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scarce," he said, "when they make so much fuss over even a defective
specimen." When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells
in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
*
****
To W. D. Howells, in New York:
HOTEL METROPOLE,
VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it
"
Hartford, 1871." There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now. And
how much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the
glorious days of that old time--and they were. It is my quarrel--that
traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport,
and then taken away.
About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating
disaster in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke
is further away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been
through all other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done
as it ought to be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be
written with the blood out of a man's heart. I couldn't know, then, how
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