The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete


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soon I was to be made competent. I have thought of it many a time since.  
If you were here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in  
your dream. For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now,  
with some of our passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in  
eclipse.  
I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the  
ears. Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days,  
Sundays included. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it  
fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of  
the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change  
lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining. I  
don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll  
write half a dozen that won't, anyway. Dear me, I didn't know there was  
such fun in it. I'll write twenty that won't play. I get into immense  
spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal of  
this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co.  
debts, I mean. (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every  
cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't  
cash. I have marked this "private" because it is for the friends who are  
attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want  
to and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and  
which I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are  
small. Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never  
get the like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3  
years ago. And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things  
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