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MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How odd it seems, to sit down to write a letter with
the feeling that you've got time to do it. But I'm done work, for this
season, and so have got time. I've done two seasons' work in one, and
haven't anything left to do, now, but revise. I've written eight or nine
hundred MS pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the
number of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't
expect you to. I used to restrict myself to 4 or 5 hours a day and 5
days in the week, but this time I've wrought from breakfast till 5.15
p.m. six days in the week; and once or twice I smouched a Sunday when
the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature hooked on
Sunday, on the sly.
I wrote you and Twichell on the same night, about the game, and was
appalled to get a note from him saying he was going to print part of my
letter, and was going to do it before I could get a chance to forbid it.
I telegraphed him, but was of course too late.
If you haven't ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't.
I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want
any more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it;
whereas I was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of
it. I might have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would
have invented a decent historical game long ago--a thing which nobody
had done. I think I've got it in pretty fair shape--so I have caveated
it.
628
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