Hope you have entirely recovered.  I am not very well myself, the excitement of a first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with Harte that I have is too much for a beginner.  I ain’t used to it.  The houses have been picking up since Tuesday Mr. Ford has worked well and hard for us. 
               Yours in, haste,
                    Chas. Thos.  Parsloe.

The play drew some good houses in Washington, but it could not hold them for a run.  Never mind what was the matter with it; perhaps a very small change at the right point would have turned it into a fine success.  We have seen in a former letter the obligation which Mark Twain confessed to Harte—­a debt he had tried in many ways to repay—­obtaining for him a liberal book contract with Bliss; advancing him frequent and large sums of money which Harte could not, or did not, repay; seeking to advance his fortunes in many directions.  The mistake came when he introduced another genius into the intracacies of his daily life.  Clemens went down to Washington during the early rehearsals of “Ah Sin.”

Meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected President, and Clemens one day called with a letter of introduction from Howells, thinking to meet the Chief Executive.  His own letter to Howells, later, probably does not give the real reason of his failure, but it will be amusing to those who recall the erratic personality of George Francis Train.  Train and Twain were sometimes confused by the very unlettered; or pretendedly, by Mark Twain’s friends.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Baltimore, May 1, ’77.  My dear Howells,—­Found I was not absolutely needed in Washington so I only staid 24 hours, and am on my way home, now.  I called at the White House, and got admission to Col.  Rodgers, because I wanted to inquire what was the right hour to go and infest the, President.  It was my luck to strike the place in the dead waste and middle of the day, the very busiest time.  I perceived that Mr. Rodgers took me for George Francis Train and had made up his mind not to let me get at the President; so at the end of half an hour I took my letter of introduction from the table and went away.  It was a great pity all round, and a great loss to the nation, for I was brim full of the Eastern question.  I didn’t get to see the President or the Chief Magistrate either, though I had sort of a glimpse of a lady at a window who resembled her portraits. 
                                   Yrs ever,
          
                                   mark.