I enjoy the Colonel very much, and shall enjoy the rest of him with an obscene delight.
Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you and yours!
MARK.
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 garments meet for her high degree.
You think you get “poor pay” for your twenty years? No, oh no. You have lived in a paradise of the intellect whose lightest joys were beyond the reach of the longest purse in Christendom, you have had daily and nightly emancipation from the world's slaveries and gross interests, you have received a bigger wage than any man in the land, you have dreamed a splendid dream and had it come true, and to-day you could not afford to trade fortunes with anybody—not even with another scientist, for he must divide his spoil with his guild, whereas essentially the world you have discovered is your own and must remain so.
It is all just magnificent, Joe! And no one is prouder or gladder than
Yours always
MARK.