15 July 1884 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, in pencil: MH-H, UCCL 01529)
I meant to write you that I told Webster to let Raymond see the play, but I have fooled around & neglected it. This fooling around has been done in the dental chair. I go down every other day & have one or two teeth gouged out & stuffed. I have been in the dental chair ten days, a couple of hours a day; & shall be there 3 days this week & I suppose as many more next week. The dentist is a bright man, & gouges & digs & saws & rasps & hapmmers, & kept keeps up a steady stream of entertaining talk, all the time, like his professional ancestor the barber; & so these have been very pleasant relaxations to me, & I shall be rather sorry to see them come to an end. They have been a vast improvement to me, too—an education; I can stand the most exquisite pain, now, without outward manifestation; & indeed without any very real discomfort. The Indian has fallen, in my estimation; he is no better than you or me—he is merely a product of education. I have picked up a lot of good dental stuff, & I wish I had the time & energy to write it up.
On my off days I work at a new story (Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer among the Indians 40 or 50 years ago).
References
- Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass.
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- MTHL. Mark Twain–Howells Letters. Edited by Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson, with the assistance of Frederick Anderson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1960
MS, in pencil, MH-H.
MTHL, 2:495–97.
see Howells Letters in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.