The dictating goes lazily and pleasantly on. With intervals. I find that I've been at it, off & on, nearly two hours for 155 days since January 9. To be exact, I've dictated 75 hours in 80 days & loafed 75 days. I've added 60,000 words in the month that I've been here; which indicates that I've dictated during 20 days of that time—40 hours, at an average of 1,500 words an hour. It's a plenty, & I'm satisfied.
There's a good deal of "fat." I've dictated (from January 9) 210,000 words, & the "fat" adds about 50,000 more.
The "fat" is old pigeonholed things of the years gone by which I or editors didn't das't to print. For instance, I am dumping in the little old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago & which you said "publish & ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction; he'll do it" (Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven). It reads quite to suit me without altering a word now that it isn't to see print until I am dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs & assigns burned alive if they venture to print it this side of A.D. 2006—which I judge they won't. There'll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4 years longer. The edition of A.D. 2006 will make a stir when it comes out. I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead pals. You are invited.
The chapter which was to invite death at the stake for his successors was naturally one of religious heresies a violent attack on the orthodox, scriptural God, but really an expression of the highest reverence for the God which, as he said, had created the earth and sky and the music of the constellations. Mark Twain once expressed himself concerning reverence and the lack of it:
"I was never consciously and purposely irreverent in my life, yet one person or another is always charging me with a lack of reverence. Reverence for what—for whom? Who is to decide what ought to command my reverence—my neighbor or I? I think I ought to do the electing myself. The Mohammedan reveres Mohammed—it is his privilege; the Christian doesn't—apparently that is his privilege; the account is square enough. They haven't any right to complain of the other, yet they do complain of each other, and that is where the unfairness comes in. Each says that the other is irreverent, and both are mistaken, for manifestly you can't have reverence for a thing that doesn't command it. If you could do that you could digest what you haven't eaten, and do other miracles and get a reputation."
He was not reading many books at this time—he was inclined rather to be lazy, as he said, and to loaf during the afternoons; but I remember that he read aloud 'After the Wedding' and 'The Mother'—those two beautiful word-pictures by Howells—which he declared sounded the depths of humanity with a deep-sea lead. Also he read a book by William Allen White, 'In Our Town', a collection of tales that he found most admirable. I think he took the trouble to send White a personal, hand-written letter concerning them, although, with the habit of dictation, he had begun, as he said, to "loathe the use of the pen."
There were usually some sort of mild social affairs going on in the neighborhood, luncheons and afternoon gatherings like those of the previous year, though he seems to have attended fewer of them, for he did not often leave the house. Once, at least, he assisted in an afternoon entertainment at the Dublin Club, where he introduced his invention of the art of making an impromptu speech, and was assisted in its demonstration by George de Forest Brush and Joseph Lindon Smith, to the very great amusement of a crowd of summer visitors. The "art" consisted mainly of having on hand a few reliable anecdotes and a set formula which would lead directly to them from any given subject.
Twice or more he collected the children of the neighborhood for charades and rehearsed them, and took part in the performance, as in the Hartford days. Sometimes he drove out or took an extended walk. But these things were seldom.
Now and then during the summer he made a trip to New York of a semi-business nature, usually going by the way of Fairhaven, where he would visit for a few days, journeying the rest of the way in Mr. Rogers's yacht. Once they made a cruise of considerable length to Bar Harbor and elsewhere. Here is an amusing letter which he wrote to Mrs. Rogers after such a visit: