January 25 Thursday – At 30 Wellington Court in London, England Sam began a reply to William Dean Howells’ Jan. 14 that Sam finished on Jan. 26.
Yes, the short things will be added to Bliss’s Uniform Edition. Harper will issue two volumes of them in the spring. I consented a couple of weeks before their smash. They decline to give them up, now.
If you got half as much as Pond prophecied, be content & praise God—it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he didn’t go with you; for it is marvelous to hear him lie. He is good company, cheery & hearty, & his mill is never idle. Your doing a lecture tour was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, & you have a right to be proud of yourself. No amount of applause or money or both could save it from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even to me, who am made of coarser stuff. …
Privately speaking, this is a sordid & criminal war, & in every way shameful & excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine articles about it, but I have to stop with that, for England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slavery which would last till Christ comes again—which I hope he will not do; he made trouble enough before. Even wrong—& she is wrong—England must be upheld. He is an enemy of the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn’t something creditable created in place of it. God had His opportunity; He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly—a lark which must have cost him a regret or two when He came to think it over & observe effects. For a giddy & unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this war. I talk the war with both sides—always waiting until the other man introduces the topic. Then I say “My head is with the Briton, but my heart & such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer—now we will talk, unembarrassed & without prejudice.” And so we discuss, & have no trouble [MTHL 2: 715-7].