DEAR OLD JOE,--Sunday.Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the right time.It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12noon.Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later;I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear.There is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the petitioner is so apt to be in earnest.I was peculiarly alive to his performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night Iawoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable hours, I gave it up.I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark.Slowly but surely I got on garment after garment--all down to one sock; I had one slipper on and the other in my hand.Well, on my hands and knees I crept softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it up and kept it up.At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock,"but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and stronger,--and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me.I could see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and could give me no information as to where I was.But I had one comfort --I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if the night lasted long enough.So I started again and softly pawed all over the place,--and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my hand on the missing article.I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl and pitcher off the stand and simply raised ---- so to speak.Livy screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said "There ain't anything the matter--I'm hunting for my sock." She said, "Are you hunting for it with a club?"I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.
So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper a good deal to my satisfaction.
I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago.When it was first lost I was glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots.But there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work--tore up a great part of the MS written in Heidelberg,--wrote and tore up,--continued to write and tear up,--and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my pen got the old swing again!
Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes the days so short.
One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it to make a book.What a mistake.I've got 900 pages written (not a word in it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for the first time yesterday,--and then only to take our party of four on our first pedestrian tour--to Heilbronn.I've got them dressed elaborately in walking costume--knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses, leather leggings, patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks.They go all the way to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they themselves shall not be conscious of it.--This trip will take 100 pages or more,--oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is everything, not the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising before me on that trip.Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good.Don't you see, the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I ever get to Switzerland?
But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be charitable toward me in,--that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to, and give me time to write more.I shan't waste the time--I haven't the slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since Igot back my swing.And you see this book is either going to be compared with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage.
I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and Imean to do my level best to accomplish that.
My crude plans are crystalizing.As the thing stands now, I went to Europe for three purposes.The first you know, and must keep secret, even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to acquire a critical knowledge of the German language.My MS already shows that the two latter objects are accomplished.It shows that I am moving about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any immodesty in assuming these titles.Having three definite objects has had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom of a loose costume.It is three strings to my bow, too.