“I feel quite sure that in Cape Town, thirteen months ago, I stood on a platform for the last time. Nothing but the Webster debts could persuade me to lecture again, and I have ceased to worry about those. You remember in the Sam Moffett interview in Vancouver, in 1895, I gave myself four years in which to make money enough to pay those debts--and that included two lecture seasons in America, one in England, and one around the world. But we are well satisfied now that we shall have those debts paid off a year earlier than the prophecy, if I continue able to work as I have been working in London and here, _and without any further help from the platform_. And so it is, as I said a moment ago, I am a cheerful man these days.” In another letter he said: “I managed to pull through that long lecture campaign, but I was never very well, from the first night in Cleveland to the last one in Cape Town, and I found it pretty hard work on that account. I did a good deal of talking when I ought to have been in bed. At present I am not strong enough for platform work, and am not going to allow myself to think of London, or any other platform, for a long time to come. It grieves me, for I could make a satisfactory season in London and America now that I am practised in my trade again.” On April 4, 1899, he wrote me from Vienna: “No; I don’t like lecturing. I lectured in Vienna two or three weeks ago, and in Budapest last week, but it was merely for fun, not for money. I charged nothing in Vienna, and only the family’s expenses in Budapest. I like to talk for nothing, about twice a year; but talking for money is _work_, and that takes the pleasure out of it. I do not believe you could offer me terms that would dissolve my prejudice against the platform. I do not expect to see a platform again until the wolf commands. Honest people do not go robbing the public on the platform, except when they are in debt. (Disseminate this idea; it can do good).” In the autumn of 1895 I wanted him to give fifty lectures in England, but he thought it would not be worth his while. His book was the next thing to be thought of and planned for. Four years later, while he was in Sweden, I again suggested lecturing at a thousand dollars a night. “I think there’s stuff in ‘Following the Equator’ for a lecture, but I can’t come,” he wrote. As a letter writer “Mark Twain” is inimitable. He writes with the same unconventionally with which he talks, and his letters are the man. * * * * * “DEAR POND: “O, b’gosh, I can’t. I hate writing. “Ever thine, “‘MARK.’” * * * * *