And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with

noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign

authors--Not from foreign authors!"

You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple

fact that the moral law is "Thou shalt not steal"--no matter what Europe

may do.

I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit

of American booksellers, anyway.

If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making

copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it,

since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright

term--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his

rights--which is something.

If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a

sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.

The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and said that the

fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell.

I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft and enclose

another--not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance. I want

Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too,) if he will do it.

Say--Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November--telegraphs

that Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of

a place. So I guess I'll do that old "Roughing It" lecture over again in

November and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it.

Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with you that

night, provided you find at that distant time that it will not

inconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet?

With love to you all

Yrs ever,

S. L. C.

Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment

that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as

high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many

others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his

purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime,

Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and

brought grateful acknowledgment from the author.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easily

believe that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaper

praises bestowed upon the "Innocents Abroad" were large and generous, but

somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the parties who

furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading the

newspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but they

always leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that the critic's

good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the

recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country; from its

decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decree of yours

before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be right down proud

of. Mrs. Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to him as I can

be." (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroically trampling

the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality it means that

she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truth which she

fully believes all competent people know, but which none has heretofore

been brave enough to utter.) You see, the thing that gravels her is that

I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if that entirely

covered my case--which she denies with venom.

The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I am

waiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations.

We are expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterward

some are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free to go

Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit in

comfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in New

York last week, and a tremendous pull it was too.

Mrs. C. said the other day, "We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk;

for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here again

until we have been there." I was gratified to see that there was one

string, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do her the

justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent

of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. I want her to get

started, now, before children's diseases are fashionable again, because

they always play such hob with visiting arrangements.

With love to you all

Yrs Ever

S. L. CLEMENS.

Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require

more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells

seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain,

perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with

him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him

into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing.

In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In

the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain

results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Oct. 4, '75.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We had a royal good time at your house, and have had a

royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and with the

neighbors.

Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheery

respite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells's

didn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her cares and

responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through without

committing some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have taken

the inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishment

went on. I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother about

her coffee when it was "a good deal better than we get at home."

I "caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. at the last moment and losing her

the opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when the

printers are done with it. I "caught it" once more for personating that

drunken Col. James. I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow's

picture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm,

I confessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you that we

hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton,

&c., &c., &c., the Madam was simply speechless for the space of a minute.

Then she said:

"How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with his

sensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--"

"Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a man

who--" She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on in

the hall, so she took it out of George. I was glad of that, because it

saved the babies.

I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great work

is mulling itself into shape gradually.

Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligently

laying up material for a letter to her.

Yrs ever

MARK.

The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a

valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque

character, who "one day came to wash windows," as Clemens used to

say, "and remained eighteen years." The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's

severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast

with the reality of her gentle heart.

Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. to Boston himself and placed it

in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the

story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so.

She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest

faith in Howells's opinion.

It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: "I finished

reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A.M. to get to

the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's

altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense

success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's

story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you

should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up

point of view, you give the wrong key to it.... The adventures

are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The

treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and

splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially.

Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to

jumping in the right places"--meaning that he would have an advance

review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of

criticism in America.

Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was

always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a

willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and

Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The

"proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, how

awkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three words

where one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against.

I shall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don't

look out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriously

fear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his and

Bret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser to

have believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have felt

that he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c.")

The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of being a

deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that I have

charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this in turn

reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over a bran

new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at once it

flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years ago and

told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am well

repaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced in the

waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in an

unstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in the

world, without knowing it.

It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see to

it that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before the

other notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issue

as a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely the

correct idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it off

and adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book was

done when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to put Huck's

life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it in a

paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclose

money for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter.

Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes over

till this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the story

will take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night for

fireside reading, anyway.

I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of the

misery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all.

Yrs ever

MARK.

The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at

this time. His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort.

Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started

wrong, or with no definitely formed plan. Others of his literary

enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the

offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the

intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The

Autobiography of a Damned Fool." "Livy wouldn't have it," he said later,

"so I gave it up." The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the

check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his

public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he realized this,

and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes.

We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes

only out of love for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her

thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in

his life.

To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday:

HARTFORD, November 27, 1875.

Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great success

in life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence made

preparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Every

day we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that we can

never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine a

regret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child,

than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you were

dearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and more

dear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that this

precious progression will continue on to the end.

Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age and their

gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting and believing

that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to make them blessed.

So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this day that

brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades!

Always Yours

S. L. C.

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1876-1885

ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

VOLUME III.

XVI.

LETTERS, 1876, CHIEFLY TO W. D. HOWELLS. LITERATURE AND POLITICS.

PLANNING A PLAY WITH BRET HARTE

The Monday Evening Club of Hartford was an association of most of

the literary talent of that city, and it included a number of very

distinguished members. The writers, the editors, the lawyers, and

the ministers of the gospel who composed it were more often than not

men of national or international distinction. There was but one

paper at each meeting, and it was likely to be a paper that would

later find its way into some magazine.

Naturally Mark Twain was one of its favorite members, and his

contributions never failed to arouse interest and discussion. A

"Mark Twain night" brought out every member. In the next letter we

find the first mention of one of his most memorable contributions--a

story of one of life's moral aspects. The tale, now included in his

collected works, is, for some reason, little read to-day; yet the

curious allegory, so vivid in its seeming reality, is well worth

consideration.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Jan. 11, '76.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Indeed we haven't forgotten the Howellses, nor scored

up a grudge of any kind against them; but the fact is I was under the

doctor's hands for four weeks on a stretch and have been disabled from

working for a week or so beside. I thought I was well, about ten days

ago, so I sent for a short-hand writer and dictated answers to a bushel

or so of letters that had been accumulating during my illness. Getting

everything shipshape and cleared up, I went to work next day upon an

Atlantic article, which ought to be worth $20 per page (which is the

price they usually pay for my work, I believe) for although it is only 70

pages MS (less than two days work, counting by bulk,) I have spent 3 more

days trimming, altering and working at it. I shall put in one more day's

polishing on it, and then read it before our Club, which is to meet at

our house Monday evening, the 24th inst. I think it will bring out

considerable discussion among the gentlemen of the Club--though the title

of the article will not give them much notion of what is to follow,--this

title being "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in

Connecticut"--which reminds me that today's Tribune says there will be a

startling article in the current Atlantic, in which a being which is

tangible bud invisible will figure-exactly the case with the sketch of

mine which I am talking about! However, mine can lie unpublished a year

or two as well as not--though I wish that contributor of yours had not

interfered with his coincidence of heroes.

But what I am coming at, is this: won't you and Mrs. Howells come down

Saturday the 22nd and remain to the Club on Monday night? We always have

a rattling good time at the Club and we do want you to come, ever so

much. Will you? Now say you will. Mrs. Clemens and I are persuading

ourselves that you twain will come.

My volume of sketches is doing very well, considering the times; received

my quarterly statement today from Bliss, by which I perceive that 20,000

copies have been sold--or rather, 20,000 had been sold 3 weeks ago; a lot

more, by this time, no doubt.

I am on the sick list again--and was, day before yesterday--but on the

whole I am getting along.

Yrs ever

MARK

Howells wrote that he could not come down to the club meeting,

adding that sickness was "quite out of character" for Mark Twain,

and hardly fair on a man who had made so many other people feel

well. He closed by urging that Bliss "hurry out" 'Tom Sawyer.'

"That boy is going to make a prodigious hit." Clemens answered:

To W. D. Howells, in Boston.

HARTFORD, Jan. 18, '76.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks, and ever so many, for the good opinion of 'Tom

Sawyer.' Williams has made about 300 rattling pictures for it--some of

them very dainty. Poor devil, what a genius he has and how he does

murder it with rum. He takes a book of mine, and without suggestion from

anybody builds no end of pictures just from his reading of it.

There was never a man in the world so grateful to another as I was to you

day before yesterday, when I sat down (in still rather wretched health)

to set myself to the dreary and hateful task of making final revision of

Tom Sawyer, and discovered, upon opening the package of MS that your

pencil marks were scattered all along. This was splendid, and swept away

all labor. Instead of reading the MS, I simply hunted out the pencil

marks and made the emendations which they suggested. I reduced the boy

battle to a curt paragraph; I finally concluded to cut the Sunday school

speech down to the first two sentences, leaving no suggestion of satire,

since the book is to be for boys and girls; I tamed the various

obscenities until I judged that they no longer carried offense. So, at a

single sitting I began and finished a revision which I had supposed would

occupy 3 or 4. days and leave me mentally and physically fagged out at

the end. I was careful not to inflict the MS upon you until I had

thoroughly and painstakingly revised it. Therefore, the only faults left

were those that would discover themselves to others, not me--and these

you had pointed out.

There was one expression which perhaps you overlooked. When Huck is

complaining to Tom of the rigorous system in vogue at the widow's, he

says the servants harass him with all manner of compulsory decencies, and

he winds up by saying: "and they comb me all to hell." (No exclamation

point.) Long ago, when I read that to Mrs. Clemens, she made no comment;

another time I created occasion to read that chapter to her aunt and her

mother (both sensitive and loyal subjects of the kingdom of heaven, so to

speak) and they let it pass. I was glad, for it was the most natural

remark in the world for that boy to make (and he had been allowed few

privileges of speech in the book;) when I saw that you, too, had let it

go without protest, I was glad, and afraid; too--afraid you hadn't

observed it. Did you? And did you question the propriety of it? Since

the book is now professedly and confessedly a boy's and girl's hook, that

darn word bothers me some, nights, but it never did until I had ceased to

regard the volume as being for adults.

Don't bother to answer now, (for you've writing enough to do without

allowing me to add to the burden,) but tell me when you see me again!

Which we do hope will be next Saturday or Sunday or Monday. Couldn't you

come now and mull over the alterations which you are going to make in

your MS, and make them after you go back? Wouldn't it assist the work if

you dropped out of harness and routine for a day or two and have that

sort of revivification which comes of a holiday-forgetfulness of the

work-shop? I can always work after I've been to your house; and if you

will come to mine, now, and hear the club toot their various horns over

the exasperating metaphysical question which I mean to lay before them in

the disguise of a literary extravaganza, it would just brace you up like

a cordial.

(I feel sort of mean trying to persuade a man to put down a critical

piece of work at a critical time, but yet I am honest in thinking it

would not hurt the work nor impair your interest in it to come under the

circumstances.) Mrs. Clemens says, "Maybe the Howellses could come Monday

if they cannot come Saturday; ask them; it is worth trying." Well, how's

that? Could you? It would be splendid if you could. Drop me a postal

card--I should have a twinge of conscience if I forced you to write a

letter, (I am honest about that,)--and if you find you can't make out to

come, tell me that you bodies will come the next Saturday if the thing is

possible, and stay over Sunday.

Yrs ever

MARK.

Howells, however, did not come to the club meeting, but promised to

come soon when they could have a quiet time to themselves together.

As to Huck's language, he declared:

"I'd have that swearing out in an instant. I suppose I didn't

notice it because the locution was so familiar to my Western sense,

and so exactly the thing that Huck would say." Clemens changed the

phrase to, "They comb me all to thunder," and so it stands to-day.

The "Carnival of Crime," having served its purpose at the club,

found quick acceptance by Howells for the Atlantic. He was so

pleased with it, in fact, that somewhat later he wrote, urging that

its author allow it to be printed in a dainty book, by Osgood, who

made a specialty of fine publishing. Meantime Howells had written

his Atlantic notice of Tom Sawyer, and now inclosed Clemens a proof

of it. We may judge from the reply that it was satisfactory.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Apl 3, '76.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is a splendid notice and will embolden weak-kneed

journalistic admirers to speak out, and will modify or shut up the

unfriendly. To "fear God and dread the Sunday school" exactly described

that old feeling which I used to have, but I couldn't have formulated it.

I want to enclose one of the illustrations in this letter, if I do not

forget it. Of course the book is to be elaborately illustrated, and I

think that many of the pictures are considerably above the American

average, in conception if not in execution.

I do not re-enclose your review to you, for you have evidently read and

corrected it, and so I judge you do not need it. About two days after

the Atlantic issues I mean to begin to send books to principal journals

and magazines.

I read the "Carnival of Crime" proof in New York when worn and witless

and so left some things unamended which I might possibly have altered had

I been at home. For instance, "I shall always address you in your own

S-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l, baby." I saw that you objected to something

there, but I did not understand what! Was it that it was too personal?

Should the language be altered?--or the hyphens taken out? Won't you

please fix it the way it ought to be, altering the language as you

choose, only making it bitter and contemptuous?

"Deuced" was not strong enough; so I met you halfway with "devilish."

Mrs. Clemens has returned from New York with dreadful sore throat, and

bones racked with rheumatism. She keeps her bed. "Aloha nui!" as the

Kanakas say.

MARK.

Henry Irving once said to Mark Twain: "You made a mistake by not

adopting the stage as a profession. You would have made even a

greater actor than a writer."

Mark Twain would have made an actor, certainly, but not a very

tractable one. His appearance in Hartford in "The Loan of a Lover"

was a distinguished event, and his success complete, though he made

so many extemporaneous improvements on the lines of thick-headed

Peter Spuyk, that he kept the other actors guessing as to their

cues, and nearly broke up the performance. It was, of course, an

amateur benefit, though Augustin Daly promptly wrote, offering to

put it on for a long run.

The "skeleton novelette" mentioned in the next letter refers to a

plan concocted by Howells and Clemens, by which each of twelve

authors was to write a story, using the same plot, "blindfolded" as

to what the others had written. It was a regular "Mark Twain"

notion, and it is hard to-day to imagine Howells's continued

enthusiasm in it. Neither he nor Clemens gave up the idea for a

long time. It appears in their letters again and again, though

perhaps it was just as well for literature that it was never carried

out.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Apl. 22, 1876.

MY DEAR HOWELLS, You'll see per enclosed slip that I appear for the first

time on the stage next Wednesday. You and Mrs. H. come down and you

shall skip in free.

I wrote my skeleton novelette yesterday and today. It will make a little

under 12 pages.

Please tell Aldrich I've got a photographer engaged, and tri-weekly issue

is about to begin. Show him the canvassing specimens and beseech him to

subscribe.

Ever yours,

S. L. C.

In his next letter Mark Twain explains why Tom Sawyer is not to

appear as soon as planned. The reference to "The Literary

Nightmare" refers to the "Punch, Conductor, Punch with Care" sketch,

which had recently appeared in the Atlantic. Many other versifiers

had had their turn at horse-car poetry, and now a publisher was

anxious to collect it in a book, provided he could use the Atlantic

sketch. Clemens does not tell us here the nature of Carlton's

insult, forgiveness of which he was not yet qualified to grant, but

there are at least two stories about it, or two halves of the same

incident, as related afterward by Clemens and Canton. Clemens said

that when he took the Jumping Frog book to Carlton, in 1867, the

latter, pointing to his stock, said, rather scornfully: "Books?

I don't want your book; my shelves are full of books now," though

the reader may remember that it was Carlton himself who had given

the frog story to the Saturday Press and had seen it become famous.

Carlton's half of the story was that he did not accept Mark Twain's

book because the author looked so disreputable. Long afterward,

when the two men met in Europe, the publisher said to the now rich

and famous author: "Mr. Clemens, my one claim on immortality is that

I declined your first book."

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Apl. 25, 1876

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Thanks for giving me the place of honor.

Bliss made a failure in the matter of getting Tom Sawyer ready on time

--the engravers assisting, as usual. I went down to see how much of a

delay there was going to be, and found that the man had not even put a

canvasser on, or issued an advertisement yet--in fact, that the

electrotypes would not all be done for a month! But of course the main

fact was that no canvassing had been done--because a subscription harvest

is before publication, (not after, when people have discovered how bad

one's book is.)

Well, yesterday I put in the Courant an editorial paragraph stating that

Tam Sawyer is "ready to issue, but publication is put off in order to

secure English copyright by simultaneous publication there and here. The

English edition is unavoidably delayed."

You see, part of that is true. Very well. When I observed that my

"Sketches" had dropped from a sale of 6 or 7000 a month down to 1200 a

month, I said "this ain't no time to be publishing books; therefore, let

Tom lie still till Autumn, Mr. Bliss, and make a holiday book of him to

beguile the young people withal."

I shall print items occasionally, still further delaying Tom, till I ease

him down to Autumn without shock to the waiting world.

As to that "Literary Nightmare" proposition. I'm obliged to withhold

consent, for what seems a good reason--to wit: A single page of horse-car

poetry is all that the average reader can stand, without nausea; now, to

stack together all of it that has been written, and then add it to my

article would be to enrage and disgust each and every reader and win the

deathless enmity of the lot.

Even if that reason were insufficient, there would still be a sufficient

reason left, in the fact that Mr. Carlton seems to be the publisher of

the magazine in which it is proposed to publish this horse-car matter.

Carlton insulted me in Feb. 1867, and so when the day arrives that sees

me doing him a civility I shall feel that I am ready for Paradise, since

my list of possible and impossible forgivenesses will then be complete.

Mrs. Clemens says my version of the blindfold novelette "A Murder and A

Marriage" is "good." Pretty strong language--for her.

The Fieldses are coming down to the play tomorrow, and they promise to

get you and Mrs. Howells to come too, but I hope you'll do nothing of the

kind if it will inconvenience you, for I'm not going to play either

strikingly bad enough or well enough to make the journey pay you.

My wife and I think of going to Boston May 7th to see Anna Dickinson's

debut on the 8th. If I find we can go, I'll try to get a stage box and

then you and Mrs. Howells must come to Parker's and go with us to the

crucifixion.

(Is that spelt right?--somehow it doesn't look right.)

With our very kindest regards to the whole family.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

The mention of Anna Dickinson, at the end of this letter, recalls a

prominent reformer and lecturer of the Civil War period. She had

begun her crusades against temperance and slavery in 1857, when she

was but fifteen years old, when her success as a speaker had been

immediate and extraordinary. Now, in this later period, at the age

of thirty-four, she aspired to the stage--unfortunately for her, as

her gifts lay elsewhere. Clemens and Howells knew Miss Dickinson,

and were anxious for the success which they hardly dared hope for.

Clemens arranged a box party.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

May 4, '76.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I shall reach Boston on Monday the 8th, either at

4:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. (Which is best?) and go straight to Parker's.

If you and Mrs. Howells cannot be there by half past 4, I'll not plan to

arrive till the later train-time (6,) because I don't want to be there

alone--even a minute. Still, Joe Twichell will doubtless go with me

(forgot that,) he is going to try hard to. Mrs. Clemens has given up

going, because Susy is just recovering from about the savagest assault of

diphtheria a child ever did recover from, and therefore will not be

entirely her healthy self again by the 8th.

Would you and Mrs. Howells like to invite Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich? I have

a large proscenium box--plenty of room. Use your own pleasure about it

--I mainly (that is honest,) suggest it because I am seeking to make

matters pleasant for you and Mrs. Howells. I invited Twichell because I

thought I knew you'd like that. I want you to fix it so that you and the

Madam can remain in Boston all night; for I leave next day and we can't

have a talk, otherwise. I am going to get two rooms and a parlor; and

would like to know what you decide about the Aldriches, so as to know

whether to apply for an additional bedroom or not.

Don't dine that evening, for I shall arrive dinnerless and need your

help.

I'll bring my Blindfold Novelette, but shan't exhibit it unless you

exhibit yours. You would simply go to work and write a novelette that

would make mine sick. Because you would know all about where my weak

points lay. No, Sir, I'm one of these old wary birds!

Don't bother to write a letter--3 lines on a postal card is all that I

can permit from a busy man.

Yrs ever

MARK.

P. S. Good! You'll not have to feel any call to mention that debut in

the Atlantic--they've made me pay the grand cash for my box!--a thing

which most managers would be too worldly-wise to do, with journalistic

folks. But I'm most honestly glad, for I'd rather pay three prices, any

time, than to have my tongue half paralyzed with a dead-head ticket.

Hang that Anna Dickinson, a body can never depend upon her debuts! She

has made five or six false starts already. If she fails to debut this

time, I will never bet on her again.

In his book, My Mark Twain, Howells refers to the "tragedy" of Miss

Dickinson's appearance. She was the author of numerous plays, some

of which were successful, but her career as an actress was never

brilliant.

At Elmira that summer the Clemenses heard from their good friend

Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh, and sent eager replies.

To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

ELMIRA, NEW YORK, U. S. June 22, 1876.

DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR,--It was a perfect delight to see the well-known

handwriting again! But we so grieve to know that you are feeling

miserable. It must not last--it cannot last. The regal summer is come

and it will smile you into high good cheer; it will charm away your

pains, it will banish your distresses. I wish you were here, to spend

the summer with us. We are perched on a hill-top that overlooks a little

world of green valleys, shining rivers, sumptuous forests and billowy

uplands veiled in the haze of distance. We have no neighbors. It is the

quietest of all quiet places, and we are hermits that eschew caves and

live in the sun. Doctor, if you'd only come!

I will carry your letter to Mrs. C. now, and there will be a glad woman,

I tell you! And she shall find one of those pictures to put in this for

Mrs. Barclays and if there isn't one here we'll send right away to

Hartford and get one. Come over, Doctor John, and bring the Barclays,

the Nicolsons and the Browns, one and all!

Affectionately,

SAML. L. CLEMENS.

From May until August no letters appear to have passed between

Clemens and Howells; the latter finally wrote, complaining of the

lack of news. He was in the midst of campaign activities, he said,

writing a life of Hayes, and gaily added: "You know I wrote the life

of Lincoln, which elected him." He further reported a comedy he had

completed, and gave Clemens a general stirring up as to his own

work.

Mark Twain, in his hillside study, was busy enough. Summer was his

time for work, and he had tried his hand in various directions. His

mention of Huck Finn in his reply to Howells is interesting, in that

it shows the measure of his enthusiasm, or lack of it, as a gauge of

his ultimate achievement

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Aug. 9, 1876.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I was just about to write you when your letter came

--and not one of those obscene postal cards, either, but reverently, upon

paper.

I shall read that biography, though the letter of acceptance was amply

sufficient to corral my vote without any further knowledge of the man.

Which reminds me that a campaign club in Jersey City wrote a few days ago

and invited me to be present at the raising of a Tilden and Hendricks

flag there, and to take the stand and give them some "counsel." Well, I

could not go, but gave them counsel and advice by letter, and in the

kindliest terms as to the raising of the flag--advised them "not to raise

it."

Get your book out quick, for this is a momentous time. If Tilden is

elected I think the entire country will go pretty straight to--Mrs.

Howells's bad place.

I am infringing on your patent--I started a record of our children's

sayings, last night. Which reminds me that last week I sent down and got

Susie a vast pair of shoes of a most villainous pattern, for I discovered

that her feet were being twisted and cramped out of shape by a smaller

and prettier article. She did not complain, but looked degraded and

injured. At night her mamma gave her the usual admonition when she was

about to say her prayers--to wit:

"Now, Susie--think about God."

"Mamma, I can't, with those shoes."

The farm is perfectly delightful this season. It is as quiet and

peaceful as a South Sea Island. Some of the sunsets which we have

witnessed from this commanding eminence were marvelous. One evening a

rainbow spanned an entire range of hills with its mighty arch, and from a

black hub resting upon the hill-top in the exact centre, black rays

diverged upward in perfect regularity to the rainbow's arch and created a

very strongly defined and altogether the most majestic, magnificent and

startling half-sunk wagon wheel you can imagine. After that, a world of

tumbling and prodigious clouds came drifting up out of the West and took

to themselves a wonderfully rich and brilliant green color--the decided

green of new spring foliage. Close by them we saw the intense blue of

the skies, through rents in the cloud-rack, and away off in another

quarter were drifting clouds of a delicate pink color. In one place hung

a pall of dense black clouds, like compacted pitch-smoke. And the

stupendous wagon wheel was still in the supremacy of its unspeakable

grandeur. So you see, the colors present in the sky at once and the same

time were blue, green, pink, black, and the vari-colored splendors of the

rainbow. All strong and decided colors, too. I don't know whether this

weird and astounding spectacle most suggested heaven, or hell. The

wonder, with its constant, stately, and always surprising changes, lasted

upwards of two hours, and we all stood on the top of the hill by my study

till the final miracle was complete and the greatest day ended that we

ever saw.

Our farmer, who is a grave man, watched that spectacle to the end, and

then observed that it was "dam funny."

The double-barreled novel lies torpid. I found I could not go on with

it. The chapters I had written were still too new and familiar to me.

I may take it up next winter, but cannot tell yet; I waited and waited to

see if my interest in it would not revive, but gave it up a month ago and

began another boys' book--more to be at work than anything else. I have

written 400 pages on it--therefore it is very nearly half done. It is

Huck Finn's Autobiography. I like it only tolerably well, as far as I

have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn the MS when it is done.

So the comedy is done, and with a "fair degree of satisfaction." That

rejoices me, and makes me mad, too--for I can't plan a comedy, and what

have you done that God should be so good to you? I have racked myself

baldheaded trying to plan a comedy harness for some promising characters

of mine to work in, and had to give it up. It is a noble lot of blooded

stock and worth no end of money, but they must stand in the stable and be

profitless. I want to be present when the comedy is produced and help

enjoy the success.

Warner's book is mighty readable, I think.

Love to yez.

Yrs ever

MARK

Howells promptly wrote again, urging him to enter the campaign for

Hayes. "There is not another man in this country," he said, "who

could help him so much as you." The "farce" which Clemens refers to

in his reply, was "The Parlor Car," which seems to have been about

the first venture of Howells in that field.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, August 23, 1876.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am glad you think I could do Hayes any good, for I

have been wanting to write a letter or make a speech to that end. I'll

be careful not to do either, however, until the opportunity comes in a

natural, justifiable and unlugged way; and shall not then do anything

unless I've got it all digested and worded just right. In which case I

might do some good--in any other I should do harm. When a humorist

ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than

another man or he works harm to his cause.

The farce is wonderfully bright and delicious, and must make a hit. You

read it to me, and it was mighty good; I read it last night and it was

better; I read it aloud to the household this morning and it was better

than ever. So it would be worth going a long way to see it well played;

for without any question an actor of genius always adds a subtle

something to any man's work that none but the writer knew was there

before. Even if he knew it. I have heard of readers convulsing

audiences with my "Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man." If there is

anything really funny in the piece, the author is not aware of it.

All right--advertise me for the new volume. I send you herewith a sketch

which will make 3 pages of the Atlantic. If you like it and accept it,

you should get it into the December No. because I shall read it in public

in Boston the 13th and 14th of Nov. If it went in a month earlier it

would be too old for me to read except as old matter; and if it went in a

month later it would be too old for the Atlantic--do you see? And if you

wish to use it, will you set it up now, and send me three proofs?--one

to correct for Atlantic, one to send to Temple Bar (shall I tell them to

use it not earlier than their November No.) and one to use in practising

for my Boston readings.

We must get up a less elaborate and a much better skeleton-plan for the

Blindfold Novels and make a success of that idea. David Gray spent

Sunday here and said we could but little comprehend what a rattling stir

that thing would make in the country. He thought it would make a mighty

strike. So do I. But with only 8 pages to tell the tale in, the plot

must be less elaborate, doubtless. What do you think?

When we exchange visits I'll show you an unfinished sketch of Elizabeth's

time which shook David Gray's system up pretty exhaustively.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

The MS. sketch mentioned in the foregoing letter was "The

Canvasser's Tale," later included in the volume, Tom Sawyer Abroad,

and Other Stories. It is far from being Mark Twain's best work, but

was accepted and printed in the Atlantic. David Gray was an able

journalist and editor whom Mark Twain had known in Buffalo.

The "sketch of Elizabeth's time" is a brilliant piece of writing

--an imaginary record of conversation and court manners in the good

old days of free speech and performance, phrased in the language of

the period. Gray, John Hay, Twichell, and others who had a chance

to see it thought highly of it, and Hay had it set in type and a few

proofs taken for private circulation. Some years afterward a West

Point officer had a special font of antique type made for it, and

printed a hundred copies. But the present-day reader would hardly

be willing to include "Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen

Elizabeth" in Mark Twain's collected works.

Clemens was a strong Republican in those days, as his letters of

this period show. His mention of the "caves" in the next is another

reference to "The Canvasser's Tale."

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Sept. 14, 1876.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, the collection of caves was the origin of it.

I changed it to echoes because these being invisible and intangible,

constituted a still more absurd species of property, and yet a man could

really own an echo, and sell it, too, for a high figure--such an echo as

that at the Villa Siminetti, two miles from Milan, for instance.

My first purpose was to have the man make a collection of caves and

afterwards of echoes; but perceived that the element of absurdity and

impracticability was so nearly identical as to amount to a repetition of

an idea.....

I will not, and do not, believe that there is a possibility of Hayes's

defeat, but I want the victory to be sweeping.....

It seems odd to find myself interested in an election. I never was

before. And I can't seem to get over my repugnance to reading or

thinking about politics, yet. But in truth I care little about any

party's politics--the man behind it is the important thing.

You may well know that Mrs. Clemens liked the Parlor Car--enjoyed it ever

so much, and was indignant at you all through, and kept exploding into

rages at you for pretending that such a woman ever existed--closing each

and every explosion with "But it is just what such a woman would do."

--"It is just what such a woman would say." They all voted the Parlor

Car perfection--except me. I said they wouldn't have been allowed to

court and quarrel there so long, uninterrupted; but at each critical

moment the odious train-boy would come in and pile foul literature all

over them four or five inches deep, and the lover would turn his head

aside and curse--and presently that train-boy would be back again (as on

all those Western roads) to take up the literature and leave prize candy.

Of course the thing is perfect, in the magazine, without the train-boy;

but I was thinking of the stage and the groundlings. If the dainty

touches went over their heads, the train-boy and other possible

interruptions would fetch them every time. Would it mar the flow of the

thing too much to insert that devil? I thought it over a couple of hours

and concluded it wouldn't, and that he ought to be in for the sake of the

groundlings (and to get new copyright on the piece.)

And it seemed to me that now that the fourth act is so successfully

written, why not go ahead and write the 3 preceding acts? And then after

it is finished, let me put into it a low-comedy character (the girl's or

the lover's father or uncle) and gobble a big pecuniary interest in your

work for myself. Do not let this generous proposition disturb your rest

--but do write the other 3 acts, and then it will be valuable to

managers. And don't go and sell it to anybody, like Harte, but keep it

for yourself.

Harte's play can be doctored till it will be entirely acceptable and then

it will clear a great sum every year. I am out of all patience with

Harte for selling it. The play entertained me hugely, even in its

present crude state.

Love to you all.

Yrs ever,

MARK

Following the Sellers success, Clemens had made many attempts at

dramatic writing. Such undertakings had uniformly failed, but he

had always been willing to try again. In the next letter we get the

beginning of what proved his first and last direct literary

association, that is to say, collaboration, with Bret Harte.

Clemens had great admiration for Harte's ability and believed that

between them they could turn out a successful play. Whether or not

this belief was justified will appear later. Howells's biography of

Hayes, meanwhile, had not gone well. He reported that only two

thousand copies had been sold in what was now the height of the

campaign. "There's success for you," he said; "it makes me despair

of the Republic."

Clemens, on his part, had made a speech for Hayes that Howells

declared had put civil-service reform in a nutshell; he added: "You

are the only Republican orator, quoted without distinction of party

by all the newspapers."

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 11, 1876.

MY DEAR HOWELLS, This is a secret, to be known to nobody but you (of

course I comprehend that Mrs. Howells is part of you) that Bret Harte

came up here the other day and asked me to help him write a play and

divide the swag, and I agreed. I am to put in Scotty Briggs (See Buck

Fanshaw's Funeral, in "Roughing It.") and he is to put in a Chinaman (a,

wonderfully funny creature, as Bret presents him--for 5 minutes--in his

Sandy Bar play.) This Chinaman is to be the character of the play, and

both of us will work on him and develop him. Bret is to draw a plot, and

I am to do the same; we shall use the best of the two, or gouge from both

and build a third. My plot is built--finished it yesterday--six days'

work, 8 or 9 hours a day, and has nearly killed me.

Now the favor I ask of you is that you will have the words "Ah Sin, a

Drama," printed in the middle of a note-paper page and send the same to

me, with Bill. We don't want anybody to know that we are building this

play. I can't get this title page printed here without having to lie so

much that the thought of it is disagreeable to one reared as I have been.

And yet the title of the play must be printed--the rest of the

application for copyright is allowable in penmanship.

We have got the very best gang of servants in America, now. When George

first came he was one of the most religious of men. He had but one

fault--young George Washington's. But I have trained him; and now it

fairly breaks Mrs. Clemens's heart to hear George stand at that front

door and lie to the unwelcome visitor. But your time is valuable; I must

not dwell upon these things.....I'll ask Warner and Harte if they'll do

Blindfold Novelettes. Some time I'll simplify that plot. All it needs

is that the hanging and the marriage shall not be appointed for the same

day. I got over that difficulty, but it required too much MS to

reconcile the thing--so the movement of the story was clogged.

I came near agreeing to make political speeches with our candidate for

Governor the 16th and 23 inst., but I had to give up the idea, for Harte

and I will be here at work then.

Yrs ever,

MARK

Mark Twain was writing few letters these days to any one but

Howells, yet in November he sent one to an old friend of his youth,

Burrough, the literary chair-maker who had roomed with him in the

days when he had been setting type for the St. Louis Evening News.

To Mr. Burrough, of St. Louis:

HARTFORD, Nov. 1, 1876.

MY DEAR BURROUGHS,--As you describe me I can picture myself as I was 20

years ago. The portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon

my word there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a

self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug.... imagining that he is

remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right.

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense

and pitiful chuckle-headedness--and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of

it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average

Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a certain grade. It is

of children like this that voters are made. And such is the primal

source of our government! A man hardly knows whether to swear or cry

over it.

I think I comprehend the position there--perfect freedom to vote just as

you choose, provided you choose to vote as other people think--social

ostracism, otherwise. The same thing exists here, among the Irish.

An Irish Republican is a pariah among his people. Yet that race find

fault with the same spirit in Know-Nothingism.

Fortunately a good deal of experience of men enabled me to choose my

residence wisely. I live in the freest corner of the country. There are

no social disabilities between me and my Democratic personal friends.

We break the bread and eat the salt of hospitality freely together and

never dream of such a thing as offering impertinent interference in each

other's political opinions.

Don't you ever come to New York again and not run up here to see me. I

Suppose we were away for the summer when you were East; but no matter,

you could have telegraphed and found out. We were at Elmira N. Y. and

right on your road, and could have given you a good time if you had

allowed us the chance.

Yes, Will Bowen and I have exchanged letters now and then for several

years, but I suspect that I made him mad with my last--shortly after you

saw him in St. Louis, I judge. There is one thing which I can't stand

and won't stand, from many people. That is sham sentimentality--the kind

a school-girl puts into her graduating composition; the sort that makes

up the Original Poetry column of a country newspaper; the rot that deals

in the "happy days of yore," the "sweet yet melancholy past," with its

"blighted hopes" and its "vanished dreams" and all that sort of drivel.

Will's were always of this stamp. I stood it years. When I get a letter

like that from a grown man and he a widower with a family, it gives me

the stomach ache. And I just told Will Bowen so, last summer. I told

him to stop being 16 at 40; told him to stop drooling about the sweet yet

melancholy past, and take a pill. I said there was but one solitary

thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is

the past--can't be restored. Well, I exaggerated some of these truths a

little--but only a little--but my idea was to kill his sham

sentimentality once and forever, and so make a good fellow of him again.

I went to the unheard-of trouble of re-writing the letter and saying the

same harsh things softly, so as to sugarcoat the anguish and make it a

little more endurable and I asked him to write and thank me honestly for

doing him the best and kindliest favor that any friend ever had done him

--but he hasn't done it yet. Maybe he will, sometime. I am grateful to

God that I got that letter off before he was married (I get that news

from you) else he would just have slobbered all over me and drowned me

when that event happened.

I enclose photograph for the young ladies. I will remark that I do not

wear seal-skin for grandeur, but because I found, when I used to lecture

in the winter, that nothing else was able to keep a man warm sometimes,

in these high latitudes. I wish you had sent pictures of yourself and

family--I'll trade picture for picture with you, straight through, if you

are commercially inclined.

Your old friend,

SAML L. CLEMENS.

XVII.

LETTERS, 1877. TO BERMUDA WITH TWICHELL. PROPOSITION TO TH. NAST.

THE WHITTIER DINNER

Mark Twain must have been too busy to write letters that winter.

Those that have survived are few and unimportant. As a matter of

fact, he was writing the play, "Ah Sin," with Bret Harte, and

getting it ready for production. Harte was a guest in the Clemens

home while the play was being written, and not always a pleasant

one. He was full of requirements, critical as to the 'menage,' to

the point of sarcasm. The long friendship between Clemens and Harte

weakened under the strain of collaboration and intimate daily

intercourse, never to renew its old fiber. It was an unhappy

outcome of an enterprise which in itself was to prove of little

profit. The play, "Ah Sin," had many good features, and with

Charles T. Parsloe in an amusing Chinese part might have been made a

success, if the two authors could have harmoniously undertaken the

needed repairs. It opened in Washington in May, and a letter from

Parsloe, written at the moment, gives a hint of the situation.

From Charles T. Parsloe to S. L. Clemens:

WASHINGTON, D. C. May 11th, 1877.

MR. CLEMENS,--I forgot whether I acknowledged receipt of check by

telegram. Harte has been here since Monday last and done little or

nothing yet, but promises to have something fixed by tomorrow morning.

We have been making some improvements among ourselves. The last act is

weak at the end, and I do hope Mr. Harte will have something for a good

finish to the piece. The other acts I think are all right, now.

Hope you have entirely recovered. I am not very well myself, the

excitement of a first night is bad enough, but to have the annoyance with

Harte that I have is too much for a beginner. I ain't used to it. The

houses have been picking up since Tuesday Mr. Ford has worked well and

hard for us.

Yours in, haste,

CHAS. THOS. PARSLOE.

The play drew some good houses in Washington, but it could not hold

them for a run. Never mind what was the matter with it; perhaps a

very small change at the right point would have turned it into a

fine success. We have seen in a former letter the obligation which

Mark Twain confessed to Harte--a debt he had tried in many ways to

repay--obtaining for him a liberal book contract with Bliss;

advancing him frequent and large sums of money which Harte could

not, or did not, repay; seeking to advance his fortunes in many

directions. The mistake came when he introduced another genius into

the intracacies of his daily life. Clemens went down to Washington

during the early rehearsals of "Ah Sin."

Meantime, Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected President, and

Clemens one day called with a letter of introduction from Howells,

thinking to meet the Chief Executive. His own letter to Howells,

later, probably does not give the real reason of his failure, but it

will be amusing to those who recall the erratic personality of

George Francis Train. Train and Twain were sometimes confused by

the very unlettered; or pretendedly, by Mark Twain's friends.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

BALTIMORE, May 1, '77.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Found I was not absolutely needed in Washington so I

only staid 24 hours, and am on my way home, now. I called at the White

House, and got admission to Col. Rodgers, because I wanted to inquire

what was the right hour to go and infest the, President. It was my luck

to strike the place in the dead waste and middle of the day, the very

busiest time. I perceived that Mr. Rodgers took me for George Francis

Train and had made up his mind not to let me get at the President; so at

the end of half an hour I took my letter of introduction from the table

and went away. It was a great pity all round, and a great loss to the

nation, for I was brim full of the Eastern question. I didn't get to see

the President or the Chief Magistrate either, though I had sort of a

glimpse of a lady at a window who resembled her portraits.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

Howells condoled with him on his failure to see the President,

"but," he added, "if you and I had both been there, our combined

skill would have no doubt procured us to be expelled from the White

House by Fred Douglass. But the thing seems to be a complete

failure as it was." Douglass at this time being the Marshal of

Columbia, gives special point to Howells's suggestion.

Later, in May, Clemens took Twichell for an excursion to Bermuda.

He had begged Howells to go with them, but Howells, as usual, was

full of literary affairs. Twichell and Clemens spent four glorious

days tramping the length and breadth of the beautiful island, and

remembered it always as one of their happiest adventures. "Put it

down as an Oasis!" wrote Twichell on his return, "I'm afraid I shall

not see as green a spot again soon. And it was your invention and

your gift. And your company was the best of it. Indeed, I never

took more comfort in being with you than on this journey, which, my

boy, is saying a great deal."

To Howells, Clemens triumphantly reported the success of the

excursion.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, May 29, 1877.

Confound you, Joe Twichell and I roamed about Bermuda day and night and

never ceased to gabble and enjoy. About half the talk was--"It is a

burning shame that Howells isn't here." "Nobody could get at the very

meat and marrow of this pervading charm and deliciousness like Howells;"

"How Howells would revel in the quaintness, and the simplicity of this

people and the Sabbath repose of this land." "What an imperishable

sketch Howells would make of Capt. West the whaler, and Capt. Hope with

the patient, pathetic face, wanderer in all the oceans for 42 years,

lucky in none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his ship

--resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this." "What a rattling chapter

Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and

military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady;

and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and

the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there

--and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but

lightly upon, we not being worthy." "Dam Howells for not being here!"

(this usually from me, not Twichell.)

O, your insufferable pride, which will have a fall some day! If you had

gone with us and let me pay the $50 which the trip and the board and the

various nicknacks and mementoes would cost, I would have picked up enough

droppings from your conversation to pay me 500 per cent profit in the way

of the several magazine articles which I could have written, whereas I

can now write only one or two and am therefore largely out of pocket by

your proud ways. Ponder these things. Lord, what a perfectly bewitching

excursion it was! I traveled under an assumed name and was never

molested with a polite attention from anybody.

Love to you all.

Yrs ever

MARK

Aldrich, meantime, had invited the Clemenses to Ponkapog during the

Bermuda absence, and Clemens hastened to send him a line expressing

regrets. At the close he said:

To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass.:

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, June 3, 1877.

Day after tomorrow we leave for the hills beyond Elmira, N. Y. for the

summer, when I shall hope to write a book of some sort or other to beat

the people with. A work similar to your new one in the Atlantic is what

I mean, though I have not heard what the nature of that one is. Immoral,

I suppose. Well, you are right. Such books sell best, Howells says.

Howells says he is going to make his next book indelicate. He says he

thinks there is money in it. He says there is a large class of the

young, in schools and seminaries who--But you let him tell you. He has

ciphered it all down to a demonstration.

With the warmest remembrances to the pair of you

Ever Yours

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.

Clemens would naturally write something about Bermuda, and began at

once, "Random Notes of an Idle Excursion," and presently completed

four papers, which Howells eagerly accepted for the Atlantic. Then

we find him plunging into another play, this time alone.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, June 27, 1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should not like the first 2 chapters, send them

to me and begin with Chapter 3--or Part 3, I believe you call these

things in the magazine. I have finished No. 4., which closes the series,

and will mail it tomorrow if I think of it. I like this one, I liked the

preceding one (already mailed to you some time ago) but I had my doubts

about 1 and 2. Do not hesitate to squelch them, even with derision and

insult.

Today I am deep in a comedy which I began this morning--principal

character, that old detective--I skeletoned the first act and wrote the

second, today; and am dog-tired, now. Fifty-four close pages of MS in 7

hours. Once I wrote 55 pages at a sitting--that was on the opening

chapters of the "Gilded Age" novel. When I cool down, an hour from now,

I shall go to zero, I judge.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

Clemens had doubts as to the quality of the Bermuda papers, and with

some reason. They did not represent him at his best. Nevertheless,

they were pleasantly entertaining, and Howells expressed full

approval of them for Atlantic use. The author remained troubled.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, July 4,1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It is splendid of you to say those pleasant things.

But I am still plagued with doubts about Parts 1 and 2. If you have any,

don't print. If otherwise, please make some cold villain like Lathrop

read and pass sentence on them. Mind, I thought they were good, at

first--it was the second reading that accomplished its hellish purpose on

me. Put them up for a new verdict. Part 4 has lain in my pigeon-hole a

good while, and when I put it there I had a Christian's confidence in 4

aces in it; and you can be sure it will skip toward Connecticut tomorrow

before any fatal fresh reading makes me draw my bet.

I've piled up 151 MS pages on my comedy. The first, second and fourth

acts are done, and done to my satisfaction, too. Tomorrow and next day

will finish the 3rd act and the play. I have not written less than 30

pages any day since I began. Never had so much fun over anything in my

life-never such consuming interest and delight. (But Lord bless you the

second reading will fetch it!) And just think!--I had Sol Smith Russell

in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and hang it he has gone

off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else the papers lie.

I read everything about the President's doings there with exultation.

I wish that old ass of a private secretary hadn't taken me for George

Francis Train. If ignorance were a means of grace I wouldn't trade that

gorilla's chances for the Archbishop of Canterbury's.

I shall call on the President again, by and by. I shall go in my war

paint; and if I am obstructed the nation will have the unusual spectacle

of a private secretary with a pen over one ear a tomahawk over the other.

I read the entire Atlantic this time. Wonderful number. Mrs. Rose Terry

Cooke's story was a ten-strike. I wish she would write 12 old-time New

England tales a year.

Good times to you all! Mind if you don't run here for a few days you

will go to hence without having had a fore-glimpse of heaven.

MARK.

The play, "Ah Sin," that had done little enough in Washington, was

that summer given another trial by Augustin Daly, at the Fifth

Avenue Theater, New York, with a fine company. Clemens had

undertaken to doctor the play, and it would seem to have had an

enthusiastic reception on the opening night. But it was a summer

audience, unspoiled by many attractions. "Ah Sin" was never a

success in the New York season--never a money-maker on the road.

The reference in the first paragraph of the letter that follows is

to the Bermuda chapters which Mark Twain was publishing

simultaneously in England and America.

ELMIRA, Aug 3,1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I have mailed one set of the slips to London, and told

Bentley you would print Sept. 15, in October Atlantic, and he must not

print earlier in Temple Bar. Have I got the dates and things right?

I am powerful glad to see that No. 1 reads a nation sight better in print

than it did in MS. I told Bentley we'd send him the slips, each time, 6

weeks before day of publication. We can do that can't we? Two months

ahead would be still better I suppose, but I don't know.

"Ah Sin" went a-booming at the Fifth Avenue. The reception of Col.

Sellers was calm compared to it.

*The criticisms were just; the criticisms of the great New York dailies

are always just, intelligent, and square and honest--notwithstanding,

by a blunder which nobody was seriously to blame for, I was made to say

exactly the opposite of this in a newspaper some time ago. Never said it

at all, and moreover I never thought it. I could not publicly correct it

before the play appeared in New York, because that would look as if I had

really said that thing and then was moved by fears for my pocket and my

reputation to take it back. But I can correct it now, and shall do it;

for now my motives cannot be impugned. When I began this letter, it had

not occurred to me to use you in this connection, but it occurs to me

now. Your opinion and mine, uttered a year ago, and repeated more than

once since, that the candor and ability of the New York critics were

beyond question, is a matter which makes it proper enough that I should

speak through you at this time. Therefore if you will print this

paragraph somewhere, it may remove the impression that I say unjust

things which I do not think, merely for the pleasure of talking.

There, now, Can't you say--

"In a letter to Mr. Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain describes

the reception of the new comedy 'Ali Sin,' and then goes on to say:" etc.

Beginning at the star with the words, "The criticisms were just." Mrs.

Clemens says, "Don't ask that of Mr. Howells--it will be disagreeable to

him." I hadn't thought of it, but I will bet two to one on the

correctness of her instinct. We shall see.

Will you cut that paragraph out of this letter and precede it with the

remarks suggested (or with better ones,) and send it to the Globe or some

other paper? You can't do me a bigger favor; and yet if it is in the

least disagreeable, you mustn't think of it. But let me know, right

away, for I want to correct this thing before it grows stale again.

I explained myself to only one critic (the World)--the consequence was a

noble notice of the play. This one called on me, else I shouldn't have

explained myself to him.

I have been putting in a deal of hard work on that play in New York, but

it is full of incurable defects.

My old Plunkett family seemed wonderfully coarse and vulgar on the stage,

but it was because they were played in such an outrageously and

inexcusably coarse way. The Chinaman is killingly funny. I don't know

when I have enjoyed anything as much as I did him. The people say there

isn't enough of him in the piece. That's a triumph--there'll never be

any more of him in it.

John Brougham said, "Read the list of things which the critics have

condemned in the piece, and you have unassailable proofs that the play

contains all the requirements of success and a long life."

That is true. Nearly every time the audience roared I knew it was over

something that would be condemned in the morning (justly, too) but must

be left in--for low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the

kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the

drawing-room can't support the play by itself.

There was as much money in the house the first two nights as in the first

ten of Sellers. Haven't heard from the third--I came away.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

In a former letter we have seen how Mark Twain, working on a story

that was to stand as an example of his best work, and become one of

his surest claims to immortality (The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn), displayed little enthusiasm in his undertaking. In the

following letter, which relates the conclusion of his detective

comedy, we find him at the other extreme, on very tiptoe with

enthusiasm over something wholly without literary value or dramatic

possibility. One of the hall-marks of genius is the inability to

discriminate as to the value of its output. "Simon Wheeler, Amateur

Detective" was a dreary, absurd, impossible performance, as wild and

unconvincing in incident and dialogue as anything out of an asylum

could well be. The title which he first chose for it, "Balaam's

Ass," was properly in keeping with the general scheme. Yet Mark

Twain, still warm with the creative fever, had the fullest faith in

it as a work of art and a winner of fortune. It would never see the

light of production, of course. We shall see presently that the

distinguished playwright, Dion Boucicault, good-naturedly

complimented it as being better than "Ahi Sin." One must wonder

what that skilled artist really thought, and how he could do even

this violence to his conscience.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Wednesday P.M. (1877)

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It's finished. I was misled by hurried mis-paging.

There were ten pages of notes, and over 300 pages of MS when the play was

done. Did it in 42 hours, by the clock; 40 pages of the Atlantic--but

then of course it's very "fat." Those are the figures, but I don't

believe them myself, because the thing's impossible.

But let that pass. All day long, and every day, since I finished (in the

rough) I have been diligently altering, amending, re-writing, cutting

down. I finished finally today. Can't think of anything else in the way

of an improvement. I thought I would stick to it while the interest was

hot--and I am mighty glad I did. A week from now it will be frozen--then

revising would be drudgery. (You see I learned something from the fatal

blunder of putting "Ah Sin" aside before it was finished.)

She's all right, now. She reads in two hours and 20 minutes and will

play not longer than 2 3/4 hours. Nineteen characters; 3 acts; (I

bunched 2 into 1.)

Tomorrow I will draw up an exhaustive synopsis to insert in the printed

title-page for copyrighting, and then on Friday or Saturday I go to New

York to remain a week or ten days and lay for an actor. Wish you could

run down there and have a holiday. 'Twould be fun.

My wife won't have "Balaam's Ass"; therefore I call the piece "Cap'n

Simon Wheeler, The Amateur Detective."

Yrs

MARK.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Aug. 29, 1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Just got your letter last night. No, dern that

article,--[One of the Bermuda chapters.]--it made me cry when I read it

in proof, it was so oppressively and ostentatiously poor. Skim your eye

over it again and you will think as I do. If Isaac and the prophets of

Baal can be doctored gently and made permissible, it will redeem the

thing: but if it can't, let's burn all of the articles except the

tail-end of it and use that as an introduction to the next article--as I

suggested in my letter to you of day before yesterday. (I had this proof

from Cambridge before yours came.)

Boucicault says my new play is ever so much better than "Ah Sin;" says

the Amateur detective is a bully character, too. An actor is chawing

over the play in New York, to see if the old Detective is suited to his

abilities. Haven't heard from him yet.

If you've got that paragraph by you yet, and if in your judgment it would

be good to publish it, and if you absolutely would not mind doing it,

then I think I'd like to have you do it--or else put some other words in

my mouth that will be properer, and publish them. But mind, don't think

of it for a moment if it is distasteful--and doubtless it is. I value

your judgment more than my own, as to the wisdom of saying anything at

all in this matter. To say nothing leaves me in an injurious position

--and yet maybe I might do better to speak to the men themselves when I

go to New York. This was my latest idea, and it looked wise.

We expect to leave here for home Sept. 4, reaching there the 8th--but we

may be delayed a week.

Curious thing. I read passages from my play, and a full synopsis, to

Boucicault, who was re-writing a play, which he wrote and laid aside 3 or

4 years ago. (My detective is about that age, you know.) Then he read a

passage from his play, where a real detective does some things that are

as idiotic as some of my old Wheeler's performances. Showed me the

passages, and behold, his man's name is Wheeler! However, his Wheeler

is not a prominent character, so we'll not alter the names. My Wheeler's

name is taken from the old jumping Frog sketch.

I am re-reading Ticknor's diary, and am charmed with it, though I still

say he refers to too many good things when he could just as well have

told them. Think of the man traveling 8 days in convoy and familiar

intercourse with a band of outlaws through the mountain fastnesses of

Spain--he the fourth stranger they had encountered in thirty years--and

compressing this priceless experience into a single colorless paragraph

of his diary! They spun yarns to this unworthy devil, too.

I wrote you a very long letter a day or two ago, but Susy Crane wanted to

make a copy of it to keep, so it has not gone yet. It may go today,

possibly.

We unite in warm regards to you and yours.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

The Ticknor referred to in a former letter was Professor George

Ticknor, of Harvard College, a history-writer of distinction. On

the margin of the "Diary" Mark Twain once wrote, "Ticknor is a

Millet, who makes all men fall in love with him." And adds: "Millet

was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and then he admired

and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without

knowing it) had created in them. Perhaps it would be strictly truer

of these two men to say that they bore within them the divine

something in whose presence the evil in people fled away and hid

itself, while all that was good in them came spontaneously forward

out of the forgotten walls and comers in their systems where it was

accustomed to hide."

It is Frank Millet, the artist, he is speaking of--a knightly soul

whom all the Clemens household loved, and who would one day meet his

knightly end with those other brave men that found death together

when the Titanic went down.

The Clemens family was still at Quarry Farm at the end of August,

and one afternoon there occurred a startling incident which Mark

Twain thought worth setting down in practically duplicate letters to

Howells and to Dr. John Brown. It may be of interest to the reader

to know that John T. Lewis, the colored man mentioned, lived to a

good old age--a pensioner of the Clemens family and, in the course

of time, of H. H. Rogers. Howells's letter follows. It is the

"very long letter" referred to in the foregoing.

To W. D. Howells and wife, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Aug. 25 '77.

MY DEAR HOWELLSES,--I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it for

further reference; the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it to

somebody; but that somebody would let it leak into print and that we wish

to avoid. The Howellses would be safe--so let us tell the Howellses

about it.

Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit.

Aunt Marsh and Cousin May Marsh were here visiting Susie Crane and Livy

at our farmhouse. By and by mother Langdon came up the hill in the "high

carriage" with Nora the nurse and little Jervis (Charley Langdon's little

boy)--Timothy the coachman driving. Behind these came Charley's wife and

little girl in the buggy, with the new, young, spry, gray horse--a

high-stepper. Theodore Crane arrived a little later.

The Bay and Susy were on hand with their nurse, Rosa. I was on hand,

too. Susy Crane's trio of colored servants ditto--these being Josie,

house-maid; Aunty Cord, cook, aged 62, turbaned, very tall, very broad,

very fine every way (see her portrait in "A True Story just as I Heard

It" in my Sketches;) Chocklate (the laundress) (as the Bay calls her--she

can't say Charlotte,) still taller, still more majestic of proportions,

turbaned, very black, straight as an Indian--age 24. Then there was the

farmer's wife (colored) and her little girl, Susy.

Wasn't it a good audience to get up an excitement before? Good

excitable, inflammable material?

Lewis was still down town, three miles away, with his two-horse wagon,

to get a load of manure. Lewis is the farmer (colored). He is of mighty

frame and muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face and a

clear eye. Age about 45--and the most picturesque of men, when he sits

in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his

aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears and neck. It is a spectacle to

make the broken-hearted smile. Lewis has worked mighty hard and remained

mighty poor. At the end of each whole year's toil he can't show a gain

of fifty dollars. He had borrowed money of the Cranes till he owed them

$700 and he being conscientious and honest, imagine what it was to him to

have to carry this stubborn, helpless load year in and year out.

Well, sunset came, and Ida the young and comely (Charley Langdon's wife)

and her little Julia and the nurse Nora, drove out at the gate behind the

new gray horse and started down the long hill--the high carriage

receiving its load under the porte cochere. Ida was seen to turn her

face toward us across the fence and intervening lawn--Theodore waved

good-bye to her, for he did not know that her sign was a speechless

appeal for help.

The next moment Livy said, "Ida's driving too fast down hill!" She

followed it with a sort of scream, "Her horse is running away!"

We could see two hundred yards down that descent. The buggy seemed to

fly. It would strike obstructions and apparently spring the height of a

man from the ground.

Theodore and I left the shrieking crowd behind and ran down the hill

bare-headed and shouting. A neighbor appeared at his gate--a tenth of a

second too late! the buggy vanished past him like a thought. My last

glimpse showed it for one instant, far down the descent, springing high

in the air out of a cloud of dust, and then it disappeared. As I flew

down the road my impulse was to shut my eyes as I turned them to the

right or left, and so delay for a moment the ghastly spectacle of

mutilation and death I was expecting.

I ran on and on, still spared this spectacle, but saying to myself:

"I shall see it at the turn of the road; they never can pass that turn

alive." When I came in sight of that turn I saw two wagons there bunched

together--one of them full of people. I said, "Just so--they are staring

petrified at the remains."

But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy and nobody

hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle. Ida was pale but serene. As I

came tearing down, she smiled back over her shoulder at me and said,

"Well, we're alive yet, aren't we?" A miracle had been performed

--nothing else.

You see Lewis, the prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been

toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging down

the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his heels as high as a

man's head at every jump. So Lewis turned his team diagonally across the

road just at the "turn," thus making a V with the fence--the running

horse could not escape that, but must enter it. Then Lewis sprang to the

ground and stood in this V. He gathered his vast strength, and with a

perfect Creedmoor aim he seized the gray horse's bit as he plunged by and

fetched him up standing!

It was down hill, mind you. Ten feet further down hill neither Lewis nor

any other man could have saved them, for they would have been on the

abrupt "turn," then. But how this miracle was ever accomplished at all,

by human strength, generalship and accuracy, is clean beyond my

comprehension--and grows more so the more I go and examine the ground and

try to believe it was actually done. I know one thing, well; if Lewis

had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the trap he

had made for himself, and we should have found the rest of the remains

away down at the bottom of the steep ravine.

Ten minutes later Theodore and I arrived opposite the house, with the

servants straggling after us, and shouted to the distracted group on the

porch, "Everybody safe!"

Believe it? Why how could they? They knew the road perfectly. We might

as well have said it to people who had seen their friends go over

Niagara.

However, we convinced them; and then, instead of saying something, or

going on crying, they grew very still--words could not express it, I

suppose.

Nobody could do anything that night, or sleep, either; but there was a

deal of moving talk, with long pauses between pictures of that flying

carriage, these pauses represented--this picture intruded itself all the

time and disjointed the talk.

But yesterday evening late, when Lewis arrived from down town he found

his supper spread, and some presents of books there, with very

complimentary writings on the fly-leaves, and certain very complimentary

letters, and more or less greenbacks of dignified denomination pinned to

these letters and fly-leaves,--and one said, among other things, (signed

by the Cranes) "We cancel $400 of your indebtedness to us," &c. &c.

(The end thereof is not yet, of course, for Charley Langdon is West and

will arrive ignorant of all these things, today.)

The supper-room had been kept locked and imposingly secret and mysterious

until Lewis should arrive; but around that part of the house were

gathered Lewis's wife and child, Chocklate, Josie, Aunty Cord and our

Rosa, canvassing things and waiting impatiently. They were all on hand

when the curtain rose.

Now, Aunty Cord is a violent Methodist and Lewis an implacable Dunker

--Baptist. Those two are inveterate religious disputants. The

revealments having been made Aunty Cord said with effusion--

"Now, let folks go on saying there ain't no God! Lewis, the Lord sent

you there to stop that horse."

Says Lewis:

"Then who sent the horse there in sich a shape?"

But I want to call your attention to one thing. When Lewis arrived the

other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the

most marvelous of any I can call to mind--when he arrived, hunched up on

his manure wagon and as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody

wanted to go and see how he looked. They came back and said he was

beautiful. It was so, too--and yet he would have photographed exactly as

he would have done any day these past 7 years that he has occupied this

farm.

Aug. 27.

P. S. Our little romance in real life is happily and satisfactorily

completed. Charley has come, listened, acted--and now John T. Lewis has

ceased to consider himself as belonging to that class called "the poor."

It has been known, during some years, that it was Lewis's purpose to buy

a thirty dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he could

afford it. Today Ida has given him a new, sumptuous gold Swiss

stem-winding stop-watch; and if any scoffer shall say, "Behold this thing

is out of character," there is an inscription within, which will silence

him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, not

the watch the wearer.

I was asked beforehand, if this would be a wise gift, and I said "Yes,

the very wisest of all;" I know the colored race, and I know that in

Lewis's eyes this fine toy will throw the other more valuable

testimonials far away into the shade. If he lived in England the Humane

Society would give him a gold medal as costly as this watch, and nobody

would say: "It is out of character." If Lewis chose to wear a town

clock, who would become it better?

Lewis has sound common sense, and is not going to be spoiled. The

instant he found himself possessed of money, he forgot himself in a plan

to make his old father comfortable, who is wretchedly poor and lives down

in Maryland. His next act, on the spot, was the proffer to the Cranes of

the $300 of his remaining indebtedness to them. This was put off by them

to the indefinite future, for he is not going to be allowed to pay that

at all, though he doesn't know it.

A letter of acknowledgment from Lewis contains a sentence which raises it

to the dignity of literature:

"But I beg to say, humbly, that inasmuch as divine providence saw fit to

use me as a instrument for the saving of those presshious lives, the

honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed."

That is well said.

Yrs ever

MARK.

Howells was moved to use the story in the. "Contributors' Club,"

and warned Clemens against letting it get into the newspapers. He

declared he thought it one of the most impressive things he had ever

read. But Clemens seems never to have allowed it to be used in any

form. In its entirety, therefore, it is quite new matter.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Sept. 19, 1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I don't really see how the story of the runaway horse

could read well with the little details of names and places and things

left out. They are the true life of all narrative. It wouldn't quite

do to print them at this time. We'll talk about it when you come.

Delicacy--a sad, sad false delicacy--robs literature of the best two

things among its belongings. Family-circle narrative and obscene

stories. But no matter; in that better world which I trust we are all

going to I have the hope and belief that they will not be denied us.

Say--Twichell and I had an adventure at sea, 4 months ago, which I did

not put in my Bermuda articles, because there was not enough to it. But

the press dispatches bring the sequel today, and now there's plenty to

it. A sailless, wasteless, chartless, compassless, grubless old

condemned tub that has been drifting helpless about the ocean for 4

months and a half, begging bread and water like any other tramp, flying a

signal of distress permanently, and with 13 innocent, marveling

chuckleheaded Bermuda niggers on board, taking a Pleasure Excursion! Our

ship fed the poor devils on the 25th of last May, far out at sea and left

them to bullyrag their way to New York--and now they ain't as near New

York as they were then by 250 miles! They have drifted 750 miles and are

still drifting in the relentless Gulf Stream! What a delicious magazine

chapter it would make--but I had to deny myself. I had to come right out

in the papers at once, with my details, so as to try to raise the

government's sympathy sufficiently to have better succor sent them than

the cutter Colfax, which went a little way in search of them the other

day and then struck a fog and gave it up.

If the President were in Washington I would telegraph him.

When I hear that the "Jonas Smith" has been found again, I mean to send

for one of those darkies, to come to Hartford and give me his adventures

for an Atlantic article.

Likely you will see my today's article in the newspapers.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

The revenue cutter Colfax went after the Jonas Smith, thinking there was

mutiny or other crime on board. It occurs to me now that, since there is

only mere suffering and misery and nobody to punish, it ceases to be a

matter which (a republican form of) government will feel authorized to

interfere in further. Dam a republican form of government.

Clemens thought he had given up lecturing for good; he was

prosperous and he had no love for the platform. But one day an idea

popped into his head: Thomas Nast, the "father of the American

cartoon," had delivered a successful series of illustrated lectures

--talks for which he made the drawings as he went along. Mark

Twain's idea was to make a combination with Nast. His letter gives

us the plan in full.

To Thomas Nast, Morristown, N. J.:

HARTFORD, CONN. 1877.

MY DEAR NAST,--I did not think I should ever stand on a platform again

until the time was come for me to say "I die innocent." But the same old

offers keep arriving. I have declined them all, just as usual, though

sorely tempted, as usual.

Now, I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but because

(1) traveling alone is so heartbreakingly dreary, and (2) shouldering the

whole show is such a cheer-killing responsibility.

Therefore, I now propose to you what you proposed to me in 1867, ten

years ago (when I was unknown) viz., that you stand on the platform and

make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience. I should

enormously enjoy meandering around (to big towns--don't want to go to the

little ones) with you for company.

My idea is not to fatten the lecture agents and lyceums on the spoils,

but put all the ducats religiously into two equal piles, and say to the

artist and lecturer, "Absorb these."

For instance--[Here follows a plan and a possible list of cities to be

visited. The letter continues]

Call the gross receipts $100,000 for four months and a half, and the

profit from $60,000 to $75,000 (I try to make the figures large enough,

and leave it to the public to reduce them.)

I did not put in Philadelphia because Pugh owns that town, and last

winter when I made a little reading-trip he only paid me $300 and

pretended his concert (I read fifteen minutes in the midst of a concert)

cost him a vast sum, and so he couldn't afford any more. I could get up

a better concert with a barrel of cats.

I have imagined two or three pictures and concocted the accompanying

remarks to see how the thing would go. I was charmed.

Well, you think it over, Nast, and drop me a line. We should have some

fun.

Yours truly,

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.

The plan came to nothing. Nast, like Clemens, had no special taste

for platforming, and while undoubtedly there would have been large

profits in the combination, the promise of the venture did not

compel his acceptance.

In spite of his distaste for the platform Mark Twain was always

giving readings and lectures, without charge, for some worthy

Hartford cause. He was ready to do what he could to help an

entertainment along, if he could do it in his own way--an original

way, sometimes, and not always gratifying to the committee, whose

plans were likely to be prearranged.

For one thing, Clemens, supersensitive in the matter of putting

himself forward in his own town, often objected to any special

exploitation of his name. This always distressed the committee, who

saw a large profit to their venture in the prestige of his fame.

The following characteristic letter was written in self-defense

when, on one such occasion, a committee had become sufficiently

peevish to abandon a worthy enterprise.

To an Entertainment Committee, in Hartford:

Nov. 9.

E. S. SYKES, Esq:

Dr. SIR,--Mr. Burton's note puts upon me all the blame of the destruction

of an enterprise which had for its object the succor of the Hartford

poor. That is to say, this enterprise has been dropped because of the

"dissatisfaction with Mr. Clemens's stipulations." Therefore I must be

allowed to say a word in my defense.

There were two "stipulations"--exactly two. I made one of them; if the

other was made at all, it was a joint one, from the choir and me.

My individual stipulation was, that my name should be kept out of the

newspapers. The joint one was that sufficient tickets to insure a good

sum should be sold before the date of the performance should be set.

(Understand, we wanted a good sum--I do not think any of us bothered

about a good house; it was money we were after)

Now you perceive that my concern is simply with my individual

stipulation. Did that break up the enterprise?

Eugene Burton said he would sell $300 worth of the tickets himself.--Mr.

Smith said he would sell $200 or $300 worth himself. My plan for Asylum

Hill Church would have ensured $150 from that quarter.--All this in the

face of my "Stipulation." It was proposed to raise $1000; did my

stipulation render the raising of $400 or $500 in a dozen churches

impossible?

My stipulation is easily defensible. When a mere reader or lecturer has

appeared 3 or 4 times in a town of Hartford's size, he is a good deal

more than likely to get a very unpleasant snub if he shoves himself

forward about once or twice more. Therefore I long ago made up my mind

that whenever I again appeared here, it should be only in a minor

capacity and not as a chief attraction.

Now, I placed that harmless and very justifiable stipulation before the

committee the other day; they carried it to headquarters and it was

accepted there. I am not informed that any objection was made to it, or

that it was regarded as an offense. It seems late in the day, now, after

a good deal of trouble has been taken and a good deal of thankless work

done by the committees, to, suddenly tear up the contract and then turn

and bowl me down from long range as being the destroyer of it.

If the enterprise has failed because of my individual stipulation, here

you have my proper and reasonable reasons for making that stipulation.

If it has failed because of the joint stipulation, put the blame there,

and let us share it collectively.

I think our plan was a good one. I do not doubt that Mr. Burton still

approves of it, too. I believe the objections come from other quarters,

and not from him. Mr. Twichell used the following words in last Sunday's

sermon, (if I remember correctly):

"My hearers, the prophet Deuteronomy says this wise thing: 'Though ye

plan a goodly house for the poor, and plan it with wisdom, and do take

off your coats and set to to build it, with high courage, yet shall the

croaker presently come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat on,) and

say, Verily this plan is not well planned--and he will go his way; and

the obstructionist will come, and lift up his voice, (having his coat

on,) and say, Behold, this is but a sick plan--and he will go his way;

and the man that knows it all will come, and lift up his voice, (having

his coat on,) and say, Lo, call they this a plan? then will he go his

way; and the places which knew him once shall know him no more forever,

because he was not, for God took him. Now therefore I say unto you,

Verily that house will not be budded. And I say this also: He that

waiteth for all men to be satisfied with his plan, let him seek eternal

life, for he shall need it.'"

This portion of Mr. Twichell's sermon made a great impression upon me,

and I was grieved that some one had not wakened me earlier so that I

might have heard what went before.

S. L. CLEMENS.

Mr. Sykes (of the firm of Sykes & Newton, the Allen House Pharmacy)

replied that he had read the letter to the committee and that it had

set those gentlemen right who had not before understood the

situation. "If others were as ready to do their part as yourself

our poor would not want assistance," he said, in closing.

We come now to an incident which assumes the proportions of an

episode-even of a catastrophe--in Mark Twain's career. The disaster

was due to a condition noted a few pages earlier--the inability of

genius to judge its own efforts. The story has now become history

--printed history--it having been sympathetically told by Howells in

My Mark Twain, and more exhaustively, with a report of the speech

that invited the lightning, in a former work by the present writer.

The speech was made at John Greenleaf Whittier's seventieth birthday

dinner, given by the Atlantic staff on the evening of December 17,

1877. It was intended as a huge joke--a joke that would shake the

sides of these venerable Boston deities, Longfellow, Emerson,

Holmes, and the rest of that venerated group. Clemens had been a

favorite at the Atlantic lunches and dinners--a speech by him always

an event. This time he decided to outdo himself.

He did that, but not in the way he had intended. To use one of his

own metaphors, he stepped out to meet the rainbow and got struck by

lightning. His joke was not of the Boston kind or size. When its

full nature burst upon the company--when the ears of the assembled

diners heard the sacred names of Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes

lightly associated with human aspects removed--oh, very far removed

--from Cambridge and Concord, a chill fell upon the diners that

presently became amazement, and then creeping paralysis. Nobody

knew afterward whether the great speech that he had so gaily planned

ever came to a natural end or not. Somebody--the next on the

program--attempted to follow him, but presently the company melted

out of the doors and crept away into the night.

It seemed to Mark Twain that his career had come to an end. Back in

Hartford, sweating and suffering through sleepless nights, he wrote

Howells his anguish.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Sunday Night. 1877.

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 permanencies--a list of

humiliations that extends back to when I was seven years old, and which

keep on persecuting me regardless of my repentancies.

I feel that my misfortune has 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 and my wife's that the telephone story had better be suppressed.

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 and 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.

Howells sent back a comforting letter. "I have no idea of dropping

you out of the Atlantic," he wrote; "and Mr. Houghton has still

less, if possible. You are going to help and not hurt us many a

year yet, if you will.... You are not going to be floored by it;

there is more justice than that, even in this world."

Howells added that Charles Elliot Norton had expressed just the

right feeling concerning the whole affair, and that many who had not

heard the speech, but read the newspaper reports of it, had found it

without offense.

Clemens wrote contrite letters to Holmes, Emerson, and Longfellow,

and received most gracious acknowledgments. Emerson, indeed, had

not heard the speech: His faculties were already blurred by the

mental mists that would eventually shut him in. Clemens wrote again

to Howells, this time with less anguish.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Friday, 1877.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter was a godsend; and perhaps the welcomest

part of it was your consent that I write to those gentlemen; for you

discouraged my hints in that direction that morning in Boston--rightly,

too, for my offense was yet too new, then. Warner has tried to hold up

our hands like the good fellow he is, but poor Twichell could not say a

word, and confessed that he would rather take nearly any punishment than

face Livy and me. He hasn't been here since.

It is curious, but I pitched early upon Mr. Norton as the very man who

would think some generous thing about that matter, whether he said it or

not. It is splendid to be a man like that--but it is given to few to be.

I wrote a letter yesterday, and sent a copy to each of the three. I

wanted to send a copy to Mr. Whittier also, since the offense was done

also against him, being committed in his presence and he the guest of the

occasion, besides holding the well-nigh sacred place he does in his

people's estimation; but I didn't know whether to venture or not, and so

ended by doing nothing. It seemed an intrusion to approach him, and even

Livy seemed to have her doubts as to the best and properest way to do in

the case. I do not reverence Mr. Emerson less, but somehow I could

approach him easier.

Send me those proofs, if you have got them handy; I want to submit them

to Wylie; he won't show them to anybody.

Had a very pleasant and considerate letter from Mr. Houghton, today, and

was very glad to receive it.

You can't imagine how brilliant and beautiful that new brass fender is,

and how perfectly naturally it takes its place under the carved oak. How

they did scour it up before they sent it! I lied a good deal about it

when I came home--so for once I kept a secret and surprised Livy on a

Christmas morning!

I haven't done a stroke of work since the Atlantic dinner; have only

moped around. But I'm going to try tomorrow. How could I ever have.

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and

all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Livy and I join in the warmest regards to you and yours,

Yrs ever,

MARK.

Longfellow, in his reply, said: "I do not believe anybody was much hurt.

Certainly I was not, and Holmes tells me he was not. So I think you may

dismiss the matter from your mind without further remorse."

Holmes wrote: "It never occurred to me for a moment to take offense, or

feel wounded by your playful use of my name."

Miss Ellen Emerson replied for her father (in a letter to Mrs. Clemens)

that the speech had made no impression upon him, giving at considerable

length the impression it had made on herself and other members of the

family.

Clearly, it was not the principals who were hurt, but only those who

held them in awe, though one can realize that this would not make it

much easier for Mark Twain.

XVIII.

LETTERS FROM EUROPE, 1878-79. TRAMPING WITH TWICHELL. WRITING A NEW

TRAVEL BOOK. LIFE IN MUNICH

Whether the unhappy occurrence at the Whittier dinner had anything

to do with Mark Twain's resolve to spend a year or two in Europe

cannot be known now. There were other good reasons for going, one

in particular being a demand for another book of travel. It was

also true, as he explains in a letter to his mother, that his days

were full of annoyances, making it difficult for him to work. He

had a tendency to invest money in almost any glittering enterprise

that came along, and at this time he was involved in the promotion

of a variety of patent rights that brought him no return other than

assessment and vexation.

Clemens's mother was by this time living with her son Onion and his

wife, in Iowa.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

HARTFORD, Feb. 17, 1878

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I suppose I am the worst correspondent in the whole

world; and yet I grow worse and worse all the time. My conscience

blisters me for not writing you, but it has ceased to abuse me for not

writing other folks.

Life has come to be a very serious matter with me. I have a badgered,

harassed feeling, a good part of my time. It comes mainly of business

responsibilities and annoyances, and the persecution of kindly letters

from well meaning strangers--to whom I must be rudely silent or else put

in the biggest half of my time bothering over answers. There are other

things also that help to consume my time and defeat my projects. Well,

the consequence is, I cannot write a book at home. This cuts my income

down. Therefore, I have about made up my mind to take my tribe and fly

to some little corner of Europe and budge no more until I shall have

completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs. Please

say nothing about this at present.

We propose to sail the 11th of April. I shall go to Fredonia to meet

you, but it will not be well for Livy to make that trip I am afraid.

However, we shall see. I will hope she can go.

Mr. Twichell has just come in, so I must go to him. We are all well, and

send love to you all.

Affly,

SAM.

He was writing few letters at this time, and doing but little work.

There were always many social events during the winter, and what

with his European plans and a diligent study of the German language,

which the entire family undertook, his days and evenings were full

enough. Howells wrote protesting against the European travel and

berating him for his silence:

"I never was in Berlin and don't know any family hotel there.

I should be glad I didn't, if it would keep you from going. You

deserve to put up at the Sign of the Savage in Vienna. Really, it's

a great blow to me to hear of that prospected sojourn. It's a

shame. I must see you, somehow, before you go. I'm in dreadfully

low spirits about it.

"I was afraid your silence meant something wicked."

Clemens replied promptly, urging a visit to Hartford, adding a

postscript for Mrs. Howells, characteristic enough to warrant

preservation.

P. S. to Mrs. Howells, in Boston:

Feb. '78.

DEAR MRS. HOWELLS. Mrs. Clemens wrote you a letter, and handed it to me

half an hour ago, while I was folding mine to Mr. Howells. I laid that

letter on this table before me while I added the paragraph about R,'s

application. Since then I have been hunting and swearing, and swearing

and hunting, but I can't find a sign of that letter. It is the most

astonishing disappearance I ever heard of. Mrs. Clemens has gone off

driving--so I will have to try and give you an idea of her communication

from memory. Mainly it consisted of an urgent desire that you come to

see us next week, if you can possibly manage it, for that will be a

reposeful time, the turmoil of breaking up beginning the week after. She

wants you to tell her about Italy, and advise her in that connection, if

you will. Then she spoke of her plans--hers, mind you, for I never have

anything quite so definite as a plan. She proposes to stop a fortnight

in (confound the place, I've forgotten what it was,) then go and live in

Dresden till sometime in the summer; then retire to Switzerland for the

hottest season, then stay a while in Venice and put in the winter in

Munich. This program subject to modifications according to

circumstances. She said something about some little by-trips here and

there, but they didn't stick in my memory because the idea didn't charm

me.

(They have just telephoned me from the Courant office that Bayard Taylor

and family have taken rooms in our ship, the Holsatia, for the 11th

April.)

Do come, if you possibly can!--and remember and don't forget to avoid

letting Mrs. Clemens find out I lost her letter. Just answer her the

same as if you had got it.

Sincerely yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

The Howellses came, as invited, for a final reunion before the

breaking up. This was in the early half of March; the Clemenses

were to sail on the 11th of the following month.

Orion Clemens, meantime, had conceived a new literary idea and was

piling in his MS. as fast as possible to get his brother's judgment

on it before the sailing-date. It was not a very good time to send

MS., but Mark Twain seems to have read it and given it some

consideration. "The Journey in Heaven," of his own, which he

mentions, was the story published so many years later under the

title of "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven." He had began it in

1868, on his voyage to San Francisco, it having been suggested by

conversations with Capt. Ned Wakeman, of one of the Pacific

steamers. Wakeman also appears in 'Roughing It,' Chap. L, as Capt.

Ned Blakely, and again in one of the "Rambling Notes of an Idle

Excursion," as "Captain Hurricane Jones."

To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:

HARTFORD, Mch. 23, 1878.

MY DEAR BRO.,--Every man must learn his trade--not pick it up.

God requires that he learn it by slow and painful processes. The

apprentice-hand, in black-smithing, in medicine, in literature, in

everything, is a thing that can't be hidden. It always shows.

But happily there is a market for apprentice work, else the "Innocents

Abroad" would have had no sale. Happily, too, there's a wider market for

some sorts of apprentice literature than there is for the very best of

journey-work. This work of yours is exceedingly crude, but I am free to

say it is less crude than I expected it to be, and considerably better

work than I believed you could do, it is too crude to offer to any

prominent periodical, so I shall speak to the N. Y. Weekly people. To

publish it there will be to bury it. Why could not same good genius have

sent me to the N. Y. Weekly with my apprentice sketches?

You should not publish it in book form at all--for this reason: it is

only an imitation of Verne--it is not a burlesque. But I think it may be

regarded as proof that Verne cannot be burlesqued.

In accompanying notes I have suggested that you vastly modify the first

visit to hell, and leave out the second visit altogether. Nobody would,

or ought to print those things. You are not advanced enough in

literature to venture upon a matter requiring so much practice. Let me

show you what a man has got to go through:

Nine years ago I mapped out my "Journey in Heaven." I discussed it with

literary friends whom I could trust to keep it to themselves.

I gave it a deal of thought, from time to time. After a year or more I

wrote it up. It was not a success. Five years ago I wrote it again,

altering the plan. That MS is at my elbow now. It was a considerable

improvement on the first attempt, but still it wouldn't do--last year and

year before I talked frequently with Howells about the subject, and he

kept urging me to do it again.

So I thought and thought, at odd moments and at last I struck what I

considered to be the right plan! Mind I have never altered the ideas,

from the first--the plan was the difficulty. When Howells was here last,

I laid before him the whole story without referring to my MS and he said:

"You have got it sure this time. But drop the idea of making mere

magazine stuff of it. Don't waste it. Print it by itself--publish it

first in England--ask Dean Stanley to endorse it, which will draw some of

the teeth of the religious press, and then reprint in America." I doubt

my ability to get Dean Stanley to do anything of the sort, but I shall do

the rest--and this is all a secret which you must not divulge.

Now look here--I have tried, all these years, to think of some way of

"doing" hell too--and have always had to give it up. Hell, in my book,

will not occupy five pages of MS I judge--it will be only covert hints,

I suppose, and quickly dropped, I may end by not even referring to it.

And mind you, in my opinion you will find that you can't write up hell so

it will stand printing. Neither Howells nor I believe in hell or the

divinity of the Savior, but no matter, the Savior is none the less a

sacred Personage, and a man should have no desire or disposition to refer

to him lightly, profanely, or otherwise than with the profoundest

reverence.

The only safe thing is not to introduce him, or refer to him at all,

I suspect. I have entirely rewritten one book 3 (perhaps 4.) times,

changing the plan every time--1200 pages of MS. wasted and burned--and

shall tackle it again, one of these years and maybe succeed at last.

Therefore you need not expect to get your book right the first time.

Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and

lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are

God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases

to get under the bed, by and by.

Mr. Perkins will send you and Ma your checks when we are gone. But don't

write him, ever, except a single line in case he forgets the checks--for

the man is driven to death with work.

I see you are half promising yourself a monthly return for your book.

In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch. How many

of mine I have counted! and never a one of them but failed! It is much

better to hedge disappointment by not counting.--Unexpected money is a

delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.

My time in America is growing mighty short. Perhaps we can manage in

this way: Imprimis, if the N. Y. Weekly people know that you are my

brother, they will turn that fact into an advertisement--a thing of value

to them, but not to you and me. This must be prevented. I will write

them a note to say you have a friend near Keokuk, Charles S. Miller,

who has a MS for sale which you think is a pretty clever travesty on

Verne; and if they want it they might write to him in your care. Then if

any correspondence ensues between you and them, let Mollie write for you

and sign your name--your own hand writing representing Miller's. Keep

yourself out of sight till you make a strike on your own merits there is

no other way to get a fair verdict upon your merits.

Later-I've written the note to Smith, and with nothing in it which he can

use as an advertisement. I'm called--Good bye-love to you both.

We leave here next Wednesday for Elmira: we leave there Apl. 9 or 10--and

sail 11th

Yr Bro.

SAM.

In the letter that follows the mention of Annie and Sam refers, of

course, to the children of Mrs. Moffett, who had been, Pamela

Clemens. They were grown now, and Annie Moffett was married to

Charles L. Webster, who later was to become Mark Twain's business

partner. The Moffetts and Websters were living in Fredonia at this

time, and Clemens had been to pay them a good-by visit. The Taylor

dinner mentioned was a farewell banquet given to Bayard Taylor, who

had been appointed Minister to Germany, and was to sail on the ship

with Mark Twain. Mark Twain's mother was visiting in Fredonia when

this letter was written.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens, in Fredonia:

Apr. 7, '78.

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told Livy all about Annie's beautiful house, and

about Sam and Charley, and about Charley's ingenious manufactures and his

strong manhood and good promise, and how glad I am that he and Annie

married. And I have told her about Annie's excellent house-keeping, also

about the great Bacon conflict; (I told you it was a hundred to one that

neither Livy nor the European powers had heard of that desolating

struggle.)

And I have told her how beautiful you are in your age and how bright your

mind is with its old-time brightness, and how she and the children would

enjoy you. And I have told her how singularly young Pamela is looking,

and what a fine large fellow Sam is, and how ill the lingering syllable

"my" to his name fits his port and figure.

Well, Pamela, after thinking it over for a day or so, I came near

inquiring about a state-room in our ship for Sam, to please you, but my

wiser former resolution came back to me. It is not for his good that he

have friends in the ship. His conduct in the Bacon business shows that

he will develop rapidly into a manly man as soon as he is cast loose from

your apron strings.

You don't teach him to push ahead and do and dare things for himself, but

you do just the reverse. You are assisted in your damaging work by the

tyrannous ways of a village--villagers watch each other and so make

cowards of each other. After Sam shall have voyaged to Europe by

himself, and rubbed against the world and taken and returned its cuffs,

do you think he will hesitate to escort a guest into any whisky-mill in

Fredonia when he himself has no sinful business to transact there?

No, he will smile at the idea. If he avoids this courtesy now from

principle, of course I find no fault with it at all--only if he thinks it

is principle he may be mistaken; a close examination may show it is only

a bowing to the tyranny of public opinion.

I only say it may--I cannot venture to say it will. Hartford is not a

large place, but it is broader than to have ways of that sort. Three or

four weeks ago, at a Moody and Sankey meeting, the preacher read a letter

from somebody "exposing" the fact that a prominent clergyman had gone

from one of those meetings, bought a bottle of lager beer and drank it on

the premises (a drug store.)

A tempest of indignation swept the town. Our clergymen and everybody

else said the "culprit" had not only done an innocent thing, but had done

it in an open, manly way, and it was nobody's right or business to find

fault with it. Perhaps this dangerous latitude comes of the fact that we

never have any temperance "rot" going on in Hartford.

I find here a letter from Orion, submitting some new matter in his story

for criticism. When you write him, please tell him to do the best he can

and bang away. I can do nothing further in this matter, for I have but 3

days left in which to settle a deal of important business and answer a

bushel and a half of letters. I am very nearly tired to death.

I was so jaded and worn, at the Taylor dinner, that I found I could not

remember 3 sentences of the speech I had memorized, and therefore got up

and said so and excused myself from speaking. I arrived here at 3

o'clock this morning. I think the next 3 days will finish me. The idea

of sitting down to a job of literary criticism is simply ludicrous.

A young lady passenger in our ship has been placed under Livy's charge.

Livy couldn't easily get out of it, and did not want to, on her own

account, but fully expected I would make trouble when I heard of it.

But I didn't. A girl can't well travel alone, so I offered no objection.

She leaves us at Hamburg. So I've got 6 people in my care, now--which is

just 6 too many for a man of my unexecutive capacity. I expect nothing

else but to lose some of them overboard.

We send our loving good-byes to all the household and hope to see you

again after a spell.

Affly Yrs.

SAM.

There are no other American letters of this period. The Clemens

party, which included Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira, sailed as

planned, on the Holsatia, April 11, 1878. As before stated, Bayard

Taylor was on the ship; also Murat Halstead and family. On the eve

of departure, Clemens sent to Howells this farewell word:

"And that reminds me, ungrateful dog that I am, that I owe as much

to your training as the rude country job-printer owes to the city

boss who takes him in hand and teaches him the right way to handle

his art. I was talking to Mrs. Clemens about this the other day,

and grieving because I never mentioned it to you, thereby seeming to

ignore it, or to be unaware of it. Nothing that has passed under

your eye needs any revision before going into a volume, while all my

other stuff does need so much."

A characteristic tribute, and from the heart.

The first European letter came from Frankfort, a rest on their way

to Heidelberg.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, May 4, 1878.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I only propose to write a single line to say we are

still around. Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of

being "out of it all." I think I foretaste some of the advantages of

being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don't read any newspapers or care

for them. When people tell me England has declared war, I drop the

subject, feeling that it is none of my business; when they tell me Mrs.

Tilton has confessed and Mr. B. denied, I say both of them have done that

before, therefore let the worn stub of the Plymouth white-wash brush be

brought out once more, and let the faithful spit on their hands and get

to work again regardless of me--for I am out of it all.