It took a great burden off my heart this morning when your letter arrived & said & I found my 2 articles had not been lost in transitu. I was to going to write today & ask about them. Ordinarily I should trouble myself but little about the loss of 2 articles, for the loss could not rob me of the chief thing, i.e., the pleasure the writing them had afforded me,—but when a body is yoked down to the grinding out of a 600-page 8-vo. book, to lose a chapter is like losing a child. I was not at all sure that I should use both of those chapters in my book, but to have them around, in case of need, would give that added comfort which comes of having a life-preserver handy in a ship which might go down though nobody is expecting such a thing. But you speak so kindly of them that I shall probably venture to use them both. I have destroyed such lots of MS written for this book! And I suppose there are such lots left which ought to be destroyed. If it should be, it shall be,—that is certain. I have rung in that fragrant account of the Limberger cheese & the coffin-box full of guns. Had I better leave that out? Give me your plain, square advice, for I propose to follow it. The back of my big job is broken, now, for the book is rather more than half done; so from this out I can tear up MS without a pang.

You sent me 2 copies of the first slip of Pitcairn, but no copy of the remaining half of the article. However, I have mailed one first-slip to Chatto & Windus & asked them to send me one of their second-slips, in exchange.

I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man can’t write successful satire except he be in a calm judicial good-humor—whereas I hate travel, & I hate hotels, & I hate the opera, &Ⓐemendation I hate the Old Masters—in truth I don’t ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to satirize it; no, I want to stand up before it & curse it, & foam at the mouth,—or take a club & beat it club & pound it to rags & pulp. I have got in two or three chapters about Wagner’s Operas, & managed to do it without showing temper—but the strain of another such effort would burst me. (Mind, whatever I say about the book is a secret;—my publisher shall know little or nothing about the book till he gets the MS, for I can’t trust his tongue—I am trusting nobody but you & Twichell. I like mighty well to tell my plans & swap opinions about them, but I don’t like them to get around.) I have exposed the German language inⒶemendation two or three chapters, & have shown what I consider to be the needed improvements in it. I mean to describe a German newspaper, but not satirically—simply in a plain matter of fact way. I wrote the chapter satirically, but found that a plain statement was rather the better satire. In my book I allow it to appear,—casually & without stress,—that I am over here to make the tour of Europe on foot. I am in pedestrian costume, as a general thing, & start on pedestrian tours, but mount the first conveyance that offers, making but slight explanation or excuse, & endeavoring to seem unconscious that this is not legitimate pedestrianizing. My second object here is to become a German scholar; my third, to study Art, & learn to paint. I have a notion to put a few hideous pen & ink sketches of my own in my book, & explain their merits & defects in the technical language of art. But I shall not put many in—better artists shall do nineteen-twentieths of the illustrating. I have made a pedestrian trip up the Neckar to Heilbronn, with muslin-wound hat, leathern leggings, sun-umbrella, alpenstock, &c—by rail,—with my agent,—I employ an agent on a salary, & he does the real work when any is to be done, though I appropriate his emotions to myself & do his marvelling for him—& in yesterday’s chapter we have started back to Heidelberg on a raft, & are having a good time. The raft is mine, since I have chartered it, & I shall pick up useful passengers here & there to tell me the legends of the ruined castles, & other things—perhaps the Captain who brought the news of the Pitcairn revolution. I have invented quite a nice little legend for Dilsberg Castle, & maybe that is the only one I shall invent—don’t know.

I want to make a book which people will read,—& I shall make it profitable reading in spots—in spots merely because there’s not much material for a larger amount. And as soon as it is off my hands I shall take up Wakeman & Heaven at once.

Confound that February number, I wish it would fetch along the Lady of the Aroostook, for we are pretty impatient to see her again. All right, tell me about the Pacific coast trip—I wish we were going with you.

So Aldrich is gone—but he won’t go to Egypt if this plague continues to spread. I sent him a paragraph from a German paper the other day: Scientist discovered a Roman vessel n near Regensburg of a sort which has long been supposed to have been used to burn fragrant herbs in during cremation of corpses, but there was no proof. He set this one on the stove one today, & presently it began to send out a sweet perfume—resumed its office after a vacation of 1500 years. Thought Aldrich could do a sonnet on it.

Write me here, to above address—for even if the plague drives us away, we shall see to it that our letters follow us all right this time.

With our loves to you & yours—