We remain here till middle of March.

In ‘A Tramp Abroad’ there is an incident in which the author describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast hotel bedroom at Heilbronn.  The account of the real incident, as written to Twichell, seems even more amusing.

The “Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns,” like “The Stolen White Elephant,” did not find place in the travel-book, but was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to the rambling notes of “An Idle Excursion.”

With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was
going better.  His letter reflects his enthusiasm.

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: 

Munich, Jan 26 ’79.  Dear old Joe,—­Sunday.  Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the right time.  It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12 noon.  Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later; I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear.  There is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher’s way because the petitioner is so apt to be in earnest.  I was peculiarly alive to his performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit:  Last night I awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable hours, I gave it up.  I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark.  Slowly but surely I got on garment after garment—­all down to one sock; I had one slipper on and the other in my hand.  Well, on my hands and knees I crept softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it up and kept it up.  At first I only said to myself, “Blame that sock,” but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and stronger,—­and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me.  I could see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and could give me no information as to where I was.  But I had one comfort —­I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if the night lasted long enough.  So I started again and softly pawed all over the place,—­and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my hand on the missing article.  I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl and pitcher off the stand and simply raised——­so to speak.  Livy screamed, then said, “Who is that? what is the matter?” I said “There ain’t anything the matter—­I’m hunting for my sock.”  She said, “Are you hunting for it with a club?”

I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves.  So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper a good deal to my satisfaction.