FOREWORDNowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters.
Notin literary letters--prepared with care, and the thought of possible
publication--but in those letters wrought out of the press of
circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind. A collection of such
documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind at
large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects in
some degree at least the soul of the writer.
The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort. He was a
man of few restraints and of no affectations. In his correspondence,
as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammeled by literary
conventions.
Necessarily such a collection does not constitute a detail