week ago, and staid four days and then had to go to New York on business.

......................

No further letters have been preserved until June, when he is in
Elmira and with his fiancee reading final proofs on the new book.
They were having an idyllic good time, of course, but it was a
useful time, too, for Olivia Langdon had a keen and refined literary
instinct, and the Innocents Abroad, as well as Mark Twain's other
books, are better to-day for her influence.

It has been stated that Mark Twain loved the lecture platform, but
from his letters we see that even at this early date, when he was at
the height of his first great vogue as a public entertainer, he had
no love for platform life. Undoubtedly he rejoiced in the brief
periods when he was actually before his audience and could play upon
it with his master touch, but the dreary intermissions of travel and
broken sleep were too heavy a price to pay.


To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis

ELMIRA, June 4. (1868)
DEAR FOLKS,--Livy sends you her love and loving good wishes, and I send
you mine. The last 3 chapters of the book came tonight--we shall read it
in the morning and then thank goodness, we are done.

In twelve months (or rather I believe it is fourteen,) I have earned just
eighty dollars by my pen--two little magazine squibs and one newspaper
letter--altogether the idlest, laziest 14 months I ever spent in my life.