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To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Dec. 18, 1874.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I left No. 3, (Miss. chapter) in my eldest's reach,
and it may have gone to the postman and it likewise may have gone into
the fire. I confess to a dread that the latter is the case and that that
stack of MS will have to be written over again. If so, O for the return
of the lamented Herod!
You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful--Mrs.
Clemens. For months--I may even say years--she had shown unaccountable
animosity toward my neck-tie, even getting up in the night to take it
with the tongs and blackguard it--sometimes also going so far as to
threaten it.
When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neck-ties, and that
they were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of
happiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the venom
in her nature gathered itself together,--insomuch that I, being near to
a door, went without, perceiving danger.
Now I wear one of the new neck-ties, nothing being sacred in Mrs.
Clemens's eyes that can be perverted to a gaud that shall make the
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