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To W. D. Howells, in Maine:
DUBLIN, Sunday, June 17, '06.
DEAR HOWELLS,--..... The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With
intervals. I find that I have been at it, off and on, nearly two hours a
day for 155 days, since Jan. 9. To be exact I've dictated 75 hours in 80
days and loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've
been here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that
time--40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a plenty, and
I am satisfied.
There's a good deal of "fat" I've dictated, (from Jan. 9) 210,000 words,
and the "fat" adds about 50,000 more.
The "fat" is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or
editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little
old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which
you said "publish--and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction;
he'll do it." ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It reads quite
to suit me, without altering a word, now that it isn't to see print
until I am dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and
assigns burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006
A.D.--which I judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I
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