Mark Twain's Letters — Volume 2 (1867-1875)

temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me!"

From Italy the Clemens party went to Munich, where they had arranged

in advance for winter quarters. Clemens claims, in his report of

the matter to Howells, that he took the party through without the

aid of a courier, though thirty years later, in some comment which

he set down on being shown the letter, he wrote concerning this

paragraph: "Probably a lie." He wrote, also, that they acquired a

great affection for Fraulein Dahlweiner: "Acquired it at once and it

outlasted the winter we spent in her house."

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

No 1a, Karlstrasse, 2e Stock.

Care Fraulein Dahlweiner.

MUNICH, Nov. 17, 1878.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-We arrived here night before last, pretty well fagged: an 8-hour pull from Rome to Florence; a rest there of a day and two nights; then 5 1/2 hours to Bologna; one night's rest; then from noon to 10:30 p.m. carried us to Trent, in the Austrian Tyrol, where the confounded hotel had not received our message, and so at that miserable hour, in that snowy region, the tribe had to shiver together in fireless rooms while beds were prepared and warmed, then up at 6 in the morning and a noble view of snow-peaks glittering in the rich light of a full moon while the hotel-devils lazily deranged a breakfast for us in the dreary gloom of blinking candles; then a solid 12 hours pull through the loveliest snow ranges and snow-draped forest-and at 7 p.m. we hauled up, in drizzle and fog, at the domicile which had been engaged for us ten months before. Munich did seem the horriblest place, the most desolate place, the most unendurable place!-and the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meagre, and the porcelain stoves so grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy and Clara (Spaulding) sat down forlorn, and cried, and I retired to a private, place to pray. By and by we all retired to our narrow German beds; and when Livy and I finished talking across the room, it was all decided that we would rest 24 hours then pay whatever damages were required, and straightway fly to the south of France.

But you see, that was simply fatigue. Next morning the tribe fell in love with the rooms, with the weather, with Munich, and head over heels in love with Fraulein Dahlweiner. We got a larger parlor-an ample one-threw two communicating bedrooms into one, for the children, and now we are entirely comfortable. The only apprehension, at present, is that the climate may not be just right for the children, in which case we shall have to go to France, but it will be with the sincerest regret.

Now I brought the tribe through from Rome, myself. We never had so little trouble before. The next time anybody has a courier to put out to nurse, I shall not be in the market.

Last night the forlornities had all disappeared; so we gathered around the lamp, after supper, with our beer and my pipe, and in a condition of grateful snugness tackled the new magazines. I read your new story aloud, amid thunders of applause, and we all agreed that Captain Jenness and the old man with the accordion-hat are lovely people and most skillfully drawn-and that cabin-boy, too, we like. Of course we are all glad the girl is gone to Venice-for there is no place like Venice. Now I easily understand that the old man couldn't go, because you have a purpose in sending Lyddy by herself: but you could send the old man over in another ship, and we particularly want him along. Suppose you don't need him there? What of that? Can't you let him feed the doves? Can't you let him fall in the canal occasionally? Can't you let his good-natured purse be a daily prey to guides and beggar-boys? Can't you let him find peace and rest and fellowship under Pere Jacopo's kindly wing? (However, you are writing the book, not I-still, I am one of the people you are writing it for, you understand.) I only want to insist, in a friendly way, that the old man shall shed his sweet influence frequently upon the page-that is all.

The first time we called at the convent, Pere Jacopo was absent; the next (Just at this moment Miss Spaulding spoke up and said something about Pere Jacopo-there is more in this acting of one mind upon another than people think) time, he was there, and gave us preserved rose-leaves to eat, and talked about you, and Mrs. Howells, and Winnie, and brought out his photographs, and showed us a picture of "the library of your new house," but not so-it was the study in your Cambridge house. He was very sweet and good. He called on us next day; the day after that we left Venice, after a pleasant sojourn Of 3 or 4 weeks. He expects to spend this winter in Munich and will see us often, he said.

Pretty soon, I am going to write something, and when I finish it I shall know whether to put it to itself or in the "Contributors' Club." That "Contributors' Club" was a most happy idea. By the way, I think that the man who wrote the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 643 has said a mighty sound and sensible thing. I wish his suggestion could be adopted.

It is lovely of you to keep that old pipe in such a place of honor.

While it occurs to me, I must tell you Susie's last. She is sorely badgered with dreams; and her stock dream is that she is being eaten up by bears. She is a grave and thoughtful child, as you will remember. Last night she had the usual dream. This morning she stood apart (after telling it,) for some time, looking vacantly at the floor, and absorbed in meditation. At last she looked up, and with the pathos of one who feels he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said "But Mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear, but always the person."

It would not have occurred to me that there might be an advantage, even in a dream, in occasionally being the eater, instead of always the party eaten, but I easily perceived that her point was well taken.

I'm sending to Heidelberg for your letter and Winnie's, and I do hope they haven't been lost.

My wife and I send love to you all.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

The Howells story, running at this time in the Atlantic, and so much

enjoyed by the Clemens party, was "The Lady of the Aroostook." The

suggestions made for enlarging the part of the "old man" are

eminently characteristic.

Mark Twain's forty-third birthday came in Munich, and in his letter

conveying this fact to his mother we get a brief added outline of

the daily life in that old Bavarian city. Certainly, it would seem

to have been a quieter and more profitable existence than he had

known amid the confusion of things left behind in, America.

* * *

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in America:

No. 1a Karlstrasse,

Dec. 1, MUNICH. 1878.

MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,-I broke the back of life yesterday and started down-hill toward old age. This fact has not produced any effect upon me that I can detect.

I suppose we are located here for the winter. I have a pleasant work-room a mile from here where I do my writing. The walk to and from that place gives me what exercise I need, and all I take. We staid three weeks in Venice, a week in Florence, a fortnight in Rome, and arrived here a couple of weeks ago. Livy and Miss Spaulding are studying drawing and German, and the children have a German day-governess. I cannot see but that the children speak German as well as they do English.

Susie often translates Livy's orders to the servants. I cannot work and study German at the same time: so I have dropped the latter, and do not even read the language, except in the morning paper to get the news.

We have all pretty good health, latterly, and have seldom had to call the doctor. The children have been in the open air pretty constantly for months now. In Venice they were on the water in the gondola most of the time, and were great friends with our gondolier; and in Rome and Florence they had long daily tramps, for Rosa is a famous hand to smell out the sights of a strange place. Here they wander less extensively.

The family all join in love to you all and to Orion and Mollie.

Affly

Your son

SAM.

XIX. LETTERS 1879. RETURN TO AMERICA. THE GREAT GRANT REUNION

Life went on very well in Munich. Each day the family fell

more in love with Fraulein Dahlweiner and her house.

Mark Twain, however, did not settle down to his work

readily. His "pleasant work-room" provided exercise, but no

inspiration. When he discovered he could not find his Swiss

note-book he was ready to give up his travel-writing

altogether. In the letter that follows we find him much

less enthusiastic concerning his own performances than over

the story by Howells, which he was following in the

Atlantic.

The "detective" chapter mentioned in this letter was not

included in 'A Tramp Abroad.' It was published separately,

as 'The Stolen White Elephant' in a volume bearing that

title. The play, which he had now found "dreadfully witless

and flat," was no other than "Simon Wheeler, Detective,"

which he had once regarded so highly. The "Stewart"

referred to was the millionaire merchant, A. T. Stewart,

whose body was stolen in the expectation of reward.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MUNICH, Jan. 21, (1879)

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-It's no use, your letter miscarried in some way and is lost. The consul has made a thorough search and says he has not been able to trace it. It is unaccountable, for all the letters I did not want arrived without a single grateful failure. Well, I have read-up, now, as far as you have got, that is, to where there's a storm at sea approaching,-and we three think you are clear, out-Howellsing Howells. If your literature has not struck perfection now we are not able to see what is lacking. It is all such truth-truth to the life; every where your pen falls it leaves a photograph. I did imagine that everything had been said about life at sea that could be said, but no matter, it was all a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of fact,-only you have stated it as it absolutely is. And only you see people and their ways, and their insides and outsides as they are, and make them talk as they do talk. I think you are the very greatest artist in these tremendous mysteries that ever lived. There doesn't seem to be anything that can be concealed from your awful all-seeing eye. It must be a cheerful thing for one to live with you and be aware that you are going up and down in him like another conscience all the time. Possibly you will not be a fully accepted classic until you have been dead a hundred years,-it is the fate of the Shakespeares and of all genuine prophets,-but then your books will be as common as Bibles, I believe. You're not a weed, but an oak; not a summer-house, but a cathedral. In that day I shall still be in the Cyclopedias, too, thus: "Mark Twain; history and occupation unknown-but he was personally acquainted with Howells." There-I could sing your praises all day, and feel and believe every bit of it.

My book is half finished; I wish to heaven it was done. I have given up writing a detective novel-can't write a novel, for I lack the faculty; but when the detectives were nosing around after Stewart's loud remains, I threw a chapter into my present book in which I have very extravagantly burlesqued the detective business-if it is possible to burlesque that business extravagantly. You know I was going to send you that detective play, so that you could re-write it. Well I didn't do it because I couldn't find a single idea in it that could be useful to you. It was dreadfully witless and flat. I knew it would sadden you and unfit you for work.

I have always been sorry we threw up that play embodying Orion which you began. It was a mistake to do that. Do keep that MS and tackle it again. It will work out all right; you will see. I don't believe that that character exists in literature in so well-developed a condition as it exists in Orion's person. Now won't you put Orion in a story? Then he will go handsomely into a play afterwards. How deliciously you could paint him-it would make fascinating reading-the sort that makes a reader laugh and cry at the same time, for Orion is as good and ridiculous a soul as ever was.

Ah, to think of Bayard Taylor! It is too sad to talk about. I was so glad there was not a single sting and so many good praiseful words in the Atlantic's criticism of Deukalion.

Love to you all

Yrs Ever

MARK

We remain here till middle of March.

In 'A Tramp Abroad' there is an incident in which the author

describes himself as hunting for a lost sock in the dark, in a vast

hotel bedroom at Heilbronn. The account of the real incident, as

written to Twichell, seems even more amusing.

The "Yarn About the Limburger Cheese and the Box of Guns," like "The

Stolen White Elephant," did not find place in the travel-book, but

was published in the same volume with the elephant story, added to

the rambling notes of "An Idle Excursion."

With the discovery of the Swiss note-book, work with Mark Twain was

going better. His letter reflects his enthusiasm.

* * *

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

MUNICH, Jan 26 '79.

DEAR OLD JOE,-Sunday. Your delicious letter arrived exactly at the right time. It was laid by my plate as I was finishing breakfast at 12 noon. Livy and Clara, (Spaulding) arrived from church 5 minutes later; I took a pipe and spread myself out on the sofa, and Livy sat by and read, and I warmed to that butcher the moment he began to swear. There is more than one way of praying, and I like the butcher's way because the petitioner is so apt to be in earnest. I was peculiarly alive to his performance just at this time, for another reason, to wit: Last night I awoke at 3 this morning, and after raging to my self for 2 interminable hours, I gave it up. I rose, assumed a catlike stealthiness, to keep from waking Livy, and proceeded to dress in the pitch dark. Slowly but surely I got on garment after garment-all down to one sock; I had one slipper on and the other in my hand. Well, on my hands and knees I crept softly around, pawing and feeling and scooping along the carpet, and among chair-legs for that missing sock; I kept that up; and still kept it up and kept it up. At first I only said to myself, "Blame that sock," but that soon ceased to answer; my expletives grew steadily stronger and stronger,-and at last, when I found I was lost, I had to sit flat down on the floor and take hold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with the profane explosion that was trying to get out of me. I could see the dim blur of the window, but of course it was in the wrong place and could give me no information as to where I was. But I had one comfort-I had not waked Livy; I believed I could find that sock in silence if the night lasted long enough. So I started again and softly pawed all over the place,-and sure enough at the end of half an hour I laid my hand on the missing article. I rose joyfully up and butted the wash-bowl and pitcher off the stand and simply raised--so to speak. Livy screamed, then said, "Who is that? what is the matter?" I said "There ain't anything the matter-I'm hunting for my sock." She said, "Are you hunting for it with a club?"

I went in the parlor and lit the lamp, and gradually the fury subsided and the ridiculous features of the thing began to suggest themselves. So I lay on the sofa, with note-book and pencil, and transferred the adventure to our big room in the hotel at Heilbronn, and got it on paper a good deal to my satisfaction.

I found the Swiss note-book, some time ago. When it was first lost I was glad of it, for I was getting an idea that I had lost my faculty of writing sketches of travel; therefore the loss of that note-book would render the writing of this one simply impossible, and let me gracefully out; I was about to write to Bliss and propose some other book, when the confounded thing turned up, and down went my heart into my boots. But there was now no excuse, so I went solidly to work-tore up a great part of the MS written in Heidelberg,-wrote and tore up,-continued to write and tear up,-and at last, reward of patient and noble persistence, my pen got the old swing again!

Since then I'm glad Providence knew better what to do with the Swiss note-book than I did, for I like my work, now, exceedingly, and often turn out over 30 MS pages a day and then quit sorry that Heaven makes the days so short.

One of my discouragements had been the belief that my interest in this tour had been so slender that I couldn't gouge matter enough out of it to make a book. What a mistake. I've got 900 pages written (not a word in it about the sea voyage) yet I stepped my foot out of Heidelberg for the first time yesterday,-and then only to take our party of four on our first pedestrian tour-to Heilbronn. I've got them dressed elaborately in walking costume-knapsacks, canteens, field-glasses, leather leggings, patent walking shoes, muslin folds around their hats, with long tails hanging down behind, sun umbrellas, and Alpenstocks. They go all the way to Wimpfen by rail-thence to Heilbronn in a chance vegetable cart drawn by a donkey and a cow; I shall fetch them home on a raft; and if other people shall perceive that that was no pedestrian excursion, they themselves shall not be conscious of it.-This trip will take 100 pages or more,-oh, goodness knows how many! for the mood is everything, not the material, and I already seem to see 300 pages rising before me on that trip. Then, I propose to leave Heidelberg for good. Don't you see, the book (1800 MS pages,) may really be finished before I ever get to Switzerland?

But there's one thing; I want to tell Frank Bliss and his father to be charitable toward me in,-that is, let me tear up all the MS I want to, and give me time to write more. I shan't waste the time-I haven't the slightest desire to loaf, but a consuming desire to work, ever since I got back my swing. And you see this book is either going to be compared with the Innocents Abroad, or contrasted with it, to my disadvantage. I think I can make a book that will be no dead corpse of a thing and I mean to do my level best to accomplish that.

My crude plans are crystalizing. As the thing stands now, I went to Europe for three purposes. The first you know, and must keep secret, even from the Blisses; the second is to study Art; and the third to acquire a critical knowledge of the German language. My MS already shows that the two latter objects are accomplished. It shows that I am moving about as an Artist and a Philologist, and unaware that there is any immodesty in assuming these titles. Having three definite objects has had the effect of seeming to enlarge my domain and give me the freedom of a loose costume. It is three strings to my bow, too.

Well, your butcher is magnificent. He won't stay out of my mind.-I keep trying to think of some way of getting your account of him into my book without his being offended-and yet confound him there isn't anything you have said which he would see any offense in,-I'm only thinking of his friends-they are the parties who busy themselves with seeing things for people. But I'm bound to have him in. I'm putting in the yarn about the Limburger cheese and the box of guns, too-mighty glad Howells declined it. It seems to gather richness and flavor with age. I have very nearly killed several companies with that narrative,-the American Artists Club, here, for instance, and Smith and wife and Miss Griffith (they were here in this house a week or two.) I've got other chapters that pretty nearly destroyed the same parties, too.

O, Switzerland! the further it recedes into the enriching haze of time, the more intolerably delicious the charm of it and the cheer of it and the glory and majesty and solemnity and pathos of it grow. Those mountains had a soul; they thought; they spoke,-one couldn't hear it with the ears of the body, but what a voice it was!-and how real. Deep down in my memory it is sounding yet. Alp calleth unto Alp!-that stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's ocean. How puny we were in that awful presence-and how painless it was to be so; how fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the sense of our unspeakable insignificance. And Lord how pervading were the repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the invisible Great Spirit of the Mountains.

Now what is it? There are mountains and mountains and mountains in this world-but only these take you by the heart-strings. I wonder what the secret of it is. Well, time and time again it has seemed to me that I must drop everything and flee to Switzerland once more. It is a longing-a deep, strong, tugging longing-that is the word. We must go again, Joe.-October days, let us get up at dawn and breakfast at the tower. I should like that first rate.

Livy and all of us send deluges of love to you and Harmony and all the children. I dreamed last night that I woke up in the library at home and your children were frolicing around me and Julia was sitting in my lap; you and Harmony and both families of Warners had finished their welcomes and were filing out through the conservatory door, wrecking Patrick's flower pots with their dress skirts as they went. Peace and plenty abide with you all!

MARK.

I want the Blisses to know their part of this letter, if possible. They will see that my delay was not from choice.

Following the life of Mark Twain, whether through his letters or

along the sequence of detailed occurrence, we are never more than a

little while, or a little distance, from his brother Orion. In one

form or another Orion is ever present, his inquiries, his proposals,

his suggestions, his plans for improving his own fortunes, command

our attention. He was one of the most human creatures that ever

lived; indeed, his humanity excluded every form of artificiality

-everything that needs to be acquired. Talented, trusting,

child-like, carried away by the impulse of the moment, despite a

keen sense of humor he was never able to see that his latest plan

or project was not bound to succeed. Mark Twain loved him, pitied

him-also enjoyed him, especially with Howells. Orion's new plan

to lecture in the interest of religion found its way to Munich,

with the following result:

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

MUNICH, Feb. 9. (1879)

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-I have just received this letter from Orion-take care of it, for it is worth preserving. I got as far as 9 pages in my answer to it, when Mrs. Clemens shut down on it, and said it was cruel, and made me send the money and simply wish his lecture success. I said I couldn't lose my 9 pages-so she said send them to you. But I will acknowledge that I thought I was writing a very kind letter.

Now just look at this letter of Orion's. Did you ever see the grotesquely absurd and the heart-breakingly pathetic more closely joined together? Mrs. Clemens said "Raise his monthly pension." So I wrote to Perkins to raise it a trifle.

Now only think of it! He still has 100 pages to write on his lecture, yet in one inking of his pen he has already swooped around the United States and invested the result!

You must put him in a book or a play right away. You are the only man capable of doing it. You might die at any moment, and your very greatest work would be lost to the world. I could write Orion's simple biography, and make it effective, too, by merely stating the bald facts-and this I will do if he dies before I do; but you must put him into romance. This was the understanding you and I had the day I sailed.

Observe Orion's career-that is, a little of it: (1) He has belonged to as many as five different religious denominations; last March he withdrew from the deaconship in a Congregational Church and the Superintendency of its Sunday School, in a speech in which he said that for many months (it runs in my mind that he said 13 years,) he had been a confirmed infidel, and so felt it to be his duty to retire from the flock.

2. After being a republican for years, he wanted me to buy him a democratic newspaper. A few days before the Presidential election, he came out in a speech and publicly went over to the democrats; he prudently "hedged" by voting for 6 state republicans, also.

The new convert was made one of the secretaries of the democratic meeting, and placed in the list of speakers. He wrote me jubilantly of what a ten-strike he was going to make with that speech. All right-but think of his innocent and pathetic candor in writing me something like this, a week later:

"I was more diffident than I had expected to be, and this was increased by the silence with which I was received when I came forward; so I seemed unable to get the fire into my speech which I had calculated upon, and presently they began to get up and go out; and in a few minutes they all rose up and went away."

How could a man uncover such a sore as that and show it to another? Not a word of complaint, you see-only a patient, sad surprise.

3. His next project was to write a burlesque upon Paradise Lost.

4. Then, learning that the Times was paying Harte $100 a column for stories, he concluded to write some for the same price. I read his first one and persuaded him not to write any more.

5. Then he read proof on the N. Y. Eve. Post at $10 a week and meekly observed that the foreman swore at him and ordered him around "like a steamboat mate."

6. Being discharged from that post, he wanted to try agriculture-was sure he could make a fortune out of a chicken farm. I gave him $900 and he went to a ten-house village a miles above Keokuk on the river bank-this place was a railway station. He soon asked for money to buy a horse and light wagon,-because the trains did not run at church time on Sunday and his wife found it rather far to walk.

For a long time I answered demands for "loans" and by next mail always received his check for the interest due me to date. In the most guileless way he let it leak out that he did not underestimate the value of his custom to me, since it was not likely that any other customer of mine paid his interest quarterly, and this enabled me to use my capital twice in 6 months instead of only once. But alas, when the debt at last reached $1800 or $2500 (I have forgotten which) the interest ate too formidably into his borrowings, and so he quietly ceased to pay it or speak of it. At the end of two years I found that the chicken farm had long ago been abandoned, and he had moved into Keokuk. Later in one of his casual moments, he observed that there was no money in fattening a chicken on 65 cents worth of corn and then selling it for 50.

7. Finally, if I would lend him $500 a year for two years, (this was 4 or 5 years ago,) he knew he could make a success as a lawyer, and would prove it. This is the pension which we have just increased to $600. The first year his legal business brought him $5. It also brought him an unremunerative case where some villains were trying to chouse some negro orphans out of $700. He still has this case. He has waggled it around through various courts and made some booming speeches on it. The negro children have grown up and married off, now, I believe, and their litigated town-lot has been dug up and carted off by somebody-but Orion still infests the courts with his documents and makes the welkin ring with his venerable case. The second year, he didn't make anything. The third he made $6, and I made Bliss put a case in his hands-about half an hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it-Bliss paid him $15. Thus four or five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library." Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that lair day by day as patiently as a spider.

8. Then he by and by conceived the idea of lecturing around America as "Mark Twain's Brother"-that to be on the bills. Subject of proposed lecture, "On the Formation of Character."

9. I protested, and he got on his warpaint, couched his lance, and ran a bold tilt against total abstinence and the Red Ribbon fanatics. It raised a fine row among the virtuous Keokukians.

10. I wrote to encourage him in his good work, but I had let a mail intervene; so by the time my letter reached him he was already winning laurels as a Red Ribbon Howler.

11. Afterward he took a rabid part in a prayer-meeting epidemic; dropped that to travesty Jules Verne; dropped that, in the middle of the last chapter, last March, to digest the matter of an infidel book which he proposed to write; and now he comes to the surface to rescue our "noble and beautiful religion" from the sacrilegious talons of Bob Ingersoll.

Now come! Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at your feet, but take it up and use it. One can let his imagination run riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be out of character with him.

Well-good-bye, and a short life and a merry one be yours. Poor old Methusaleh, how did he manage to stand it so long?

Yrs ever,

MARK.

* * *

To Orion Clemens Unsent and inclosed with the foregoing, to W. D. Howells:

MUNICH, Feb. 9, (1879)

MY DEAR BRO.,-Yours has just arrived. I enclose a draft on Hartford for $25. You will have abandoned the project you wanted it for, by the time it arrives,-but no matter, apply it to your newer and present project, whatever it is. You see I have an ineradicable faith in your unsteadfastness,-but mind you, I didn't invent that faith, you conferred it on me yourself. But fire away, fire away! I don't see why a changeable man shouldn't get as much enjoyment out of his changes, and transformations and transfigurations as a steadfast man gets out of standing still and pegging at the same old monotonous thing all the time. That is to say, I don't see why a kaleidoscope shouldn't enjoy itself as much as a telescope, nor a grindstone have as good a time as a whetstone, nor a barometer as good a time as a yardstick. I don't feel like girding at you any more about fickleness of purpose, because I recognize and realize at last that it is incurable; but before I learned to accept this truth, each new weekly project of yours possessed the power of throwing me into the most exhausting and helpless convulsions of profanity. But fire away, now! Your magic has lost its might. I am able to view your inspirations dispassionately and judicially, now, and say "This one or that one or the other one is not up to your average flight, or is above it, or below it."

And so, without passion, or prejudice, or bias of any kind, I sit in judgment upon your lecture project, and say it was up to your average, it was indeed above it, for it had possibilities in it, and even practical ones. While I was not sorry you abandoned it, I should not be sorry if you had stuck to it and given it a trial. But on the whole you did the wise thing to lay it aside, I think, because a lecture is a most easy thing to fail in; and at your time of life, and in your own town, such a failure would make a deep and cruel wound in your heart and in your pride. It was decidedly unwise in you to think for a moment of coming before a community who knew you, with such a course of lectures; because Keokuk is not unaware that you have been a Swedenborgian, a Presbyterian, a Congregationalist, and a Methodist (on probation), and that just a year ago you were an infidel. If Keokuk had gone to your lecture course, it would have gone to be amused, not instructed, for when a man is known to have no settled convictions of his own he can't convince other people. They would have gone to be amused and that would have been a deep humiliation to you. It could have been safe for you to appear only where you were unknown-then many of your hearers would think you were in earnest. And they would be right. You are in earnest while your convictions are new. But taking it by and large, you probably did best to discard that project altogether. But I leave you to judge of that, for you are the worst judge I know of.

(Unfinished.)

That Mark Twain in many ways was hardly less child-like than his

brother is now and again revealed in his letters. He was of

steadfast purpose, and he possessed the driving power which Orion

Clemens lacked; but the importance to him of some of the smaller

matters of life, as shown in a letter like the following, bespeaks a

certain simplicity of nature which he never outgrew:

* * *

To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:

MUNICH, Feb. 24. (1879)

DEAR OLD JOE,-It was a mighty good letter, Joe-and that idea of yours is a rattling good one. But I have not sot down here to answer your letter,-for it is down at my study,-but only to impart some information.

For a months I had not shaved without crying. I'd spend 3/4 of an hour whetting away on my hand-no use, couldn't get an edge. Tried a razor strop-same result. So I sat down and put in an hour thinking out the mystery. Then it seemed plain-to wit: my hand can't give a razor an edge, it can only smooth and refine an edge that has already been given. I judge that a razor fresh from the hone is this shape V-the long point being the continuation of the edge-and that after much use the shape is this V-the attenuated edge all worn off and gone. By George I knew that was the explanation. And I knew that a freshly honed and freshly strapped razor won't cut, but after strapping on the hand as a final operation, it will cut.-So I sent out for an oil-stone; none to be had, but messenger brought back a little piece of rock the size of a Safety-match box-(it was bought in a shoemaker's shop) bad flaw in middle of it, too, but I put 4 drops of fine Olive oil on it, picked out the razor marked "Thursday" because it was never any account and would be no loss if I spoiled it-gave it a brisk and reckless honing for 10 minutes, then tried it on a hair-it wouldn't cut. Then I trotted it through a vigorous 20-minute course on a razor-strap and tried it on a hair-it wouldn't cut-tried it on my face-it made me cry-gave it a 5-minute stropping on my hand, and my land, what an edge she had! We thought we knew what sharp razors were when we were tramping in Switzerland, but it was a mistake-they were dull beside this old Thursday razor of mine-which I mean to name Thursday October Christian, in gratitude. I took my whetstone, and in 20 minutes I put two more of my razors in splendid condition-but I leave them in the box-I never use any but Thursday O. C., and shan't till its edge is gone-and then I'll know how to restore it without any delay.

We all go to Paris next Thursday-address, Monroe & Co., Bankers.

With love

Ys Ever

MARK.

In Paris they found pleasant quarters at the Hotel Normandy, but it

was a chilly, rainy spring, and the travelers gained a rather poor

impression of the French capital. Mark Twain's work did not go

well, at first, because of the noises of the street. But then he

found a quieter corner in the hotel and made better progress. In a

brief note to Aldrich he said: "I sleep like a lamb and write like a

lion-I mean the kind of a lion that writes-if any such." He

expected to finish the book in six weeks; that is to say, before

returning to America. He was looking after its illustrations

himself, and a letter to Frank Bliss, of The American Publishing

Company, refers to the frontpiece, which, from time to time, has

caused question as to its origin. To Bliss he says: "It is a thing

which I manufactured by pasting a popular comic picture into the

middle of a celebrated Biblical one-shall attribute it to Titian.

It needs to be engraved by a master."

The weather continued bad in France and they left there in July to

find it little better in England. They had planned a journey to

Scotland to visit Doctor Brown, whose health was not very good. In

after years Mark Twain blamed himself harshly for not making the

trip, which he declared would have meant so much to Mrs. Clemens.

He had forgotten by that time the real reasons for not going-the

continued storms and uncertainty of trains (which made it barely

possible for them to reach Liverpool in time for their

sailing-date), and with characteristic self-reproach vowed that

only perversity and obstinacy on his part had prevented the journey

to Scotland. From Liverpool, on the eve of sailing, he sent Doctor

Brown a good-by word.

* * *

To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

WASHINGTON HOTEL, LIME STREET, LIVERPOOL.

Aug. (1879)

MY DEAR MR. BROWN,-During all the 15 months we have been spending on the continent, we have been promising ourselves a sight of you as our latest and most prized delight in a foreign land-but our hope has failed, our plan has miscarried. One obstruction after another intruded itself, and our short sojourn of three or four weeks on English soil was thus frittered gradually away, and we were at last obliged to give up the idea of seeing you at all. It is a great disappointment, for we wanted to show you how much "Megalopis" has grown (she is 7 now) and what a fine creature her sister is, and how prettily they both speak German. There are six persons in my party, and they are as difficult to cart around as nearly any other menagerie would be. My wife and Miss Spaulding are along, and you may imagine how they take to heart this failure of our long promised Edinburgh trip. We never even wrote you, because we were always so sure, from day to day, that our affairs would finally so shape themselves as to let us get to Scotland. But no,-everything went wrong we had only flying trips here and there in place of the leisurely ones which we had planned.

We arrived in Liverpool an hour ago very tired, and have halted at this hotel (by the advice of misguided friends)-and if my instinct and experience are worth anything, it is the very worst hotel on earth, without any exception. We shall move to another hotel early in the morning to spend to-morrow. We sail for America next day in the "Gallic."

We all join in the sincerest love to you, and in the kindest remembrance to "Jock"-[Son of Doctor Brown.]-and your sister.

Truly yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

It was September 3, 1879, that Mark Twain returned to America by the

steamer Gallic. In the seventeen months of his absence he had taken

on a "traveled look" and had added gray hairs. A New York paper

said of his arrival that he looked older than when he went to

Germany, and that his hair had turned quite gray.

Mark Twain had not finished his book of travel in Paris-in fact,

it seemed to him far from complete-and he settled down rather

grimly to work on it at Quarry Farm. When, after a few days no word

of greeting came from Howells, Clemens wrote to ask if he were dead

or only sleeping. Howells hastily sent a line to say that he had

been sleeping "The sleep of a torpid conscience. I will feign that

I did not know where to write you; but I love you and all of yours,

and I am tremendously glad that you are home again. When and where

shall we meet? Have you come home with your pockets full of

Atlantic papers?" Clemens, toiling away at his book, was, as usual,

not without the prospect of other plans. Orion, as literary

material, never failed to excite him.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Sept. 15, 1879.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-When and where? Here on the farm would be an elegant place to meet, but of course you cannot come so far. So we will say Hartford or Belmont, about the beginning of November. The date of our return to Hartford is uncertain, but will be three or four weeks hence, I judge. I hope to finish my book here before migrating.

I think maybe I've got some Atlantic stuff in my head, but there's none in MS, I believe.

Say-a friend of mine wants to write a play with me, I to furnish the broad-comedy cuss. I don't know anything about his ability, but his letter serves to remind me of our old projects. If you haven't used Orion or Old Wakeman, don't you think you and I can get together and grind out a play with one of those fellows in it? Orion is a field which grows richer and richer the more he mulches it with each new top-dressing of religion or other guano. Drop me an immediate line about this, won't you? I imagine I see Orion on the stage, always gentle, always melancholy, always changing his politics and religion, and trying to reform the world, always inventing something, and losing a limb by a new kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap, he is good material. I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to see him waltz into the next one and leave her isolated once more.

(Mem. Orion's wife has followed him into the outer darkness, after 30 years' rabid membership in the Presbyterian Church.)

Well, with the sincerest and most abounding love to you and yours, from all this family, I am,

Yrs ever

MARK.

The idea of the play interested Howells, but he had twinges of

conscience in the matter of using Orion as material. He wrote:

"More than once I have taken the skeleton of that comedy of ours and

viewed it with tears..... I really have a compunction or two about

helping to put your brother into drama. You can say that he is your

brother, to do what you like with him, but the alien hand might

inflict an incurable hurt on his tender heart."

As a matter of fact, Orion Clemens had a keen appreciation of his

own shortcomings, and would have enjoyed himself in a play as much

as any observer of it. Indeed, it is more than likely that he would

have been pleased at the thought of such distinguished

dramatization. From the next letter one might almost conclude that

he had received a hint of this plan, and was bent upon supplying

rich material.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

ELMIRA, Oct. 9 '79.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-Since my return, the mail facilities have enabled Orion to keep me informed as to his intentions. Twenty-eight days ago it was his purpose to complete a work aimed at religion, the preface to which he had already written. Afterward he began to sell off his furniture, with the idea of hurrying to Leadville and tackling silver-mining-threw up his law den and took in his sign. Then he wrote to Chicago and St. Louis newspapers asking for a situation as "paragrapher"-enclosing a taste of his quality in the shape of two stanzas of "humorous rhymes." By a later mail on the same day he applied to New York and Hartford insurance companies for copying to do.

However, it would take too long to detail all his projects. They comprise a removal to south-west Missouri; application for a reporter's berth on a Keokuk paper; application for a compositor's berth on a St. Louis paper; a re-hanging of his attorney's sign, "though it only creaks and catches no flies;" but last night's letter informs me that he has retackled the religious question, hired a distant den to write in, applied to my mother for $50 to re-buy his furniture, which has advanced in value since the sale-purposes buying $25 worth of books necessary to his labors which he had previously been borrowing, and his first chapter is already on its way to me for my decision as to whether it has enough ungodliness in it or not. Poor Orion!

Your letter struck me while I was meditating a project to beguile you, and John Hay and Joe Twichell, into a descent upon Chicago which I dream of making, to witness the re-union of the great Commanders of the Western Army Corps on the 9th of next month. My sluggish soul needs a fierce upstirring, and if it would not get it when Grant enters the meeting place I must doubtless "lay" for the final resurrection. Can you and Hay go? At the same time, confound it, I doubt if I can go myself, for this book isn't done yet. But I would give a heap to be there. I mean to heave some holiness into the Hartford primaries when I go back; and if there was a solitary office in the land which majestic ignorance and incapacity, coupled with purity of heart, could fill, I would run for it. This naturally reminds me of Bret Harte-but let him pass.

We propose to leave here for New York Oct. 21, reaching Hartford 24th or 25th. If, upon reflection, you Howellses find, you can stop over here on your way, I wish you would do it, and telegraph me. Getting pretty hungry to see you. I had an idea that this was your shortest way home, but like as not my geography is crippled again-it usually is.

Yrs ever

MARK.

The "Reunion of the Great Commanders," mentioned in the foregoing,

was a welcome to General Grant after his journey around the world.

Grant's trip had been one continuous ovation-a triumphal march.

In '79 most of his old commanders were still alive, and they had

planned to assemble in Chicago to do him honor. A Presidential year

was coming on, but if there was anything political in the project

there were no surface indications. Mark Twain, once a Confederate

soldier, had long since been completely "desouthernized"-at least

to the point where he felt that the sight of old comrades paying

tribute to the Union commander would stir his blood as perhaps it

had not been stirred, even in that earlier time, when that same

commander had chased him through the Missouri swamps. Grant,

indeed, had long since become a hero to Mark Twain, though it is

highly unlikely that Clemens favored the idea of a third term. Some

days following the preceding letter an invitation came for him to be

present at the Chicago reunion; but by this time he had decided not

to go. The letter he wrote has been preserved.

* * *

To Gen. William E. Strong, in Chicago:

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.

Oct. 28, 1879.

GEN. WM. E. STRONG, CH'M, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE:

I have been hoping during several weeks that it might be my good fortune to receive an invitation to be present on that great occasion in Chicago; but now that my desire is accomplished my business matters have so shaped themselves as to bar me from being so far from home in the first half of November. It is with supreme regret that I lost this chance, for I have not had a thorough stirring up for some years, and I judged that if I could be in the banqueting hall and see and hear the veterans of the Army of the Tennessee at the moment that their old commander entered the room, or rose in his place to speak, my system would get the kind of upheaval it needs. General Grant's progress across the continent is of the marvelous nature of the returning Napoleon's progress from Grenoble to Paris; and as the crowning spectacle in the one case was the meeting with the Old Guard, so, likewise, the crowning spectacle in the other will be our great captain's meeting with his Old Guard-and that is the very climax which I wanted to witness.

Besides, I wanted to see the General again, any way, and renew the acquaintance. He would remember me, because I was the person who did not ask him for an office. However, I consume your time, and also wander from the point-which is, to thank you for the courtesy of your invitation, and yield up my seat at the table to some other guest who may possibly grace it better, but will certainly not appreciate its privileges more, than I should.

With great respect,

I am, Gentlemen,

Very truly yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Private:-I beg to apologize for my delay, gentlemen, but the card of invitation went to Elmira, N. Y. and hence has only just now reached me.

This letter was not sent. He reconsidered and sent an acceptance,

agreeing to speak, as the committee had requested. Certainly there

was something picturesque in the idea of the Missouri private who

had been chased for a rainy fortnight through the swamps of Ralls

County being selected now to join in welcome to his ancient enemy.

The great reunion was to be something more than a mere banquet. It

would continue for several days, with processions, great

assemblages, and much oratory.

Mark Twain arrived in Chicago in good season to see it all. Three

letters to Mrs. Clemens intimately present his experiences: his

enthusiastic enjoyment and his own personal triumph.

The first was probably written after the morning of his arrival.

The Doctor Jackson in it was Dr. A. Reeves Jackson, the

guide-dismaying "Doctor" of Innocents Abroad.

* * *

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

PALMER HOUSE, CHICAGO, Nov. 11.

Livy darling, I am getting a trifle leg-weary. Dr. Jackson called and dragged me out of bed at noon, yesterday, and then went off. I went down stairs and was introduced to some scores of people, and among them an elderly German gentleman named Raster, who said his wife owed her life to me-hurt in Chicago fire and lay menaced with death a long time, but the Innocents Abroad kept her mind in a cheerful attitude, and so, with the doctor's help for the body she pulled through.... They drove me to Dr. Jackson's and I had an hour's visit with Mrs. Jackson. Started to walk down Michigan Avenue, got a few steps on my way and met an erect, soldierly looking young gentleman who offered his hand; said, "Mr. Clemens, I believe-I wish to introduce myself-you were pointed out to me yesterday as I was driving down street-my name is Grant."

"Col. Fred Grant?"

"Yes. My house is not ten steps away, and I would like you to come and have a talk and a pipe, and let me introduce my wife."

So we turned back and entered the house next to Jackson's and talked something more than an hour and smoked many pipes and had a sociable good time. His wife is very gentle and intelligent and pretty, and they have a cunning little girl nearly as big as Bay but only three years old. They wanted me to come in and spend an evening, after the banquet, with them and Gen. Grant, after this grand pow-wow is over, but I said I was going home Friday. Then they asked me to come Friday afternoon, when they and the general will receive a few friends, and I said I would. Col. Grant said he and Gen. Sherman used the Innocents Abroad as their guide book when they were on their travels.

I stepped in next door and took Dr. Jackson to the hotel and we played billiards from 7 to 11.30 P.M. and then went to a beer-mill to meet some twenty Chicago journalists-talked, sang songs and made speeches till 6 o'clock this morning. Nobody got in the least degree "under the influence," and we had a pleasant time. Read awhile in bed, slept till 11, shaved, went to breakfast at noon, and by mistake got into the servants' hall. I remained there and breakfasted with twenty or thirty male and female servants, though I had a table to myself.

A temporary structure, clothed and canopied with flags, has been erected at the hotel front, and connected with the second-story windows of a drawing-room. It was for Gen. Grant to stand on and review the procession. Sixteen persons, besides reporters, had tickets for this place, and a seventeenth was issued for me. I was there, looking down on the packed and struggling crowd when Gen. Grant came forward and was saluted by the cheers of the multitude and the waving of ladies' handkerchiefs-for the windows and roofs of all neighboring buildings were massed full of life. Gen. Grant bowed to the people two or three times, then approached my side of the platform and the mayor pulled me forward and introduced me. It was dreadfully conspicuous. The General said a word or so-I replied, and then said, "But I'll step back, General, I don't want to interrupt your speech."

"But I'm not going to make any-stay where you are-I'll get you to make it for me."

General Sherman came on the platform wearing the uniform of a full General, and you should have heard the cheers. Gen. Logan was going to introduce me, but I didn't want any more conspicuousness.

When the head of the procession passed it was grand to see Sheridan, in his military cloak and his plumed chapeau, sitting as erect and rigid as a statue on his immense black horse-by far the most martial figure I ever saw. And the crowd roared again.

It was chilly, and Gen. Deems lent me his overcoat until night. He came a few minutes ago-5.45 P.M., and got it, but brought Gen. Willard, who lent me his for the rest of my stay, and will get another for himself when he goes home to dinner. Mine is much too heavy for this warm weather.

I have a seat on the stage at Haverley's Theatre, tonight, where the Army of the Tennessee will receive Gen. Grant, and where Gen. Sherman will make a speech. At midnight I am to attend a meeting of the Owl Club.

I love you ever so much, my darling, and am hoping to get a word from you yet.

SAML.

Following the procession, which he describes, came the grand

ceremonies of welcome at Haverley's Theatre. The next letter is

written the following morning, or at least soiree time the following

day, after a night of ratification.

* * *

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

CHICAGO, Nov. 12, '79.

Livy darling, it was a great time. There were perhaps thirty people on the stage of the theatre, and I think I never sat elbow-to-elbow with so many historic names before. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield, Pope, Logan, Augur, and so on. What an iron man Grant is! He sat facing the house, with his right leg crossed over his left and his right boot-sole tilted up at an angle, and his left hand and arm reposing on the arm of his chair-you note that position? Well, when glowing references were made to other grandees on the stage, those grandees always showed a trifle of nervous consciousness-and as these references came frequently, the nervous change of position and attitude were also frequent. But Grant!-he was under a tremendous and ceaseless bombardment of praise and gratulation, but as true as I'm sitting here he never moved a muscle of his body for a single instant, during 30 minutes! You could have played him on a stranger for an effigy. Perhaps he never would have moved, but at last a speaker made such a particularly ripping and blood-stirring remark about him that the audience rose and roared and yelled and stamped and clapped an entire minute-Grant sitting as serene as ever-when Gen. Sherman stepped to him, laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder, bent respectfully down and whispered in his ear. Gen. Grant got up and bowed, and the storm of applause swelled into a hurricane. He sat down, took about the same position and froze to it till by and by there was another of those deafening and protracted roars, when Sherman made him get up and bow again. He broke up his attitude once more-the extent of something more than a hair's breadth-to indicate me to Sherman when the house was keeping up a determined and persistent call for me, and poor bewildered Sherman, (who did not know me), was peering abroad over the packed audience for me, not knowing I was only three feet from him and most conspicuously located, (Gen. Sherman was Chairman.)

One of the most illustrious individuals on that stage was "Ole Abe," the historic war eagle. He stood on his perch-the old savage-eyed rascal-three or four feet behind Gen. Sherman, and as he had been in nearly every battle that was mentioned by the orators his soul was probably stirred pretty often, though he was too proud to let on.

Read Logan's bosh, and try to imagine a burly and magnificent Indian, in General's uniform, striking a heroic attitude and getting that stuff off in the style of a declaiming school-boy.

Please put the enclosed scraps in the drawer and I will scrap-book them.

I only staid at the Owl Club till 3 this morning and drank little or nothing. Went to sleep without whisky. Ich liebe dish.

SAML.

But it is in the third letter that we get the climax. On the same

day he wrote a letter to Howells, which, in part, is very similar in

substance and need not be included here.

A paragraph, however, must not be omitted.

"Imagine what it was like to see a bullet-shredded old battle-flag

reverently unfolded to the gaze of a thousand middle-aged soldiers,

most of whom hadn't seen it since they saw it advancing over

victorious fields, when they were in their prime. And imagine what

it was like when Grant, their first commander, stepped into view

while they were still going mad over the flag, and then right in the

midst of it all somebody struck up, 'When we were marching through

Georgia.' Well, you should have heard the thousand voices lift that

chorus and seen the tears stream down. If I live a hundred years I

shan't ever forget these things, nor be able to talk about them....

Grand times, my boy, grand times!"

At the great banquet Mark Twain's speech had been put last on the

program, to hold the house. He had been invited to respond to the

toast of "The Ladies," but had replied that he had already responded

to that toast more than once. There was one class of the community,

he said, commonly overlooked on these occasions-the babies-he

would respond to that toast. In his letter to Howells he had not

been willing to speak freely of his personal triumph, but to Mrs.

Clemens he must tell it all, and with that child-like ingenuousness

which never failed him to his last day.

* * *

To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford:

CHICAGO, Nov. 14 '79.

A little after 5 in the morning.

I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard four speeches which I can never forget. One by Emory Storrs, one by Gen. Vilas (O, wasn't it wonderful!) one by Gen. Logan (mighty stirring), one by somebody whose name escapes me, and one by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll,-oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began. My soul, how handsome he looked, as he stood on that table, in the midst of those 500 shouting men, and poured the molten silver from his lips! Lord, what an organ is human speech when it is played by a master! All these speeches may look dull in print, but how the lightning glared around them when they were uttered, and how the crowd roared in response! It was a great night, a memorable night. I am so richly repaid for my journey-and how I did wish with all my whole heart that you were there to be lifted into the very seventh heaven of enthusiasm, as I was. The army songs, the military music, the crashing applause-Lord bless me, it was unspeakable.

Out of compliment they placed me last in the list-No. 15-I was to "hold the crowd"-and bless my life I was in awful terror when No. 14. rose, at a o'clock this morning and killed all the enthusiasm by delivering the flattest, insipidest, silliest of all responses to "Woman" that ever a weary multitude listened to. Then Gen. Sherman (Chairman) announced my toast, and the crowd gave me a good round of applause as I mounted on top of the dinner table, but it was only on account of my name, nothing more-they were all tired and wretched. They let my first sentence go in silence, till I paused and added "we stand on common ground"-then they burst forth like a hurricane and I saw that I had them! From that time on, I stopped at the end of each sentence, and let the tornado of applause and laughter sweep around me-and when I closed with "And if the child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded," I say it who oughtn't to say it, the house came down with a crash. For two hours and a half, now, I've been shaking hands and listening to congratulations. Gen. Sherman said, "Lord bless you, my boy, I don't know how you do it-it's a secret that's beyond me-but it was great-give me your hand again."

And do you know, Gen. Grant sat through fourteen speeches like a graven image, but I fetched him! I broke him up, utterly! He told me he laughed till the tears came and every bone in his body ached. (And do you know, the biggest part of the success of the speech lay in the fact that the audience saw that for once in his life he had been knocked out of his iron serenity.)

Bless your soul, 'twas immense. I never was so proud in my life. Lots and lots of people-hundreds I might say-told me my speech was the triumph of the evening-which was a lie. Ladies, Tom, Dick and Harry-even the policemen-captured me in the halls and shook hands, and scores of army officers said "We shall always be grateful to you for coming." General Pope came to bunt me up-I was afraid to speak to him on that theatre stage last night, thinking it might be presumptuous to tackle a man so high up in military history. Gen. Schofield, and other historic men, paid their compliments. Sheridan was ill and could not come, but I'm to go with a General of his staff and see him before I go to Col. Grant's. Gen. Augur-well, I've talked with them all, received invitations from them all-from people living everywhere-and as I said before, it's a memorable night. I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world.

But my sakes, you should have heard Ingersoll's speech on that table! Half an hour ago he ran across me in the crowded halls and put his arms about me and said "Mark, if I live a hundred years, I'll always be grateful for your speech-Lord what a supreme thing it was." But I told him it wasn't any use to talk, he had walked off with the honors of that occasion by something of a majority. Bully boy is Ingersoll-traveled with him in the cars the other day, and you can make up your mind we had a good time.

Of course I forgot to go and pay for my hotel car and so secure it, but the army officers told me an hour ago to rest easy, they would go at once, at this unholy hour of the night and compel the railways to do their duty by me, and said "You don't need to request the Army of the Tennessee to do your desires-you can command its services."

Well, I bummed around that banquet hall from 8 in the evening till 2 in the morning, talking with people and listening to speeches, and I never ate a single bite or took a sup of anything but ice water, so if I seem excited now, it is the intoxication of supreme enthusiasm. By George, it was a grand night, a historical night.

And now it is a quarter past 6 A.M.-so good bye and God bless you and the Bays,-[Family word for babies]-my darlings

SAML.

Show it to Joe if you want to-I saw some of his friends here.

Mark Twain's admiration for Robert Ingersoll was very great, and we may believe that he was deeply impressed by the Chicago speech, when we find him, a few days later, writing to Ingersoll for a perfect copy to read to a young girls' club in Hartford. Ingersoll sent the speech, also some of his books, and the next letter is Mark Twain's acknowledgment.

* * *

To Col. Robert G. Ingersoll:

HARTFORD, Dec. 14.

MY DEAR INGERSOLL,-Thank you most heartily for the books-I am devouring them-they have found a hungry place, and they content it and satisfy it to a miracle. I wish I could hear you speak these splendid chapters before a great audience-to read them by myself and hear the boom of the applause only in the ear of my imagination, leaves a something wanting-and there is also a still greater lack, your manner, and voice, and presence.

The Chicago speech arrived an hour too late, but I was all right anyway, for I found that my memory had been able to correct all the errors. I read it to the Saturday Club (of young girls) and told them to remember that it was doubtful if its superior existed in our language.

Truly Yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

The reader may remember Mark Twain's Whittier dinner speech of 1877,

and its disastrous effects. Now, in 1879, there was to be another

Atlantic gathering: a breakfast to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to

which Clemens was invited. He was not eager to accept; it would

naturally recall memories of two years before, but being urged by

both Howells and Warner, he agreed to attend if they would permit

him to speak. Mark Twain never lacked courage and he wanted to

redeem himself. To Howells he wrote:

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Nov. 28, 1879.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-If anybody talks, there, I shall claim the right to say a word myself, and be heard among the very earliest-else it would be confoundedly awkward for me-and for the rest, too. But you may read what I say, beforehand, and strike out whatever you choose.

Of course I thought it wisest not to be there at all; but Warner took the opposite view, and most strenuously.

Speaking of Johnny's conclusion to become an outlaw, reminds me of Susie's newest and very earnest longing-to have crooked teeth and glasses-"like Mamma."

I would like to look into a child's head, once, and see what its processes are.

Yrs ever,

S. L. CLEMENS.

The matter turned out well. Clemens, once more introduced by

Howells-this time conservatively, it may be said-delivered a

delicate and fitting tribute to Doctor Holmes, full of graceful

humor and grateful acknowledgment, the kind of speech he should have

given at the Whittier dinner of two years before. No reference was

made to his former disaster, and this time he came away covered with

glory, and fully restored in his self-respect.

XX. LETTERS OF 1880, CHIEFLY TO HOWELLS. "THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER." MARK TWAIN MUGWUMP SOCIETY.

The book of travel,-[A Tramp Abroad.]-which Mark Twain had

hoped to finish in Paris, and later in Elmira, for some

reason would not come to an end. In December, in Hartford,

he was still working on it, and he would seem to have

finished it, at last, rather by a decree than by any natural

process of authorship. This was early in January, 1880. To

Howells he reports his difficulties, and his drastic method

of ending them.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Jan. 8, '80.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-Am waiting for Patrick to come with the carriage. Mrs. Clemens and I are starting (without the children) to stay indefinitely in Elmira. The wear and tear of settling the house broke her down, and she has been growing weaker and weaker for a fortnight. All that time-in fact ever since I saw you-I have been fighting a life-and-death battle with this infernal book and hoping to get done some day. I required 300 pages of MS, and I have written near 600 since I saw you-and tore it all up except 288. This I was about to tear up yesterday and begin again, when Mrs. Perkins came up to the billiard room and said, "You will never get any woman to do the thing necessary to save her life by mere persuasion; you see you have wasted your words for three weeks; it is time to use force; she must have a change; take her home and leave the children here."

I said, "If there is one death that is painfuller than another, may I get it if I don't do that thing."

So I took the 288 pages to Bliss and told him that was the very last line I should ever write on this book. (A book which required 2600 pages of MS, and I have written nearer four thousand, first and last.)

I am as soary (and flighty) as a rocket, to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been roosting for more than a year and a half. Next time I make a contract before writing the book, may I suffer the righteous penalty and be burnt, like the injudicious believer.

I am mighty glad you are done your book (this is from a man who, above all others, feels how much that sentence means) and am also mighty glad you have begun the next (this is also from a man who knows the felicity of that, and means straightway to enjoy it.) The Undiscovered starts off delightfully-I have read it aloud to Mrs. C. and we vastly enjoyed it.

Well, time's about up-must drop a line to Aldrich.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

In a letter which Mark Twain wrote to his brother Orion at this

period we get the first hint of a venture which was to play an

increasingly important part in the Hartford home and fortunes during

the next ten or a dozen years. This was the type-setting machine

investment, which, in the end, all but wrecked Mark Twain's

finances. There is but a brief mention of it in the letter to

Orion, and the letter itself is not worth preserving, but as

references to the "machine" appear with increasing frequency, it

seems proper to record here its first mention. In the same letter

he suggests to his brother that he undertake an absolutely truthful

autobiography, a confession in which nothing is to be withheld. He

cites the value of Casanova's memories, and the confessions of

Rousseau. Of course, any literary suggestion from "Brother Sam" was

gospel to Orion, who began at once piling up manuscript at a great

rate.

Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got 'A Tramp Abroad' on the

presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three

years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he

called it then, "The Little Prince and The Little Pauper." He was

presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Mch. 11, '80.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-... I take so much pleasure in my story that I am loth to hurry, not wanting to get it done. Did I ever tell you the plot of it? It begins at 9 a.m., Jan. 27, 1547, seventeen and a half hours before Henry VIII's death, by the swapping of clothes and place, between the prince of Wales and a pauper boy of the same age and countenance (and half as much learning and still more genius and imagination) and after that, the rightful small King has a rough time among tramps and ruffians in the country parts of Kent, whilst the small bogus King has a gilded and worshipped and dreary and restrained and cussed time of it on the throne-and this all goes on for three weeks-till the midst of the coronation grandeurs in Westminster Abbey, Feb. 20, when the ragged true King forces his way in but cannot prove his genuineness-until the bogus King, by a remembered incident of the first day is able to prove it for him-whereupon clothes are changed and the coronation proceeds under the new and rightful conditions.

My idea is to afford a realizing sense of the exceeding severity of the laws of that day by inflicting some of their penalties upon the King himself and allowing him a chance to see the rest of them applied to others-all of which is to account for certain mildnesses which distinguished Edward VI's reign from those that preceded and followed it.

Imagine this fact-I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for youth. My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way. She is become the horseleech's daughter and my mill doesn't grind fast enough to suit her. This is no mean triumph, my dear sir.

Last night, for the first time in ages, we went to the theatre-to see Yorick's Love. The magnificence of it is beyond praise. The language is so beautiful, the passion so fine, the plot so ingenious, the whole thing so stirring, so charming, so pathetic! But I will clip from the Courant-it says it right.

And what a good company it is, and how like live people they all acted! The "thee's" and the "thou's" had a pleasant sound, since it is the language of the Prince and the Pauper. You've done the country a service in that admirable work....

Yrs Ever,

MARK.

The play, "Yorick's Love," mentioned in this letter, was one which

Howells had done for Lawrence Barrett.

Onion Clemens, meantime, was forwarding his manuscript, and for once

seems to have won his brother's approval, so much so that Mark Twain

was willing, indeed anxious, that Howells should run the

"autobiography" in the Atlantic. We may imagine how Onion prized

the words of commendation which follow:

* * *

To Orion Clemens:

May 6, '80.

MY DEAR BROTHER,-It is a model autobiography.

Continue to develop your character in the same gradual inconspicuous and apparently unconscious way. The reader, up to this time, may have his doubts, perhaps, but he can't say decidedly, "This writer is not such a simpleton as he has been letting on to be." Keep him in that state of mind. If, when you shall have finished, the reader shall say, "The man is an ass, but I really don't know whether he knows it or not," your work will be a triumph.

Stop re-writing. I saw places in your last batch where re-writing had done formidable injury. Do not try to find those places, else you will mar them further by trying to better them. It is perilous to revise a book while it is under way. All of us have injured our books in that foolish way.

Keep in mind what I told you-when you recollect something which belonged in an earlier chapter, do not go back, but jam it in where you are. Discursiveness does not hurt an autobiography in the least.

I have penciled the MS here and there, but have not needed to make any criticisms or to knock out anything.

The elder Bliss has heart disease badly, and thenceforth his life hangs upon a thread.

Yr Bro

SAM.

But Howells could not bring himself to print so frank a confession

as Orion had been willing to make. "It wrung my heart," he said,

"and I felt haggard after I had finished it. The writer's soul is

laid bare; it is shocking." Howells added that the best touches in

it were those which made one acquainted with the writer's brother;

that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable

material hereafter-a true prophecy, for Mark Twain's early

biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least

half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately

preserved. Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have

proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing

off into by-paths of theology and discussion where the interest was

lost. There were, perhaps, as many as two thousand pages of it,

which few could undertake to read.

Mark Twain's mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of

them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely

whimsical character. Once he proposed a "Modest Club," of which the

first and main qualification for membership was modesty. "At

present," he wrote, "I am the only member; and as the modesty

required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem

for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of

further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion

that you are eligible. Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted

to offer you the distinction of membership. I do not know that we

can find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner,

Twichell, Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more

-together with Mrs. Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others

of the sex."

Howells replied that the only reason he had for not joining the

Modest Club was that he was too modest-too modest to confess his

modesty. "If I could get over this difficulty I should like to

join, for I approve highly of the Club and its object.... It ought

to be given an annual dinner at the public expense. If you think I

am not too modest you may put my name down and I will try to think

the same of you. Mrs. Howells applauded the notion of the club from

the very first. She said that she knew one thing: that she was

modest enough, anyway. Her manner of saying it implied that the

other persons you had named were not, and created a painful

impression in my mind. I have sent your letter and the rules to

Hay, but I doubt his modesty. He will think he has a right to

belong to it as much as you or I; whereas, other people ought only

to be admitted on sufferance."

Our next letter to Howells is, in the main, pure foolery, but we get

in it a hint what was to become in time one of Mask Twain's

strongest interests, the matter of copyright. He had both a

personal and general interest in the subject. His own books were

constantly pirated in Canada, and the rights of foreign authors were

not respected in America. We have already seen how he had drawn a

petition which Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and others were to sign,

and while nothing had come of this plan he had never ceased to

formulate others. Yet he hesitated when he found that the proposed

protection was likely to work a hardship to readers of the poorer

class. Once he wrote: "My notions have mightily changed lately....

I can buy a lot of the copyright classics, in paper, at from three

to thirty cents apiece. These things must find their way into the

very kitchens and hovels of the country..... And even if the treaty

will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a

year, I am down on it anyway, and I'd like cussed well to write an

article opposing the treaty."

* * *

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

Thursday, June 6th, 1880.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-There you stick, at Belmont, and now I'm going to Washington for a few days; and of course, between you and Providence that visit is going to get mixed, and you'll have been here and gone again just about the time I get back. Bother it all, I wanted to astonish you with a chapter or two from Orion's latest book-not the seventeen which he has begun in the last four months, but the one which he began last week.

Last night, when I went to bed, Mrs. Clemens said, "George didn't take the cat down to the cellar-Rosa says he has left it shut up in the conservatory." So I went down to attend to Abner (the cat.) About 3 in the morning Mrs. C. woke me and said, "I do believe I hear that cat in the drawing-room-what did you do with him?" I answered up with the confidence of a man who has managed to do the right thing for once, and said "I opened the conservatory doors, took the library off the alarm, and spread everything open, so that there wasn't any obstruction between him and the cellar." Language wasn't capable of conveying this woman's disgust. But the sense of what she said, was, "He couldn't have done any harm in the conservatory-so you must go and make the entire house free to him and the burglars, imagining that he will prefer the coal-bins to the drawing-room. If you had had Mr. Howells to help you, I should have admired but not been astonished, because I should know that together you would be equal to it; but how you managed to contrive such a stately blunder all by yourself, is what I cannot understand."

So, you see, even she knows how to appreciate our gifts.

Brisk times here.-Saturday, these things happened: Our neighbor Chas. Smith was stricken with heart disease, and came near joining the majority; my publisher, Bliss, ditto, ditto; a neighbor's child died; neighbor Whitmore's sixth child added to his five other cases of measles; neighbor Niles sent for, and responded; Susie Warner down, abed; Mrs. George Warner threatened with death during several hours; her son Frank, whilst imitating the marvels in Barnum's circus bills, thrown from his aged horse and brought home insensible: Warner's friend Max Yortzburgh, shot in the back by a locomotive and broken into 32 distinct pieces and his life threatened; and Mrs. Clemens, after writing all these cheerful things to Clara Spaulding, taken at midnight, and if the doctor had not been pretty prompt the contemplated Clemens would have called before his apartments were ready.

However, everybody is all right, now, except Yortzburg, and he is mending-that is, he is being mended. I knocked off, during these stirring times, and don't intend to go to work again till we go away for the Summer, 3 or 6 weeks hence. So I am writing to you not because I have anything to say, but because you don't have to answer and I need something to do this afternoon.....

I have a letter from a Congressman this morning, and he says Congress couldn't be persuaded to bother about Canadian pirates at a time like this when all legislation must have a political and Presidential bearing, else Congress won't look at it. So have changed my mind and my course; I go north, to kill a pirate. I must procure repose some way, else I cannot get down to work again.

Pray offer my most sincere and respectful approval to the President-is approval the proper word? I find it is the one I most value here in the household and seldomest get.

With our affection to you both.

Yrs ever

MARK.

It was always dangerous to send strangers with letters of

introduction to Mark Twain. They were so apt to arrive at the wrong

time, or to find him in the wrong mood. Howells was willing to risk

it, and that the result was only amusing instead of tragic is the

best proof of their friendship.

* * *

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

June 9, '80.

Well, old practical joker, the corpse of Mr. X--has been here, and I have bedded it and fed it, and put down my work during 24 hours and tried my level best to make it do something, or say something, or appreciate something-but no, it was worse than Lazarus. A kind-hearted, well-meaning corpse was the Boston young man, but lawsy bless me, horribly dull company. Now, old man, unless you have great confidence in Mr. X's judgment, you ought to make him submit his article to you before he prints it. For only think how true I was to you: Every hour that he was here I was saying, gloatingly, "O G- d-- you, when you are in bed and your light out, I will fix you" (meaning to kill him)...., but then the thought would follow-"No, Howells sent him-he shall be spared, he shall be respected he shall travel hell-wards by his own route."

Breakfast is frozen by this time, and Mrs. Clemens correspondingly hot. Good bye.

Yrs ever,

MARK.

"I did not expect you to ask that man to live with you," Howells

answered. "What I was afraid of was that you would turn him out of

doors, on sight, and so I tried to put in a good word for him.

After this when I want you to board people, I'll ask you. I am

sorry for your suffering. I suppose I have mostly lost my smell for

bores; but yours is preternaturally keen. I shall begin to be

afraid I bore you. (How does that make you feel?)"

In a letter to Twichell-a remarkable letter-when baby Jean Clemens

was about a month old, we get a happy hint of conditions at Quarry

Farm, and in the background a glimpse of Mark Twain's unfailing

tragic reflection.

* * *

To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford:

QUARRY FARM, Aug. 29 ['80].

DEAR OLD JOE,-Concerning Jean Clemens, if anybody said he "didn't see no pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," I should think he was convicting himself of being a pretty poor sort of observer.... I will not go into details; it is not necessary; you will soon be in Hartford, where I have already hired a hall; the admission fee will be but a trifle.

It is curious to note the change in the stock-quotation of the Affection Board brought about by throwing this new security on the market. Four weeks ago the children still put Mamma at the head of the list right along, where she had always been. But now:

Jean

Mamma

Motley [a cat]

Fraulein [another]

Papa

That is the way it stands, now Mamma is become No. 2; I have dropped from No. 4., and am become No. 5. Some time ago it used to be nip and tuck between me and the cats, but after the cats "developed" I didn't stand any more show.

I've got a swollen ear; so I take advantage of it to lie abed most of the day, and read and smoke and scribble and have a good time. Last evening Livy said with deep concern, "O dear, I believe an abscess is forming in your ear."

I responded as the poet would have done if he had had a cold in the head-

"Tis said that abscess conquers love,

But O believe it not."

This made a coolness.

Been reading Daniel Webster's Private Correspondence. Have read a hundred of his diffuse, conceited, "eloquent," bathotic (or bathostic) letters written in that dim (no, vanished) Past when he was a student; and Lord, to think that this boy who is so real to me now, and so booming with fresh young blood and bountiful life, and sappy cynicisms about girls, has since climbed the Alps of fame and stood against the sun one brief tremendous moment with the world's eyes upon him, and then-f-z-t-! where is he? Why the only long thing, the only real thing about the whole shadowy business is the sense of the lagging dull and hoary lapse of time that has drifted by since then; a vast empty level, it seems, with a formless spectre glimpsed fitfully through the smoke and mist that lie along its remote verge.

Well, we are all getting along here first-rate; Livy gains strength daily, and sits up a deal; the baby is five weeks old and-but no more of this; somebody may be reading this letter 80 years hence. And so, my friend (you pitying snob, I mean, who are holding this yellow paper in your hand in 1960,) save yourself the trouble of looking further; I know how pathetically trivial our small concerns will seem to you, and I will not let your eye profane them. No, I keep my news; you keep your compassion. Suffice it you to know, scoffer and ribald, that the little child is old and blind, now, and once more toothless; and the rest of us are shadows, these many, many years. Yes, and your time cometh!

MARK.

At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the

Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end

September 19th. It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving. The

book by Aldrich here mentioned was 'The Stillwater Tragedy.'

* * *

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

ELMIRA, Sept. 15, '80.

MY DEAR ALDRICH,-Thank you ever so much for the book-I had already finished it, and prodigiously enjoyed it, in the periodical of the notorious Howells, but it hits Mrs. Clemens just right, for she is having a reading holiday, now, for the first time in same months; so between-times, when the new baby is asleep and strengthening up for another attempt to take possession of this place, she is going to read it. Her strong friendship for you makes her think she is going to like it.

I finished a story yesterday, myself. I counted up and found it between sixty and eighty thousand words-about the size of your book. It is for boys and girls-been at work at it several years, off and on.

I hope Howells is enjoying his journey to the Pacific. He wrote me that you and Osgood were going, also, but I doubted it, believing he was in liquor when he wrote it. In my opinion, this universal applause over his book is going to land that man in a Retreat inside of two months. I notice the papers say mighty fine things about your book, too. You ought to try to get into the same establishment with Howells. But applause does not affect me-I am always calm-this is because I am used to it.

Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you. Mrs. Clemens asks me to send her warmest regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich-which I do, and add those of

Yrs ever

MARK.

While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a

middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning

Call. Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his

associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic.

But Soule's gift had never been an important one. Now, in his old

age, he found his fame still local, and he yearned for wider

recognition. He wished to have a volume of poems issued by a

publisher of recognized standing. Because Mark Twain had been one

of Soule's admirers and a warm friend in the old days, it was

natural that Soule should turn to him now, and equally natural that

Clemens should turn to Howells.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Sunday, Oct. 2 '80.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-Here's a letter which I wrote you to San Francisco the second time you didn't go there.... I told Soule he needn't write you, but simply send the MS. to you. O dear, dear, it is dreadful to be an unrecognized poet. How wise it was in Charles Warren Stoddard to take in his sign and go for some other calling while still young.

I'm laying for that Encyclopedical Scotchman-and he'll need to lock the door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him. He is accustomed to seeing the publisher impoverish the author-that spectacle must be getting stale to him-if he contracts with the undersigned he will experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off his teeth for very surprise-and joy. No, that last is what Mrs. Clemens thinks-but it's not so. The proposed work is growing, mightily, in my estimation, day by day; and I'm not going to throw it away for any mere trifle. If I make a contract with the canny Scot, I will then tell him the plan which you and I have devised (that of taking in the humor of all countries)-otherwise I'll keep it to myself, I think. Why should we assist our fellowman for mere love of God?

Yrs ever

MARK.

One wishes that Howells might have found value enough in the verses

of Frank Soule to recommend them to Osgood. To Clemens he wrote:

"You have touched me in regard to him, and I will deal gently with

his poetry. Poor old fellow! I can imagine him, and how he must

have to struggle not to be hard or sour."

The verdict, however, was inevitable. Soule's graceful verses

proved to be not poetry at all. No publisher of standing could

afford to give them his imprint.

The "Encyclopedical Scotchman" mentioned in the preceding letter was

the publisher Gebbie, who had a plan to engage Howells and Clemens

to prepare some sort of anthology of the world's literature. The

idea came to nothing, though the other plan mentioned-for a library

of humor-in time grew into a book.

Mark Twain's contracts with Bliss for the publication of his books

on the subscription plan had been made on a royalty basis, beginning

with 5 per cent. on 'The Innocents Abroad' increasing to 7 per

cent. on 'Roughing It,' and to 10 per cent. on later books. Bliss

had held that these later percentages fairly represented one half

the profits. Clemens, however, had never been fully satisfied, and

his brother Onion had more than once urged him to demand a specific

contract on the half-profit basis. The agreement for the

publication of 'A Tramp Abroad' was made on these terms. Bliss died

before Clemens received his first statement of sales. Whatever may

have been the facts under earlier conditions, the statement proved

to Mark Twain's satisfaction; at least, that the half-profit

arrangement was to his advantage. It produced another result; it

gave Samuel Clemens an excuse to place his brother Onion in a

position of independence.

* * *

To Onion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:

Sunday, Oct 24 '80.

MY DEAR BRO.,-Bliss is dead. The aspect of the balance-sheet is enlightening. It reveals the fact, through my present contract, (which is for half the profits on the book above actual cost of paper, printing and binding,) that I have lost considerably by all this nonsense-sixty thousand dollars, I should say-and if Bliss were alive I would stay with the concern and get it all back; for on each new book I would require a portion of that back pay; but as it is (this in the very strictest confidence,) I shall probably go to a new publisher 6 or 8 months hence, for I am afraid Frank, with his poor health, will lack push and drive.

Out of the suspicions you bred in me years ago, has grown this result,-to wit, that I shall within the twelvemonth get $40,000 out of this "Tramp" instead Of $20,000. Twenty thousand dollars, after taxes and other expenses are stripped away, is worth to the investor about $75 a month-so I shall tell Mr. Perkins to make your check that amount per month, hereafter, while our income is able to afford it. This ends the loan business; and hereafter you can reflect that you are living not on borrowed money but on money which you have squarely earned, and which has no taint or savor of charity about it-and you can also reflect that the money you have been receiving of me all these years is interest charged against the heavy bill which the next publisher will have to stand who gets a book of mine.

Jean got the stockings and is much obliged; Mollie wants to know whom she most resembles, but I can't tell; she has blue eyes and brown hair, and three chins, and is very fat and happy; and at one time or another she has resembled all the different Clemenses and Langdons, in turn, that have ever lived.

Livy is too much beaten out with the baby, nights, to write, these times; and I don't know of anything urgent to say, except that a basket full of letters has accumulated in the 7 days that I have been whooping and cursing over a cold in the head-and I must attack the pile this very minute.

With love from us

Y aff

SAM

$25 enclosed.

On the completion of The Prince and Pauper story, Clemens had

naturally sent it to Howells for consideration. Howells wrote:

"I have read the two P's and I like it immensely, it begins well and

it ends well." He pointed out some things that might be changed or

omitted, and added: "It is such a book as I would expect from you,

knowing what a bottom of fury there is to your fun." Clemens had

thought somewhat of publishing the story anonymously, in the fear

that it would not be accepted seriously over his own signature.

The "bull story" referred to in the next letter is the one later

used in the Joan of Arc book, the story told Joan by "Uncle Laxart,"

how he rode a bull to a funeral.

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Xmas Eve, 1880.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-I was prodigiously delighted with what you said about the book-so, on the whole, I've concluded to publish intrepidly, instead of concealing the authorship. I shall leave out that bull story.

I wish you had gone to New York. The company was small, and we had a first-rate time. Smith's an enjoyable fellow. I liked Barrett, too. And the oysters were as good as the rest of the company. It was worth going there to learn how to cook them.

Next day I attended to business-which was, to introduce Twichell to Gen. Grant and procure a private talk in the interest of the Chinese Educational Mission here in the U. S. Well, it was very funny. Joe had been sitting up nights building facts and arguments together into a mighty and unassailable array and had studied them out and got them by heart-all with the trembling half-hearted hope of getting Grant to add his signature to a sort of petition to the Viceroy of China; but Grant took in the whole situation in a jiffy, and before Joe had more than fairly got started, the old man said: "I'll write the Viceroy a Letter-a separate letter-and bring strong reasons to bear upon him; I know him well, and what I say will have weight with him; I will attend to it right away. No, no thanks-I shall be glad to do it-it will be a labor of love."

So all Joe's laborious hours were for naught! It was as if he had come to borrow a dollar, and been offered a thousand before he could unfold his case....

But it's getting dark. Merry Christmas to all of you.

Yrs Ever,

MARK.

The Chinese Educational Mission, mentioned in the foregoing, was a

thriving Hartford institution, projected eight years before by a

Yale graduate named Yung Wing. The mission was now threatened, and

Yung Wing, knowing the high honor in which General Grant was held in

China, believed that through him it might be saved. Twichell, of

course, was deeply concerned and naturally overjoyed at Grant's

interest. A day or two following the return to Hartford, Clemens

received a letter from General Grant, in which he wrote: "Li Hung

Chang is the most powerful and most influential Chinaman in his

country. He professed great friendship for me when I was there, and

I have had assurances of the same thing since. I hope, if he is

strong enough with his government, that the decision to withdraw the

Chinese students from this country may be changed."

But perhaps Li Hung Chang was experiencing one of his partial

eclipses just then, or possibly he was not interested, for the

Hartford Mission did not survive.

XXI. LETTERS 1881, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. ASSISTING A YOUNG SCULPTOR. LITERARY PLANS.

With all of Mark Twain's admiration for Grant, he had

opposed him as a third-term President and approved of the

nomination of Garfield. He had made speeches for Garfield

during the campaign just ended, and had been otherwise

active in his support. Upon Garfield's election, however,

he felt himself entitled to no special favor, and the single

request which he preferred at length could hardly be classed

as, personal, though made for a "personal friend."

* * *

To President-elect James A. Garfield, in Washington:

HARTFORD, Jany. 12, '81.

GEN. GARFIELD

DEAR SIR,-Several times since your election persons wanting office have asked me "to use my influence" with you in their behalf.

To word it in that way was such a pleasant compliment to me that I never complied. I could not without exposing the fact that I hadn't any influence with you and that was a thing I had no mind to do.

It seems to me that it is better to have a good man's flattering estimate of my influence-and to keep it-than to fool it away with trying to get him an office. But when my brother-on my wife's side-Mr. Charles J. Langdon-late of the Chicago Convention-desires me to speak a word for Mr. Fred Douglass, I am not asked "to use my influence" consequently I am not risking anything. So I am writing this as a simple citizen. I am not drawing on my fund of influence at all. A simple citizen may express a desire with all propriety, in the matter of a recommendation to office, and so I beg permission to hope that you will retain Mr. Douglass in his present office of Marshall of the District of Columbia, if such a course will not clash with your own preferences or with the expediencies and interest of your administration. I offer this petition with peculiar pleasure and strong desire, because I so honor this man's high and blemishless character and so admire his brave, long crusade for the liberties and elevation of his race.

He is a personal friend of mine, but that is nothing to the point, his history would move me to say these things without that, and I feel them too.

With great respect

I am, General,

Yours truly,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Clemens would go out of his way any time to grant favor to the

colored race. His childhood associations were partly accountable

for this, but he also felt that the white man owed the negro a debt

for generations of enforced bondage. He would lecture any time in a

colored church, when he would as likely as not refuse point-blank to

speak for a white congregation. Once, in Elmira, he received a

request, poorly and none too politely phrased, to speak for one of

the churches. He was annoyed and about to send a brief refusal,

when Mrs. Clemens, who was present, said:

"I think I know that church, and if so this preacher is a colored

man; he does not know how to write a polished letter-how should

he?" Her husband's manner changed so suddenly that she added:

"I will give you a motto, and it will be useful to you if you will

adopt it: Consider every man colored until he is proved white."

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

HARTFORD, Feb. 27, 1881.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-I go to West Point with Twichell tomorrow, but shall be back Tuesday or Wednesday; and then just as soon thereafter as you and Mrs. Howells and Winny can come you will find us ready and most glad to see you-and the longer you can stay the gladder we shall be. I am not going to have a thing to do, but you shall work if you want to. On the evening of March 10th, I am going to read to the colored folk in the African Church here (no whites admitted except such as I bring with me), and a choir of colored folk will sing jubilee songs. I count on a good time, and shall hope to have you folks there, and Livy. I read in Twichell's chapel Friday night and had a most rattling high time-but the thing that went best of all was Uncle Remus's Tar Baby. I mean to try that on my dusky audience. They've all heard that tale from childhood-at least the older members have.

I arrived home in time to make a most noble blunder-invited Charley Warner here (in Livy's name) to dinner with the Gerhardts, and told him Livy had invited his wife by letter and by word of mouth also. I don't know where I got these impressions, but I came home feeling as one does who realizes that he has done a neat thing for once and left no flaws or loop-holes. Well, Livy said she had never told me to invite Charley and she hadn't dreamed of inviting Susy, and moreover there wasn't any dinner, but just one lean duck. But Susy Warner's intuitions were correct-so she choked off Charley, and staid home herself-we waited dinner an hour and you ought to have seen that duck when he was done drying in the oven.

MARK.

Clemens and his wife were always privately assisting worthy and

ambitious young people along the way of achievement. Young actors

were helped through dramatic schools; young men and women were

assisted through college and to travel abroad. Among others Clemens

paid the way of two colored students, one through a Southern

institution and another through the Yale law school.

The mention of the name of Gerhardt in the preceding letter

introduces the most important, or at least the most extensive, of

these benefactions. The following letter gives the beginning of the

story:

* * *

To W. D. Howells, in Boston:

Private and Confidential.

HARTFORD, Feb. 21, 1881.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,-Well, here is our romance.

It happened in this way. One morning, a month ago-no, three weeks-Livy, and Clara Spaulding and I were at breakfast, at 10 A.M., and I was in an irritable mood, for the barber was up stairs waiting and his hot water getting cold, when the colored George returned from answering the bell and said: "There's a lady in the drawing-room wants to see you." "A book agent!" says I, with heat. "I won't see her; I will die in my tracks, first."

Then I got up with a soul full of rage, and went in there and bent scowling over that person, and began a succession of rude and raspy questions-and without even offering to sit down.

Not even the defendant's youth and beauty and (seeming) timidity were able to modify my savagery, for a time-and meantime question and answer were going on. She had risen to her feet with the first question; and there she stood, with her pretty face bent floorward whilst I inquired, but always with her honest eyes looking me in the face when it came her turn to answer.

And this was her tale, and her plea-diffidently stated, but straight-forwardly; and bravely, and most winningly simply and earnestly: I put it in my own fashion, for I do not remember her words:

Mr. Karl Gerhardt, who works in Pratt & Whitney's machine shops, has made a statue in clay, and would I be so kind as to come and look at it, and tell him if there is any promise in it? He has none to go to, and he would be so glad.

"O, dear me," I said, "I don't know anything about art-there's nothing I could tell him."

But she went on, just as earnestly and as simply as before, with her plea-and so she did after repeated rebuffs; and dull as I am, even I began by and by to admire this brave and gentle persistence, and to perceive how her heart of hearts was in this thing, and how she couldn't give it up, but must carry her point. So at last I wavered, and promised in general terms that I would come down the first day that fell idle-and as I conducted her to the door, I tamed more and more, and said I would come during the very next week-"We shall be so glad-but-but, would you please come early in the week?-the statue is just finished and we are so anxious-and-and-we did hope you could come this week-and"-well, I came down another peg, and said I would come Monday, as sure as death; and before I got to the dining room remorse was doing its work and I was saying to myself, "Damnation, how can a man be such a hound? why didn't I go with her now?" Yes, and how mean I should have felt if I had known that out of her poverty she had hired a hack and brought it along to convey me. But luckily for what was left of my peace of mind, I didn't know that.

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 19 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.

November 30th that year was Mark Twain's fiftieth birthday, an event

noticed by the newspapers generally, and especially observed by many

of his friends. Warner, Stockton and many others sent letters;

Andrew Lang contributed a fine poem; also Oliver Wendell. Holmes

-the latter by special request of Miss Gilder-for the Critic.

These attentions came as a sort of crowning happiness at the end of

a golden year. At no time in his life were Mark Twain's fortunes

and prospects brighter; he had a beautiful family and a perfect

home. Also, he had great prosperity. The reading-tour with Cable

had been a fine success. His latest book, The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, had added largely to his fame and income.

The publication of the Grant Memoirs had been a dazzling triumph.

Mark Twain had become recognized, not only as America's most

distinguished author, but as its most envied publisher. And now,

with his fiftieth birthday, had come this laurel from Holmes, last

of the Brahmins, to add a touch of glory to all the rest. We feel

his exaltation in his note of acknowledgment.

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To Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Boston:

DEAR MR. HOLMES,-I shall never be able to tell you the half of how proud you have made me. If I could you would say you were nearly paid for the trouble you took. And then the family: If I can convey the electrical surprise and gratitude and exaltation of the wife and the children last night, when they happened upon that Critic where I had, with artful artlessness, spread it open and retired out of view to see what would happen-well, it was great and fine and beautiful to see, and made me feel as the victor feels when the shouting hosts march by; and if you also could have seen it you would have said the account was squared. For I have brought them up in your company, as in the company of a warm and friendly and beneficent but far-distant sun; and so, for you to do this thing was for the sun to send down out of the skies the miracle of a special ray and transfigure me before their faces. I knew what that poem would be to them; I knew it would raise me up to remote and shining heights in their eyes, to very fellowship with the chambered Nautilus itself, and that from that fellowship they could never more dissociate me while they should live; and so I made sure to be by when the surprise should come.

Charles Dudley Warner is charmed with the poem for its own felicitous sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow shame of it, and made me glad and proud it happened.

With reverence and affection,

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.

Holmes wrote with his own hand: "Did Miss Gilder tell you I had

twenty-three letters spread out for answer when her suggestion came

about your anniversary? I stopped my correspondence and made my

letters wait until the lines were done."

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