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To Orion Clemens Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing,
to W. D. Howells:
MUNICH, Feb. 9, (1879)
MY DEAR BRO.,--Yours has just arrived. I enclose a draft on Hartford for
$
25. You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time
it arrives,--but no matter, apply it to your newer and present
project, whatever it is. You see I have an ineradicable faith in
your unsteadfastness,--but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you
conferred it on me yourself. But fire away, fire away! I don't see why
a changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes,
and transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out
of standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the
time. That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy
itself as much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as
a whetstone, nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't
feel like girding at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I
recognize and realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned
to accept this truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the
power of throwing me into the most exhausting and helpless convulsions
of profanity. But fire away, now! Your magic has lost its might. I am
able to view your inspirations dispassionately and judicially, now, and
say "This one or that one or the other one is not up to your average
flight, or is above it, or below it."
510
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