Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/128

 MARK TWAIN

who knew my German addres, and at last the idea had occured to him that a letter sent to the care of the embassy at Berlin might possibly find me. Maybe it was an &quot; accident &quot; that he finally deter mined to write me at the same moment that I finally determined to write him, but I think not.

With me the most irritating thing has been to wait a tedious time in a purely business matter, hoping that the other party will do the writing, and then sit down and do it myself, perfectly satisfied that that other man is sitting down at the same moment to write a letter which will &quot;cross&quot; mine. And yet one must go on writing, just the same; because if you get up from your table and postpone, that other man will do the same thing, exactly as if you two were harnessed together like the Siamese twins, and must duplicate each other s movements.

Several months before I left home a New York firm did some work about the house for me, and did not make a success of it, as it seemed to me. When the bill came, I wrote and said I wanted the work perfected before I paid. They replied that they were very busy, but that as soon as they could spare the proper man the thing should be done. I waited more than two months, enduring as patiently as possible the companionship of bells which would fire away of their own accord sometimes when no body was touching them, and at other times wouldn t ring though you struck the button with a sledge hammer. Many a time I got ready to write and then postponed it ; but at last I sat down one evening and poured out my grief to the extent of a page or so,

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