Hartford to listen to his readings of the master. He was an impressive
reader, and he carefully prepared himself for these occasions, indicating
by graduated underscorings, the exact values he wished to give to words
and phrases. Those were memorable gatherings, and they must have
continued through at least two winters. It is one of the puzzling phases
of Mark Twain's character that, notwithstanding his passion for direct
and lucid expression, he should have found pleasure in the poems of
Robert Browning.


To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Aug. 22, '87.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man
while he sleeps. When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871,
I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it
differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and
environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once
more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale,
characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel
so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.

People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at
all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so.
It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or
Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look
at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance
of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination
call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't
altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.