The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete


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paying no visits, receiving none, and just lazying a heavenly life out  
in their own private unpestered society, and doing their literary work,  
if they have any, wholly uninterrupted. If you had hired such a boat and  
sent for us we should have a couple of satisfactory books ready for  
the press now with no marks of interruption, vexatious wearinesses, and  
other hellishnesses visible upon them anywhere. We shall have to do this  
another time. We have lost an opportunity for the present. Do you forget  
that Heaven is packed with a multitude of all nations and that these  
people are all on the most familiar how-the-hell-are-you footing with  
Talmage swinging around the circle to all eternity hugging the saints  
and patriarchs and archangels, and forcing you to do the same unless you  
choose to make yourself an object of remark if you refrain? Then why do  
you try to get to Heaven? Be warned in time.  
We have all read your two opening numbers in the Century, and consider  
them almost beyond praise. I hear no dissent from this verdict. I did  
not know there was an untouched personage in American life, but I had  
forgotten the auctioneer. You have photographed him accurately.  
I have been an utterly free person for a month or two; and I do not  
believe I ever so greatly appreciated and enjoyed--and realized the  
absence of the chains of slavery as I do this time. Usually my first  
waking thought in the morning is, "I have nothing to do to-day, I belong  
to nobody, I have ceased from being a slave." Of course the highest  
pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor.  
Therefore I labor. But I take my time about it. I work one hour or four  
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