14 [1878]
My Dear Mr. Taylor:
When we were poking around Italy 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was told that you
were ill, but straightway saw it contradicted in a newspaper. Now comes
this paragraph in Galignani which not only shows that the contradiction
was erroneous, but shows how ignorant one may be in this country about
what is happening only a few hundred miles away; especially when one is
buried in work & neither talks with people or often looks in the paper.
We three folks are heartily glad to hear that you are coming happily out
of it; & we are venturing to hope that by this time you are wholly
restored.
We are located for the winter,--I suppose. But the children are having
such a run of coughs & diptheria [sic], that I can't tell at what moment
Mrs. Clemens may take fright & flee to some kindlier climate. However, I
stick hard at work & make what literary hay I can while we tarry. Our
little children talk German as glibly as they do English, now, but the
rest of us are mighty poor German scholars, I can tell you. Rev.
Twitchell (who was over here with me a while,) conceived a pretty
correct average of my German. When I was talking, (in my native tongue,)
about some rather private matters in the hearing of some Germans one
day, Twitchel said, "Speak in German, Mark,--some of these people may
understand English.
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