editorial office of the atlantic monthly. the riverside press, cambridge, mass.
March 5, 1876.
My dear Clemens:
My wife has your wife’s very kind letter, for which she sends her love, and bids me say with tears that she is a thousand times grateful, but that it’s quite impossible for her to leave home at this time. She will hold the invitation in terrorem over Mrs. Clemens, and that in the meantime your hospitality may not go defrauded she lets me ask if I may bring Bua with me. He wont make you any trouble I can promise, and he can sleep with me, so that his habitual nightmare must not disturb the other slumberers. May I?
Yours ever
W. D. Howells.
