Sunday Night.
My Dear Howells:
My sense of disgrace does not abate. It grows. I see that it is going to add itself to my list of [permannencies]—a list of humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, & which keep on persecuting me regardless of my repenteancies.
I feel that my misfortune has gone injured me all over the country; therefore it will be best that I retire from before the public at present. It will hurt the Atlantic for me to appear in its pages, now. So it is my opinion & my wife’s, that the telephone story had better be suppressed. If Will you return those proofs or revises to me, so that I can use the same on some future occasion?
It seems as if I must have been insane when I wrote that speech & saw no harm in it, no disrespect toward those men whom I reverenced so much. And what shame I brought upon you, after what you said in introducing me! It burns me like fire to think of it.
The whole matter is a dreadful subject—let me drop it here—at least on paper.
Penitently yrs
Mark.
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