Thank you ever so much for reading that batch of the proof. It was a relief & respite, & I cursed my way through the rest & survived. I was most heavenly glad to get done with it. The sight of a proof-slip is always exasperating to me; but on this book it was maddening.

You see I am trying a new pen. I stood the stylograph as long as I could, & then retired to the pencil. The thing I am trying now is that fountain-pen which is advertised to employ & accommodate itself to any kind of pen. So I selected an ordinary gold pen—a limber one—& sent it to New York & had it cut & fitted to this thing. It goes very well indeed—thus far; but doubtless the devil will be in it by tomorrowⒶemendation.

Mrs. Clemens & I immediately resolved to accept your & Mrs. Howells’s invitation for November & be present on your “first night;” but then I remembered that my readings are to begin about Nov. 5; so that g Ⓐemendation spree seems barred. But we shall see. I wish you had to share the affliction of gadding around the country with me; but it couldn’t be; it couldn’t pay you; & I it couldn’t easily have been made to pay you. I saw that.

This presidential campaign is too delicious for anything. —especially To see grown men, apparently in their right mind, seriously arguing against a bachelor’s fitness for President because he has had private intercourse with a consenting widow! Those grown men know what the bachelor’s other alternative was—& tacitly they seem to prefer that to the widow. Isn’t human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented? Isn’t man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all his aspects? Is he really fit for anything but to be stood up on the street corner as a convenience for dogs? Man, “know thyself”—& then thou wilt despise thyself, to a dead moral certainty. Take three quite good specimens—Hawley, Warner, & Charley Clark. Even I do not loathe Blaine more than they do; yet Hawley is howling for Blaine, Warner & Clark are eating their daily crow in the paper for him, & all three will vote for him. O Stultification, where is thy sting, O slave where is thy hickory!

I suppose you heard how a marble monument for which St Gaudens was pecuniarily responsible, burned down in Hartford the other day, uninsured,—for who in the world would ever think of insuring a marble shaft in a cemetery against fire?—& left St. Gaudens out of pocket $15,000. It was a bad day for artists. Gerhardt finished my bust that day, & the work was pronounced admirable by all the kin & friends; but in putting it in plaster (or rather in taking it out,) next day it got ruined. It was four or five weeks’ hard work gone to the dogs. Eve The news flew, & everybody on the farm flocked to the arbor & grouped themselves about the wreck in a profound & moving silence—the farm-help, the colored servants, the German nurse, the children, everybody—a silence interrupted at wide intervals by absent-minded ejaculations wrung from unconscious breasts as the whole size of the disaster gradually worked its way home to the realization of one spirit after another. Some burst out with one thing, some another; & the German nurse put up her hands & said, “Oh, Schade! oh, schrecklich!” But Gerhardt said nothing; or almost that. He couldn’t word it, I suppose. But he went to work, & by dark had everything thoroughly well under way for a fresh start in the morning; & in three days’ time had built a new bust which was ( as good as a trifle better than the old one—& tomorrow we shall put the finishing touches on it, & it will be about as good a one as nearly anybody could make.