XXXIII
in england
MARK TWAIN closed his lecture season in February (1872), and during the same month his new book, Roughing It, came from the press. He disliked the lecture platform, and he felt that he could now abandon it. He had made up his loss in Buffalo and something besides. Furthermore, the advance sales on his book had been large.
Roughing It, in fact, proved a very successful book. Like The Innocents Abroad, it was the first of its kind, fresh in its humor and description, true in its picture of the frontier life he had known. In three months forty thousand copies had been sold, and now, after more than forty years, it is still a popular book. The life it describes is all gone—the scenes are changed. It is a record of a vanished time—a delightful history—as delightful to-day as ever.
Eighteen hundred and seventy-two was an eventful year for Mark Twain. In March his second child, a little girl whom they named Susy, was born, and three months later the boy, Langdon, died. He had never been really strong, and a heavy cold and diphtheria brought the end.
Clemens did little work that summer. He took
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