We have not heard of Joe Goodman since the trying days of '90 and
'91, when he was seeking to promote the fortunes of the type-setting
machine. Goodman, meantime, who had in turn been miner, printer,
publisher, and farmer; had been devoting his energies and genius to
something entirely new: he had been translating the prehistoric
Mayan inscriptions of Yucatan, and with such success that his work
was elaborately published by an association of British scientists.
In due time a copy of this publication came to Clemens, who was full
of admiration of the great achievement.


To J. T. Goodman, in California:

RIVERDALE-ON-THE-HUDSON,
June 13, '02.
DEAR JOE,--I am lost in reverence and admiration! It is now twenty-four
hours that I have been trying to cool down and contemplate with quiet
blood this extraordinary spectacle of energy, industry, perseverance,
pluck, analytical genius, penetration, this irruption of thunders and
fiery splendors from a fair and flowery mountain that nobody had supposed
was a sleeping volcano, but I seem to be as excited as ever. Yesterday
I read as much as half of the book, not understanding a word but
enchanted nevertheless--partly by the wonder of it all, the study, the
erudition, the incredible labor, the modesty, the dignity, the majestic
exclusiveness of the field and its lofty remoteness from things and
contacts sordid and mean and earthy, and partly by the grace and beauty
and limpidity of the book's unsurpassable English. Science, always great
and worshipful, goes often in hodden grey, but you have clothed her in