My Dear Aldrich: Behold I have come home from a pleasure trip to Bermuda to find I could have had one without going all that distance or taking all that trouble. Both of us, the wife & I, are as sorry as to two people can be that we missed those good times which you & madame prepared for the elect. Mrs. Clemens was moved to accept the invitation & go along alone.

Day after tomorrow we leave for the hills beyond Elmira, N.Y., for the summer, where I shall hope to write a book of some sort or other to beat the people wh with. A work similar to your new one in the Atlantic is what I mean, though I have not heard what the nature of that one is. Immoral, I suppose. Well, you are right. Such books sell best, Howells says. Howells says he is going to make his next book indelicate. He says he thinks there is money in it. He says there is a large class of the young, in schools & seminaries who—But you let him tell you. He has ciphered it all down to a demonstration.

With the warmest remembrances to the pair of you—