Well, it appears that from here she went to Charley Warner's. There was

a better light, there, and the eloquence of her face had a better chance

to do its office. Warner fought, as I had done; and he was in the midst

of an article and very busy; but no matter, she won him completely. He

laid aside his MS and said, "Come, let us go and see your father's

statue. That is--is he your father?" "No, he is my husband." So this

child was married, you see.

This was a Saturday. Next day Warner came to dinner and said "Go!--go

tomorrow--don't fail." He was in love with the girl, and with her

husband too, and said he believed there was merit in the statue. Pretty

crude work, maybe, but merit in it.

Patrick and I hunted up the place, next day; the girl saw us driving up,

and flew down the stairs and received me. Her quarters were the second

story of a little wooden house--another family on the ground floor. The

husband was at the machine shop, the wife kept no servant, she was there

alone. She had a little parlor, with a chair or two and a sofa; and the

artist-husband's hand was visible in a couple of plaster busts, one of

the wife, and another of a neighbor's child; visible also in a couple of

water colors of flowers and birds; an ambitious unfinished portrait of

his wife in oils: some paint decorations on the pine mantel; and an

excellent human ear, done in some plastic material at 16.

Then we went into the kitchen, and the girl flew around, with enthusiasm,

and snatched rag after rag from a tall something in the corner, and

presently there stood the clay statue, life size--a graceful girlish

creature, nude to the waist, and holding up a single garment with one

hand the expression attempted being a modified scare--she was interrupted

when about to enter the bath.

Then this young wife posed herself alongside the image and so remained

--a thing I didn't understand. But presently I did--then I said:

"O, it's you!"

"Yes," she said, "I was the model. He has no model but me. I have stood

for this many and many an hour--and you can't think how it does tire one!

But I don't mind it. He works all day at the shop; and then, nights and

Sundays he works on his statue as long as I can keep up."

She got a big chisel, to use as a lever, and between us we managed to

twist the pedestal round and round, so as to afford a view of the statue

from all points. Well, sir, it was perfectly charming, this girl's

innocence and purity---exhibiting her naked self, as it were, to a

stranger and alone, and never once dreaming that there was the slightest

indelicacy about the matter. And so there wasn't; but it will be many

along day before I run across another woman who can do the like and show

no trace of self-consciousness.

Well, then we sat down, and I took a smoke, and she told me all about her

people in Massachusetts--her father is a physician and it is an old and

respectable family--(I am able to believe anything she says.) And she

told me how "Karl" is 26 years old; and how he has had passionate

longings all his life toward art, but has always been poor and obliged to

struggle for his daily bread; and how he felt sure that if he could only

have one or two lessons in--

"Lessons? Hasn't he had any lessons?"

No. He had never had a lesson.

And presently it was dinner time and "Karl" arrived--a slender young

fellow with a marvelous head and a noble eye--and he was as simple and

natural, and as beautiful in spirit as his wife was. But she had to do

the talking--mainly--there was too much thought behind his cavernous eyes

for glib speech.

I went home enchanted. Told Livy and Clara Spaulding all about the

paradise down yonder where those two enthusiasts are happy with a yearly

expense of $350. Livy and Clara went there next day and came away

enchanted. A few nights later the Gerhardts kept their promise and came

here for the evening. It was billiard night and I had company and so was

not down; but Livy and Clara became more charmed with these children than

ever.

Warner and I planned to get somebody to criticise the statue whose

judgment would be worth something. So I laid for Champney, and after two

failures I captured him and took him around, and he said "this statue is

full of faults--but it has merits enough in it to make up for them"

--whereat the young wife danced around as delighted as a child. When we

came away, Champney said, "I did not want to say too much there, but the

truth is, it seems to me an extraordinary performance for an untrained

hand. You ask if there is promise enough there to justify the Hartford

folk in going to an expense of training this young man. I should say,

yes, decidedly; but still, to make everything safe, you had better get

the judgment of a sculptor."

Warner was in New York. I wrote him, and he said he would fetch up Ward

--which he did. Yesterday they went to the Gerhardts and spent two

hours, and Ward came away bewitched with those people and marveling at

the winning innocence of the young wife, who dropped naturally into

model-attitude beside the statue (which is stark naked from head to heel,

now--G. had removed the drapery, fearing Ward would think he was afraid

to try legs and hips) just as she has always done before.

Livy and I had two long talks with Ward yesterday evening. He spoke

strongly. He said, "if any stranger had told me that this apprentice did

not model that thing from plaster casts, I would not have believed it."

He said "it is full of crudities, but it is full of genius, too. It is

such a statue as the man of average talent would achieve after two years

training in the schools. And the boldness of the fellow, in going

straight to nature! He is an apprentice--his work shows that, all over;

but the stuff is in him, sure. Hartford must send him to Paris--two

years; then if the promise holds good, keep him there three more--and

warn him to study, study, work, work, and keep his name out of the

papers, and neither ask for orders nor accept them when offered."

Well, you see, that's all we wanted. After Ward was gone Livy came out

with the thing that was in her mind. She said, "Go privately and start

the Gerhardts off to Paris, and say nothing about it to any one else."

So I tramped down this morning in the snow-storm--and there was a

stirring time. They will sail a week or ten days from now.

As I was starting out at the front door, with Gerhardt beside me and the

young wife dancing and jubilating behind, this latter cried out

impulsively, "Tell Mrs. Clemens I want to hug her--I want to hug you

both!"

I gave them my old French book and they were going to tackle the

language, straight off.

Now this letter is a secret--keep it quiet--I don't think Livy would mind

my telling you these things, but then she might, you know, for she is a

queer girl.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

Champney was J. Wells Champney, a portrait-painter of distinction;

Ward was the sculptor, J. Q. A. Ward.

The Gerhardts were presently off to Paris, well provided with means

to make their dreams reality; in due time the letters will report

them again.

The Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris gave Mark Twain great

pleasure. He frequently read them aloud, not only at home but in

public. Finally, he wrote Harris, expressing his warm appreciation,

and mentioning one of the negro stories of his own childhood, "The

Golden Arm," which he urged Harris to look up and add to his

collection.

"You have pinned a proud feather in Uncle-Remus's cap," replied

Harris. "I do not know what higher honor he could have than to

appear before the Hartford public arm in arm with Mark Twain."

He disclaimed any originality for the stories, adding, "I understand

that my relations toward Uncle Remus are similar to those that exist

between an almanac maker and the calendar." He had not heard the

"Golden Arm" story and asked for the outlines; also for some

publishing advice, out of Mark Twain's long experience.

To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:

ELMIRA, N.Y., Aug. 10.

MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--You can argue yourself into the delusion that the

principle of life is in the stories themselves and not in their setting;

but you will save labor by stopping with that solitary convert, for he is

the only intelligent one you will bag. In reality the stories are only

alligator pears--one merely eats them for the sake of the salad-dressing.

Uncle Remus is most deftly drawn, and is a lovable and delightful

creation; he, and the little boy, and their relations with each other,

are high and fine literature, and worthy to live, for their own sakes;

and certainly the stories are not to be credited with them. But enough

of this; I seem to be proving to the man that made the multiplication

table that twice one are two.

I have been thinking, yesterday and to-day (plenty of chance to think, as

I am abed with lumbago at our little summering farm among the solitudes

of the Mountaintops,) and I have concluded that I can answer one of your

questions with full confidence--thus: Make it a subscription book.

Mighty few books that come strictly under the head of literature will

sell by subscription; but if Uncle Remus won't, the gift of prophecy has

departed out of me. When a book will sell by subscription, it will sell

two or three times as many copies as it would in the trade; and the

profit is bulkier because the retail price is greater.....

You didn't ask me for a subscription-publisher. If you had, I should

have recommended Osgood to you. He inaugurates his subscription

department with my new book in the fall.....

Now the doctor has been here and tried to interrupt my yarn about "The

Golden Arm," but I've got through, anyway.

Of course I tell it in the negro dialect--that is necessary; but I have

not written it so, for I can't spell it in your matchless way. It is

marvelous the way you and Cable spell the negro and creole dialects.

Two grand features are lost in print: the weird wailing, the rising and

falling cadences of the wind, so easily mimicked with one's mouth; and

the impressive pauses and eloquent silences, and subdued utterances,

toward the end of the yarn (which chain the attention of the children

hand and foot, and they sit with parted lips and breathless, to be

wrenched limb from limb with the sudden and appalling "You got it").

Old Uncle Dan'l, a slave of my uncle's' aged 60, used to tell us children

yarns every night by the kitchen fire (no other light;) and the last yarn

demanded, every night, was this one. By this time there was but a

ghastly blaze or two flickering about the back-log. We would huddle

close about the old man, and begin to shudder with the first familiar

words; and under the spell of his impressive delivery we always fell a

prey to that climax at the end when the rigid black shape in the twilight

sprang at us with a shout.

When you come to glance at the tale you will recollect it--it is as

common and familiar as the Tar Baby. Work up the atmosphere with your

customary skill and it will "go" in print.

Lumbago seems to make a body garrulous--but you'll forgive it.

Truly yours

S. L. CLEMENS

The "Golden Arm" story was one that Clemens often used in his public

readings, and was very effective as he gave it.

In his sketch, "How to Tell a Story," it appears about as he used to

tell it. Harris, receiving the outlines of the old Missouri tale,

presently announced that he had dug up its Georgia relative, an

interesting variant, as we gather from Mark Twain's reply.

To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:

HARTFORD, '81.

MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--I was very sure you would run across that Story

somewhere, and am glad you have. A Drummond light--no, I mean a Brush

light--is thrown upon the negro estimate of values by his willingness to

risk his soul and his mighty peace forever for the sake of a silver

sev'm-punce. And this form of the story seems rather nearer the true

field-hand standard than that achieved by my Florida, Mo., negroes with

their sumptuous arm of solid gold.

I judge you haven't received my new book yet--however, you will in a day

or two. Meantime you must not take it ill if I drop Osgood a hint about

your proposed story of slave life.....

When you come north I wish you would drop me a line and then follow it in

person and give me a day or two at our house in Hartford. If you will,

I will snatch Osgood down from Boston, and you won't have to go there at

all unless you want to. Please to bear this strictly in mind, and don't

forget it.

Sincerely yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

Charles Warren Stoddard, to whom the next letter is written, was one

of the old California literary crowd, a graceful writer of verse and

prose, never quite arriving at the success believed by his friends

to be his due. He was a gentle, irresponsible soul, well loved by

all who knew him, and always, by one or another, provided against

want. The reader may remember that during Mark Twain's great

lecture engagement in London, winter of 1873-74, Stoddard lived with

him, acting as his secretary. At a later period in his life he

lived for several years with the great telephone magnate, Theodore

N. Vail. At the time of this letter, Stoddard had decided that in

the warm light and comfort of the Sandwich Islands he could survive

on his literary earnings.

To Charles Warren Stoddard, in the Sandwich Islands:

HARTFORD, Oct. 26 '81.

MY DEAR CHARLIE,--Now what have I ever done to you that you should not

only slide off to Heaven before you have earned a right to go, but must

add the gratuitous villainy of informing me of it?.....

The house is full of carpenters and decorators; whereas, what we really

need here, is an incendiary. If the house would only burn down, we would

pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest, and shut ourselves up

in the healing solitudes of the crater of Haleakala and get a good rest;

for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the

telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece

and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and

give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for these privileges, and never

house-keep any more.

I think my wife would be twice as strong as she is, but for this wearing

and wearying slavery of house-keeping. However, she thinks she must

submit to it for the sake of the children; whereas, I have always had a

tenderness for parents too, so, for her sake and mine, I sigh for the

incendiary. When the evening comes and the gas is lit and the wear and

tear of life ceases, we want to keep house always; but next morning we

wish, once more, that we were free and irresponsible boarders.

Work?--one can't you know, to any purpose. I don't really get anything

done worth speaking of, except during the three or four months that we

are away in the Summer. I wish the Summer were seven years long. I keep

three or four books on the stocks all the time, but I seldom add a

satisfactory chapter to one of them at home. Yes, and it is all because

my time is taken up with answering the letters of strangers. It can't be

done through a short hand amanuensis--I've tried that--it wouldn't work

--I couldn't learn to dictate. What does possess strangers to write so

many letters? I never could find that out. However, I suppose I did it

myself when I was a stranger. But I will never do it again.

Maybe you think I am not happy? the very thing that gravels me is that I

am. I don't want to be happy when I can't work; I am resolved that

hereafter I won't be. What I have always longed for, was the privilege

of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich

Islands overlooking the sea.

Yours ever

MARK.

That magazine article of yours was mighty good: up to your very best I

think. I enclose a book review written by Howells.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 26 '81.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am delighted with your review, and so is Mrs.

Clemens. What you have said, there, will convince anybody that reads it;

a body cannot help being convinced by it. That is the kind of a review

to have; the doubtful man; even the prejudiced man, is persuaded and

succumbs.

What a queer blunder that was, about the baronet. I can't quite see how

I ever made it. There was an opulent abundance of things I didn't know;

and consequently no need to trench upon the vest-pocketful of things I

did know, to get material for a blunder.

Charley Warren Stoddard has gone to the Sandwich Islands permanently.

Lucky devil. It is the only supremely delightful place on earth. It

does seem that the more advantage a body doesn't earn, here, the more of

them God throws at his head. This fellow's postal card has set the

vision of those gracious islands before my mind, again, with not a leaf

withered, nor a rainbow vanished, nor a sun-flash missing from the waves,

and now it will be months, I reckon, before I can drive it away again.

It is beautiful company, but it makes one restless and dissatisfied.

With love and thanks,

Yrs ever,

MARK.

The review mentioned in this letter was of The Prince and the

Pauper. What the queer "blunder" about the baronet was, the present

writer confesses he does not know; but perhaps a careful reader

could find it, at least in the early edition; very likely it was

corrected without loss of time.

Clemens now and then found it necessary to pay a visit to Canada in

the effort to protect his copyright. He usually had a grand time on

these trips, being lavishly entertained by the Canadian literary

fraternity. In November, 1881, he made one of these journeys in the

interest of The Prince and the Pauper, this time with Osgood, who

was now his publisher. In letters written home we get a hint of his

diversions. The Monsieur Frechette mentioned was a Canadian poet of

considerable distinction. "Clara" was Miss Clara Spaulding, of

Elmira, who had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Clemens to Europe in 1873,

and again in 1878. Later she became Mrs. John B. Staachfield, of

New York City. Her name has already appeared in these letters many

times.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

MONTREAL, Nov. 28 '81.

Livy darling, you and Clara ought to have been at breakfast in the great

dining room this morning. English female faces, distinctive English

costumes, strange and marvelous English gaits--and yet such honest,

honorable, clean-souled countenances, just as these English women almost

always have, you know. Right away--

But they've come to take me to the top of Mount Royal, it being a cold,

dry, sunny, magnificent day. Going in a sleigh.

Yours lovingly,

SAML.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

MONTREAL, Sunday, November 27, 1881.

Livy dear, a mouse kept me awake last night till 3 or 4 o'clock--so I am

lying abed this morning. I would not give sixpence to be out yonder in

the storm, although it is only snow.

[The above paragraph is written in the form of a rebus illustrated with

various sketches.]

There--that's for the children--was not sure that they could read

writing; especially jean, who is strangely ignorant in some things.

I can not only look out upon the beautiful snow-storm, past the vigorous

blaze of my fire; and upon the snow-veiled buildings which I have

sketched; and upon the churchward drifting umbrellas; and upon the

buffalo-clad cabmen stamping their feet and thrashing their arms on the

corner yonder: but I also look out upon the spot where the first white

men stood, in the neighborhood of four hundred years ago, admiring the

mighty stretch of leafy solitudes, and being admired and marveled at by

an eager multitude of naked savages. The discoverer of this region, and

namer of it, Jacques Cartier, has a square named for him in the city. I

wish you were here; you would enjoy your birthday, I think.

I hoped for a letter, and thought I had one when the mail was handed in,

a minute ago, but it was only that note from Sylvester Baxter. You must

write--do you hear?--or I will be remiss myself.

Give my love and a kiss to the children, and ask them to give you my love

and a kiss from

SAML.

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

QUEBEC, Sunday. '81.

Livy darling, I received a letter from Monsieur Frechette this morning,

in which certain citizens of Montreal tendered me a public dinner next

Thursday, and by Osgood's advice I accepted it. I would have accepted

anyway, and very cheerfully but for the delay of two days--for I was

purposing to go to Boston Tuesday and home Wednesday; whereas, now I go

to Boston Friday and home Saturday. I have to go by Boston on account of

business.

We drove about the steep hills and narrow, crooked streets of this old

town during three hours, yesterday, in a sleigh, in a driving snow-storm.

The people here don't mind snow; they were all out, plodding around on

their affairs--especially the children, who were wallowing around

everywhere, like snow images, and having a mighty good time. I wish I

could describe the winter costume of the young girls, but I can't. It is

grave and simple, but graceful and pretty--the top of it is a brimless

fur cap. Maybe it is the costume that makes pretty girls seem so

monotonously plenty here. It was a kind of relief to strike a homely

face occasionally.

You descend into some of the streets by long, deep stairways; and in the

strong moonlight, last night, these were very picturesque. I did wish

you were here to see these things. You couldn't by any possibility sleep

in these beds, though, or enjoy the food.

Good night, sweetheart, and give my respects to the cubs.

SAML.

It had been hoped that W. D. Howells would join the Canadian

excursion, but Howells was not very well that autumn. He wrote that

he had been in bed five weeks, "most of the time recovering; so you

see how bad I must have been to begin with. But now I am out of any

first-class pain; I have a good appetite, and I am as abusive and

peremptory as Guiteau." Clemens, returning to Hartford, wrote him a

letter that explains itself.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Dec. 16 '81.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--It was a sharp disappointment--your inability to

connect, on the Canadian raid. What a gaudy good time we should have

had!

Disappointed, again, when I got back to Boston; for I was promising

myself half an hour's look at you, in Belmont; but your note to Osgood

showed that that could not be allowed out yet.

The Atlantic arrived an hour ago, and your faultless and delicious Police

Report brought that blamed Joe Twichell powerfully before me. There's a

man who can tell such things himself (by word of mouth,) and has as sure

an eye for detecting a thing that is before his eyes, as any man in the

world, perhaps--then why in the nation doesn't he report himself with a

pen?

One of those drenching days last week, he slopped down town with his

cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat

woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry

show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and

was cleaning up and fixing around, diligently. Joe conceived the idea of

getting some talk out of him. Now that never would have occurred to me.

So he dropped in under the man's elbow, dogged him patiently around,

prodding him with questions and getting irritated snarls in return which

would have finished me early--but at last one of Joe's random shafts

drove the centre of that giant's sympathies somehow, and fetched him.

The fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he rained a flood of

personal history that was unspeakably entertaining.

Among other things it turned out that he had been a Turkish (native)

colonel, and had fought all through the Crimean war--and so, for the

first time, Joe got a picture of the Charge of the Six Hundred that made

him see the living spectacle, the flash of flag and tongue-flame, the

rolling smoke, and hear the booming of the guns; and for the first time

also, he heard the reasons for that wild charge delivered from the mouth

of a master, and realized that nobody had "blundered," but that a cold,

logical, military brain had perceived this one and sole way to win an

already lost battle, and so gave the command and did achieve the victory.

And mind you Joe was able to come up here, days afterwards, and reproduce

that giant's picturesque and admirable history. But dern him, he can't

write it--which is all wrong, and not as it should be.

And he has gone and raked up the MS autobiography (written in 1848,) of

Mrs. Phebe Brown, (author of "I Love to Steal a While Away,") who

educated Yung Wing in her family when he was a little boy; and I came

near not getting to bed at all, last night, on account of the lurid

fascinations of it. Why in the nation it has never got into print, I

can't understand.

But, by jings! the postman will be here in a minute; so, congratulations

upon your mending health, and gratitude that it is mending; and love to

you all.

Yrs Ever

MARK.

Don't answer--I spare the sick.

XXII.

LETTERS, 1882, MAINLY TO HOWELLS. WASTED FURY. OLD SCENES REVISITED.

THE MISSISSIPPI BOOK

A man of Mark Twain's profession and prominence must necessarily be

the subject of much newspaper comment. Jest, compliment, criticism

--none of these things disturbed him, as a rule. He was pleased

that his books should receive favorable notices by men whose opinion

he respected, but he was not grieved by adverse expressions. Jests

at his expense, if well written, usually amused him; cheap jokes

only made him sad; but sarcasms and innuendoes were likely to enrage

him, particularly if he believed them prompted by malice. Perhaps

among all the letters he ever wrote, there is none more

characteristic than this confession of violence and eagerness for

reprisal, followed by his acknowledgment of error and a manifest

appreciation of his own weakness. It should be said that Mark Twain

and Whitelaw Reid were generally very good friends, and perhaps for

the moment this fact seemed to magnify the offense.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Jan. 28 '82.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Nobody knows better than I, that there are times when

swearing cannot meet the emergency. How sharply I feel that, at this

moment. Not a single profane word has issued from my lips this mornin

--I have not even had the impulse to swear, so wholly ineffectual would

swearing have manifestly been, in the circumstances. But I will tell you

about it.

About three weeks ago, a sensitive friend, approaching his revelation

cautiously, intimated that the N. Y. Tribune was engaged in a kind of

crusade against me. This seemed a higher compliment than I deserved; but

no matter, it made me very angry. I asked many questions, and gathered,

in substance, this: Since Reid's return from Europe, the Tribune had

been flinging sneers and brutalities at me with such persistent frequency

"as to attract general remark." I was an angered--which is just as good

an expression, I take it, as an hungered. Next, I learned that Osgood,

among the rest of the "general," was worrying over these constant and

pitiless attacks. Next came the testimony of another friend, that the

attacks were not merely "frequent," but "almost daily." Reflect upon

that: "Almost daily" insults, for two months on a stretch. What would

you have done?

As for me, I did the thing which was the natural thing for me to do, that

is, I set about contriving a plan to accomplish one or the other of two

things: 1. Force a peace; or 2. Get revenge. When I got my plan

finished, it pleased me marvelously. It was in six or seven sections,

each section to be used in its turn and by itself; the assault to begin

at once with No. 1, and the rest to follow, one after the other, to keep

the communication open while I wrote my biography of Reid. I meant to

wind up with this latter great work, and then dismiss the subject for

good.

Well, ever since then I have worked day and night making notes and

collecting and classifying material. I've got collectors at work in

England. I went to New York and sat three hours taking evidence while a

stenographer set it down. As my labors grew, so also grew my

fascination. Malice and malignity faded out of me--or maybe I drove them

out of me, knowing that a malignant book would hurt nobody but the fool

who wrote it. I got thoroughly in love with this work; for I saw that I

was going to write a book which the very devils and angels themselves

would delight to read, and which would draw disapproval from nobody but

the hero of it, (and Mrs. Clemens, who was bitter against the whole

thing.) One part of my plan was so delicious that I had to try my hand

on it right away, just for the luxury of it. I set about it, and sure

enough it panned out to admiration. I wrote that chapter most carefully,

and I couldn't find a fault with it. (It was not for the biography--no,

it belonged to an immediate and deadlier project.)

Well, five days ago, this thought came into my mind (from Mrs. Clemens's):

"Wouldn't it be well to make sure that the attacks have been 'almost

daily'?--and to also make sure that their number and character will

justify me in doing what I am proposing to do?"

I at once set a man to work in New York to seek out and copy every

unpleasant reference which had been made to me in the Tribune from Nov.

1st to date. On my own part I began to watch the current numbers, for I

had subscribed for the paper.

The result arrived from my New York man this morning. O, what a pitiable

wreck of high hopes! The "almost daily" assaults, for two months,

consist of--1. Adverse criticism of P. & P. from an enraged idiot in the

London Atheneum; 2. Paragraph from some indignant Englishman in the Pall

Mall Gazette who pays me the vast compliment of gravely rebuking some

imaginary ass who has set me up in the neighborhood of Rabelais; 3. A

remark of the Tribune's about the Montreal dinner, touched with an almost

invisible satire; 4. A remark of the Tribune's about refusal of Canadian

copyright, not complimentary, but not necessarily malicious--and of

course adverse criticism which is not malicious is a thing which none but

fools irritate themselves about.

There--that is the prodigious bugaboo, in its entirety! Can you conceive

of a man's getting himself into a sweat over so diminutive a provocation?

I am sure I can't. What the devil can those friends of mine have been

thinking about, to spread these 3 or 4 harmless things out into two

months of daily sneers and affronts? The whole offense, boiled down,

amounts to just this: one uncourteous remark of the Tribune about my

book--not me between Nov. 1 and Dec. 20; and a couple of foreign

criticisms (of my writings, not me,) between Nov. 1 and Jan. 26! If I

can't stand that amount of friction, I certainly need reconstruction.

Further boiled down, this vast outpouring of malice amounts to simply

this: one jest from the Tribune (one can make nothing more serious than

that out of it.) One jest--and that is all; for the foreign criticisms do

not count, they being matters of news, and proper for publication in

anybody's newspaper.

And to offset that one jest, the Tribune paid me one compliment Dec. 23,

by publishing my note declining the New York New England dinner, while

merely (in the same breath,) mentioning that similar letters were read

from General Sherman and other men whom we all know to be persons of real

consequence.

Well, my mountain has brought forth its mouse, and a sufficiently small

mouse it is, God knows. And my three weeks' hard work have got to go

into the ignominious pigeon-hole. Confound it, I could have earned ten

thousand dollars with infinitely less trouble. However, I shouldn't have

done it, for I am too lazy, now, in my sere and yellow leaf, to be

willing to work for anything but love..... I kind of envy you people who

are permitted for your righteousness' sake to dwell in a boarding house;

not that I should always want to live in one, but I should like the

change occasionally from this housekeeping slavery to that wild

independence. A life of don't-care-a-damn in a boarding house is what I

have asked for in many a secret prayer. I shall come by and by and

require of you what you have offered me there.

Yours ever,

MARK.

Howells, who had already known something of the gathering storm,

replied: "Your letter was an immense relief to me, for although I

had an abiding faith that you would get sick of your enterprise,

I wasn't easy until I knew that you had given it up."

Joel Chandler Harris appears again in the letters of this period.

Twichell, during a trip South about this time, had called on Harris

with some sort of proposition or suggestion from Clemens that Harris

appear with him in public, and tell, or read, the Remus stories from

the platform. But Harris was abnormally diffident. Clemens later

pronounced him "the shyest full-grown man" he had ever met, and the

word which Twichell brought home evidently did not encourage the

platform idea.

To Joel Chandler Harris, in Atlanta:

HARTFORD, Apl. 2, '82.

Private.

MY DEAR MR. HARRIS,--Jo Twichell brought me your note and told me of his

talk with you. He said you didn't believe you would ever be able to

muster a sufficiency of reckless daring to make you comfortable and at

ease before an audience. Well, I have thought out a device whereby I

believe we can get around that difficulty. I will explain when I see

you.

Jo says you want to go to Canada within a month or six weeks--I forget

just exactly what he did say; but he intimated the trip could be delayed

a while, if necessary. If this is so, suppose you meet Osgood and me in

New Orleans early in May--say somewhere between the 1st and 6th?

It will be well worth your while to do this, because the author who goes

to Canada unposted, will not know what course to pursue [to secure

copyright] when he gets there; he will find himself in a hopeless

confusion as to what is the correct thing to do. Now Osgood is the only

man in America, who can lay out your course for you and tell you exactly

what to do. Therefore, you just come to New Orleans and have a talk with

him.

Our idea is to strike across lots and reach St. Louis the 20th of April

--thence we propose to drift southward, stopping at some town a few

hours or a night, every day, and making notes.

To escape the interviewers, I shall follow my usual course and use a

fictitious name (C. L. Samuel, of New York.) I don't know what Osgood's

name will be, but he can't use his own.

If you see your way to meet us in New Orleans, drop me a line, now, and

as we approach that city I will telegraph you what day we shall arrive

there.

I would go to Atlanta if I could, but shan't be able. We shall go back

up the river to St. Paul, and thence by rail X-lots home.

(I am making this letter so dreadfully private and confidential because

my movements must be kept secret, else I shan't be able to pick up the

kind of book-material I want.)

If you are diffident, I suspect that you ought to let Osgood be your

magazine-agent. He makes those people pay three or four times as much as

an article is worth, whereas I never had the cheek to make them pay more

than double.

Yrs Sincerely

S. L. CLEMENS.

"My backwardness is an affliction," wrote Harris..... "The ordeal

of appearing on the stage would be a terrible one, but my experience

is that when a diffident man does become familiar with his

surroundings he has more impudence than his neighbors. Extremes

meet."

He was sorely tempted, but his courage became as water at the

thought of footlights and assembled listeners. Once in New York he

appears to have been caught unawares at a Tile Club dinner and made

to tell a story, but his agony was such that at the prospect of a

similar ordeal in Boston he avoided that city and headed straight

for Georgia and safety.

The New Orleans excursion with Osgood, as planned by Clemens, proved

a great success. The little party took the steamer Gold Dust from

St. Louis down river toward New Orleans. Clemens was quickly

recognized, of course, and his assumed name laid aside. The author

of "Uncle Remus" made the trip to New Orleans. George W. Cable was

there at the time, and we may believe that in the company of Mark

Twain and Osgood those Southern authors passed two or three

delightful days. Clemens also met his old teacher Bixby in New

Orleans, and came back up the river with him, spending most of his

time in the pilot-house, as in the old days. It was a glorious

trip, and, reaching St. Louis, he continued it northward, stopping

off at Hannibal and Quincy.'

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

QUINCY, ILL. May 17, '82.

Livy darling, I am desperately homesick. But I have promised Osgood, and

must stick it out; otherwise I would take the train at once and break for

home.

I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day

long, examining the old localities and talking with the grey-heads who

were boys and girls with me 30 or 40 years ago. It has been a moving

time. I spent my nights with John and Helen Garth, three miles from

town, in their spacious and beautiful house. They were children with me,

and afterwards schoolmates. Now they have a daughter 19 or 20 years old.

Spent an hour, yesterday, with A. W. Lamb, who was not married when I saw

him last. He married a young lady whom I knew. And now I have been

talking with their grown-up sons and daughters. Lieutenant Hickman, the

spruce young handsomely-uniformed volunteer of 1846, called on me--a

grisly elephantine patriarch of 65 now, his grace all vanished.

That world which I knew in its blossoming youth is old and bowed and

melancholy, now; its soft cheeks are leathery and wrinkled, the fire is

gone out in its eyes, and the spring from its step. It will be dust and

ashes when I come again. I have been clasping hands with the moribund

--and usually they said, "It is for the last time."

Now I am under way again, upon this hideous trip to St. Paul, with a

heart brimming full of thoughts and images of you and Susie and Bay and

the peerless Jean. And so good night, my love.

SAML.

Clemens's trip had been saddened by learning, in New Orleans, the

news of the death of Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh. To Doctor

Brown's son, whom he had known as "Jock," he wrote immediately on

his return to Hartford.

To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh

HARTFORD, June 1, 1882.

MY DEAR MR. BROWN,--I was three thousand miles from home, at breakfast in

New Orleans, when the damp morning paper revealed the sorrowful news

among the cable dispatches. There was no place in America, however

remote, or however rich, or poor or high or humble where words of

mourning for your father were not uttered that morning, for his works had

made him known and loved all over the land. To Mrs. Clemens and me,

the loss is personal; and our grief the grief one feels for one who was

peculiarly near and dear. Mrs. Clemens has never ceased to express

regret that we came away from England the last time without going to see

him, and often we have since projected a voyage across the Atlantic for

the sole purpose of taking him by the hand and looking into his kind eyes

once more before he should be called to his rest.

We both thank you greatly for the Edinburgh papers which you sent. My

wife and I join in affectionate remembrances and greetings to yourself

and your aunt, and in the sincere tender of our sympathies.

Faithfully yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Our Susie is still "Megalops." He gave her that name:

Can you spare a photograph of your father? We have none but the one

taken in a group with ourselves.

William Dean Howells, at the age of forty-five, reached what many

still regard his highest point of achievement in American realism.

His novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, which was running as a Century

serial during the summer of 1882, attracted wide attention, and upon

its issue in book form took first place among his published novels.

Mark Twain, to the end of his life, loved all that Howells wrote.

Once, long afterward, he said: "Most authors give us glimpses of a

radiant moon, but Howells's moon shines and sails all night long."

When the instalments of The Rise of Silas Lapham began to appear, he

overflowed in adjectives, the sincerity of which we need not doubt,

in view of his quite open criticisms of the author's reading

delivery.

To W. D. Howells, in Belmont, Mass.:

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I am in a state of wild enthusiasm over this July

instalment of your story. It's perfectly dazzling--it's masterly

--incomparable. Yet I heard you read it--without losing my balance.

Well, the difference between your reading and your writing is-remarkable.

I mean, in the effects produced and the impression left behind. Why, the

one is to the other as is one of Joe Twichell's yarns repeated by a

somnambulist. Goodness gracious, you read me a chapter, and it is a

gentle, pearly dawn, with a sprinkle of faint stars in it; but by and by

I strike it in print, and shout to myself, "God bless us, how has that

pallid former spectacle been turned into these gorgeous sunset

splendors!"

Well, I don't care how much you read your truck to me, you can't

permanently damage it for me that way. It is always perfectly fresh and

dazzling when I come on it in the magazine. Of course I recognize the

form of it as being familiar--but that is all. That is, I remember it as

pyrotechnic figures which you set up before me, dead and cold, but ready

for the match--and now I see them touched off and all ablaze with

blinding fires. You can read, if you want to, but you don't read worth a

damn. I know you can read, because your readings of Cable and your

repeatings of the German doctor's remarks prove that.

That's the best drunk scene--because the truest--that I ever read. There

are touches in it that I never saw any writer take note of before. And

they are set before the reader with amazing accuracy. How very drunk,

and how recently drunk, and how altogether admirably drunk you must have

been to enable you to contrive that masterpiece!

Why I didn't notice that that religious interview between Marcia and Mrs.

Halleck was so deliciously humorous when you read it to me--but dear me,

it's just too lovely for anything. (Wrote Clark to collar it for the

"Library.")

Hang it, I know where the mystery is, now; when you are reading, you

glide right along, and I don't get a chance to let the things soak home;

but when I catch it in the magazine, I give a page 20 or 30 minutes in

which to gently and thoroughly filter into me. Your humor is so very

subtle, and elusive--(well, often it's just a vanishing breath of perfume

which a body isn't certain he smelt till he stops and takes another

smell) whereas you can smell other

(Remainder obliterated.)

Among Mark Twain's old schoolmates in Hannibal was little Helen

Kercheval, for whom in those early days he had a very tender spot

indeed. But she married another schoolmate, John Garth, who in time

became a banker, highly respected and a great influence. John and

Helen Garth have already been mentioned in the letter of May 17th.

To John Garth, in Hannibal:

HARTFORD, July 3 '82.

DEAR JOHN,--Your letter of June i9 arrived just one day after we ought to

have been in Elmira, N. Y. for the summer: but at the last moment the

baby was seized with scarlet fever. I had to telegraph and countermand

the order for special sleeping car; and in fact we all had to fly around

in a lively way and undo the patient preparations of weeks--rehabilitate

the dismantled house, unpack the trunks, and so on. A couple of days

later, the eldest child was taken down with so fierce a fever that she

was soon delirious--not scarlet fever, however. Next, I myself was

stretched on the bed with three diseases at once, and all of them fatal.

But I never did care for fatal diseases if I could only have privacy and

room to express myself concerning them.

We gave early warning, and of course nobody has entered the house in all

this time but one or two reckless old bachelors--and they probably wanted

to carry the disease to the children of former flames of theirs. The

house is still in quarantine and must remain so for a week or two yet--at

which time we are hoping to leave for Elmira.

Always your friend

S. L. CLEMENS.

By the end of summer Howells was in Europe, and Clemens, in Elmira,

was trying to finish his Mississippi book, which was giving him a

great deal of trouble. It was usually so with his non-fiction

books; his interest in them was not cumulative; he was prone to grow

weary of them, while the menace of his publisher's contract was

maddening. Howells's letters, meant to be comforting, or at least

entertaining, did not always contribute to his peace of mind. The

Library of American Humor which they had planned was an added

burden. Before sailing, Howells had written: "Do you suppose you

can do your share of the reading at Elmira, while you are writing at

the Mississippi book?"

In a letter from London, Howells writes of the good times he is

having over there with Osgood, Hutton, John Hay, Aldrich, and Alma

Tadema, excursioning to Oxford, feasting, especially "at the Mitre

Tavern, where they let you choose your dinner from the joints

hanging from the rafter, and have passages that you lose yourself in

every time you try to go to your room..... Couldn't you and Mrs.

Clemens step over for a little while?..... We have seen lots of

nice people and have been most pleasantly made of; but I would

rather have you smoke in my face, and talk for half a day just for

pleasure, than to go to the best house or club in London." The

reader will gather that this could not be entirely soothing to a man

shackled by a contract and a book that refused to come to an end.

To W. D. Howells, in London:

HARTFORD, CONN. Oct 30, 1882.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I do not expect to find you, so I shan't spend many

words on you to wind up in the perdition of some European dead-letter

office. I only just want to say that the closing installments of the

story are prodigious. All along I was afraid it would be impossible for

you to keep up so splendidly to the end; but you were only, I see now,

striking eleven. It is in these last chapters that you struck twelve.

Go on and write; you can write good books yet, but you can never match

this one. And speaking of the book, I inclose something which has been

happening here lately.

We have only just arrived at home, and I have not seen Clark on our

matters. I cannot see him or any one else, until I get my book finished.

The weather turned cold, and we had to rush home, while I still lacked

thirty thousand words. I had been sick and got delayed. I am going to

write all day and two thirds of the night, until the thing is done, or

break down at it. The spur and burden of the contract are intolerable to

me. I can endure the irritation of it no longer. I went to work at nine

o'clock yesterday morning, and went to bed an hour after midnight.

Result of the day, (mainly stolen from books, tho' credit given,) 9500

words, so I reduced my burden by one third in one day. It was five days

work in one. I have nothing more to borrow or steal; the rest must all

be written. It is ten days work, and unless something breaks, it will be

finished in five. We all send love to you and Mrs. Howells, and all the

family.

Yours as ever,

MARK.

Again, from Villeneuve, on lake Geneva, Howells wrote urging him this

time to spend the winter with them in Florence, where they would write

their great American Comedy of 'Orme's Motor,' "which is to enrich us

beyond the dreams of avarice.... We could have a lot of fun writing it,

and you could go home with some of the good old Etruscan malaria in your

bones, instead of the wretched pinch-beck Hartford article that you are

suffering from now.... it's a great opportunity for you. Besides,

nobody over there likes you half as well as I do."

It should be added that 'Orme's Motor' was the provisional title that

Clemens and Howells had selected for their comedy, which was to be built,

in some measure, at least, around the character, or rather from the

peculiarities, of Orion Clemens. The Cable mentioned in Mark Twain's

reply is, of course, George W. Cable, who only a little while before had

come up from New Orleans to conquer the North with his wonderful tales

and readings.

To W. D. Howells, in Switzerland:

HARTFORD, Nov. 4th, 1882.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Yes, it would be profitable for me to do that, because

with your society to help me, I should swiftly finish this now apparently

interminable book. But I cannot come, because I am not Boss here, and

nothing but dynamite can move Mrs. Clemens away from home in the winter

season.

I never had such a fight over a book in my life before. And the

foolishest part of the whole business is, that I started Osgood to

editing it before I had finished writing it. As a consequence, large

areas of it are condemned here and there and yonder, and I have the

burden of these unfilled gaps harassing me and the thought of the broken

continuity of the work, while I am at the same time trying to build the

last quarter of the book. However, at last I have said with sufficient

positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I

will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things

easy and comfortably, write when I choose to write, leave it alone when I

so prefer. The printers must wait, the artists, the canvassers, and all

the rest. I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where

it ought to be, and that is where it must remain; to follow any other

policy would be to make the book worse than it already is. I ought to

have finished it before showing to anybody, and then sent it across the

ocean to you to be edited, as usual; for you seem to be a great many

shades happier than you deserve to be, and if I had thought of this thing

earlier, I would have acted upon it and taken the tuck somewhat out of

your joyousness.

In the same mail with your letter, arrived the enclosed from Orme the

motor man. You will observe that he has an office. I will explain that

this is a law office and I think it probably does him as much good to

have a law office without anything to do in it, as it would another man

to have one with an active business attached. You see he is on the

electric light lay now. Going to light the city and allow me to take all

the stock if I want to. And he will manage it free of charge. It never

would occur to this simple soul how much less costly it would be to me,

to hire him on a good salary not to manage it. Do you observe the same

old eagerness, the same old hurry, springing from the fear that if he

does not move with the utmost swiftness, that colossal opportunity will

escape him? Now just fancy this same frantic plunging after vast

opportunities, going on week after week with this same man, during fifty

entire years, and he has not yet learned, in the slightest degree, that

there isn't any occasion to hurry; that his vast opportunity will always

wait; and that whether it waits or flies, he certainly will never catch

it. This immortal hopefulness, fortified by its immortal and unteachable

misjudgment, is the immortal feature of this character, for a play; and

we will write that play. We should be fools else. That staccato

postscript reads as if some new and mighty business were imminent, for it

is slung on the paper telegraphically, all the small words left out.

I am afraid something newer and bigger than the electric light is

swinging across his orbit. Save this letter for an inspiration. I have

got a hundred more.

Cable has been here, creating worshipers on all hands. He is a marvelous

talker on a deep subject. I do not see how even Spencer could unwind a

thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in a cleaner, clearer,

crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his faculty. You know when

it comes down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly blemishless

piety, the Apostles were mere policemen to Cable; so with this in mind

you must imagine him at a midnight dinner in Boston the other night,

where we gathered around the board of the Summerset Club; Osgood, full,

Boyle O'Reilly, full, Fairchild responsively loaded, and Aldrich and

myself possessing the floor, and properly fortified. Cable told Mrs.

Clemens when he returned here, that he seemed to have been entertaining

himself with horses, and had a dreamy idea that he must have gone to

Boston in a cattle-car. It was a very large time. He called it an orgy.

And no doubt it was, viewed from his standpoint.

I wish I were in Switzerland, and I wish we could go to Florence; but we

have to leave these delights to you; there is no helping it. We all join

in love to you and all the family.

Yours as ever

MARK.

XXIII.

LETTERS, 1883, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. A GUEST OF THE MARQUIS OF LORNE.

THE HISTORY GAME. A PLAY BY HOWELLS AND MARK TWAIN

Mark Twain, in due season, finished the Mississippi book and placed

it in Osgood's hands for publication. It was a sort of partnership

arrangement in which Clemens was to furnish the money to make the

book, and pay Osgood a percentage for handling it. It was, in fact,

the beginning of Mark Twain's adventures as a publisher.

Howells was not as happy in Florence as he had hoped to be. The

social life there overwhelmed him. In February he wrote: "Our two

months in Florence have been the most ridiculous time that ever even

half-witted people passed. We have spent them in chasing round

after people for whom we cared nothing, and being chased by them.

My story isn't finished yet, and what part of it is done bears the

fatal marks of haste and distraction. Of course, I haven't put pen

to paper yet on the play. I wring my hands and beat my breast when

I think of how these weeks have been wasted; and how I have been

forced to waste them by the infernal social circumstances from which

I couldn't escape."

Clemens, now free from the burden of his own book, was light of

heart and full of ideas and news; also of sympathy and appreciation.

Howells's story of this time was "A Woman's Reason." Governor

Jewell, of this letter, was Marshall Jewell, Governor of Connecticut

from 1871 to 1873. Later, he was Minister to Russia, and in 1874

was United States Postmaster-General.

To W. D. Howells, in Florence:

HARTFORD, March 1st, 1883.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We got ourselves ground up in that same mill, once, in

London, and another time in Paris. It is a kind of foretaste of hell.

There is no way to avoid it except by the method which you have now

chosen. One must live secretly and cut himself utterly off from the

human race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an

impossibility. I learned something last night, and maybe it may

reconcile me to go to Europe again sometime. I attended one of the

astonishingly popular lectures of a man by the name of Stoddard, who

exhibits interesting stereopticon pictures and then knocks the interest

all out of them with his comments upon them. But all the world go there

to look and listen, and are apparently well satisfied. And they ought to

be fully satisfied, if the lecturer would only keep still, or die in the

first act. But he described how retired tradesmen and farmers in Holland

load a lazy scow with the family and the household effects, and then loaf

along the waterways of the low countries all the summer long, paying no

visits, receiving none, and just lazying a heavenly life out in their own

private unpestered society, and doing their literary work, if they have

any, wholly uninterrupted. If you had hired such a boat and sent for us

we should have a couple of satisfactory books ready for the press now

with no marks of interruption, vexatious wearinesses, and other

hellishnesses visible upon them anywhere. We shall have to do this

another time. We have lost an opportunity for the present. Do you

forget that Heaven is packed with a multitude of all nations and that

these people are all on the most familiar how-the-hell-are-you footing

with Talmage swinging around the circle to all eternity hugging the

saints and patriarchs and archangels, and forcing you to do the same

unless you choose to make yourself an object of remark if you refrain?

Then why do you try to get to Heaven? Be warned in time.

We have all read your two opening numbers in the Century, and consider

them almost beyond praise. I hear no dissent from this verdict. I did

not know there was an untouched personage in American life, but I had

forgotten the auctioneer. You have photographed him accurately.

I have been an utterly free person for a month or two; and I do not

believe I ever so greatly appreciated and enjoyed--and realized the

absence of the chains of slavery as I do this time. Usually my first

waking thought in the morning is, "I have nothing to do to-day, I belong

to nobody, I have ceased from being a slave." Of course the highest

pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labor.

Therefore I labor. But I take my time about it. I work one hour or four

as happens to suit my mind, and quit when I please. And so these days

are days of entire enjoyment. I told Clark the other day, to jog along

comfortable and not get in a sweat. I said I believed you would not be

able to enjoy editing that library over there, where you have your own

legitimate work to do and be pestered to death by society besides;

therefore I thought if he got it ready for you against your return, that

that would be best and pleasantest.

You remember Governor Jewell, and the night he told about Russia, down in

the library. He was taken with a cold about three weeks ago, and I

stepped over one evening, proposing to beguile an idle hour for him with

a yarn or two, but was received at the door with whispers, and the

information that he was dying. His case had been dangerous during that

day only and he died that night, two hours after I left. His taking off

was a prodigious surprise, and his death has been most widely and

sincerely regretted. Win. E. Dodge, the father-in-law of one of Jewell's

daughters, dropped suddenly dead the day before Jewell died, but Jewell

died without knowing that. Jewell's widow went down to New York, to

Dodge's house, the day after Jewell's funeral, and was to return here day

before yesterday, and she did--in a coffin. She fell dead, of heart

disease, while her trunks were being packed for her return home.

Florence Strong, one of Jewell's daughters, who lives in Detroit, started

East on an urgent telegram, but missed a connection somewhere, and did

not arrive here in time to see her father alive. She was his favorite

child, and they had always been like lovers together. He always sent her

a box of fresh flowers once a week to the day of his death; a custom

which he never suspended even when he was in Russia. Mrs. Strong had

only just reached her Western home again when she was summoned to

Hartford to attend her mother's funeral.

I have had the impulse to write you several times. I shall try to

remember better henceforth.

With sincerest regards to all of you,

Yours as ever,

MARK.

Mark Twain made another trip to Canada in the interest of copyright

--this time to protect the Mississippi book. When his journey was

announced by the press, the Marquis of Lorne telegraphed an

invitation inviting him to be his guest at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa.

Clemens accepted, of course, and was handsomely entertained by the

daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, then Governor-General of

Canada.

On his return to Hartford he found that Osgood had issued a curious

little book, for which Clemens had prepared an introduction. It was

an absurd volume, though originally issued with serious intent, its

title being The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and

English.'--[The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and

English, by Pedro Caxolino, with an introduction by Mark Twain.

Osgood, Boston, 1883. ]--Evidently the "New Guide" was prepared by

some simple Portuguese soul with but slight knowledge of English

beyond that which could be obtained from a dictionary, and his

literal translation of English idioms are often startling, as, for

instance, this one, taken at random:

"A little learneds are happies enough for to may to satisfy their

fancies on the literature."

Mark Twain thought this quaint book might amuse his royal hostess,

and forwarded a copy in what he considered to be the safe and proper

form.

To Col. De Winton, in Ottawa, Canada:

HARTFORD, June 4, '83.

DEAR COLONEL DE WINTON,--I very much want to send a little book to her

Royal Highness--the famous Portuguese phrase book; but I do not know the

etiquette of the matter, and I would not wittingly infringe any rule of

propriety. It is a book which I perfectly well know will amuse her "some

at most" if she has not seen it before, and will still amuse her "some at

least," even if she has inspected it a hundred times already. So I will

send the book to you, and you who know all about the proper observances

will protect me from indiscretion, in case of need, by putting the said

book in the fire, and remaining as dumb as I generally was when I was up

there. I do not rebind the thing, because that would look as if I

thought it worth keeping, whereas it is only worth glancing at and

casting aside.

Will you please present my compliments to Mrs. De Winton and Mrs.

Mackenzie?--and I beg to make my sincere compliments to you, also, for

your infinite kindnesses to me. I did have a delightful time up there,

most certainly.

Truly yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

P. S. Although the introduction dates a year back, the book is only just

now issued. A good long delay.

S. L. C.

Howells, writing from Venice, in April, manifested special interest

in the play project: "Something that would run like Scheherazade,

for a thousand and one nights," so perhaps his book was going

better. He proposed that they devote the month of October to the

work, and inclosed a letter from Mallory, who owned not only a

religious paper, The Churchman, but also the Madison Square Theater,

and was anxious for a Howells play. Twenty years before Howells had

been Consul to Venice, and he wrote, now: "The idea of my being here

is benumbing and silencing. I feel like the Wandering Jew, or the

ghost of the Cardiff giant."

He returned to America in July. Clemens sent him word of welcome,

with glowing reports of his own undertakings. The story on which he

was piling up MS. was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, begun

seven years before at Quarry Farm. He had no great faith in it

then, and though he had taken it up again in 1880, his interest had

not lasted to its conclusion. This time, however, he was in the

proper spirit, and the story would be finished.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, July 20, '83.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--We are desperately glad you and your gang are home

again--may you never travel again, till you go aloft or alow. Charley

Clark has gone to the other side for a run--will be back in August. He

has been sick, and needed the trip very much.

Mrs. Clemens had a long and wasting spell of sickness last Spring, but

she is pulling up, now. The children are booming, and my health is

ridiculous, it's so robust, notwithstanding the newspaper misreports.

I haven't piled up MS so in years as I have done since we came here to

the farm three weeks and a half ago. Why, it's like old times, to step

right into the study, damp from the breakfast table, and sail right in

and sail right on, the whole day long, without thought of running short

of stuff or words.

I wrote 4000 words to-day and I touch 3000 and upwards pretty often, and

don't fall below 1600 any working day. And when I get fagged out, I lie

abed a couple of days and read and smoke, and then go it again for 6 or 7

days. I have finished one small book, and am away along in a big 433

one that I half-finished two or three years ago. I expect to complete it

in a month or six weeks or two months more. And I shall like it, whether

anybody else does or not.

It's a kind of companion to Tom Sawyer. There's a raft episode from it

in second or third chapter of life on the Mississippi.....

I'm booming, these days--got health and spirits to waste--got an

overplus; and if I were at home, we would write a play. But we must do

it anyhow by and by.

We stay here till Sep. 10; then maybe a week at Indian Neck for sea air,

then home.

We are powerful glad you are all back; and send love according.

Yrs Ever

MARK

To Onion Clemens and family, in Keokuk, Id.:

ELMIRA, July 22, '83.

Private.

DEAR MA AND ORION AND MOLLIE,--I don't know that I have anything new to

report, except that Livy is still gaining, and all the rest of us

flourishing. I haven't had such booming working-days for many years.

I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall

complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for

7 years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to

lie.

Day before yesterday I felt slightly warned to knock off work for one

day. So I did it, and took the open air. Then I struck an idea for the

instruction of the children, and went to work and carried it out. It

took me all day. I measured off 817 feet of the road-way in our farm

grounds, with a foot-rule, and then divided it up among the English

reigns, from the Conqueror down to 1883, allowing one foot to the year.

I whittled out a basket of little pegs and drove one in the ground at the

beginning of each reign, and gave it that King's name--thus:

I measured all the reigns exactly as many feet to the reign as there were

years in it. You can look out over the grounds and see the little pegs

from the front door--some of them close together, like Richard II,

Richard Cromwell, James II, &c; and some prodigiously wide apart, like

Henry III, Edward III, George III, &c. It gives the children a realizing

sense of the length or brevity of a reign. Shall invent a violent game

to go with it.

And in bed, last night, I invented a way to play it indoors--in a far

more voluminous way, as to multiplicity of dates and events--on a

cribbage board.

Hello, supper's ready.

Love to all.

Good bye.

SAML.

Onion Clemens would naturally get excited over the idea of the game

and its commercial possibilities. Not more so than his brother,

however, who presently employed him to arrange a quantity of

historical data which the game was to teach. For a season, indeed,

interest in the game became a sort of midsummer madness which

pervaded the two households, at Keokuk and at Quarry Farm. Howells

wrote his approval of the idea of "learning history by the running

foot," which was a pun, even if unintentional, for in its out-door

form it was a game of speed as well as knowledge.

Howells adds that he has noticed that the newspapers are exploiting

Mark Twain's new invention of a history game, and we shall presently

see how this happened.

Also, in this letter, Howells speaks of an English nobleman to whom

he has given a letter of introduction. "He seemed a simple, quiet,

gentlemanly man, with a good taste in literature, which he evinced

by going about with my books in his pockets, and talking of yours."

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How odd it seems, to sit down to write a letter with

the feeling that you've got time to do it. But I'm done work, for this

season, and so have got time. I've done two seasons' work in one, and

haven't anything left to do, now, but revise. I've written eight or nine

hundred MS pages in such a brief space of time that I mustn't name the

number of days; I shouldn't believe it myself, and of course couldn't

expect you to. I used to restrict myself to 4 or 5 hours a day and

5 days in the week, but this time I've wrought from breakfast till

5.15 p.m. six days in the week; and once or twice I smouched a Sunday

when the boss wasn't looking. Nothing is half so good as literature

hooked on Sunday, on the sly.

I wrote you and Twichell on the same night, about the game, and was

appalled to get a note from him saying he was going to print part of my

letter, and was going to do it before I could get a chance to forbid it.

I telegraphed him, but was of course too late.

If you haven't ever tried to invent an indoor historical game, don't.

I've got the thing at last so it will work, I guess, but I don't want any

more tasks of that kind. When I wrote you, I thought I had it; whereas I

was only merely entering upon the initiatory difficulties of it. I might

have known it wouldn't be an easy job, or somebody would have invented a

decent historical game long ago--a thing which nobody had done. I think

I've got it in pretty fair shape--so I have caveated it.

Earl of Onston--is that it? All right, we shall be very glad to receive

them and get acquainted with them. And much obliged to you, too.

There's plenty of worse people than the nobilities. I went up and spent

a week with the Marquis and the Princess Louise, and had as good a time

as I want.

I'm powerful glad you are all back again; and we will come up there if

our little tribe will give us the necessary furlough; and if we can't get

it, you folks must come to us and give us an extension of time. We get

home Sept. 11.

Hello, I think I see Waring coming!

Good-by-letter from Clark, which explains for him.

Love to you all from the

CLEMENSES.

No--it wasn't Waring. I wonder what the devil has become of that man.

He was to spend to-day with us, and the day's most gone, now.

We are enjoying your story with our usual unspeakableness; and I'm right

glad you threw in the shipwreck and the mystery--I like it. Mrs. Crane

thinks it's the best story you've written yet. We--but we always think

the last one is the best. And why shouldn't it be? Practice helps.

P. S. I thought I had sent all our loves to all of you, but Mrs. Clemens

says I haven't. Damn it, a body can't think of everything; but a woman

thinks you can. I better seal this, now--else there'll be more

criticism.

I perceive I haven't got the love in, yet. Well, we do send the love of

all the family to all the Howellses.

S. L. C.

There had been some delay and postponement in the matter of the play

which Howells and Clemens agreed to write. They did not put in the

entire month of October as they had planned, but they did put in a

portion of that month, the latter half, working out their old idea.

In the end it became a revival of Colonel Sellers, or rather a caricature

of that gentle hearted old visionary. Clemens had always complained that

the actor Raymond had never brought out the finer shades of Colonel

Sellers's character, but Raymond in his worst performance never belied

his original as did Howells and Clemens in his dramatic revival. These

two, working together, let their imaginations run riot with disastrous

results. The reader can judge something of this himself, from The

American Claimant the book which Mark Twain would later build from the

play.

But at this time they thought it a great triumph. They had "cracked

their sides" laughing over its construction, as Howells once said, and

they thought the world would do the same over its performance. They

decided to offer it to Raymond, but rather haughtily, indifferently,

because any number of other actors would be waiting for it.

But this was a miscalculation. Raymond now turned the tables. Though

favorable to the idea of a new play, he declared this one did not present

his old Sellers at all, but a lunatic. In the end he returned the MS.

with a brief note. Attempts had already been made to interest other

actors, and would continue for some time.

XXIV

LETTERS, 1884, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. CABLE'S GREAT APRIL FOOL.

"HUCK FINN" IN PRESS. MARK TWAIN FOR CLEVELAND. CLEMENS AND CABLE

Mark Twain had a lingering attack of the dramatic fever that winter.

He made a play of the Prince and Pauper, which Howells pronounced "too

thin and slight and not half long enough." He made another of Tom

Sawyer, and probably destroyed it, for no trace of the MS. exists to-day.

Howells could not join in these ventures, for he was otherwise occupied

and had sickness in his household.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Jan. 7, '84.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--"O my goodn's", as Jean says. You have now encountered

at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author. The scarlet

fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may

desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the

scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till you be

all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to cheer

you.

The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I

believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me.

You folks have our most sincere sympathy. Oh, the intrusion of this

hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.

My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich

Islands: the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with

notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that

unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating people.

And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little

considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly you are born in

you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler religious folly

may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and abolished and obliterated

it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age, and the heroine at 4, in

the midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque and

amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months before the arrival of the

missionaries and the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of

the old paganism. Then these two will become educated Christians, and

highly civilized.

And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale's leper business. When we

came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all ready

to our hand.

Yrs Ever

MARK.

He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells

were to dramatize later. His head filled up with other projects,

such as publishing plans, reading-tours, and the like. The

type-setting machine does not appear in the letters of this period,

but it was an important factor, nevertheless. It was costing

several thousand dollars a month for construction and becoming

a heavy drain on Mark Twain's finances. It was necessary to

recuperate, and the anxiety for a profitable play, or some other

adventure that would bring a quick and generous return, grew out

of this need.

Clemens had established Charles L. Webster, his nephew by marriage,

in a New York office, as selling agent for the Mississippi book and

for his plays. He was also planning to let Webster publish the new

book, Huck Finn.

George W. Cable had proven his ability as a reader, and Clemens saw

possibilities in a reading combination, which was first planned to

include Aldrich, and Howells, and a private car.

But Aldrich and Howells did not warm to the idea, and the car was

eliminated from the plan. Cable came to visit Clemens in Hartford,

and was taken with the mumps, so that the reading-trip was

postponed.

The fortunes of the Sellers play were most uncertain and becoming

daily more doubtful. In February, Howells wrote: "If you have got

any comfort in regard to our play I wish you would heave it into my

bosom."

Cable recovered in time, and out of gratitude planned a great

April-fool surprise for his host. He was a systematic man, and did

it in his usual thorough way. He sent a "private and confidential"

suggestion to a hundred and fifty of Mark Twain's friends and

admirers, nearly all distinguished literary men. The suggestion

was that each one of them should send a request for Mark Twain's

autograph, timing it so that it would arrive on the 1st of April.

All seemed to have responded. Mark Twain's writing-table on April

Fool morning was heaped with letters, asking in every ridiculous

fashion for his "valuable autograph." The one from Aldrich was a

fair sample. He wrote: "I am making a collection of autographs of

our distinguished writers, and having read one of your works,

Gabriel Convoy, I would like to add your name to the list."

Of course, the joke in this was that Gabriel Convoy was by Bret

Harte, who by this time was thoroughly detested by Mark Twain. The

first one or two of the letters puzzled the victim; then he

comprehended the size and character of the joke and entered into it

thoroughly. One of the letters was from Bloodgood H. Cutter, the

"Poet Lariat" of Innocents Abroad. Cutter, of course, wrote in

"poetry," that is to say, doggerel. Mark Twain's April Fool was a

most pleasant one.

Rhymed letter by Bloodgood H. Cutter to Mark Twain:

LITTLE NECK, LONG ISLAND.

LONG ISLAND FARMER, TO HIS FRIEND AND PILGRIM BROTHER,

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, ESQ.

Friends, suggest in each one's behalf

To write, and ask your autograph.

To refuse that, I will not do,

After the long voyage had with you.

That was a memorable time You wrote in prose, I wrote in Rhyme To

describe the wonders of each place, And the queer customs of each race.

That is in my memory yet

For while I live I'll not forget.

I often think of that affair

And the many that were with us there.

As your friends think it for the best

I ask your Autograph with the rest,

Hoping you will it to me send

'Twill please and cheer your dear old friend:

Yours truly,

BLOODGOOD H. CUTTER.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Apl 8, '84.

MY DEAR HOWELLS, It took my breath away, and I haven't recovered it yet,

entirely--I mean the generosity of your proposal to read the proofs of

Huck Finn.

Now if you mean it, old man--if you are in earnest--proceed, in God's

name, and be by me forever blest. I cannot conceive of a rational man

deliberately piling such an atrocious job upon himself; but if there is

such a man and you be that man, why then pile it on. It will cost me a

pang every time I think of it, but this anguish will be eingebusst to me

in the joy and comfort I shall get out of the not having to read the

verfluchtete proofs myself. But if you have repented of your

augenblichlicher Tobsucht and got back to calm cold reason again, I won't

hold you to it unless I find I have got you down in writing somewhere.

Herr, I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair and

reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it.

The proof-reading on the P & P cost me the last rags of my religion.

M.

Howells had written that he would be glad to help out in the reading of

the proofs of Huck Finn, which book Webster by this time had in hand.

Replying to Clemens's eager and grateful acceptance now, he wrote: "It is

all perfectly true about the generosity, unless I am going to read your

proofs from one of the shabby motives which I always find at the bottom

of my soul if I examine it." A characteristic utterance, though we may

be permitted to believe that his shabby motives were fewer and less

shabby than those of mankind in general.

The proofs which Howells was reading pleased him mightily. Once, during

the summer, he wrote: "if I had written half as good a book as Huck Finn

I shouldn't ask anything better than to read the proofs; even as it is,

I don't, so send them on; they will always find me somewhere."

This was the summer of the Blaine-Cleveland campaign. Mark Twain, in

company with many other leading men, had mugwumped, and was supporting

Cleveland. From the next letter we gather something of the aspects of

that memorable campaign, which was one of scandal and vituperation. We

learn, too, that the young sculptor, Karl Gerhardt, having completed a

three years' study in Paris, had returned to America a qualified artist.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Aug. 21, '84.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--This presidential campaign is too delicious for

anything. Isn't human nature the most consummate sham and lie that was

ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all

his aspects? Man, "know thyself "--and then thou wilt despise thyself,

to a dead moral certainty. Take three quite good specimens--Hawley,

Warner, and Charley Clark. Even I do not loathe Blaine more than they

do; yet Hawley is howling for Blaine, Warner and Clark are eating their

daily crow in the paper for him, and all three will vote for him. O

Stultification, where is thy sting, O slave where is thy hickory!

I suppose you heard how a marble monument for which St. Gaudens was

pecuniarily responsible, burned down in Hartford the other day,

uninsured--for who in the world would ever think of insuring a marble

shaft in a cemetery against a fire?--and left St. Gauden out of pocket

$15,000.

It was a bad day for artists. Gerhardt finished my bust that day, and

the work was pronounced admirable by all the kin and friends; but in

putting it in plaster (or rather taking it out) next day it got ruined.

It was four or five weeks hard work gone to the dogs. The news flew, and

everybody on the farm flocked to the arbor and grouped themselves about

the wreck in a profound and moving silence--the farm-help, the colored

servants, the German nurse, the children, everybody--a silence

interrupted at wide intervals by absent-minded ejaculations wising from

unconscious breasts as the whole size of the disaster gradually worked

its way home to the realization of one spirit after another.

Some burst out with one thing, some another; the German nurse put up her

hands and said, "Oh, Schade! oh, schrecklich! "But Gerhardt said

nothing; or almost that. He couldn't word it, I suppose. But he went to

work, and by dark had everything thoroughly well under way for a fresh

start in the morning; and in three days' time had built a new bust which

was a trifle better than the old one--and to-morrow we shall put the

finishing touches on it, and it will be about as good a one as nearly

anybody can make.

Yrs Ever

MARK.

If you run across anybody who wants a bust, be sure and recommend

Gerhardt on my say-so.

But Howells was determinedly for Blaine. "I shall vote for Blaine," he

replied. "I do not believe he is guilty of the things they accuse him

of, and I know they are not proved against him. As for Cleveland, his

private life may be no worse than that of most men, but as an enemy of

that contemptible, hypocritical, lop-sided morality which says a woman

shall suffer all the shame of unchastity and man none, I want to see him

destroyed politically by his past. The men who defend him would take

their wives to the White House if he were president, but if he married

his concubine--'made her an honest woman' they would not go near him. I

can't stand that."

Certainly this was sound logic, in that day, at least. But it left

Clemens far from satisfied.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Sept. 17, '84.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--Somehow I can't seem to rest quiet under the idea of

your voting for Blaine. I believe you said something about the country

and the party. Certainly allegiance to these is well; but as certainly a

man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor--the party or the

country come second to that, and never first. I don't ask you to vote at

all--I only urge you to not soil yourself by voting for Blaine.

When you wrote before, you were able to say the charges against him were

not proven. But you know now that they are proven, and it seems to me

that that bars you and all other honest and honorable men (who are

independently situated) from voting for him.

It is not necessary to vote for Cleveland; the only necessary thing to

do, as I understand it, is that a man shall keep himself clean, (by

withholding his vote for an improper man) even though the party and the

country go to destruction in consequence. It is not parties that make or

save countries or that build them to greatness--it is clean men, clean

ordinary citizens, rank and file, the masses. Clean masses are not made

by individuals standing back till the rest become clean.

As I said before, I think a man's first duty is to his own honor; not to

his country and not to his party. Don't be offended; I mean no offence.

I am not so concerned about the rest of the nation, but--well, good-bye.

Ys Ever

MARK.

There does not appear to be any further discussion of the matter

between Howells and Clemens. Their letters for a time contained no

suggestion of politics.

Perhaps Mark Twain's own political conscience was not entirely clear

in his repudiation of his party; at least we may believe from his

next letter that his Cleveland enthusiasm was qualified by a

willingness to support a Republican who would command his admiration

and honor. The idea of an eleventh-hour nomination was rather

startling, whatever its motive.

To Mr. Pierce, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 22, '84.

MY DEAR MR. PIERCE,--You know, as well as I do, that the reason the

majority of republicans are going to vote for Blaine is because they feel

that they cannot help themselves. Do not you believe that if Mr. Edmunds

would consent to run for President, on the Independent ticket--even at

this late day--he might be elected?

Well, if he wouldn't consent, but should even strenuously protest and say

he wouldn't serve if elected, isn't it still wise and fair to nominate

him and vote for him? since his protest would relieve him from all

responsibility; and he couldn't surely find fault with people for forcing

a compliment upon him. And do not you believe that his name thus

compulsorily placed at the head of the Independent column would work

absolutely certain defeat to Blain and save the country's honor?

Politicians often carry a victory by springing some disgraceful and

rascally mine under the feet of the adversary at the eleventh hour; would

it not be wholesome to vary this thing for once and spring as formidable

a mine of a better sort under the enemy's works?

If Edmunds's name were put up, I would vote for him in the teeth of all

the protesting and blaspheming he could do in a month; and there are lots

of others who would do likewise.

If this notion is not a foolish and wicked one, won't you just consult

with some chief Independents, and see if they won't call a sudden

convention and whoop the thing through? To nominate Edmunds the 1st of

November, would be soon enough, wouldn't it?

With kindest regards to you and the Aldriches,

Yr Truly

S. L. CLEMENS.

Clemens and Cable set out on their reading-tour in November. They were a

curiously-assorted pair: Cable was of orthodox religion, exact as to

habits, neat, prim, all that Clemens was not. In the beginning Cable

undertook to read the Bible aloud to Clemens each evening, but this part

of the day's program was presently omitted by request. If they spent

Sunday in a town, Cable was up bright and early visiting the various

churches and Sunday-schools, while Mark Twain remained at the hotel, in

bed, reading or asleep.

XXV

THE GREAT YEAR OF 1885. CLEMENS AND CABLE. PUBLICATION OF "HUCK FINN."

THE GRANT MEMOIRS. MARK TWAIN AT FIFTY

The year 1885 was in some respects the most important, certainly the

most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in

which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one

of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal

Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do

general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become

sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for

Huck Finn's adventures; he had intended only to handle his own

books, because he was pretty thoroughly dissatisfied with other

publishing arrangements. Even the Library of Humor, which Howells,

with Clark, of the Courant, had put together for him, he left with

Osgood until that publisher failed, during the spring of 1885.

Certainly he never dreamed of undertaking anything of the

proportions of the Grant book.

He had always believed that Grant could make a book. More than

once, when they had met, he had urged the General to prepare his

memoirs for publication. Howells, in his 'My Mark Twain', tells of

going with Clemens to see Grant, then a member of the ill-fated firm

of Grant and Ward, and how they lunched on beans, bacon and coffee

brought in from a near-by restaurant. It was while they were eating

this soldier fare that Clemens--very likely abetted by Howells

--especially urged the great commander to prepare his memoirs. But

Grant had become a financier, as he believed, and the prospect of

literary earnings, however large, did not appeal to him.

Furthermore, he was convinced that he was without literary ability

and that a book by him would prove a failure.

But then, by and by, came a failure more disastrous than anything he

had foreseen--the downfall of his firm through the Napoleonic

rascality of Ward. General Grant was utterly ruined; he was left

without income and apparently without the means of earning one. It

was the period when the great War Series was appeasing in the

Century Magazine. General Grant, hard-pressed, was induced by the

editors to prepare one or more articles, and, finding that he could

write them, became interested in the idea of a book. It is

unnecessary to repeat here the story of how the publication of this

important work passed into the hands of Mark Twain; that is to say,

the firm of Charles L. Webster & Co., the details having been fully

given elsewhere.--[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. cliv.]--

We will now return for the moment to other matters, as reported in

order by the letters. Clemens and Cable had continued their

reading-tour into Canada, and in February found themselves in

Montreal. Here they were invited by the Toque Bleue Snow-shoe Club

to join in one of their weekly excursions across Mt. Royal. They

could not go, and the reasons given by Mark Twain are not without

interest. The letter is to Mr. George Iles, author of Flame,

Electricity, and the Camera, and many other useful works.

To George Iles, far the Toque Blew Snow-shoe Club,

Montreal:

DETROIT, February 12, 1885.

Midnight, P.S.

MY DEAR ILES,--I got your other telegram a while ago, and answered it,

explaining that I get only a couple of hours in the middle of the day for

social life. I know it doesn't seem rational that a man should have to

lie abed all day in order to be rested and equipped for talking an hour

at night, and yet in my case and Cable's it is so. Unless I get a great

deal of rest, a ghastly dulness settles down upon me on the platform, and

turns my performance into work, and hard work, whereas it ought always to

be pastime, recreation, solid enjoyment. Usually it is just this latter,

but that is because I take my rest faithfully, and prepare myself to do

my duty by my audience.

I am the obliged and appreciative servant of my brethren of the Snow-shoe

Club, and nothing in the world would delight me more than to come to

their house without naming time or terms on my own part--but you see how

it is. My cast iron duty is to my audience--it leaves me no liberty and

no option.

With kindest regards to the Club, and to you,

I am Sincerely yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

In the next letter we reach the end of the Clemens-Cable venture and

get a characteristic summing up of Mark Twain's general attitude

toward the companion of his travels. It must be read only in the

clear realization of Mark Twain's attitude toward orthodoxy, and his

habit of humor. Cable was as rigidly orthodox as Mark Twain was

revolutionary. The two were never anything but the best of friends.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

PHILADA. Feb. 27, '85.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--To-night in Baltimore, to-morrow afternoon and night in

Washington, and my four-months platform campaign is ended at last. It

has been a curious experience. It has taught me that Cable's gifts of

mind are greater and higher than I had suspected. But--

That "But" is pointing toward his religion. You will never, never know,

never divine, guess, imagine, how loathsome a thing the Christian

religion can be made until you come to know and study Cable daily and

hourly. Mind you, I like him; he is pleasant company; I rage and swear

at him sometimes, but we do not quarrel; we get along mighty happily

together; but in him and his person I have learned to hate all religions.

He has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and

troublesome ways to dishonor it.

Nat Goodwin was on the train yesterday. He plays in Washington all the

coming week. He is very anxious to get our Sellers play and play it

under changed names. I said the only thing I could do would be to write

to you. Well, I've done it.

Ys Ever

MARK.

Clemens and Webster were often at the house of General Grant during

these early days of 1885, and it must have been Webster who was

present with Clemens on the great occasion described in the

following telegram. It was on the last day and hour of President

Arthur's administration that the bill was passed which placed

Ulysses S. Grant as full General with full pay on the retired list,

and it is said that the congressional clock was set back in order

that this enactment might become a law before the administration

changed. General Grant had by this time developed cancer and was

already in feeble health.

Telegram to Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

NEW YORK, Mar. 4, 1885.

To MRS. S. L. CLEMENS, We were at General Grant's at noon and a telegram

arrived that the last act of the expiring congress late this morning

retired him with full General's rank and accompanying emoluments. The

effect upon him was like raising the dead. We were present when the

telegram was put in his hand.

S. L. CLEMENS.

Something has been mentioned before of Mark Twain's investments and

the generally unprofitable habit of them. He had a trusting nature,

and was usually willing to invest money on any plausible

recommendation. He was one of thousands such, and being a person of

distinction he now and then received letters of inquiry, complaint,

or condolence. A minister wrote him that he had bought some stocks

recommended by a Hartford banker and advertised in a religious

paper. He added, "After I made that purchase they wrote me that you

had just bought a hundred shares and that you were a 'shrewd' man."

The writer closed by asking for further information. He received

it, as follows:

To the Rev. J----, in Baltimore:

WASHINGTON, Mch. 2,'85.

MY DEAR SIR,--I take my earliest opportunity to answer your favor of Feb.

B---- was premature in calling me a "shrewd man." I wasn't one at that

time, but am one now--that is, I am at least too shrewd to ever again

invest in anything put on the market by B----. I know nothing whatever

about the Bank Note Co., and never did know anything about it. B----

sold me about $4,000 or $5,000 worth of the stock at $110, and I own it

yet. He sold me $10,000 worth of another rose-tinted stock about the

same time. I have got that yet, also. I judge that a peculiarity of

B----'s stocks is that they are of the staying kind. I think you should

have asked somebody else whether I was a shrewd man or not for two

reasons: the stock was advertised in a religious paper, a circumstance

which was very suspicious; and the compliment came to you from a man who

was interested to make a purchaser of you. I am afraid you deserve your

loss. A financial scheme advertised in any religious paper is a thing

which any living person ought to know enough to avoid; and when the

factor is added that M. runs that religious paper, a dead person ought to

know enough to avoid it.

Very Truly Yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

The story of Huck Finn was having a wide success. Webster handled

it skillfully, and the sales were large. In almost every quarter

its welcome was enthusiastic. Here and there, however, could be

found an exception; Huck's morals were not always approved of by

library reading-committees. The first instance of this kind was

reported from Concord; and would seem not to have depressed the

author-publisher.

To Chas. L. Webster, in New York:

Mch 18, '85.

DEAR CHARLEY,--The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass, have

given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the

country. They have expelled Huck from their library as "trash and

suitable only for the slums." That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure.

S. L. C.

Perhaps the Concord Free Trade Club had some idea of making amends

to Mark Twain for the slight put upon his book by their librarians,

for immediately after the Huck Finn incident they notified him of

his election to honorary membership.

Those were the days of "authors' readings," and Clemens and Howells

not infrequently assisted at these functions, usually given as

benefits of one kind or another. From the next letter, written

following an entertainment given for the Longfellow memorial, we

gather that Mark Twain's opinion of Howells's reading was steadily

improving.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, May 5, '85.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--.....Who taught you to read? Observation and thought,

I guess. And practice at the Tavern Club?--yes; and that was the best

teaching of all:

Well, you sent even your daintiest and most delicate and fleeting points

home to that audience--absolute proof of good reading. But you couldn't

read worth a damn a few years ago. I do not say this to flatter. It is

true I looked around for you when I was leaving, but you had already

gone.

Alas, Osgood has failed at last. It was easy to see that he was on the

very verge of it a year ago, and it was also easy to see that he was

still on the verge of it a month or two ago; but I continued to hope--but

not expect that he would pull through. The Library of Humor is at his

dwelling house, and he will hand it to you whenever you want it.

To save it from any possibility of getting mixed up in the failure,

perhaps you had better send down and get it. I told him, the other day,

that an order of any kind from you would be his sufficient warrant for

its delivery to you.

In two days General Grant has dictated 50 pages of foolscap, and thus the

Wilderness and Appomattox stand for all time in his own words. This

makes the second volume of his book as valuable as the first.

He looks mighty well, these latter days.

Yrs Ever

MARK.

"I am exceedingly glad," wrote Howells, "that you approve of my

reading, for it gives me some hope that I may do something on the

platform next winter..... but I would never read within a hundred

miles of you, if I could help it. You simply straddled down to the

footlights and took that house up in the hollow of your hand and

tickled it."

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, July 21, 1885.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You are really my only author; I am restricted to you,

I wouldn't give a damn for the rest.

I bored through Middlemarch during the past week, with its labored and

tedious analyses of feelings and motives, its paltry and tiresome people,

its unexciting and uninteresting story, and its frequent blinding flashes

of single-sentence poetry, philosophy, wit, and what not, and nearly died

from the overwork. I wouldn't read another of those books for a farm.

I did try to read one other--Daniel Deronda. I dragged through three

chapters, losing flesh all the time, and then was honest enough to quit,

and confess to myself that I haven't any romance literature appetite, as

far as I can see, except for your books.

But what I started to say, was, that I have just read Part II of Indian

Summer, and to my mind there isn't a waste line in it, or one that could

be improved. I read it yesterday, ending with that opinion; and read it

again to-day, ending with the same opinion emphasized. I haven't read

Part I yet, because that number must have reached Hartford after we left;

but we are going to send down town for a copy, and when it comes I am to

read both parts aloud to the family. It is a beautiful story, and makes

a body laugh all the time, and cry inside, and feel so old and so

forlorn; and gives him gracious glimpses of his lost youth that fill him

with a measureless regret, and build up in him a cloudy sense of his

having been a prince, once, in some enchanted far-off land, and of being

an exile now, and desolate--and Lord, no chance ever to get back there

again! That is the thing that hurts. Well, you have done it with

marvelous facility and you make all the motives and feelings perfectly

clear without analyzing the guts out of them, the way George Eliot does.

I can't stand George Eliot and Hawthorne and those people; I see what

they are at a hundred years before they get to it and they just tire me

to death. And as for "The Bostonians," I would rather be damned to John

Bunyan's heaven than read that.

Yrs Ever

MARK

It is as easy to understand Mark Twain's enjoyment of Indian Summer

as his revolt against Daniel Deronda and The Bostonians. He cared

little for writing that did not convey its purpose in the simplest

and most direct terms. It is interesting to note that in thanking

Clemens for his compliment Howells wrote: "What people cannot see is

that I analyze as little as possible; they go on talking about the

analytical school, which I am supposed to belong to, and I want to

thank you for using your eyes..... Did you ever read De Foe's

'Roxana'? If not, then read it, not merely for some of the deepest

insights into the lying, suffering, sinning, well-meaning human

soul, but for the best and most natural English that a book was ever

written in."

General Grant worked steadily on his book, dictating when he could,

making brief notes on slips of paper when he could no longer speak.

Clemens visited him at Mt. McGregor and brought the dying soldier

the comforting news that enough of his books were already sold to

provide generously for his family, and that the sales would

aggregate at least twice as much by the end of the year.

This was some time in July. On the 23d of that month General Grant

died. Immediately there was a newspaper discussion as to the most

suitable place for the great chieftain to lie. Mark Twain's

contribution to this debate, though in the form of an open letter,

seems worthy of preservation here.

To the New York "Sun," on the proper place for Grant's Tomb:

To THE EDITOR OP' THE SUN:--SIR,--The newspaper atmosphere is charged

with objections to New York as a place of sepulchre for General Grant,

and the objectors are strenuous that Washington is the right place. They

offer good reasons--good temporary reasons--for both of these positions.

But it seems to me that temporary reasons are not mete for the occasion.

We need to consider posterity rather than our own generation. We should

select a grave which will not merely be in the right place now, but will

still be in the right place 500 years from now.

How does Washington promise as to that? You have only to hit it in one

place to kill it. Some day the west will be numerically strong enough to

move the seat of government; her past attempts are a fair warning that

when the day comes she will do it. Then the city of Washington will lose

its consequence and pass out of the public view and public talk. It is

quite within the possibilities that, a century hence, people would wonder

and say, "How did your predecessors come to bury their great dead in this

deserted place?"

But as long as American civilisation lasts New York will last. I cannot

but think she has been well and wisely chosen as the guardian of a grave

which is destined to become almost the most conspicuous in the world's

history. Twenty centuries from now New York will still be New York,

still a vast city, and the most notable object in it will still be the

tomb and monument of General Grant.

I observe that the common and strongest objection to New York is that she

is not "national ground." Let us give ourselves no uneasiness about

that. Wherever General Grant's body lies, that is national ground.

S. L. CLEMENS.

ELMIRA, July 27.

The letter that follows is very long, but it seems too important and

too interesting to be omitted in any part. General Grant's early

indulgence in liquors had long been a matter of wide, though not

very definite, knowledge. Every one had heard how Lincoln, on being

told that Grant drank, remarked something to the effect that he

would like to know what kind of whisky Grant used so that he might

get some of it for his other generals. Henry Ward Beecher, selected

to deliver a eulogy on the dead soldier, and doubtless wishing

neither to ignore the matter nor to make too much of it, naturally

turned for information to the publisher of Grant's own memoirs,

hoping from an advance copy to obtain light.

To Henry Ward Beecher,.Brooklyn:

ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 11, '85.

MY DEAR MR. BEECHER,--My nephew Webster is in Europe making contracts for

the Memoirs. Before he sailed he came to me with a writing, directed to

the printers and binders, to this effect:

"Honor no order for a sight or copy of the Memoirs while I am absent,

even though it be signed by Mr. Clemens himself."

I gave my permission. There were weighty reasons why I should not only

give my permission, but hold it a matter of honor to not dissolve the

order or modify it at any time. So I did all of that--said the order

should stand undisturbed to the end. If a principal could dissolve his

promise as innocently as he can dissolve his written order unguarded by

his promise, I would send you a copy of the Memoirs instantly. I did not

foresee you, or I would have made an exception.

...........................

My idea gained from army men, is that the drunkenness (and sometimes

pretty reckless spreeing, nights,) ceased before he came East to be Lt.

General. (Refer especially to Gen. Wm. B. Franklin--[If you could see

Franklin and talk with him--then he would unbosom,]) It was while Grant

was still in the West that Mr. Lincoln said he wished he could find out

what brand of whisky that fellow used, so he could furnish it to some of

the other generals. Franklin saw Grant tumble from his horse drunk,

while reviewing troops in New Orleans. The fall gave him a good deal of

a hurt. He was then on the point of leaving for the Chattanooga region.

I naturally put "that and that together" when I read Gen. O. O. Howards's

article in the Christian Union, three or four weeks ago--where he

mentions that the new General arrived lame from a recent accident.

(See that article.) And why not write Howard?

Franklin spoke positively of the frequent spreeing. In camp--in time of

war.

.........................

Captain Grant was frequently threatened by the Commandant of his Oregon

post with a report to the War Department of his conduct unless he

modified his intemperance. The report would mean dismissal from the

service. At last the report had to be made out; and then, so greatly was

the captain beloved, that he was privately informed, and was thus enabled

to rush his resignation to Washington ahead of the report. Did the

report go, nevertheless? I don't know. If it did, it is in the War

Department now, possibly, and seeable. I got all this from a regular

army man, but I can't name him to save me.

The only time General Grant ever mentioned liquor to me was about last

April or possibly May. He said:

"If I could only build up my strength! The doctors urge whisky and

champagne; but I can't take them; I can't abide the taste of any kind of

liquor."

Had he made a conquest so complete that even the taste of liquor was

become an offense? Or was he so sore over what had been said about his

habit that he wanted to persuade others and likewise himself that he

hadn't even ever had any taste for it? It sounded like the latter, but

that's no evidence.

He told me in the fall of '84 that there was something the matter with

his throat, and that at the suggestion of his physicians he had reduced

his smoking to one cigar a day. Then he added, in a casual fashion, that

he didn't care for that one, and seldom smoked it.

I could understand that feeling. He had set out to conquer not the habit

but the inclination--the desire. He had gone at the root, not the trunk.

It's the perfect way and the only true way (I speak from experience.)

How I do hate those enemies of the human race who go around enslaving

God's free people with pledges--to quit drinking instead of to quit

wanting to drink.

But Sherman and Van Vliet know everything concerning Grant; and if you

tell them how you want to use the facts, both of them will testify.

Regular army men have no concealments about each other; and yet they make

their awful statements without shade or color or malice with a frankness

and a child-like naivety, indeed, which is enchanting-and stupefying.

West Point seems to teach them that, among other priceless things not to

be got in any other college in this world. If we talked about our

guild-mates as I have heard Sherman, Grant, Van Vliet and others talk

about theirs--mates with whom they were on the best possible terms--we

could never expect them to speak to us again.

.......................

I am reminded, now, of another matter. The day of the funeral I sat an

hour over a single drink and several cigars with Van Vliet and Sherman

and Senator Sherman; and among other things Gen. Sherman said, with

impatient scorn:

"The idea of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude

language and indelicate stories! Why Grant was full of humor, and full

of the appreciation of it. I have sat with him by the hour listening to

Jim Nye's yarns, and I reckon you know the style of Jim Nye's histories,

Clemens. It makes me sick--that newspaper nonsense. Grant was no

namby-pamby fool, he was a man--all over--rounded and complete."

I wish I had thought of it! I would have said to General Grant: "Put

the drunkenness in the Memoirs--and the repentance and reform. Trust the

people."

But I will wager there is not a hint in the book. He was sore, there.

As much of the book as I have read gives no hint, as far as I recollect.

The sick-room brought out the points of Gen. Grant's character--some of

them particularly, to wit:

His patience; his indestructible equability of temper; his exceeding

gentleness, kindness, forbearance, lovingness, charity; his loyalty: to

friends, to convictions, to promises, half-promises, infinitesimal

fractions and shadows of promises; (There was a requirement of him which

I considered an atrocity, an injustice, an outrage; I wanted to implore

him to repudiate it; Fred Grant said, "Save your labor, I know him; he is

in doubt as to whether he made that half-promise or not--and, he will

give the thing the benefit of the doubt; he will fulfill that

half-promise or kill himself trying;" Fred Grant was right--he did

fulfill it;) his aggravatingly trustful nature; his genuineness,

simplicity, modesty, diffidence, self-depreciation, poverty in the

quality of vanity-and, in no contradiction of this last, his simple

pleasure in the flowers and general ruck sent to him by Tom, Dick and

Harry from everywhere--a pleasure that suggested a perennial surprise

that he should be the object of so much fine attention--he was the most

lovable great child in the world; (I mentioned his loyalty: you remember

Harrison, the colored body-servant? the whole family hated him, but that

did not make any difference, the General always stood at his back,

wouldn't allow him to be scolded; always excused his failures and

deficiencies with the one unvarying formula, "We are responsible for

these things in his race--it is not fair to visit our fault upon them

--let him alone;" so they did let him alone, under compulsion, until the

great heart that was his shield was taken away; then--well they simply

couldn't stand him, and so they were excusable for determining to

discharge him--a thing which they mortally hated to do, and by lucky

accident were saved from the necessity of doing;) his toughness as a

bargainer when doing business for other people or for his country

(witness his "terms" at Donelson, Vicksburg, etc.; Fred Grant told me his

father wound up an estate for the widow and orphans of a friend in St.

Louis--it took several years; at the end every complication had been

straightened out, and the property put upon a prosperous basis; great

sums had passed through his hands, and when he handed over the papers

there were vouchers to show what had been done with every penny) and his

trusting, easy, unexacting fashion when doing business for himself (at

that same time he was paying out money in driblets to a man who was

running his farm for him--and in his first Presidency he paid every one

of those driblets again (total, $3,000 F. said,) for he hadn't a scrap of

paper to show that he had ever paid them before; in his dealings with me

he would not listen to terms which would place my money at risk and leave

him protected--the thought plainly gave him pain, and he put it from him,

waved it off with his hands, as one does accounts of crushings and

mutilations--wouldn't listen, changed the subject;) and his fortitude!

He was under, sentence of death last spring; he sat thinking, musing,

several days--nobody knows what about; then he pulled himself together

and set to work to finish that book, a colossal task for a dying man.

Presently his hand gave out; fate seemed to have got him checkmated.

Dictation was suggested. No, he never could do that; had never tried it;

too old to learn, now. By and by--if he could only do Appomattox-well.

So he sent for a stenographer, and dictated 9,000 words at a single

sitting!--never pausing, never hesitating for a word, never repeating

--and in the written-out copy he made hardly a correction. He dictated

again, every two or three days--the intervals were intervals of

exhaustion and slow recuperation--and at last he was able to tell me that

he had written more matter than could be got into the book. I then

enlarged the book--had to. Then he lost his voice. He was not quite

done yet, however:--there was no end of little plums and spices to be

stuck in, here and there; and this work he patiently continued, a few

lines a day, with pad and pencil, till far into July, at Mt. McGregor.

One day he put his pencil aside, and said he was done--there was nothing

more to do. If I had been there I could have foretold the shock that

struck the world three days later.

Well, I've written all this, and it doesn't seem to amount to anything.

But I do want to help, if I only could. I will enclose some scraps from

my Autobiography--scraps about General Grant--they may be of some trifle

of use, and they may not--they at least verify known traits of his

character. My Autobiography is pretty freely dictated, but my idea is to

jack-plane it a little before I die, some day or other; I mean the rude

construction and rotten grammar. It is the only dictating I ever did,

and it was most troublesome and awkward work. You may return it to

Hartford.

Sincerely Yours

S. L. CLEMENS.

The old long-deferred Library of Humor came up again for discussion,

when in the fall of 1885 Howells associated himself with Harper &

Brothers. Howells's contract provided that his name was not to

appear on any book not published by the Harper firm. He wrote,

therefore, offering to sell out his interest in the enterprise for

two thousand dollars, in addition to the five hundred which he had

already received--an amount considered to be less than he was to

have received as joint author and compiler. Mark Twain's answer

pretty fully covers the details of this undertaking.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Oct. 18, 1885.

Private.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I reckon it would ruin the book that is, make it

necessary to pigeon-hole it and leave it unpublished. I couldn't publish

it without a very responsible name to support my own on the title page,

because it has so much of my own matter in it. I bought Osgood's rights

for $3,000 cash, I have paid Clark $800 and owe him $700 more, which must

of course be paid whether I publish or not. Yet I fully recognize that I

have no sort of moral right to let that ancient and procrastinated

contract hamper you in any way, and I most certainly won't. So, it is my

decision,--after thinking over and rejecting the idea of trying to buy

permission of the Harpers for $2,500 to use your name, (a proposition

which they would hate to refuse to a man in a perplexed position, and yet

would naturally have to refuse it,) to pigeon-hole the "Library": not

destroy it, but merely pigeon-hole it and wait a few years and see what

new notion Providence will take concerning it. He will not desert us

now, after putting in four licks to our one on this book all this time.

It really seems in a sense discourteous not to call it "Providence's

Library of Humor."

Now that deal is all settled, the next question is, do you need and must

you require that $2,000 now? Since last March, you know, I am carrying a

mighty load, solitary and alone--General Grant's book--and must carry it

till the first volume is 30 days old (Jan. 1st) before the relief money

will begin to flow in. From now till the first of January every dollar

is as valuable to me as it could be to a famishing tramp. If you can

wait till then--I mean without discomfort, without inconvenience--it will

be a large accommodation to me; but I will not allow you to do this favor

if it will discommode you. So, speak right out, frankly, and if you need

the money I will go out on the highway and get it, using violence, if

necessary.

Mind, I am not in financial difficulties, and am not going to be. I am

merely a starving beggar standing outside the door of plenty--obstructed

by a Yale time-lock which is set for Jan. 1st. I can stand it, and stand

it perfectly well; but the days do seem to fool along considerable slower

than they used to.

I am mighty glad you are with the Harpers. I have noticed that good men

in their employ go there to stay.

Yours ever,

MARK.

In the next letter we begin to get some idea of the size of Mark

Twain's first publishing venture, and a brief summary of results may

not be out of place here.

The Grant Life was issued in two volumes. In the early months of

the year when the agents' canvass was just beginning, Mark Twain,

with what seems now almost clairvoyant vision, prophesied a sale of

three hundred thousand sets. The actual sales ran somewhat more

than this number. On February 27, 1886, Charles L. Webster & Co.

paid to Mrs. Grant the largest single royalty check in the history

of book-publishing. The amount of it was two hundred thousand

dollars. Subsequent checks increased the aggregate return to

considerably more than double this figure. In a memorandum made by

Clemens in the midst of the canvass he wrote."

"During 100 consecutive days the sales (i. e., subscriptions) of

General Grant's book averaged 3,000 sets (6,000 single volumes) per

day: Roughly stated, Mrs. Grant's income during all that time was

$5,000 a day."

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HOTEL NORMANDIE

NEW YORK, Dec. 2, '85.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I told Webster, this afternoon, to send you that

$2,000; but he is in such a rush, these first days of publication, that

he may possibly forget it; so I write lest I forget it too. Remind me,

if he should forget. When I postponed you lately, I did it because I

thought I should be cramped for money until January, but that has turned

out to be an error, so I hasten to cut short the postponement.

I judge by the newspapers that you are in Auburndale, but I don't know it

officially.

I've got the first volume launched safely; consequently, half of the

suspense is over, and I am that much nearer the goal. We've bound and

shipped 200,000 books; and by the 10th shall finish and ship the

remaining 125,000 of the first edition. I got nervous and came down to

help hump-up the binderies; and I mean to stay here pretty much all the

time till the first days of March, when the second volume will issue.

Shan't have so much trouble, this time, though, if we get to press pretty

soon, because we can get more binderies then than are to be had in front

of the holidays. One lives and learns. I find it takes 7 binderies four

months to bind 325,000 books.

This is a good book to publish. I heard a canvasser say, yesterday, that

while delivering eleven books he took 7 new subscriptions. But we shall

be in a hell of a fix if that goes on--it will "ball up" the binderies

again.

Yrs ever

MARK.