To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON.

Feb. '02.

DEAR JOE,--"After compliments."--[Meaning "What a good time you gave

me; what a happiness it was to be under your roof again; etc., etc."

See opening sentence of all translations of letters passing between Lord

Roberts and Indian princes and rulers.]--From Bridgeport to New York;

thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and

reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed

and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of

having been on a three days' tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years

since I have known these sensations. All through the book is the glaze

of a resplendent intellect gone mad--a marvelous spectacle. No, not all

through the book--the drunk does not come on till the last third, where

what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red

and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and

proper adornment. By God I was ashamed to be in such company.

Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Arminian position) that the Man

(or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved

to action by an impulse back of it. That's sound!

Also, that of two or more things offered it, it infallibly chooses the

1061

The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete