down & visit them, along with Mrs. Howells. They cant receive when they are sick, of course, & that will set things all straight.