HotelKrantz, Wein, I, NEUER Mart 6,
Feb. 26, 1899. 
Dear major,—­No:  it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed.  He was to teach me the river for a certain specified sum.  I have forgotten what it was, but I paid it.  I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A. T. Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one trip), and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.

The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect.  Bixby is not 67:  he is 97.  I am 63 myself, and I couldn’t talk plain and had just begun to walk when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for 57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than he really was.  At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of his before the Revolution.  He has piloted every important river in America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.  I have never revealed these facts before.  I notice, too, that you are deceiving the people concerning your age.  The printed portrait which you have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was 19.  I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby for your grandson.  Is it spreading, I wonder—­this disposition of pilots to renew their youth by doubtful methods?  Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan—­they probably go to Sunday school now—­but it will not deceive.

Yes, it is as you say.  All of the procession but a fraction has passed. 
It is time for us all to fall in. 
                         Sincerely yours,
                                   S. L. Clemens.

To W. D. Howells, in New York: 

HotelKrantz, Wien I. NEUER Markt 6
April 2, ’99. 
Dear Howells,—­I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now; waiting, and strongly interested.  You are old enough to be a weary man, with paling interests, but you do not show it.  You do your work in the same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect way.  I don’t know how you can—­but I suspect.  I suspect that to you there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke—­a poor joke—­the poorest that was ever contrived.  Since I wrote my Bible, (last year)—­["What Is Man."]—­which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders over, and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so I have lost my pride in him, and can’t write gaily nor praisefully about him any more.  And I don’t intend to try.  I mean to go on writing, for that is my best amusement, but I shan’t print much. (for I don’t wish to be scalped, any more than another.)

April 5.  The Harper has come.  I have been in Leipzig with your party, and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh’s encounter with the swine with the toothpick and the other manners—­["Their Silver Wedding Journey."]—­At this point Jean carried the magazine away.