MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1867-1875 By Mark Twain ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE VOLUME II. ***** To Bret Harte, in San Francisco: WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867. DEAR BRET, --I take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well and hopethese few lines will find you enjoying the same God's blessing. The book is out, and is handsome. It is full of damnable errors ofgrammar and deadly inconsistencies of spelling in the Frog sketchbecause I was away and did not read the proofs; but be a friend and saynothing about these things. When my hurry is over, I will send you anautograph copy to pisen the children with. I am to lecture in Cooper Institute next Monday night. Pray for me. We sail for the Holy Land June 8. Try to write me (to this hotel, ) andit will be forwarded to Paris, where we remain 10 or 15 days. Regards and best wishes to Mrs. Bret and the family. Truly Yr Friend MARK. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: WESTMINSTER HOTEL, May 1, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --Don't expect me to write for a while. My hands are fullof business on account of my lecture for the 6th inst. , and everythinglooks shady, at least, if not dark. I have got a good agent--but nowafter we have hired Cooper Institute and gone to an expense in one wayor another of $500, it comes out that I have got to play against SpeakerColfax at Irving Hall, Ristori, and also the double troupe of Japanesejugglers, the latter opening at the great Academy of Music--and with allthis against me I have taken the largest house in New York and cannotback water. Let her slide! If nobody else cares I don't. I'll send the book soon. I am awfully hurried now, but not worried. Yrs. SAM. The Cooper Union lecture proved a failure, and a success. When it became evident to Fuller that the venture was not going to pay, he sent out a flood of complimentaries to the school-teachers of New York City and the surrounding districts. No one seems to have declined them. Clemens lectured to a jammed house and acquired much reputation. Lecture proposals came from several directions, but he could not accept them now. He wrote home that he was eighteen Alta letters behind and had refused everything. Thos. Nast, the cartoonist, then in his first fame, propped a joint tour, Clemens to lecture while he, Nast, would illustrate with "lightning" sketches; but even this could not be considered now. In a little while he would sail, and the days were overfull. A letter written a week before he sailed is full of the hurry and strain of these last days. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK, June 1, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --I know I ought to write oftener (just got your last, ) andmore fully, but I cannot overcome my repugnance to telling what I amdoing or what I expect to do or propose to do. Then, what have I left towrite about? Manifestly nothing. It isn't any use for me to talk about the voyage, because I can have nofaith in that voyage till the ship is under way. How do I know she willever sail? My passage is paid, and if the ship sails, I sail inher--but I make no calculations, have bought no cigars, no sea-goingclothing--have made no preparation whatever--shall not pack my trunktill the morning we sail. Yet my hands are full of what I am going to dothe day before we sail--and what isn't done that day will go undone. All I do know or feel, is, that I am wild with impatience tomove--move--move! Half a dozen times I have wished I had sailed longago in some ship that wasn't going to keep me chained here to chafe forlagging ages while she got ready to go. Curse the endless delays!They always kill me--they make me neglect every duty and then I have aconscience that tears me like a wild beast. I wish I never had to stopanywhere a month. I do more mean things, the moment I get a chance tofold my hands and sit down than ever I can get forgiveness for. Yes, we are to meet at Mr. Beach's next Thursday night, and I supposewe shall have to be gotten up regardless of expense, in swallow-tails, white kids and everything en regle. I am resigned to Rev. Mr. Hutchinson's or anybody else's supervision. I don't mind it. I am fixed. I have got a splendid, immoral, tobacco-smoking, wine-drinking, godless room-mate who is as good andtrue and right-minded a man as ever lived--a man whose blameless conductand example will always be an eloquent sermon to all who shall comewithin their influence. But send on the professional preachers--thereare none I like better to converse with. If they're not narrow mindedand bigoted they make good companions. I asked them to send the N. Y. Weekly to you--no charge. I am not goingto write for it. Like all other, papers that pay one splendidly itcirculates among stupid people and the 'canaille. ' I have made noarrangement with any New York paper--I will see about that Monday orTuesday. Love to all Good bye, Yrs affy SAM. The "immoral" room-mate whose conduct was to be an "eloquent example" was Dan Slote, immortalized in the Innocents as "Dan" --a favorite on the ship, and later beloved by countless readers. There is one more letter, written the night before the Quaker City sailed-a letter which in a sense marks the close of the first great period of his life--the period of aimless wandering--adventure --youth. Perhaps a paragraph of explanation should precede this letter. Political changes had eliminated Orion in Nevada, and he was now undertaking the practice of law. "Bill Stewart" was Senator Stewart, of Nevada, of whom we shall hear again. The "Sandwich Island book, " as may be imagined, was made up of his letters to the Sacramento Union. Nothing came of the venture, except some chapters in 'Roughing It', rewritten from the material. "Zeb and John Leavenworth" were pilots whom he had known on the river. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family in St. Louis: NEW YORK, June 7th, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, I suppose we shall be many a league at sea tomorrow night, and goodness knows I shall be unspeakably glad of it. I haven't got anything to write, else I would write it. I have justwritten myself clear out in letters to the Alta, and I think theyare the stupidest letters that were ever written from New York. Corresponding has been a perfect drag ever since I got to the states. Ifit continues abroad, I don't know what the Tribune and Alta folks willthink. I have withdrawn the Sandwich Island book--it would be useless topublish it in these dull publishing times. As for the Frog book, I don'tbelieve that will ever pay anything worth a cent. I published it simplyto advertise myself--not with the hope of making anything out of it. Well, I haven't anything to write, except that I am tired of staying inone place--that I am in a fever to get away. Read my Alta letters--theycontain everything I could possibly write to you. Tell Zeb and JohnLeavenworth to write me. They can get plenty of gossip from the pilots. An importing house sent two cases of exquisite champagne aboard the shipfor me today--Veuve Clicquot and Lac d'Or. I and my room-mate have setapart every Saturday as a solemn fast day, wherein we will entertain nolight matters of frivolous conversation, but only get drunk. (That isa joke. ) His mother and sisters are the best and most homelike peopleI have yet found in a brown stone front. There is no style about them, except in house and furniture. I wish Orion were going on this voyage, for I believe he could not helpbut be cheerful and jolly. I often wonder if his law business is goingsatisfactorily to him, but knowing that the dull season is setting innow (it looked like it had already set in before) I have felt as if Icould almost answer the question myself--which is to say in plain words, I was afraid to ask. I wish I had gone to Washington in the winterinstead of going West. I could have gouged an office out of Bill Stewartfor him, and that would atone for the loss of my home visit. But I am soworthless that it seems to me I never do anything or accomplish anythingthat lingers in my mind as a pleasant memory. My mind is stored fullof unworthy conduct toward Orion and towards you all, and an accusingconscience gives me peace only in excitement and restless moving fromplace to place. If I could say I had done one thing for any of you thatentitled me to your good opinion, (I say nothing of your love, for I amsure of that, no matter how unworthy of it I may make myself, from Oriondown you have always given me that, all the days of my life, when GodAlmighty knows I seldom deserve it, ) I believe I could go home and staythere and I know I would care little for the world's praise or blame. There is no satisfaction in the world's praise anyhow, and it hasno worth to me save in the way of business. I tried to gather up itscompliments to send to you, but the work was distasteful and I droppedit. You observe that under a cheerful exterior I have got a spirit that isangry with me and gives me freely its contempt. I can get away from thatat sea, and be tranquil and satisfied--and so, with my parting love andbenediction for Orion and all of you, I say goodbye and God bless youall--and welcome the wind that wafts a weary soul to the sunny lands ofthe Mediterranean! Yrs. Forever, SAM. VII. LETTERS 1867. THE TRAVELER. THE VOYAGE OF THE "QUAKER CITY" Mark Twain, now at sea, was writing many letters; not personal letters, but those unique descriptive relations of travel which would make him his first great fame--those fresh first impressions preserved to us now as chapters of The Innocents Abroad. Yet here and there in the midst of sight-seeing and reporting he found time to send a brief line to those at home, merely that they might have a word from his own hand, for he had ordered the papers to which he was to contribute--the Alta and the New York Tribune--sent to them, and these would give the story of his travels. The home letters read like notebook entries. ***** Letters to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: FAYAL (Azores, ) June 20th, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --We are having a lively time here, after a stormy trip. Wemeant to go to San Miguel, but were driven here by stress of weather. Beautiful climate. Yrs. Affect. SAM. GIBRALTAR, June 30th, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --Arrived here this morning, and am clear worn out withriding and climbing in and over and around this monstrous rock and itsfortifications. Summer climate and very pleasant. Yrs. SAM. TANGIER, MOROCCO, (AFRICA), July 1, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, Half a dozen of us came here yesterday from Gibraltar andsome of the company took the other direction; went up through Spain, toParis by rail. We decided that Gibraltar and San Roque were all of Spainthat we wanted to see at present and are glad we came here among theAfricans, Moors, Arabs and Bedouins of the desert. I would not givethis experience for all the balance of the trip combined. This is theinfernalest hive of infernally costumed barbarians I have ever comeacross yet. Yrs. SAM. AT SEA, July 2, 1867. DR. FOLKS, --We are far up the intensely blue and ravishingly beautifulMediterranean. And now we are just passing the island of Minorca. Theclimate is perfectly lovely and it is hard to drive anybody to bed, dayor night. We remain up the whole night through occasionally, and by thismeans enjoy the rare sensation of seeing the sun rise. But the sunsetsare soft, rich, warm and superb! We had a ball last night under the awnings of the quarter deck, andthe share of it of three of us was masquerade. We had full, flowing, picturesque Moorish costumes which we purchased in the bazaars ofTangier. Yrs. SAM. MARSEILLES, FRANCE, July 5, 1867. We are here. Start for Paris tomorrow. All well. Had gorgeous 4th ofJuly jollification yesterday at sea. Yrs. SAM. The reader may expand these sketchy outlines to his heart's content by following the chapters in The Innocents Abroad, which is very good history, less elaborated than might be supposed. But on the other hand, the next letter adds something of interest to the book-circumstances which a modest author would necessarily omit. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: YALTA, RUSSIA, Aug. 25, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --We have been representing the United States all we knew howtoday. We went to Sebastopol, after we got tired of Constantinople (gotyour letter there, and one at Naples, ) and there the Commandant and thewhole town came aboard and were as jolly and sociable as old friends. They said the Emperor of Russia was at Yalta, 30 miles or 40 away, andurged us to go there with the ship and visit him--promised us a cordialwelcome. They insisted on sending a telegram to the Emperor, and alsoa courier overland to announce our coming. But we knew that a greatEnglish Excursion party, and also the Viceroy of Egypt, in his splendidyacht, had been refused an audience within the last fortnight, so wethought it not safe to try it. They said, no difference--the Emperorwould hardly visit our ship, because that would be a most extraordinaryfavor, and one which he uniformly refuses to accord under anycircumstances, but he would certainly receive us at his palace. We stilldeclined. But we had to go to Odessa, 250 miles away, and there theGovernor General urged us, and sent a telegram to the Emperor, which wehardly expected to be answered, but it was, and promptly. So we sailedback to Yalta. We all went to the palace at noon, today, (3 miles) in carriages andon horses sent by the Emperor, and we had a jolly time. Instead of theusual formal audience of 15 minutes, we staid 4 hours and were madea good deal more at home than we could have been in a New Yorkdrawing-room. The whole tribe turned out to receive our party-Emperor, Empress, the oldest daughter (Grand-Duchess Marie, a pretty girl of 14, )a little Grand Duke, her brother, and a platoon of Admirals, Princes, Peers of the Empire, etc. , and in a little while an aid-de-camp arrivedwith a request from the Grand Duke Michael, the Emperor's brother, that we would visit his palace and breakfast with him. The Emperor alsoinvited us, on behalf of his absent eldest son and heir (aged 22, ) tovisit his palace and consider it a visit to him. They all talk Englishand they were all very neatly but very plainly dressed. You all dress agood deal finer than they were dressed. The Emperor and his family threwoff all reserve and showed us all over the palace themselves. It is veryrich and very elegant, but in no way gaudy. I had been appointed chairman of a committee to draught an address tothe Emperor in behalf of the passengers, and as I fully expected, andas they fully intended, I had to write the address myself. I didn't mindit, because I have no modesty and would as soon write to an Emperor asto anybody else--but considering that there were 5 on the committee Ithought they might have contributed one paragraph among them, anyway. They wanted me to read it to him, too, but I declined that honor--notbecause I hadn't cheek enough (and some to spare, ) but because ourConsul at Odessa was along, and also the Secretary of our Legationat St. Petersburgh, and of course one of those ought to read it. TheEmperor accepted the address--it was his business to do it--and somany others have praised it warmly that I begin to imagine it must be awonderful sort of document and herewith send you the original draught ofit to be put into alcohol and preserved forever like a curious reptile. They live right well at the Grand Duke Michael's their breakfasts arenot gorgeous but very excellent--and if Mike were to say the word Iwould go there and breakfast with him tomorrow. Yrs aff SAM. P. S. [Written across the face of the last page. ] They had told us itwould be polite to invite the Emperor to visit the ship, though he wouldnot be likely to do it. But he didn't give us a chance--he has requestedpermission to come on board with his family and all his relationstomorrow and take a sail, in case it is calm weather. I can, entertainthem. My hand is in, now, and if you want any more Emperors feted instyle, trot them out. The next letter is of interest in that it gives us the program and volume of his work. With all the sight seeing he was averaging a full four letters a week--long letters, requiring careful observation and inquiry. How fresh and impressionable and full of vigor he was, even in that fierce southern heat! No one makes the Mediterranean trip in summer to-day, and the thought of adding constant letter-writing to steady travel through southern France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey in blazing midsummer is stupefying. And Syria and Egypt in September! ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. 1, '67. DEAR FOLKS, --All well. Do the Alta's come regularly? I wish I knewwhether my letters reach them or not. Look over the back papers and see. I wrote them as follows: 1 Letter from Fayal, in the Azores Islands. 1 from Gibraltar, in Spain. 1 from Tangier, in Africa. 2 from Paris and Marseilles, in France. 1 from Genoa, in Italy. 1 from Milan. 1 from Lake Como. 1 from some little place in Switzerland--have forgotten the name. 4 concerning Lecce, Bergamo, Padua, Verona, Battlefield of Marengo, Pestachio, and some other cities in Northern Italy. 2 from Venice. 1 about Bologna. 1 from Florence. 1 from Pisa. 1 from Leghorn. 1 from Rome and Civita Vecchia. 2 from Naples. 1 about Pazzuoli, where St. Paul landed, the Baths of Nero, and the ruins of Baia, Virgil's tomb, the Elysian Fields, the Sunken Cities and the spot where Ulysses landed. 1 from Herculaneum and Vesuvius. 1 from Pompeii. 1 from the Island of Ischia. 1 concerning the Volcano of Stromboli, the city and Straits of Messina, the land of Sicily, Scylla and Charybdis etc. 1 about the Grecian Archipelago. 1 about a midnight visit to Athens, the Piraeus and the ruins of the Acropolis. 1 about the Hellespont, the site of ancient Troy, the Sea of Marmara, etc. 2 about Constantinople, the Golden Horn and the beauties of the Bosphorus. 1 from Odessa and Sebastopol in Russia, the Black Sea, etc. 2 from Yalta, Russia, concerning a visit to the Czar. And yesterday I wrote another letter from Constantinople and 1 today about its neighbor in Asia, Scatter. I am not done with Turkey yet. Shall write 2 or 3 more. I have written to the New York Herald 2 letters from Naples, (no name signed, ) and 1 from Constantinople. To the New York Tribune I have written 1 from Fayal. 1 from Civita Vecchia in the Roman States. 2 from Yalta, Russia. And 1 from Constantinople. I have never seen any of these letters in print except the one to theTribune from Fayal and that was not worth printing. We sail hence tomorrow, perhaps, and my next letters will be mailed atSmyrna, in Syria. I hope to write from the Sea of Tiberius, Damascus, Jerusalem, Joppa, and possibly other points in the Holy Land. Theletters from Egypt, the Nile and Algiers I will look out for, myself. Iwill bring them in my pocket. They take the finest photographs in the world here. I have ordered some. They will be sent to Alexandria, Egypt. You cannot conceive of anything so beautiful as Constantinople, viewedfrom the Golden Horn or the Bosphorus. I think it must be the handsomestcity in the world. I will go on deck and look at it for you, directly. I am staying in the ship, tonight. I generally stay on shore when we arein port. But yesterday I just ran myself down. Dan Slote, my room-mate, is on shore. He remained here while we went up the Black Sea, butit seems he has not got enough of it yet. I thought Dan had got thestate-room pretty full of rubbish at last, but a while ago his dragomanarrived with a bran new, ghastly tomb-stone of the Oriental pattern, with his name handsomely carved and gilded on it, in Turkish characters. That fellow will buy a Circassian slave, next. I am tired. We are going on a trip, tomorrow. I must to bed. Love toall. Yrs SAM. ***** U. S. CONSUL'S OFFICE, BEIRUT, SYRIA, Sept. 11. (1867) DEAR FOLKS, --We are here, eight of us, making a contract with a dragomanto take us to Baalbek, then to Damascus, Nazareth, &c. Then to LakeGenassareth (Sea of Tiberias, ) then South through all the celebratedScriptural localities to Jerusalem--then to the Dead Sea, the Cave ofMacpelah and up to Joppa where the ship will be. We shall be in thesaddle three weeks--we have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragomanand two other servants, and we pay five dollars a day apiece, in gold. Love to all, yrs. SAM. We leave tonight, at two o'clock in the morning. There appear to be no further home letters written from Syria--and none from Egypt. Perhaps with the desert and the delta the heat at last became too fearful for anything beyond the actual requirements of the day. When he began his next it was October, and the fiercer travel was behind him. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: CAGHARI, SARDINIA, Oct, 12, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --We have just dropped anchor before this handsome city and-- ALGIERS, AFRICA, Oct. 15. They would not let us land at Caghari on account of cholera. Nothing towrite. MALAGA, SPAIN, Oct. 17. The Captain and I are ashore here under guard, waiting to know whetherthey will let the ship anchor or not. Quarantine regulations are verystrict here on all vessels coming from Egypt. I am a little anxiousbecause I want to go inland to Granada and see the Alhambra. I can go ondown by Seville and Cordova, and be picked up at Cadiz. Later: We cannot anchor--must go on. We shall be at Gibraltar beforemidnight and I think I will go horseback (a long days) and thenceby rail and diligence to Cadiz. I will not mail this till I see theGibraltar lights--I begin to think they won't let us in anywhere. 11. 30 P. M. --Gibraltar. At anchor and all right, but they won't let us land till morning--it isa waste of valuable time. We shall reach New York middle of November. Yours, SAM. CADIZ, Oct 24, 1867. DEAR FOLKS, --We left Gibraltar at noon and rode to Algeciras, (4 hours)thus dodging the quarantine, took dinner and then rode horseback allnight in a swinging trot and at daylight took a caleche (a wheeledvehicle) and rode 5 hours--then took cars and traveled till twelve atnight. That landed us at Seville and we were over the hard part of ourtrip, and somewhat tired. Since then we have taken things comparativelyeasy, drifting around from one town to another and attracting a gooddeal of attention, for I guess strangers do not wander through Andalusiaand the other Southern provinces of Spain often. The country isprecisely as it was when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were possiblecharacters. But I see now what the glory of Spain must have been when it was underMoorish domination. No, I will not say that, but then when one iscarried away, infatuated, entranced, with the wonders of the Alhambraand the supernatural beauty of the Alcazar, he is apt to overflow withadmiration for the splendid intellects that created them. I cannot write now. I am only dropping a line to let you know I am well. The ship will call for us here tomorrow. We may stop at Lisbon, andshall at the Bermudas, and will arrive in New York ten days after thisletter gets there. SAM. This is the last personal letter written during that famous first sea-gipsying, and reading it our regret grows that he did not put something of his Spanish excursion into his book. He never returned to Spain, and he never wrote of it. Only the barest mention of "seven beautiful days" is found in The Innocents Abroad. VIII. LETTERS 1867-68. WASHINGTON AND SAN FRANCISCO. THE PROPOSED BOOKOF TRAVEL. A NEW LECTURE. From Mark Twain's home letters we get several important side-lights on this first famous book. We learn, for in stance, that it was he who drafted the ship address to the Emperor--the opening lines of which became so wearisome when repeated by the sailors. Furthermore, we learn something of the scope and extent of his newspaper correspondence, which must have kept him furiously busy, done as it was in the midst of super-heated and continuous sight-seeing. He wrote fifty three letters to the Alta-California, six to the New York Tribune, and at least two to the New York Herald more than sixty, all told, of an average, length of three to four thousand words each. Mark Twain always claimed to be a lazy man, and certainly he was likely to avoid an undertaking not suited to his gifts, but he had energy in abundance for work in his chosen field. To have piled up a correspondence of that size in the time, and under the circumstances already noted, quality considered, may be counted a record in the history of travel letters. They made him famous. Arriving in New York, November 19, 1867, Mark Twain found himself no longer unknown to the metropolis, or to any portion of America. Papers East and West had copied his Alta and Tribune letters and carried his name into every corner of the States and Territories. He had preached a new gospel in travel literature, the gospel of frankness and sincerity that Americans could understand. Also his literary powers had awakened at last. His work was no longer trivial, crude, and showy; it was full of dignity, beauty, and power; his humor was finer, worthier. The difference in quality between the Quaker City letters and those written from the Sandwich Islands only a year before can scarcely be measured. He did not remain in New York, but went down to Washington, where he had arranged for a private secretaryship with Senator William M. Stewart, --[The "Bill" Stewart mentioned in the preceding chapter. ] whom he had known in Nevada. Such a position he believed would make but little demand upon his time, and would afford him an insight into Washington life, which he could make valuable in the shape of newspaper correspondence. But fate had other plans for him. He presently received the following letter: From Elisha Bliss, Jr. , in Hartford OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. HARTFORD, CONN, Nov 21, 1867. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS Esq. Tribune Office, New York. DR. SIR, --We take the liberty to address you this, in place of a letterwhich we had recently written and was about to forward to you, notknowing your arrival home was expected so soon. We are desirous ofobtaining from you a work of some kind, perhaps compiled from yourletters from the East, &c. , with such interesting additions as may beproper. We are the publishers of A. D. Richardson's works, and flatterourselves that we can give an author as favorable terms and do as fulljustice to his productions as any other house in the country. We areperhaps the oldest subscription house in the country, and have neverfailed to give a book an immense circulation. We sold about 100, 000copies of Richardson's F. D. & E. (Field, Dungeon and Escape) and arenow printing 41, 000, of "Beyond the Mississippi, " and large ordersahead. If you have any thought of writing a book, or could be induced todo so, we should be pleased to see you; and will do so. Will you do usthe favor to reply at once, at your earliest convenience. Very truly, &c. , E. BLISS, Jr. Secty. Clemens had already the idea of a book in mind and welcomed this proposition. ***** To Elisha Bliss, Jr. , in Hartford: WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 1867. E. BLISS, Jr. Esq. Sec'y American Publishing Co. -- DEAR SIR, --I only received your favor of Nov. 21st last night, at therooms of the Tribune Bureau here. It was forwarded from the Tribuneoffice, New York, where it had lain eight or ten days. This will be asufficient apology for the seeming discourtesy of my silence. I wrote fifty-two (three) letters for the San Francisco "AltaCalifornia" during the Quaker City excursion, about half of which numberhave been printed, thus far. The "Alta" has few exchanges in the East, and I suppose scarcely any of these letters have been copied on thisside of the Rocky Mountains. I could weed them of their chief faults ofconstruction and inelegancies of expression and make a volume that wouldbe more acceptable in many respects than any I could now write. Whenthose letters were written my impressions were fresh, but now they havelost that freshness; they were warm then--they are cold, now. I couldstrike out certain letters, and write new ones wherewith to supply theirplaces. If you think such a book would suit your purpose, please dropme a line, specifying the size and general style of the volume; when thematter ought to be ready; whether it should have pictures in it or not;and particularly what your terms with me would be, and what amount ofmoney I might possibly make out of it. The latter clause has a degree ofimportance for me which is almost beyond my own comprehension. But youunderstand that, of course. I have other propositions for a book, but have doubted the propriety ofinterfering with good newspaper engagements, except my way as an authorcould be demonstrated to be plain before me. But I know Richardson, and learned from him some months ago, something of an idea of thesubscription plan of publishing. If that is your plan invariably, itlooks safe. I am on the N. Y. Tribune staff here as an "occasional, ", among otherthings, and a note from you addressed to Very truly &c. SAM L. CLEMENS New York Tribune Bureau, Washington, will find me, without fail. The exchange of these two letters marked the beginning of one of the most notable publishing connections in American literary history. The book, however, was not begun immediately. Bliss was in poor health and final arrangements were delayed; it was not until late in January that Clemens went to Hartford and concluded the arrangement. Meantime, fate had disclosed another matter of even greater importance; we get the first hint of it in the following letter, though to him its beginning had been earlier--on a day in the blue harbor of Smyrna, when young Charles Langdon, a fellow-passenger on the Quaker City, had shown to Mark Twain a miniature of young Langdon's sister at home: ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: 224 F. STREET, WASH, Jan. 8, 1868. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --And so the old Major has been there, has he?I would like mighty well to see him. I was a sort of benefactor tohim once. I helped to snatch him out when he was about to ride into aMohammedan Mosque in that queer old Moorish town of Tangier, in Africa. If he had got in, the Moors would have knocked his venerable old headoff, for his temerity. I have just arrived from New York-been there ever since Christmasstaying at the house of Dan Slote my Quaker City room-mate, and havinga splendid time. Charley Langdon, Jack Van Nostrand, Dan and I, (allQuaker City night-hawks, ) had a blow-out at Dan's' house and a livelytalk over old times. We went through the Holy Land together, and I justlaughed till my sides ached, at some of our reminiscences. It was theunholiest gang that ever cavorted through Palestine, but those arethe best boys in the world. We needed Moulton badly. I started to makecalls, New Year's Day, but I anchored for the day at the first house Icame to--Charlie Langdon's sister was there (beautiful girl, ) and MissAlice Hooker, another beautiful girl, a niece of Henry Ward Beecher's. We sent the old folks home early, with instructions not to send thecarriage till midnight, and then I just staid there and worried the lifeout of those girls. I am going to spend a few days with the Langdon's inElmira, New York, as soon as I get time, and a few days at Mrs. Hooker'sin Hartford, Conn. , shortly. Henry Ward Beecher sent for me last Sunday to come over and dine (helives in Brooklyn, you know, ) and I went. Harriet Beecher Stowe wasthere, and Mrs. And Miss Beecher, Mrs. Hooker and my old Quaker Cityfavorite, Emma Beach. We had a very gay time, if it was Sunday. I expect I told more lies thanI have told before in a month. I went back by invitation, after the evening service, and finishedthe blow-out, and then staid all night at Mr. Beach's. Henry Ward is abrick. I found out at 10 o'clock, last night, that I was to lecture tomorrowevening and so you must be aware that I have been working like sin allnight to get a lecture written. I have finished it, I call it "FrozenTruth. " It is a little top-heavy, though, because there is more truth inthe title than there is in the lecture. But thunder, I mustn't sit here writing all day, with so much businessbefore me. Good by, and kind regards to all. Yrs affy SAM L. CLEMENS. Jack Van Nostrand of this letter is "Jack" of the Innocents. Emma Beach was the daughter of Moses S. Beach, of the 'New York Sun. ' Later she became the wife of the well-known painter, Abbot H. Thayer. We do not hear of Miss Langdon again in the letters of that time, but it was not because she was absent from his thoughts. He had first seen her with her father and brother at the old St. Nicholas Hotel, on lower Broadway, where, soon after the arrival of the Quaker City in New York, he had been invited to dine. Long afterward he said: "It is forty years ago; from that day to this she has never been out of my mind. " From his next letter we learn of the lecture which apparently was delivered in Washington. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: WASH. Jan. 9, 1868. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --That infernal lecture is over, thank Heaven!It came near being a villainous failure. It was not advertised at all. The manager was taken sick yesterday, and the man who was sent to tellme, never got to me till afternoon today. There was the dickens to pay. It was too late to do anything--too late to stop the lecture. I scaredup a door-keeper, and was ready at the proper time, and by pure goodluck a tolerably good house assembled and I was saved! I hardly knewwhat I was going to talk about, but it went off in splendid style. I wasto have preached again Saturday night, but I won't--I can't get alongwithout a manager. I have been in New York ever since Christmas, you know, and now I shallhave to work like sin to catch up my correspondence. And I have got to get up that book, too. Cut my letters out of theAlta's and send them to me in an envelop. Some, here, that are notmailed yet, I shall have to copy, I suppose. I have got a thousand things to do, and am not doing any of them. I feelperfectly savage. Good bye Yrs aff SAM. On the whole, matters were going well with him. His next letter is full of his success--overflowing with the boyish radiance which he never quite outgrew. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: HARTFORD, CONN. Jan. 24-68. DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --This is a good week for me. I stopped in theHerald office as I came through New York, to see the boys on thestaff, and young James Gordon Bennett asked me to write twice a week, impersonally, for the Herald, and said if I would I might have fullswing, and (write) about anybody and everybody I wanted to. I said Imust have the very fullest possible swing, and he said "all right. " Isaid "It's a contract--" and that settled that matter. I'll make it a point to write one letter a week, any-how. But the best thing that has happened was here. This great AmericanPublishing Company kept on trying to bargain with me for a book till Ithought I would cut the matter short by coming up for a talk. I met Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn, and with his usual whole-souled way ofdropping his own work to give other people a lift when he gets a chance, he said, "Now, here, you are one of the talented men of the age--nobodyis going to deny that---but in matters of business, I don't suppose youknow more than enough to came in when it rains. I'll tell you what todo, and how to do it. " And he did. And I listened well, and then came up here and made a splendid contractfor a Quaker City book of 5 or 600 large pages, with illustrations, themanuscript to be placed in the publishers' hands by the middle of July. My percentage is to be a fifth more than they have ever paid any author, except Horace Greeley. Beecher will be surprised, I guess, when he hearsthis. But I had my mind made up to one thing--I wasn't going to touch a bookunless there was money in it, and a good deal of it. I told them so. Ihad the misfortune to "bust out" one author of standing. They had hismanuscript, with the understanding that they would publish his book ifthey could not get a book from me, (they only publish two books at atime, and so my book and Richardson's Life of Grant will fill the billfor next fall and winter)--so that manuscript was sent back to itsauthor today. These publishers get off the most tremendous editions of their booksyou can imagine. I shall write to the Enterprise and Alta every week, as usual, I guess, and to the Herald twice a week--occasionally to theTribune and the Magazines (I have a stupid article in the Galaxy, justissued) but I am not going to write to this, that and the other paperany more. The Chicago Tribune wants letters, but I hope and pray I have chargedthem so much that they will not close the contract. I am graduallygetting out of debt, but these trips to New York do cost like sin. I hope you have cut out and forwarded my printed letters toWashington--please continue to do so as they arrive. I have had a tip-top time, here, for a few days (guest of Mr. Jno. Hooker's family--Beecher's relatives-in a general way of Mr. Bliss, also, who is head of the publishing firm. ) Puritans are mightystraight-laced and they won't let me smoke in the parlor, but theAlmighty don't make any better people. Love to all-good-bye. I shall be in New York 3 days--then go on to theCapital. Yrs affly, especially Ma. , Yr SAM. I have to make a speech at the annual Herald dinner on the 6th of May. No formal contract for the book had been made when this letter was written. A verbal agreement between Bliss and Clemens had been reached, to be ratified by an exchange of letters in the near future. Bliss had made two propositions, viz. , ten thousand dollars, cash in hand, or a 5-per-cent. Royalty on the selling price of the book. The cash sum offered looked very large to Mark Twain, and he was sorely tempted to accept it. He had faith, however, in the book, and in Bliss's ability to sell it. He agreed, therefore, to the royalty proposition; "The best business judgment I ever displayed" he often declared in after years. Five per cent. Royalty sounds rather small in these days of more liberal contracts. But the American Publishing Company sold its books only by subscription, and the agents' commissions and delivery expenses ate heavily into the profits. Clemens was probably correct in saying that his percentage was larger than had been paid to any previous author except Horace Greeley. The John Hooker mentioned was the husband of Henry Ward Beecher's sister, Isabel. It was easy to understand the Beecher family's robust appreciation of Mark Twain. From the office of Dan Slote, his room-mate of the Quaker City --"Dan" of the Innocents--Clemens wrote his letter that closed the agreement with Bliss. ***** To Elisha Bliss, Jr. , in Hartford: Office of SLOTE & WOODMAN, Blank Book Manufacturers, Nos. 119-121 William St. NEW YORK, January 27, 1868. Mr. E. Bliss, Jr. Sec'y American Publishing Co. Hartford Conn. DEAR SIR, Your favor of Jan. 25th is received, and in reply, I will saythat I accede to your several propositions, viz: That I furnish to theAmerican Publishing Company, through you, with MSS sufficient for avolume of 500 to 600 pages, the subject to be the Quaker City, thevoyage, description of places, &c. , and also embodying the substance ofthe letters written by me during that trip, said MSS to be readyabout the first of August, next, I to give all the usual and necessaryattention in preparing said MSS for the press, and in preparation ofillustrations, in correction of proofs--no use to be made by me ofthe material for this work in any way which will conflict with itsinterest--the book to be sold by the American Publishing Co. , bysubscription--and for said MS and labor on my part said Company to payme a copyright of 5 percent, upon the subscription price of the book forall copies sold. As further proposed by you, this understanding, herein set forth shallbe considered a binding contract upon all parties concerned, all minordetails to be arranged between us hereafter. Very truly yours, SAM. L. CLEMENS. (Private and General. ) I was to have gone to Washington tonight, but have held over a day, to attend a dinner given by a lot of newspaper Editors and literaryscalliwags, at the Westminster Hotel. Shall go down to-morrow, if Isurvive the banquet. Yrs truly SAM. CLEMENS. Mark Twain, in Washington, was in line for political preferment: His wide acquaintance on the Pacific slope, his new fame and growing popularity, his powerful and dreaded pen, all gave him special distinction at the capital. From time to time the offer of one office or another tempted him, but he wisely, or luckily, resisted. In his letters home are presented some of his problems. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: 224 F. STREET WASHINGTON Feb. 6, 1868. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --For two months there have been some fiftyapplications before the government for the postmastership of SanFrancisco, which is the heaviest concentration of political power on thecoast and consequently is a post which is much coveted. , When I found that a personal friend of mine, the Chief Editor of theAlta was an applicant I said I didn't want it--I would not take $10, 000a year out of a friend's pocket. The two months have passed, I heard day before yesterday that a new andalmost unknown candidate had suddenly turned up on the inside track, andwas to be appointed at once. I didn't like that, and went after his casein a fine passion. I hunted up all our Senators and representatives andfound that his name was actually to come from the President early in themorning. Then Judge Field said if I wanted the place he could pledge me thePresident's appointment--and Senator Conness said he would guaranteeme the Senate's confirmation. It was a great temptation, but it wouldrender it impossible to fill my book contract, and I had to drop theidea. I have to spend August and September in Hartford which isn't SanFrancisco. Mr. Conness offers me any choice out of five influentialCalifornia offices. Now, some day or other I shall want an office andthen, just my luck, I can't get it, I suppose. They want to send me abroad, as a Consul or a Minister. I said I didn'twant any of the pie. God knows I am mean enough and lazy enough, now, without being a foreign consul. Sometime in the course of the present century I think they will create aCommissioner of Patents, and then I hope to get a berth for Orion. I published 6 or 7 letters in the Tribune while I was gone, now I cannotget them. I suppose I must have them copied. Love to all SAM. Orion Clemens was once more a candidate for office: Nevada had become a State; with regularly elected officials, and Orion had somehow missed being chosen. His day of authority had passed, and the law having failed to support him, he was again back at his old occupation, setting type in St. Louis. He was, as ever, full of dreams and inventions that would some day lead to fortune. With the gift of the Sellers imagination, inherited by all the family, he lacked the driving power which means achievement. More and more as the years went by he would lean upon his brother for moral and physical support. The chances for him in Washington do not appear to have been bright. The political situation under Andrew Johnson was not a happy one. ***** To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis: 224 F. STREET, WASH. , Feb. 21. (1868) MY DEAR BRO. , --I am glad you do not want the clerkship, for that PatentOffice is in such a muddle that there would be no security for thepermanency of a place in it. The same remark will apply to alloffices here, now, and no doubt will, till the close of the presentadministration. Any man who holds a place here, now, stands prepared at all times tovacate it. You are doing, now, exactly what I wanted you to do a yearago. We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half. I am in for it. I must go on chasing them until I marry--then I am donewith literature and all other bosh, --that is, literature wherewith toplease the general public. I shall write to please myself, then. I hope you will set type till youcomplete that invention, for surely government pap must be nauseatingfood for a man--a man whom God has enabled to saw wood and beindependent. It really seemed to me a falling from grace, the ideaof going back to San Francisco nothing better than a mere postmaster, albeit the public would have thought I came with gilded honors, and ingreat glory. I only retain correspondence enough, now, to make a living for myself, and have discarded all else, so that I may have time to spare forthe book. Drat the thing, I wish it were done, or that I had no otherwriting to do. This is the place to get a poor opinion of everybody in. There isn'tone man in Washington, in civil office, who has the brains of AnsonBurlingame--and I suppose if China had not seized and saved his greattalents to the world, this government would have discarded him when histime was up. There are more pitiful intellects in this Congress! Oh, geeminy! Thereare few of them that I find pleasant enough company to visit. I am most infernally tired of Wash. And its "attractions. " To be busy isa man's only happiness--and I am--otherwise I should die Yrs. Aff. SAM. The secretarial position with Senator Stewart was short-lived. One cannot imagine Mark Twain as anybody's secretary, and doubtless there was little to be gained on either side by the arrangement. They parted without friction, though in later years, when Stewart had become old and irascible, he used to recount a list of grievances and declare that he had been obliged to threaten violence in order to bring Mark to terms; but this was because the author of Roughing It had in that book taken liberties with the Senator, to the extent of an anecdote and portrait which, though certainly harmless enough, had for some reason given deep offense. Mark Twain really had no time for secretary work. For one thing he was associated with John Swinton in supplying a Washington letter to a list of newspapers, and then he was busy collecting his Quaker City letters, and preparing the copy for his book. Matters were going well enough, when trouble developed from an unexpected quarter. The Alta-California had copyrighted the letters and proposed to issue them in book form. There had been no contract which would prevent this, and the correspondence which Clemens undertook with the Alta management led to nothing. He knew that he had powerful friends among the owners, if he could reach them personally, and he presently concluded to return to San Francisco, make what arrangement he could, and finish his book there. It was his fashion to be prompt; in his next letter we find him already on the way. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: AT SEA, Sunday, March 15, Lat. 25. (1868) DEAR FOLKS, --I have nothing to write, except that I am well--thatthe weather is fearfully hot-that the Henry Chauncey is a magnificentship--that we have twelve hundred, passengers on board--that I have twostaterooms, and so am not crowded--that I have many pleasant friendshere, and the people are not so stupid as on the Quaker City--that wehad Divine Service in the main saloon at 10. 30 this morning--that weexpect to meet the upward bound vessel in Latitude 23, and this is why Iam writing now. We shall reach Aspinwall Thursday morning at 6 o'clock, and SanFrancisco less than two weeks later. I worry a great deal about beingobliged to go without seeing you all, but it could not be helped. Dan Slote, my splendid room-mate in the Quaker City and the noblest manon earth, will call to see you within a month. Make him dine with youand spend the evening. His house is my home always in. New York. Yrs affy, SAM. The San Francisco trip proved successful. Once on the ground Clemens had little difficulty in convincing the Alta publishers that they had received full value in the newspaper use of the letters, and that the book rights remained with the author. A letter to Bliss conveys the situation. ***** To Elisha Bliss, Jr. , in Hartford: SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, '68. E. BLISS, Jr. Esq. Dr. SIR, --The Alta people, after some hesitation, have given mepermission to use my printed letters, and have ceased to think ofpublishing them themselves in book form. I am steadily at work, andshall start East with the completed Manuscript, about the middle ofJune. I lectured here, on the trip, the other night-over sixteen hundreddollars in gold in the house--every seat taken and paid for beforenight. Yrs truly, MARK TWAIN. But he did not sail in June. His friends persuaded him to cover his lecture circuit of two years before, telling the story of his travels. This he did with considerable profit, being everywhere received with great honors. He ended this tour with a second lecture in San Francisco, announced in a droll and characteristic fashion which delighted his Pacific admirers, and insured him a crowded house. --[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap xlvi, and Appendix H. ] His agreement had been to deliver his MS. About August 1st. Returning by the Chauncey, July 28th, he was two days later in Hartford, and had placid the copy for the new book in Bliss's hands. It was by no means a compilation of his newspaper letters. His literary vision was steadily broadening. All of the letters had been radically edited, some had been rewritten, some entirely eliminated. He probably thought very well of the book, an opinion shared by Bliss, but it is unlikely that either of them realized that it was to become a permanent classic, and the best selling book of travel for at least fifty years. IX. LETTERS 1868-70. COURTSHIP, AND "THE INNOCENTS ABROAD" The story of Mark Twain's courtship has been fully told in the completer story of his life; it need only be briefly sketched here as a setting for the letters of this period. In his letter of January 8th we note that he expects to go to Elmira for a few days as soon as he has time. But he did not have time, or perhaps did not receive a pressing invitation until he had returned with his MS. From California. Then, through young Charles Langdon, his Quaker City shipmate, he was invited to Elmira. The invitation was given for a week, but through a subterfuge--unpremeditated, and certainly fair enough in a matter of love-he was enabled to considerably prolong his visit. By the end of his stay he had become really "like one of the family, " though certainly not yet accepted as such. The fragmentary letter that follows reflects something of his pleasant situation. The Mrs. Fairbanks mentioned in this letter had been something more than a "shipmother" to Mark Twain. She was a woman of fine literary taste, and Quaker City correspondent for her husband's paper, the Cleveland Herald. She had given Mark Twain sound advice as to his letters, which he had usually read to her, and had in no small degree modified his early natural tendency to exaggeration and outlandish humor. He owed her much, and never failed to pay her tribute. ***** Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: ELMIRA, N. Y. Aug. 26, 1868. DEAR FOLKS, --You see I am progressing--though slowly. I shall be herea week yet maybe two--for Charlie Langdon cannot get away until hisfather's chief business man returns from a journey--and a visit to Mrs. Fairbanks, at Cleveland, would lose half its pleasure if Charlie werenot along. Moulton of St. Louis ought to be there too. We three wereMrs. F's "cubs, " in the Quaker City. She took good care that we were atchurch regularly on Sundays; at the 8-bells prayer meeting every night;and she kept our buttons sewed on and our clothing in order--and in aword was as busy and considerate, and as watchful over her family ofuncouth and unruly cubs, and as patient and as long-suffering, withal, as a natural mother. So we expect. .. .. Aug. 25th. Didn't finish yesterday. Something called me away. I am most comfortablysituated here. This is the pleasantest family I ever knew. I only haveone trouble, and that is they give me too much thought and too much timeand invention to the object of making my visit pass delightfully. Itneeds---- Just how and when he left the Langdon home the letters do not record. Early that fall he began a lecture engagement with James Redpath, proprietor of the Boston Lyceum Bureau, and his engagements were often within reach of Elmira. He had a standing invitation now to the Langdon home, and the end of the week often found him there. Yet when at last he proposed for the hand of Livy Langdon the acceptance was by no means prompt. He was a favorite in the Langdon household, but his suitability as a husband for the frail and gentle daughter was questioned. However, he was carrying everything, just then, by storm. The largest houses everywhere were crowded to hear him. Papers spoke of him as the coming man of the age, people came to their doors to see him pass. There is but one letter of this period, but it gives us the picture. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: CLEVELAND, Nov. 20, 1868. DEAR FOLKS, --I played against the Eastern favorite, Fanny Kemble, inPittsburgh, last night. She had 200 in her house, and I had upwards of1, 500. All the seats were sold (in a driving rain storm, 3 days ago, )as reserved seats at 25 cents extra, even those in the second and thirdtiers--and when the last seat was gone the box office had not been openmore than 2 hours. When I reached the theatre they were turning peopleaway and the house was crammed, 150 or 200 stood up, all the evening. I go to Elmira tonight. I am simply lecturing for societies, at $100 apop. Yrs SAM. It would be difficult for any family to refuse relationship with one whose star was so clearly ascending, especially when every inclination was in his favor, and the young lady herself encouraged his suit. A provisional engagement was presently made, but it was not finally ratified until February of the following year. Then in a letter from one of his lecture points he tells his people something of his happiness. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: LOCKPORT, N. Y. Feb. 27, 1868. DEAR FOLKS, --I enclose $20 for Ma. I thought I was getting ahead of herlittle assessments of $35 a month, but find I am falling behind with herinstead, and have let her go without money. Well, I did not mean todo it. But you see when people have been getting ready for months ina quiet way to get married, they are bound to grow stingy, and go tosaving up money against that awful day when it is sure to be needed. Iam particularly anxious to place myself in a position where I can carryon my married life in good shape on my own hook, because I have paddledmy own canoe so long that I could not be satisfied now to let anybodyhelp me--and my proposed father-in-law is naturally so liberal that itwould be just like him to want to give us a start in life. But I don'twant it that way. I can start myself. I don't want any help. I can runthis institution without any outside assistance, and I shall have a wifewho will stand by me like a soldier through thick and thin, andnever complain. She is only a little body, but she hasn't her peer inChristendom. I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashionimperatively demands a two-hundred dollar diamond one, and told her itwas typical of her future lot--namely, that she would have to flourishon substantials rather than luxuries. (But you see I know the girl--shedon't care anything about luxuries. ) She is a splendid girl. She spendsno money but her usual year's allowance, and she spends nearly everycent of that on other people. She will be a good sensible little wife, without any airs about her. I don't make intercession for her beforehandand ask you to love her, for there isn't any use in that--you couldn'thelp it if you were to try. I warn you that whoever comes within the fatal influence of herbeautiful nature is her willing slave for evermore. I take my affidaviton that statement. Her father and mother and brother embrace and pet herconstantly, precisely as if she were a sweetheart, instead of a bloodrelation. She has unlimited power over her father, and yet she neveruses it except to make him help people who stand in need of help. .. . But if I get fairly started on the subject of my bride, I never shallget through--and so I will quit right here. I went to Elmira a littleover a week ago, and staid four days and then had to go to New York onbusiness. . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . No further letters have been preserved until June, when he is in Elmira and with his fiancee reading final proofs on the new book. They were having an idyllic good time, of course, but it was a useful time, too, for Olivia Langdon had a keen and refined literary instinct, and the Innocents Abroad, as well as Mark Twain's other books, are better to-day for her influence. It has been stated that Mark Twain loved the lecture platform, but from his letters we see that even at this early date, when he was at the height of his first great vogue as a public entertainer, he had no love for platform life. Undoubtedly he rejoiced in the brief periods when he was actually before his audience and could play upon it with his master touch, but the dreary intermissions of travel and broken sleep were too heavy a price to pay. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis ELMIRA, June 4. (1868) DEAR FOLKS, --Livy sends you her love and loving good wishes, and I sendyou mine. The last 3 chapters of the book came tonight--we shall read itin the morning and then thank goodness, we are done. In twelve months (or rather I believe it is fourteen, ) I have earnedjust eighty dollars by my pen--two little magazine squibs and onenewspaper letter--altogether the idlest, laziest 14 months I ever spentin my life. And in that time my absolute and necessary expenses havebeen scorchingly heavy--for I have now less than three thousand sixhundred dollars in bank out of the eight or nine thousand I have madeduring those months, lecturing. My expenses were something frightfulduring the winter. I feel ashamed of my idleness, and yet I have hadreally no inclination to do anything but court Livy. I haven't any otherinclination yet. I have determined not to work as hard traveling, any more, as I did last winter, and so I have resolved not to lectureoutside of the 6 New England States next winter. My Western course wouldeasily amount to $10, 000, but I would rather make 2 or 3 thousand in NewEngland than submit again to so much wearing travel. (I have promisedto talk ten nights for a thousand dollars in the State of New York, provided the places are close together. ) But after all if I get locatedin a newspaper in a way to suit me, in the meantime, I don't want tolecture at all next winter, and probably shan't. I most cordially hatethe lecture field. And after all, I shudder to think that I may neverget out of it. In all conversations with Gough, and Anna Dickinson, Nasby, OliverWendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips and the other old stagers, I could notobserve that they ever expected or hoped to get out of the business. Idon't want to get wedded to it as they are. Livy thinks we can live ona very moderate sum and that we'll not need to lecture. I know verywell that she can live on a small allowance, but I am not so sure aboutmyself. I can't scare her by reminding her that her father's familyexpenses are forty thousand dollars a year, because she produces thedocuments at once to show that precious little of this outlay is on heraccount. But I must not commence writing about Livy, else I shall neverstop. There isn't such another little piece of perfection in the worldas she is. My time is become so short, now, that I doubt if I get to Californiathis summer. If I manage to buy into a paper, I think I will visit youa while and not go to Cal. At all. I shall know something about itafter my next trip to Hartford. We all go there on the 10th--the wholefamily--to attend a wedding, on the 17th. I am offered an interest in aCleveland paper which would pay me $2, 300 to $2, 500 a year, and a salaryadded of $3, 000. The salary is fair enough, but the interest is notlarge enough, and so I must look a little further. The Cleveland folkssay they can be induced to do a little better by me, and urge me tocome out and talk business. But it don't strike me--I feel little or noinclination to go. I believe I haven't anything else to write, and it is bed-time. I wantto write to Orion, but I keep putting it off--I keep putting everythingoff. Day after day Livy and I are together all day long and until 10 atnight, and then I feel dreadfully sleepy. If Orion will bear with me andforgive me I will square up with him yet. I will even let him kiss Livy. My love to Mollie and Annie and Sammie and all. Good-bye. Affectionately, SAM. It is curious, with his tendency to optimism and general expansion of futures, that he says nothing of the possible sales of the new book, or of his expectations in that line. It was issued in July, and by June the publishers must have had promising advance orders from their canvassers; but apparently he includes none of these chickens in his financial forecast. Even when the book had been out a full month, and was being shipped at the rate of several hundreds a day, he makes no reference to it in a letter to his sister, other than to ask if she has not received a copy. This, however, was a Mark Twain peculiarity. Writing was his trade; the returns from it seldom excited him. It was only when he drifted into strange and untried fields that he began to chase rainbows, to blow iridescent bubbles, and count unmined gold. ***** To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: BUFFALO, Aug. 20, 1869. MY DEAR SISTER, --I have only time to write a line. I got your letterthis morning and mailed it to Livy. She will be expecting me tonight andI am sorry to disappoint her so, but then I couldn't well get away. Iwill go next Saturday. I have bundled up Livy's picture and will try and recollect to mail ittomorrow. It is a porcelaintype and I think you will like it. I am sorry I never got to St. Louis, because I may be too busy to go, for a long time. But I have been busy all the time and St. Louis isclear out of the way, and remote from the world and all ordinary routesof travel. You must not place too much weight upon this idea of movingthe capital from Washington. St. Louis is in some respects a betterplace for it than Washington, though there isn't more than a toss-upbetween the two after all. One is dead and the other in a trance. Washington is in the centre of population and business, while St. Louisis far removed from both. And you know there is no geographical centreany more. The railroads and telegraph have done away with all that. Itis no longer a matter of sufficient importance to be gravely consideredby thinking men. The only centres, now, are narrowed down to those ofintelligence, capital and population. As I said before Washington is thenearest to those and you don't have to paddle across a river on ferryboats of a pattern popular in the dark ages to get to it, nor have toclamber up vilely paved hills in rascally omnibuses along with a herdof all sorts of people after you are there. Secondly, the removal ofthe capital is one of those old, regular, reliable dodges that are thebread-and meat of back country congressmen. It is agitated every year. It always has been, it always will be; It is not new in any respect. Thirdly. The Capitol has cost $40, 000, 000 already and lacks a good dealof being finished, yet. There are single stones in the Treasury building(and a good many of them) that cost twenty-seven thousand dollarsapiece--and millions were spent in the construction of that and thePatent Office and the other great government buildings. To move toSt. Louis, the country must throw away a hundred millions of capitalinvested in those buildings, and go right to work to spend a hundredmillions on new buildings in St. Louis. Shall we ever have a Congress, amajority of whose members are hopelessly insane? Probably not. But it ispossible--unquestionably such a thing is possible. Only I don't believeit will happen in our time; and I am satisfied the capital will not bemoved until it does happen. But if St. Louis would donate the ground andthe buildings, it would be a different matter. No, Pamela, I don't seeany good reason to believe you or I will ever see the capital moved. I have twice instructed the publishers to send you a book--it was thefirst thing I did--long before the proofs were finished. Write me if itis not yet done. Livy says we must have you all at our marriage, and I say we can't. Itwill be at Christmas or New Years, when such a trip across the countrywould be equivalent to murder & arson & everything else. --And it wouldcost five hundred dollars--an amount of money she don't know the valueof now, but will before a year is gone. She grieves over it, poor littlerascal, but it can't be helped. She must wait awhile, till I am firmlyon my legs, & then she shall see you. She says her father and motherwill invite you just as soon as the wedding date is definitely fixed, anyway--& she thinks that's bound to settle it. But the ice & snow, &the long hard journey, & the injudiciousness of laying out any moneyexcept what we are obliged to part with while we are so much in debt, settles the case differently. For it is a debt. . .. . Mr. Langdon is just as good as bound for $25, 000 for me, and hasalready advanced half of it in cash. I wrote and asked whether I hadbetter send him my note, or a due-bill, or how he would prefer to havethe indebtedness made of record and he answered every other topic in theletter pleasantly but never replied to that at all. Still, I shallgive my note into the hands of his business agent here, and pay him theinterest as it falls due. We must "go slow. " We are not in the ClevelandHerald. We are a hundred thousand times better off, but there isn't somuch money in it. (Remainder missing. ) In spite of the immediate success of his book--a success the like of which had scarcely been known in America--Mark Twain held himself to be, not a literary man, but a journalist: He had no plans for another book; as a newspaper owner and editor he expected, with his marriage, to settle down and devote the rest of his life to journalism. The paper was the Buffalo Express; his interest in it was one-third--the purchase price, twenty-five thousand dollars, of which he had paid a part, Jervis Langdon, his future father-in-law, having furnished cash and security for the remainder. He was already in possession in August, but he was not regularly in Buffalo that autumn, for he had agreed with Redpath to deliver his Quaker City lecture, and the tour would not end until a short time before his wedding-day, February 2, 1870. Our next letter hardly belongs in this collection; as it was doubtless written with at least the possibility of publication in view. But it is too amusing, too characteristic of Mark Twain, to be omitted. It was sent in response to an invitation from the New York Society of California Pioneers to attend a banquet given in New York City, October 13, 1869, and was, of course, read to the assembled diners. ***** To the New York Society of California Pioneers, in New York City: ELMIRA, October 11, 1869. GENTLEMEN, --Circumstances render it out of my power to take advantageof the invitation extended to me through Mr. Simonton, and be present atyour dinner at New York. I regret this very much, for there are severalamong you whom I would have a right to join hands with on the score ofold friendship, and I suppose I would have a sublime general right toshake hands with the rest of you on the score of kinship in Californiaups and downs in search of fortune. If I were to tell some of my experience, you would recognize Californiablood in me; I fancy the old, old story would sound familiar, nodoubt. I have the usual stock of reminiscences. For instance: I went toEsmeralda early. I purchased largely in the "Wide West, " "Winnemucca, "and other fine claims, and was very wealthy. I fared sumptuously onbread when flour was $200 a barrel and had beans for dinner everySunday, when none but bloated aristocrats could afford such grandeur. But I finished by feeding batteries in a quartz mill at $15 a week, andwishing I was a battery myself and had somebody to feed me. My claims inEsmeralda are there yet. I suppose I could be persuaded to sell. I went to Humboldt District when it was new; I became largely interestedin the "Alba Nueva" and other claims with gorgeous names, and was richagain--in prospect. I owned a vast mining property there. I would nothave sold out for less than $400, 000 at that time. But I will now. Finally I walked home--200 miles partly for exercise, and partly becausestage fare was expensive. Next I entered upon an affluent career inVirginia City, and by a judicious investment of labor and the capitalof friends, became the owner of about all the worthless wild cat minesthere were in that part of the country. Assessments did the businessfor me there. There were a hundred and seventeen assessments to onedividend, and the proportion of income to outlay was a little againstme. My financial barometer went down to 32 Fahrenheit, and thesubscriber was frozen out. I took up extensions on the main lead-extensions that reached toBritish America, in one direction, and to the Isthmus of Panama in theother--and I verily believe I would have been a rich man if I had everfound those infernal extensions. But I didn't. I ran tunnels till Itapped the Arctic Ocean, and I sunk shafts till I broke through the roofof perdition; but those extensions turned up missing every time. I amwilling to sell all that property and throw in the improvements. Perhaps you remember that celebrated "North Ophir?" I bought that mine. It was very rich in pure silver. You could take it out in lumps as largeas a filbert. But when it was discovered that those lumps were meltedhalf dollars, and hardly melted at that, a painful case of "salting" wasapparent, and the undersigned adjourned to the poorhouse again. I paid assessments on "Hale and Norcross" until they sold me out, andI had to take in washing for a living--and the next month that infamousstock went up to $7, 000 a foot. I own millions and millions of feet of affluent silver leads inNevada--in fact the entire undercrust of that country nearly, and ifCongress would move that State off my property so that I could get atit, I would be wealthy yet. But no, there she squats--and here am I. Failing health persuades me to sell. If you know of any one desiringa permanent investment, I can furnish one that will have the virtue ofbeing eternal. I have been through the California mill, with all its "dips, spurs andangles, variations and sinuosities. " I have worked there at all thedifferent trades and professions known to the catalogues. I havebeen everything, from a newspaper editor down to a cow-catcher on alocomotive, and I am encouraged to believe that if there had been a fewmore occupations to experiment on, I might have made a dazzling successat last, and found out what mysterious designs Providence had increating me. But you perceive that although I am not a Pioneer, I have had asufficiently variegated time of it to enable me to talk Pioneer like anative, and feel like a Forty-Niner. Therefore, I cordially welcome youto your old-remembered homes and your long deserted firesides, and closethis screed with the sincere hope that your visit here will be a happyone, and not embittered by the sorrowful surprises that absence andlapse of years are wont to prepare for wanderers; surprises which comein the form of old friends missed from their places; silence wherefamiliar voices should be; the young grown old; change and decayeverywhere; home a delusion and a disappointment; strangers athearthstone; sorrow where gladness was; tears for laughter; themelancholy-pomp of death where the grace of life has been! With all good wishes for the Returned Prodigals, and regrets that Icannot partake of a small piece of the fatted calf (rare and no gravy, ) I am yours, cordially, MARK TWAIN. In the next letter we find him in the midst of a sort of confusion of affairs, which, in one form or another, would follow him throughout the rest of his life. It was the price of his success and popularity, combined with his general gift for being concerned with a number of things, and a natural tendency for getting into hot water, which becomes more evident as the years and letters pass in review. Orion Clemens, in his attempt to save money for the government, had employed methods and agents which the officials at Washington did not understand, and refused to recognize. Instead of winning the credit and commendation he had expected, he now found himself pursued by claims of considerable proportions. The "land" referred to is the Tennessee tract, the heritage which John Clemens had provided for his children. Mark Twain had long since lost faith in it, and was not only willing, but eager to renounce his rights. "Nasby" is, of course, David R. Locke, of the Toledo Blade, whose popularity at this time both as a lecturer and writer was very great. Clemens had met him here and there on their platform tour, and they had become good friends. Clemens, in fact, had once proposed to Nasby a joint trip to the Pacific coast. The California idea had been given up, but both Mark Twain and Nasby found engagements enough, and sufficient profit east of the Mississippi. Boston was often their headquarters that winter ('69 and '70), and they were much together. "Josh Billings, " another of Redpath's lecturers, was likewise often to be found in the Lyceum offices. There is a photograph of Mark Twain, Nasby, and Josh Billings together. Clemens also, that winter, met William Dean Howells, then in the early days of his association with the Atlantic Monthly. The two men, so widely different, became firm friends at sight, and it was to Howells in the years to come that Mark Twain would write more letters, and more characteristic letters, than to any other living man. Howells had favorably reviewed 'The Innocents Abroad, ' and after the first moment of their introduction had passed Clemens said: "When I read that review of yours I felt like the woman who said that she was so glad that her baby had come white. " It was not the sort of thing that Howells would have said, but it was the sort of thing that he could understand and appreciate from Mark Twain. In company with Nasby Clemens, that season, also met Oliver Wendell Holmes. Later he had sent Holmes a copy of his book and received a pleasantly appreciative reply. "I always like, " wrote Holmes, "to hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar, or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd. .. . I hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your travels. " A wish that was realized in due time, though it is doubtful if Doctor Holmes or any one else at the moment believed that a book of that nature and price (it was $3. 50 a copy) would ever reach such a sale. ***** To Mrs. Moffett, in St. Louis: BOSTON, Nov. 9, 1869. MY DEAR SISTER, --Three or four letters just received from home. Myfirst impulse was to send Orion a check on my publisher for the money hewants, but a sober second thought suggested that if he has not defraudedthe government out of money, why pay, simply because the governmentchooses to consider him in its debt? No: Right is right. The idea don'tsuit me. Let him write the Treasury the state of the case, and tell themhe has no money. If they make his sureties pay, then I will make thesureties whole, but I won't pay a cent of an unjust claim. You talk ofdisgrace. To my mind it would be just as disgraceful to allow one's selfto be bullied into paying that which is unjust. Ma thinks it is hard that Orion's share of the land should be swept awayjust as it is right on the point (as it always has been) of becomingvaluable. Let her rest easy on that point. This letter is his ampleauthority to sell my share of the land immediately and appropriate theproceeds--giving no account to me, but repaying the amount to Ma first, or in case of her death, to you or your heirs, whenever in the futurehe shall be able to do it. Now, I want no hesitation in this matter. Irenounce my ownership from this date, for this purpose, provided it issold just as suddenly as he can sell it. In the next place--Mr. Langdon is old, and is trying hard towithdraw from business and seek repose. I will not burden him with apurchase--but I will ask him to take full possession of a coal tract ofthe land without paying a cent, simply conditioning that he shall mineand throw the coal into market at his own cost, and pay to you and allof you what he thinks is a fair portion of the profits accruing--youcan do as you please with the rest of the land. Therefore, send me(to Elmira, ) information about the coal deposits so framed that he cancomprehend the matter and can intelligently instruct an agent how tofind it and go to work. Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Bostonaudience--4, 000 critics--and on the success of this matter depends myfuture success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in thesame boat. Tonight decides the fate of his brand-new lecture. Hehas just left my room--been reading his lecture to me--was greatlydepressed. I have convinced him that he has little to fear. I get just about five hundred more applications to lecture than I canpossibly fill--and in the West they say "Charge all you please, butcome. " I shan't go West at all. I stop lecturing the 22d of January, sure. But I shall talk every night up to that time. They flood mewith high-priced invitations to write for magazines and papers, andpublishers besiege me to write books. Can't do any of these things. I am twenty-two thousand dollars in debt, and shall earn the moneyand pay it within two years--and therefore I am not spending any moneyexcept when it is necessary. I had my life insured for $10, 000 yesterday (what ever became of Mr. Moffett' s life insurance?) "for the benefit of my natural heirs"--thesame being my mother, for Livy wouldn't claim it, you may be sure ofthat. This has taken $200 out of my pocket which I was going to sendto Ma. But I will send her some, soon. Tell Orion to keep a stiff upperlip--when the worst comes to the worst I will come forward. Must talk inProvidence, R. I. , tonight. Must leave now. I thank Mollie and Orion andthe rest for your letters, but you see how I am pushed--ought to have 6clerks. Affectionately, SAM. By the end of January, 1870 more than thirty thousand copies of the Innocents had been sold, and in a letter to his publisher the author expressed his satisfaction. ***** To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: ELMIRA, Jan. 28 '70. FRIEND BLISS, --. .. . Yes, I am satisfied with the way you are running thebook. You are running it in staving, tip-top, first-class style. I neverwander into any corner of the country but I find that an agent has beenthere before me, and many of that community have read the book. And onan average about ten people a day come and hunt me up to thank me andtell me I'm a benefactor! I guess this is a part of the programme wedidn't expect in the first place. I think you are rushing this book in a manner to be proud of; andyou will make the finest success of it that has ever been made witha subscription book, I believe. What with advertising, establishingagencies, &c. , you have got an enormous lot of machinery under way andhard at work in a wonderfully short space of time. It is easy to see, when one travels around, that one must be endowed with a deal of genuinegeneralship in order to maneuvre a publication whose line of battlestretches from end to end of a great continent, and whose foragers andskirmishers invest every hamlet and besiege every village hidden away inall the vast space between. I'll back you against any publisher in America, Bliss--or elsewhere. Yrs as ever CLEMENS. There is another letter written just at this time which of all letters must not be omitted here. Only five years earlier Mark Twain, poor, and comparatively unknown, had been carrying water while Jim Gillis and Dick Stoker washed out the pans of dirt in search of the gold pocket which they did not find. Clemens must have received a letter from Gillis referring to some particular occasion, but it has disappeared; the reply, however, always remained one of James Gillis's treasured possessions. ***** To James Gillis, in his cabin on Jackass Hill, Tuolumne Co. , California: ELMIRA, N. Y. Jan. 26, '70. DEAR JIM, --I remember that old night just as well! And somewhere amongmy relics I have your remembrance stored away. It makes my heart acheyet to call to mind some of those days. Still, it shouldn't--for rightin the depths of their poverty and their pocket-hunting vagabondagelay the germ of my coming good fortune. You remember the one gleamof jollity that shot across our dismal sojourn in the rain and mud ofAngels' Camp I mean that day we sat around the tavern stove and heardthat chap tell about the frog and how they filled him with shot. And youremember how we quoted from the yarn and laughed over it, out there onthe hillside while you and dear old Stoker panned and washed. I jottedthe story down in my note-book that day, and would have been glad to getten or fifteen dollars for it--I was just that blind. But then wewere so hard up! I published that story, and it became widely known inAmerica, India, China, England--and the reputation it made for me haspaid me thousands and thousands of dollars since. Four or five monthsago I bought into the Express (I have ordered it sent to you as long asyou live--and if the book keeper sends you any bills, you let me hear ofit. ) I went heavily in debt never could have dared to do that, Jim, ifwe hadn't heard the jumping Frog story that day. And wouldn't I love to take old Stoker by the hand, and wouldn't I loveto see him in his great specialty, his wonderful rendition of "Rinalds"in the "Burning Shame!" Where is Dick and what is he doing? Give him myfervent love and warm old remembrances. A week from today I shall be married to a girl even better, and lovelierthan the peerless "Chapparal Quails. " You can't come so far, Jim, butstill I cordially invite you to come, anyhow--and I invite Dick, too. And if you two boys were to land here on that pleasant occasion, wewould make you right royally welcome. Truly your friend, SAML L. CLEMENS. P. S. "California plums are good, Jim--particularly when they arestewed. " Steve Gillis, who sent a copy of his letter to the writer, added: "Dick Stoker--dear, gentle unselfish old Dick-died over three years ago, aged 78. I am sure it will be a melancholy pleasure to Mark to know that Dick lived in comfort all his later life, sincerely loved and respected by all who knew him. He never left Jackass Hill. He struck a pocket years ago containing enough not only to build himself a comfortable house near his old cabin, but to last him, without work, to his painless end. He was a Mason, and was buried by the Order in Sonora. "The 'Quails'--the beautiful, the innocent, the wild little Quails --lived way out in the Chapparal; on a little ranch near the Stanislaus River, with their father and mother. They were famous for their beauty and had many suitors. " The mention of "California plums" refers to some inedible fruit which Gillis once, out of pure goodness of heart, bought of a poor wandering squaw, and then, to conceal his motive, declared that they were something rare and fine, and persisted in eating them, though even when stewed they nearly choked him. X. LETTERS 1870-71. MARK TWAIN IN BUFFALO. MARRIAGE. THE BUFFALOEXPRESS. "MEMORANDA. " LECTURES. A NEW BOOK. Samuel L. Clemens and Olivia Langdon were married in the Langdon home at Elmira, February 2, 1870, and took up their residence in Buffalo in a beautiful home, a wedding present from the bride's father. The story of their wedding, and the amusing circumstances connected with their establishment in Buffalo, have been told elsewhere. --[Mark Twain: A Biography, chap. Lxxiv. ] Mark Twain now believed that he was through with lecturing. Two letters to Redpath, his agent, express his comfortable condition. ***** To James Redpath, in Boston: BUFFALO, March 22, 1890. DEAR RED, --I am not going to lecture any more forever. I have got thingsciphered down to a fraction now. I know just about what it will cost usto live and I can make the money without lecturing. Therefore old man, count me out. Your friend, S. L. CLEMENS. ***** To James Redpath, in Boston: ELMIRA, N. Y. May 10, 1870. FRIEND REDPATH, --I guess I am out of the field permanently. Have got a lovely wife; a lovely house, bewitchingly furnished; alovely carriage, and a coachman whose style and dignity are simplyawe-inspiring--nothing less--and I am making more money thannecessary--by considerable, and therefore why crucify myself nightly onthe platform. The subscriber will have to be excused from the presentseason at least. Remember me to Nasby, Billings and Fall. --[Redpath's partner in thelecture lyceum. ]--Luck to you! I am going to print your menagerie, Parton and all, and make comments. In next Galaxy I give Nasby's friend and mine from Philadelphia (JohnQuill, a literary thief) a "hyste. " Yours always and after. MARK. The reference to the Galaxy in the foregoing letter has to do with a department called Memoranda, which he had undertaken to conduct for the new magazine. This work added substantially to his income, and he believed it would be congenial. He was allowed free hand to write and print what he chose, and some of his best work at this time was published in the new department, which he continued for a year. Mark Twain now seemed to have his affairs well regulated. His mother and sister were no longer far away in St. Louis. Soon after his marriage they had, by his advice, taken up residence at Fredonia, New York, where they could be easily visited from Buffalo. Altogether, the outlook seemed bright to Mark Twain and his wife, during the first months of their marriage. Then there came a change. In a letter which Clemens wrote to his mother and sister we get the first chapter of disaster. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens, and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y. : ELMIRA, N. Y. June 25, 1870. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --We were called here suddenly by telegram, 3days ago. Mr. Langdon is very low. We have well-nigh lost hope--all ofus except Livy. Mr. Langdon, whose hope is one of his most prominent characteristics, says himself, this morning, that his recovery is only a possibility, not a probability. He made his will this morning--that is, appointedexecutors--nothing else was necessary. The household is sad enoughCharley is in Bavaria. We telegraphed Munroe & Co. Paris, to notifyCharley to come home--they sent the message to Munich. Our message lefthere at 8 in the morning and Charley's answer arrived less than eighthours afterward. He sailed immediately. He will reach home two weeks from now. The whole city is troubled. As Iwrite (at the office, ) a dispatch arrives from Charley who has reachedLondon, and will sail thence on 28th. He wants news. We cannot send himany. Affectionately SAM. P. S. I sent $300 to Fredonia Bank for Ma--It is in her name. Mrs. Clemens, herself, was not in the best of health at this time, but devotion to her father took her to his bedside, where she insisted upon standing long, hard watches, the strain of which told upon her severely. Meantime, work must go on; the daily demand of the newspaper and the monthly call of the Memoranda could not go unheeded. Also, Bliss wanted a new book, and met Mark Twain at Elmira to arrange for it. In a letter to Orion we learn of this project. ***** To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis: ELMIRA, July 15, 1870 MY DEAR BRO. , --Per contract I must have another 600-page book ready formy publisher Jan. 2, and I only began it today. The subject of it is asecret, because I may possibly change it. But as it stands, I propose todo up Nevada and Cal. , beginning with the trip across the country in thestage. Have you a memorandum of the route we took--or the names of anyof the Stations we stopped at? Do you remember any of the scenes, names, incidents or adventures of the coach trip?--for I remember next tonothing about the matter. Jot down a foolscap page of items for me. Iwish I could have two days' talk with you. I suppose I am to get the biggest copyright, this time, ever paid on asubscription book in this country. Give our love to Mollie. --Mr. Langdon is very low. Yr Bro SAM. The "biggest copyright, " mentioned in this letter, was a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent. , which Bliss had agreed to pay, on the retail price of the book. The book was Roughing It, though this title was not decided upon until considerably later. Orion Clemens eagerly furnished a detailed memorandum of the route of their overland journey, which brought this enthusiastic acknowledgment: ***** To Orion Clemens, in St. Louis: BUF. , 1870. DEAR BRO. , --I find that your little memorandum book is going to be everso much use to me, and will enable me to make quite a coherent narrativeof the Plains journey instead of slurring it over and jumping 2, 000miles at a stride. The book I am writing will sell. In return for theuse of the little memorandum book I shall take the greatest pleasurein forwarding to you the third $1, 000 which the publisher of theforthcoming work sends me or the first $1, 000, I am not particular--theywill both be in the first quarterly statement of account from thepublisher. In great haste, Yr Obliged Bro. SAM. Love to Mollie. We are all getting along tolerably well. Mr. Langdon died early in August, and Mrs. Clemens returned to Buffalo, exhausted in mind and body. If she hoped for rest now, in the quiet of her own home, she was disappointed, as the two brief letters that follow clearly show. ***** To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y. : BUFFALO, Aug. 31, 70. MY DEAR SISTER, --I know I ought to be thrashed for not writing you, butI have kept putting it off. We get heaps of letters every day; it is acomfort to have somebody like you that will let us shirk and be patientover it. We got the book and I did think I wrote a line thanking you forit-but I suppose I neglected it. We are getting along tolerably well. Mother [Mrs. Langdon] is here, andMiss Emma Nye. Livy cannot sleep since her father's death--but I giveher a narcotic every night and make her. I am just as busy as I canbe--am still writing for the Galaxy and also writing a book like the"Innocents" in size and style. I have got my work ciphered down to days, and I haven't a single day to spare between this and the date which, bywritten contract I am to deliver the M. S. Of the book to the publisher. ----In a hurry Affectionately SAM ***** To Orion Clemens, in St, Louis: BUF. Sept. 9th, 1870. MY DEAR BRO, --O here! I don't want to be consulted at all about Tenn. Idon't want it even mentioned to me. When I make a suggestion it is foryou to act upon it or throw it aside, but I beseech you never to ask myadvice, opinion or consent about that hated property. If it was becauseI felt the slightest personal interest in the infernal land that I evermade a suggestion, the suggestion would never be made. Do exactly as you please with the land--always remember this--that sotrivial a percentage as ten per cent will never sell it. It is only a bid for a somnambulist. I have no time to turn round, a young lady visitor (schoolmate ofLivy's) is dying in the house of typhoid fever (parents are in SouthCarolina) and the premises are full of nurses and doctors and we are allfagged out. Yrs. SAM. Miss Nye, who had come to cheer her old schoolmate, had been prostrated with the deadly fever soon after her arrival. Another period of anxiety and nursing followed. Mrs. Clemens, in spite of her frail health, devoted much time to her dying friend, until by the time the end came she was herself in a precarious condition. This was at the end of September. A little more than a month later, November 7th, her first child, Langdon Clemens, was prematurely born. To the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, of Hartford, Mark Twain characteristically announced the new arrival. ***** To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell and wife, in Hartford, Conn. : BUFFALO, Nov 12, '70. DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT, --I came into the world on the 7th inst. , andconsequently am about five days old, now. I have had wretched healthever since I made my appearance. First one thing and then another haskept me under the weather, and as a general thing I have been chilly anduncomfortable. I am not corpulent, nor am I robust in any way. At birth I only weighed4 1/2 pounds with my clothes on--and the clothes were the chief featureof the weight, too, I am obliged to confess. But I am doing finely, all things considered. I was at a standstill for 3 days and a half, butduring the last 24 hours I have gained nearly an ounce, avoirdupois. They all say I look very old and venerable--and I am aware, myself, thatI never smile. Life seems a serious thing, what I have seen of it--andmy observation teaches me that it is made up mainly of hiccups, unnecessary washings, and colic. But no doubt you, who are old, havelong since grown accustomed and reconciled to what seems to me such adisagreeable novelty. My father said, this morning, when my face was in repose and thoughtful, that I looked precisely as young Edward Twichell of Hartford used tolook some is months ago--chin, mouth, forehead, expression--everything. My little mother is very bright and cheery, and I guess she ispretty happy, but I don't know what about. She laughs a great deal, notwithstanding she is sick abed. And she eats a great deal, though shesays that is because the nurse desires it. And when she has had all thenurse desires her to have, she asks for more. She is getting along verywell indeed. My aunt Susie Crane has been here some ten days or two weeks, butgoes home today, and Granny Fairbanks of Cleveland arrives to take herplace. --[Mrs. Fairbanks, of the Quaker City excursion. ] Very lovingly, LANGDON CLEMENS. P. S. Father said I had better write because you would be moreinterested in me, just now, than in the rest of the family. Clemens had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell and his wife during his several sojourns in Hartford, in connection with his book publication, and the two men had immediately become firm friends. Twichell had come to Elmira in February to the wedding to assist Rev. Thos. K. Beecher in the marriage ceremony. Joseph Twichell was a devout Christian, while Mark Twain was a doubter, even a scoffer, where orthodoxy was concerned, yet the sincerity and humanity of the two men drew them together; their friendship was lifelong. A second letter to Twichell, something more than a month later, shows a somewhat improved condition in the Clemens household. ***** To Rev. Twichell, in Hartford: BUF. Dec. 19th, 1870. DEAR J. H. , --All is well with us, I believe--though for some days thebaby was quite ill. We consider him nearly restored to health now, however. Ask my brother about us--you will find him at Bliss'spublishing office, where he is gone to edit Bliss's new paper--left herelast Monday. Make his and his wife's acquaintance. Take Mrs. T. To seethem as soon as they are fixed. Livy is up, and the prince keeps her busy and anxious these latter daysand nights, but I am a bachelor up stairs and don't have to jump up andget the soothing syrup--though I would as soon do it as not, I assureyou. (Livy will be certain to read this letter. ) Tell Harmony (Mrs. T. ) that I do hold the baby, and do it prettyhandily, too, although with occasional apprehensions that his loose headwill fall off. I don't have to quiet him--he hardly ever utters a cry. He is always thinking about something. He is a patient, good littlebaby. Smoke? I always smoke from 3 till 5 Sunday afternoons--and in New Yorkthe other day I smoked a week, day and night. But when Livy is well Ismoke only those two hours on Sunday. I'm "boss" of the habit, now, andshall never let it boss me any more. Originally, I quit solely on Livy'saccount, (not that I believed there was the faintest reason in thematter, but just as I would deprive myself of sugar in my coffee if shewished it, or quit wearing socks if she thought them immoral), and Istick to it yet on Livy's account, and shall always continue to do so, without a pang. But somehow it seems a pity that you quit, for Mrs. T. Didn't mind it if I remember rightly. Ah, it is turning one's back upona kindly Providence to spurn away from us the good creature he sent tomake the breath of life a luxury as well as a necessity, enjoyable aswell as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficientexcuse for it! Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shortenmy life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they werewasting their puerile word upon--they little knew how trivial andvalueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won'tpersuade you, Twichell--I won't until I see you again--but then we'llsmoke for a week together, and then shut off again. I would have gone to Hartford from New York last Saturday, but I got sohomesick I couldn't. But maybe I'll come soon. No, Sir, catch me in the metropolis again, to get homesick. I didn't know Warner had a book out. We send oceans and continents of love--I have worked myself down, today. Yrs always MARK. With his establishment in Buffalo, Clemens, as already noted, had persuaded his sister, now a widow, and his mother, to settle in Fredonia, not far away. Later, he had found a position for Orion, as editor of a small paper which Bliss had established. What with these several diversions and the sorrows and sicknesses of his own household, we can readily imagine that literary work had been performed under difficulties. Certainly, humorous writing under such disturbing conditions could not have been easy, nor could we expect him to accept an invitation to be present and make a comic speech at an agricultural dinner, even though Horace Greeley would preside. However, he sent to the secretary of the association a letter which might be read at the gathering: ***** To A. B. Crandall, in Woodberry Falls, N. Y. , to be read at anagricultural dinner: BUFFALO, Dec. 26, 1870. GENTLEMEN, --I thank you very much for your invitation to theAgricultural dinner, and would promptly accept it and as promptly bethere but for the fact that Mr. Greeley is very busy this month andhas requested me to clandestinely continue for him in The Tribune thearticles "What I Know about Farming. " Consequently the necessity ofexplaining to the readers of that journal why buttermilk cannot bemanufactured profitably at 8 cents a quart out of butter that costs 60cents a pound compels my stay at home until the article is written. With reiterated thanks, I am Yours truly, MARK TWAIN. In this letter Mark Twain made the usual mistake as to the title of the Greeley farming series, "What I Know of Farming" being the correct form. The Buffalo Express, under Mark Twain's management, had become a sort of repository for humorous efforts, often of an indifferent order. Some of these things, signed by nom de plumes, were charged to Mark Twain. When Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" devastated the country, and was so widely parodied, an imitation of it entitled, "Three Aces, " and signed "Carl Byng, " was printed in the Express. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, then editor of Every Saturday, had not met Mark Twain, and, noticing the verses printed in the exchanges over his signature, was one of those who accepted them as Mark Twain's work. He wrote rather an uncomplimentary note in Every Saturday concerning the poem and its authorship, characterizing it as a feeble imitation of Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee. " Clemens promptly protested to Aldrich, then as promptly regretted having done so, feeling that he was making too much of a small matter. Hurriedly he sent a second brief note. ***** To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, editor of "Every Saturday, " Boston, Massachusetts: BUFFALO, Jan. 22, 1870. DEAR SIR, --Please do not publish the note I sent you the other day about"Hy. Slocum's" plagiarism entitled "Three Aces"--it is not importantenough for such a long paragraph. Webb writes me that he has put in aparagraph about it, too--and I have requested him to suppress it. If youwould simply state, in a line and a half under "Literary Notes, " thatyou mistook one "Hy. Slocum" (no, it was one "Carl Byng, " I perceive)"Carl Byng" for Mark Twain, and that it was the former who wrote theplagiarism entitled "Three Aces, " I think that would do a fairjustice without any unseemly display. But it is hard to be accused ofplagiarism--a crime I never have committed in my life. Yrs. Truly MARK TWAIN. But this came too late. Aldrich replied that he could not be prevented from doing him justice, as forty-two thousand copies of the first note, with the editor's apology duly appended, were already in press. He would withdraw his apology in the next number of Every Saturday, if Mark Twain said so. Mark Twain's response this time assumed the proportions of a letter. ***** To Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in Boston: 472 DELAWARE ST. , BUFFALO, Jan. 28. DEAR MR. ALDRICH, --No indeed, don't take back the apology! Hang it, I don't want to abuse a man's civility merely because he gives me thechance. I hear a good deal about doing things on the "spur of the moment"--Iinvariably regret the things I do on the spur of the moment. Thatdisclaimer of mine was a case in point. I am ashamed every time I thinkof my bursting out before an unconcerned public with that bombasticpow-wow about burning publishers' letters, and all that sort ofimbecility, and about my not being an imitator, etc. Who would find outthat I am a natural fool if I kept always cool and never let nature cometo the surface? Nobody. But I did hate to be accused of plagiarizing Bret Harte, who trimmed andtrained and schooled me patiently until he changed me from an awkwardutterer of coarse grotesquenesses to a writer of paragraphs and chaptersthat have found a certain favor in the eyes of even some of the verydecentest people in the land--and this grateful remembrance of mineought to be worth its face, seeing that Bret broke our long friendship ayear ago without any cause or provocation that I am aware of. Well, it is funny, the reminiscences that glare out from murky cornersof one's memory, now and then, without warning. Just at this moment apicture flits before me: Scene--private room in Barnum's Restaurant, Virginia, Nevada; present, Artemus Ward, Joseph T. Goodman, (editorand proprietor Daily "Enterprise"), and "Dan de Quille" and myself, reporters for same; remnants of the feast thin and scattering, but suchtautology and repetition of empty bottles everywhere visible as tobe offensive to the sensitive eye; time, 2. 30 A. M. ; Artemus thicklyreciting a poem about a certain infant you wot of, and interruptinghimself and being interrupted every few lines by poundings of the tableand shouts of "Splendid, by Shorzhe!" Finally, a long, vociferous, poundiferous and vitreous jingling of applause announces the conclusion, and then Artemus: "Let every man 'at loves his fellow man and 'preciatesa poet 'at loves his fellow man, stan' up!--Stan' up and drink healthand long life to Thomas Bailey Aldrich!--and drink it stanning!" (On allhands fervent, enthusiastic, and sincerely honest attempts to comply. )Then Artemus: "Well--consider it stanning, and drink it just as ye are!"Which was done. You must excuse all this stuff from a stranger, for the present, andwhen I see you I will apologize in full. Do you know the prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot throughHarte's brain? It was this: When they were trying to decide upon avignette for the cover of the Overland, a grizzly bear (of the arms ofthe State of California) was chosen. Nahl Bras. Carved him and the pagewas printed, with him in it, looking thus: [Rude sketch of a grizzlybear. ] As a bear, he was a success--he was a good bear--. But then, it wasobjected, that he was an objectless bear--a bear that meant nothing inparticular, signified nothing, --simply stood there snarling over hisshoulder at nothing--and was painfully and manifestly a boorish andill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that--none weresatisfied. They hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as muchto have him there when there was no paint to him. But presently Hartetook a pencil and drew these two simple lines under his feet and beholdhe was a magnificent success!--the ancient symbol of California savagerysnarling at the approaching type of high and progressive Civilization, the first Overland locomotive!: [Sketch of a small section of railwaytrack. ] I just think that was nothing less than inspiration itself. Once more I apologize, and this time I do it "stanning!" Yrs. Truly SAML. L. CLEMENS. The "two simple lines, " of course, were the train rails under the bear's feet, and completed the striking cover design of the Overland monthly. The brief controversy over the "Three Aces" was the beginning of along and happy friendship between Aldrich and Mark Twain. Howells, Aldrich, Twichell, and Charles Dudley Warner--these were Mark Twain's intimates, men that he loved, each for his own special charm and worth. Aldrich he considered the most brilliant of living men. In his reply to Clemens's letter, Aldrich declared that he was glad now that, for the sake of such a letter, he had accused him falsely, and added: "Mem. Always abuse people. "When you come to Boston, if you do not make your presence manifest to me, I'll put in a!! in 'Every Saturday' to the effect that though you are generally known as Mark Twain your favorite nom de plume is 'Barry Gray. '" Clemens did not fail to let Aldrich know when he was in Boston again, and the little coterie of younger writers forgathered to give him welcome. Buffalo agreed with neither Mrs. Clemens nor the baby. What with nursing and anguish of mind, Mark Twain found that he could do nothing on the new book, and that he must give up his magazine department. He had lost interest in his paper and his surroundings in general. Journalism and authorship are poor yoke-mates. To Onion Clemens, at this time editing Bliss's paper at Hartford, he explained the situation. ***** To Onion Clemens, in Hartford: BUFFALO, 4th 1871. MY DEAR BRO, --What I wanted of the "Liar" Sketch, was to work it intothe California book--which I shall do. But day before yesterday Iconcluded to go out of the Galaxy on the strength of it, so I haveturned it into the last Memoranda I shall ever write, and published itas a "specimen chapter" of my forthcoming book. I have written the Galaxy people that I will never furnish themanother article long or short, for any price but $500. 00 cash--and haverequested them not to ask me for contributions any more, even at thatprice. I hope that lets them out, for I will stick to that. Now do tryand leave me clear out of the 'Publisher' for the present, for I amendangering my reputation by writing too much--I want to get out of thepublic view for awhile. I am still nursing Livy night and day and cannot write anything. Iam nearly worn out. We shall go to Elmira ten days hence (if Livy cantravel on a mattress then, ) and stay there till I have finished theCalifornia book--say three months. But I can't begin work right awaywhen I get there--must have a week's rest, for I have been through 30days' terrific siege. That makes it after the middle of March before I can go fairly towork--and then I'll have to hump myself and not lose a moment. You andBliss just put yourselves in my place and you will see that my hands arefull and more than full. When I told Bliss in N. Y. That I would write something for thePublisher I could not know that I was just about to lose fifty days. Doyou see the difference it makes? Just as soon as ever I can, I will sendsome of the book M. S. But right in the first chapter I have got to alterthe whole style of one of my characters and re-write him clear throughto where I am now. It is no fool of a job, I can tell you, but the bookwill be greatly bettered by it. Hold on a few days--four or five--and Iwill see if I can get a few chapters fixed to send to Bliss. I have offered this dwelling house and the Express for sale, and when wego to Elmira we leave here for good. I shall not select a new home tillthe book is finished, but we have little doubt that Hartford will be theplace. We are almost certain of that. Ask Bliss how it would be to ship ourfurniture to Hartford, rent an upper room in a building and unbox it andstore it there where somebody can frequently look after it. Is not theidea good? The furniture is worth $10, 000 or $12, 000 and must not bejammed into any kind of a place and left unattended to for a year. The first man that offers $25, 000 for our house can take it--it costthat. What are taxes there? Here, all bunched together--of all kinds, they are 7 per cent--simply ruin. The things you have written in the Publisher are tip-top. In haste, Yr Bro SAM There are no further letters until the end of April, by which time the situation had improved. Clemens had sold his interest in the Express (though at a loss), had severed his magazine connection, and was located at Quarry Farm, on a beautiful hilltop above Elmira, the home of Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Theodore Crane. The pure air and rest of that happy place, where they were to spend so many idyllic summers, had proved beneficial to the sick ones, and work on the new book progressed in consequence. Then Mark Twain's old editor, "Joe" Goodman, came from Virginia City for a visit, and his advice and encouragement were of the greatest value. Clemens even offered to engage Goodman on a salary, to remain until he had finished his book. Goodman declined the salary, but extended his visit, and Mark Twain at last seems to have found himself working under ideal conditions. He jubilantly reports his progress. ***** To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: ELMIRA, Monday. May 15th 1871 FRIEND BLISS, --Yrs rec'd enclosing check for $703. 35 The old "Innocents"holds out handsomely. I have MS. Enough on hand now, to make (allowing for engravings) about400 pages of the book--consequently am two-thirds done. I intendedto run up to Hartford about the middle of the week and take it along;because it has chapters in it that ought by all means to be in theprospectus; but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work, now(a thing I have not experienced for months) that I can't bear to losea single moment of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg awayas long as it lasts. My present idea is to write as much more as I havealready written, and then cull from the mass the very best chapters anddiscard the rest. I am not half as well satisfied with the first part ofthe book as I am with what I am writing now. When I get it done I wantto see the man who will begin to read it and not finish it. If it fallsshort of the "Innocents" in any respect I shall lose my guess. When I was writing the "Innocents" my daily stunt was 30 pages of MS andI hardly ever got beyond it; but I have gone over that nearly every dayfor the last ten. That shows that I am writing with a red-hot interest. Nothing grieves me now--nothing troubles me, nothing bothers me or getsmy attention--I don't think of anything but the book, and I don't havean hour's unhappiness about anything and don't care two cents whetherschool keeps or not. It will be a bully book. If I keep up my presentlick three weeks more I shall be able and willing to scratch out half ofthe chapters of the Overland narrative--and shall do it. You do not mention having received my second batch of MS, sent a week ortwo ago--about 100 pages. If you want to issue a prospectus and go right to canvassing, saythe word and I will forward some more MS--or send it by hand--specialmessenger. Whatever chapters you think are unquestionably good, we willretain of course, so they can go into a prospectus as well one timeas another. The book will be done soon, now. I have 1200 pages of MSalready written and am now writing 200 a week--more than that, infact; during the past week wrote 23 one day, then 30, 33, 35, 52, and65. --How's that? It will be a starchy book, and should be full of snappypictures--especially pictures worked in with the letterpress. Thededication will be worth the price of the volume--thus: To the Late Cain. This Book is Dedicated: Not on account of respect for his memory, for it merits little respect;not on account of sympathy with him, for his bloody deed placed himwithout the pale of sympathy, strictly speaking: but out of a mere humancommiseration for him that it was his misfortune to live in a dark agethat knew not the beneficent Insanity Plea. I think it will do. Yrs. CLEMENS. P. S. --The reaction is beginning and my stock is looking up. I amgetting the bulliest offers for books and almanacs; am flooded withlecture invitations, and one periodical offers me $6, 000 cash for12 articles, of any length and on any subject, treated humorously orotherwise. The suggested dedication "to the late Cain" may have been the humoristic impulse of the moment. At all events, it did not materialize. Clemens's enthusiasm for work was now such that he agreed with Redpath to return to the platform that autumn, and he began at once writing lectures. His disposal of the Buffalo paper had left him considerably in debt, and platforming was a sure and quick method of retrenchment. More than once in the years ahead Mark Twain would return to travel and one-night stands to lift a burden of debt. Brief letters to Redpath of this time have an interest and even a humor of their own. ***** Letters to James Redpath, in Boston: ELMIRA, June 27, 1871. DEAR RED, --Wrote another lecture--a third one-today. It is the one Iam going to deliver. I think I shall call it "Reminiscences of SomePleasant Characters Whom I Have Met, " (or should the "whom" be leftout?) It covers my whole acquaintance--kings, lunatics, idiots and all. Suppose you give the item a start in the Boston papers. If I write fiftylectures I shall only choose one and talk that one only. No sir: Don't you put that scarecrow (portrait) from the Galaxy in, Iwon't stand that nightmare. Yours, MARK. ELMIRA, July 10, 1871. DEAR REDPATH, --I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a churchyet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do itin any possible way. Success to Fall's carbuncle and many happy returns. Yours, MARK. ***** To Mr. Fall, in Boston: ELMIRA, N. Y. July 20, 1871. FRIEND FALL, --Redpath tells me to blow up. Here goes! I wanted you toscare Rondout off with a big price. $125 ain't big. I got $100 the firsttime I ever talked there and now they have a much larger hall. It isa hard town to get to--I run a chance of getting caught by the ice andmissing next engagement. Make the price $150 and let them draw out. Yours MARK ***** Letters to James Redpath, in Boston: HARTFORD, Tuesday Aug. 8, 1871. DEAR RED, --I am different from other women; my mind changes oftener. People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when aman is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea offoreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo. See?Therefore, if you will notice, one week I am likely to give rigidinstructions to confine me to New England; next week, send me toArizona; the next week withdraw my name; the next week give you fulluntrammelled swing; and the week following modify it. You must try tokeep the run of my mind, Redpath, it is your business being the agent, and it always was too many for me. It appears to me to be one of thefinest pieces of mechanism I have ever met with. Now about theWest, this week, I am willing that you shall retain all the Westernengagements. But what I shall want next week is still with God. Let us not profane the mysteries with soiled hands and prying eyes ofsin. Yours, MARK. P. S. Shall be here 2 weeks, will run up there when Nasby comes. ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 15, 1871. DEAR REDPATH, --I wish you would get me released from the lecture atBuffalo. I mortally hate that society there, and I don't doubt theyhired me. I once gave them a packed house free of charge, and they nevereven had the common politeness to thank me. They left me to shiftfor myself, too, a la Bret Harte at Harvard. Get me rid of Buffalo!Otherwise I'll have no recourse left but to get sick the day I lecturethere. I can get sick easy enough, by the simple process of saying theword--well never mind what word--I am not going to lecture there. Yours, MARK. BUFFALO, Sept. 26, 1871. DEAR REDPATH, --We have thought it all over and decided that we can'tpossibly talk after Feb. 2. We shall take up our residence in Hartford 6 days from now Yours MARK. XI. LETTERS 1871-72. REMOVAL TO HARTFORD. A LECTURE TOUR. "ROUGHING IT. "FIRST LETTER TO HOWELLS. The house they had taken in Hartford was the Hooker property on Forest Street, a handsome place in a distinctly literary neighborhood. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, and other well-known writers were within easy walking distance; Twichell was perhaps half a mile away. It was the proper environment for Mark Twain. He settled his little family there, and was presently at Redpath's office in Boston, which was a congenial place, as we have seen before. He did not fail to return to the company of Nasby, Josh Billings, and those others of Redpath's "attractions" as long and as often as distance would permit. Bret Harte, who by this time had won fame, was also in Boston now, and frequently, with Howells, Aldrich, and Mark Twain, gathered in some quiet restaurant corner for a luncheon that lasted through a dim winter afternoon--a period of anecdote, reminiscence, and mirth. They were all young then, and laughed easily. Howells, has written of one such luncheon given by Ralph Keeler, a young Californian--a gathering at which James T. Fields was present "Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly. " But a lecture circuit cannot be restricted to the radius of Boston. Clemens was presently writing to Redpath from Washington and points farther west. ***** To James Redpath, in Boston: WASHINGTON, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 1871. DEAR RED, --I have come square out, thrown "Reminiscences" overboard, andtaken "Artemus Ward, Humorist, " for my subject. Wrote it here on Fridayand Saturday, and read it from MS last night to an enormous house. Itsuits me and I'll never deliver the nasty, nauseous "Reminiscences" anymore. Yours, MARK. The Artemus Ward lecture lasted eleven days, then he wrote: ***** To Redpath and Fall, in Boston: BUFFALO DEPOT, Dec. 8, 1871. REDPATH & FALL, BOSTON, --Notify all hands that from this time I shalltalk nothing but selections from my forthcoming book "Roughing It. "Tried it last night. Suits me tip-top. SAM'L L. CLEMENS. The "Roughing It" chapters proved a success, and continued in high favor through the rest of the season. ***** To James Redpath, in Boston: LOGANSPORT, IND. Jan. 2, 1872. FRIEND REDPATH, --Had a splendid time with a splendid audience inIndianapolis last night--a perfectly jammed house, just as I have hadall the time out here. I like the new lecture but I hate the "ArtemusWard" talk and won't talk it any more. No man ever approved that choiceof subject in my hearing, I think. Give me some comfort. If I am to talk in New York am I going to have agood house? I don't care now to have any appointments cancelled. I'lleven "fetch" those Dutch Pennsylvanians with this lecture. Have paid up $4000 indebtedness. You are the last on my list. Shallbegin to pay you in a few days and then I shall be a free man again. Yours, MARK. With his debts paid, Clemens was anxious to be getting home. Two weeks following the above he wrote Redpath that he would accept no more engagements at any price, outside of New England, and added, "The fewer engagements I have from this time forth the better I shall be pleased. " By the end of February he was back in Hartford, refusing an engagement in Boston, and announcing to Redpath, "If I had another engagement I'd rot before I'd fill it. " From which we gather that he was not entirely happy in the lecture field. As a matter of fact, Mark Twain loathed the continuous travel and nightly drudgery of platform life. He was fond of entertaining, and there were moments of triumph that repaid him for a good deal, but the tyranny of a schedule and timetables was a constant exasperation. Meantime, Roughing It had appeared and was selling abundantly. Mark Twain, free of debt, and in pleasant circumstances, felt that the outlook was bright. It became even more so when, in March, the second child, a little girl, Susy, was born, with no attending misfortunes. But, then, in the early summer little Langdon died. It was seldom, during all of Mark Twain's life, that he enjoyed more than a brief period of unmixed happiness. It was in June of that year that Clemens wrote his first letter to William Dean Howells the first of several hundred that would follow in the years to come, and has in it something that is characteristic of nearly all the Clemens-Howells letters--a kind of tender playfulness that answered to something in Howells's make-up, his sense of humor, his wide knowledge of a humanity which he pictured so amusingly to the world. ***** To William Dean Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, June 15, 1872. FRIEND HOWELLS, --Could you tell me how I could get a copy of yourportrait as published in Hearth and Home? I hear so much talk about itas being among the finest works of art which have yet appeared in thatjournal, that I feel a strong desire to see it. Is it suitable forframing? I have written the publishers of H & H time and again, but theysay that the demand for the portrait immediately exhausted the editionand now a copy cannot be had, even for the European demand, which hasnow begun. Bret Harte has been here, and says his family would not bewithout that portrait for any consideration. He says his children get upin the night and yell for it. I would give anything for a copy of thatportrait to put up in my parlor. I have Oliver Wendell Holmes and BretHarte's, as published in Every Saturday, and of all the swarms thatcome every day to gaze upon them none go away that are not softened andhumbled and made more resigned to the will of God. If I had yours to putup alongside of them, I believe the combination would bring more soulsto earnest reflection and ultimate conviction of their lost condition, than any other kind of warning would. Where in the nation can I get thatportrait? Here are heaps of people that want it, --that need it. Thereis my uncle. He wants a copy. He is lying at the point of death. He hasbeen lying at the point of death for two years. He wants a copy--and Iwant him to have a copy. And I want you to send a copy to the man thatshot my dog. I want to see if he is dead to every human instinct. Now you send me that portrait. I am sending you mine, in this letter;and am glad to do it, for it has been greatly admired. People who arejudges of art, find in the execution a grandeur which has not beenequalled in this country, and an expression which has not beenapproached in any. Yrs truly, S. L. CLEMENS. P. S. 62, 000 copies of "Roughing It" sold and delivered in 4 months. The Clemens family did not spend the summer at Quarry Farm that year. The sea air was prescribed for Mrs. Clemens and the baby, and they went to Saybrook, Connecticut, to Fenwick Hall. Clemens wrote very little, though he seems to have planned Tom Sawyer, and perhaps made its earliest beginning, which was in dramatic form. His mind, however, was otherwise active. He was always more or less given to inventions, and in his next letter we find a description of one which he brought to comparative perfection. He had also conceived the idea of another book of travel, and this was his purpose of a projected trip to England. ***** To Orion Clemens, in Hartford: FENWICK HALL, SAYBROOK, CONN. Aug. 11, 1872. MY DEAR BRO. --I shall sail for England in the Scotia, Aug. 21. But what I wish to put on record now, is my new invention--hencethis note, which you will preserve. It is this--a self-pastingscrap-book--good enough idea if some juggling tailor does not comealong and ante-date me a couple of months, as in the case of the elasticveststrap. The nuisance of keeping a scrap-book is: 1. One never has paste or gumtragacanth handy; 2. Mucilage won't stick, or stay, 4 weeks; 3. Mucilagesucks out the ink and makes the scraps unreadable; 4. To daub and paste3 or 4 pages of scraps is tedious, slow, nasty and tiresome. My idea isthis: Make a scrap-book with leaves veneered or coated with gum-stickumof some kind; wet the page with sponge, brush, rag or tongue, and dab onyour scraps like postage stamps. Lay on the gum in columns of stripes. Each stripe of gum the length of say 20 ems, small pica, and as broadas your finger; a blank about as broad as your finger between each 2stripes--so in wetting the paper you need not wet any more of the gumthan your scrap or scraps will cover--then you may shut up the book andthe leaves won't stick together. Preserve, also, the envelope of this letter--postmark ought to be goodevidence of the date of this great humanizing and civilizing invention. I'll put it into Dan Slote's hands and tell him he must send you allover America, to urge its use upon stationers and booksellers--sodon't buy into a newspaper. The name of this thing is "Mark Twain'sSelf-Pasting Scrapbook. " All well here. Shall be up a P. M. Tuesday. Send the carriage. Yr Bro. S. L. CLEMENS. The Dan Slote of this letter is, of course, his old Quaker City shipmate, who was engaged in the blank-book business, the firm being Slote & Woodman, located at 119 and 121 William Street, New York. XII. LETTERS 1872-73. MARK TWAIN IN ENGLAND. LONDON HONORS. ACQUAINTANCEWITH DR. JOHN BROWN. A LECTURE TRIUMPH. "THE GILDED AGE". Clemens did, in fact, sail for England on the given date, and was lavishly received there. All literary London joined in giving him a good time. He had not as yet been received seriously by the older American men of letters, but England made no question as to his title to first rank. Already, too, they classified him as of the human type of Lincoln, and reveled in him without stint. Howells writes: "In England, rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. Lord Mayors, Lord Chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts. " He was treated so well and enjoyed it all so much that he could not write a book--the kind of book he had planned. One could not poke fun at a country or a people that had welcomed him with open arms. He made plenty of notes, at first, but presently gave up the book idea and devoted himself altogether to having a good time. He had one grievance--a publisher by the name of Hotten, a sort of literary harpy, of which there were a great number in those days of defective copyright, not merely content with pilfering his early work, had reprinted, under the name of Mark Twain, the work of a mixed assortment of other humorists, an offensive volume bearing the title, Screamers and Eye-openers, by Mark Twain. They besieged him to lecture in London, and promised him overflowing houses. Artemus Ward, during his last days, had earned London by storm with his platform humor, and they promised Mark Twain even greater success. For some reason, however, he did not welcome the idea; perhaps there was too much gaiety. To Mrs. Clemens he wrote: ***** To Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford: LONDON, Sep. 15, 1872. Livy, darling, everybody says lecture-lecture-lecture--but I have notthe least idea of doing it--certainly not at present. Mr. Dolby, whotook Dickens to America, is coming to talk business to me tomorrow, though I have sent him word once before, that I can't be hired to talkhere, because I have no time to spare. There is too much sociability--I do not get along fast enough with work. Tomorrow I lunch with Mr. Toole and a Member of Parliament--Toole isthe most able Comedian of the day. And then I am done for a while. OnTuesday I mean to hang a card to my keybox, inscribed--"Gone out of theCity for a week"--and then I shall go to work and work hard. One can'tbe caught in a hive of 4, 000, 000 people, like this. I have got such a perfectly delightful razor. I have a notion to buysome for Charley, Theodore and Slee--for I know they have no such razorsthere. I have got a neat little watch-chain for Annie--$20. I love you my darling. My love to all of you. SAML. That Mark Twain should feel and privately report something of his triumphs we need not wonder at. Certainly he was never one to give himself airs, but to have the world's great literary center paying court to him, who only ten years before had been penniless and unknown, and who once had been a barefoot Tom Sawyer in Hannibal, was quite startling. It is gratifying to find evidence of human weakness in the following heart-to-heart letter to his publisher, especially in view of the relating circumstances. ***** To Elisha Bliss, in Hartford: LONDON, Sept. 28, 1872. FRIEND BLISS, --I have been received in a sort of tremendous way, tonight, by the brains of London, assembled at the annual dinner of theSheriffs of London--mine being (between you and me) a name which wasreceived with a flattering outburst of spontaneous applause when thelong list of guests was called. I might have perished on the spot but for the friendly support andassistance of my excellent friend Sir John Bennett--and I want youto paste the enclosed in a couple of the handsomest copies of the"Innocents" and "Roughing It, " and send them to him. His address is "Sir John Bennett, Cheapside, London. " Yrs Truly S. L. CLEMENS. The "relating circumstances" were these: At the abovementioned dinner there had been a roll-call of the distinguished guests present, and each name had been duly applauded. Clemens, conversing in a whisper with his neighbor, Sir John Bennett, did not give very close attention to the names, applauding mechanically with the others. Finally, a name was read that brought out a vehement hand-clapping. Mark Twain, not to be outdone in cordiality, joined vigorously, and kept his hands going even after the others finished. Then, remarking the general laughter, he whispered to Sir John: "Whose name was that we were just applauding?" "Mark Twain's. " We may believe that the "friendly support" of Sir John Bennett was welcome for the moment. But the incident could do him no harm; the diners regarded it as one of his jokes, and enjoyed him all the more for it. He was ready to go home by November, but by no means had he had enough of England. He really had some thought of returning there permanently. In a letter to Mrs. Crane, at Quarry Farm, he wrote: "If you and Theodore will come over in the Spring with Livy and me, and spend the summer you will see a country that is so beautiful that you will be obliged to believe in Fairyland. .. .. And Theodore can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of all the centuries that have dragged their lagging decades over England since the Heptarchy fell asunder. I would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you over. " In a letter home, to his mother and sister, we get a further picture of his enjoyment. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett: LONDON, Nov. 6, 1872. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --I have been so everlasting busy that Icouldn't write--and moreover I have been so unceasingly lazy that Icouldn't have written anyhow. I came here to take notes for a book, butI haven't done much but attend dinners and make speeches. But have had ajolly good time and I do hate to go away from these English folks; theymake a stranger feel entirely at home--and they laugh so easily that itis a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here. I have made hundredsof friends; and last night in the crush of the opening of the NewGuild-hall Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar faceevery few steps. Nearly 4, 000 people, of both sexes, came and wentduring the evening, so I had a good opportunity to make a great many newacquaintances. Livy is willing to come here with me next April and stay severalmonths--so I am going home next Tuesday. I would sail on Saturday, butthat is the day of the Lord Mayor's annual grand state dinner, when theysay 900 of the great men of the city sit down to table, a great many ofthem in their fine official and court paraphernalia, so I must not missit. However, I may yet change my mind and sail Saturday. I am lookingat a fine Magic lantern which will cost a deal of money, and if I buyit Sammy may come and learn to make the gas and work the machinery, and paint pictures for it on glass. I mean to give exhibitions forcharitable purposes in Hartford, and charge a dollar a head. In a hurry, Ys affly SAM. He sailed November 12th on the Batavia, arriving in New York two weeks later. There had been a presidential election in his absence. General Grant had defeated Horace Greeley, a result, in some measure at least, attributed to the amusing and powerful pictures of the cartoonist, Thomas Nast. Mark Twain admired Greeley's talents, but he regarded him as poorly qualified for the nation's chief executive. He wrote: ***** To Th. Nast, in Morristown, N. J. : HARTFORD, Nov. 1872. Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory forGrant--I mean, rather, for civilization and progress. Those pictureswere simply marvelous, and if any man in the land has a right to holdhis head up and be honestly proud of his share in this year's vastevents that man is unquestionably yourself. We all do sincerely honoryou, and are proud of you. MARK TWAIN. Perhaps Mark Twain was too busy at this time to write letters. His success in England had made him more than ever popular in America, and he could by no means keep up with the demands on him. In January he contributed to the New York Tribune some letters on the Sandwich Islands, but as these were more properly articles they do not seem to belong here. He refused to go on the lecture circuit, though he permitted Redpath to book him for any occasional appearance, and it is due to one of these special engagements that we have the only letter preserved from this time. It is to Howells, and written with that exaggeration with which he was likely to embellish his difficulties. We are not called upon to believe that there were really any such demonstrations as those ascribed to Warner and himself. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: FARMINGTON AVE, Hartford Feb. 27. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I am in a sweat and Warner is in another. I toldRedpath some time ago I would lecture in Boston any two days he mightchoose provided they were consecutive days-- I never dreamed of his choosing days during Lent since that was hisspecial horror--but all at once he telegraphs me, and hollers at me inall manner of ways that I am booked for Boston March 5 of all days inthe year--and to make matters just as mixed and uncertain as possible, Ican't find out to save my life whether he means to lecture me on the 6thor not. Warner's been in here swearing like a lunatic, and saying he had writtenyou to come on the 4th, --and I said, "You leather-head, if I talk inBoston both afternoon and evening March 5, I'll have to go to Boston the4th, "--and then he just kicked up his heels and went off cursing after afashion I never heard of before. Now let's just leave this thing to Providence for 24 hours--you bet itwill come out all right. Yours ever MARK. He was writing a book with Warner at this time--The Gilded Age --the two authors having been challenged by their wives one night at dinner to write a better book than the current novels they had been discussing with some severity. Clemens already had a story in his mind, and Warner agreed to collaborate in the writing. It was begun without delay. Clemens wrote the first three hundred and ninety-nine pages, and read there aloud to Warner, who took up the story at this point and continued it through twelve chapters, after which they worked alternately, and with great enjoyment. They also worked rapidly, and in April the story was completed. For a collaboration by two men so different in temperament and literary method it was a remarkable performance. Another thing Mark Twain did that winter was to buy some land on Farmington Avenue and begin the building of a home. He had by no means given up returning to England, and made his plans to sail with Mrs. Clemens and Susy in May. Miss Clara Spaulding, of Elmira --[Later Mrs. John B. Stanchfield, of New York. ]--a girlhood friend of Mrs. Clemens--was to accompany them. The Daily Graphic heard of the proposed journey, and wrote, asking for a farewell word. His characteristic reply is the only letter of any kind that has survived from that spring. ***** To the Editor of "The Daily Graphic, " in New York City: HARTFORD, Apl. 17, 1873. ED. GRAPHIC, --Your note is received. If the following two lines which Ihave cut from it are your natural handwriting, then I understand you toask me "for a farewell letter in the name of the American people. "Bless you, the joy of the American people is just a little premature;I haven't gone yet. And what is more, I am not going to stay, when I dogo. Yes, it is true. I am only going to remain beyond the sea, six months, that is all. I love stir and excitement; and so the moment the springbirds begin to sing, and the lagging weariness of summer to threaten, I grow restless, I get the fidgets; I want to pack off somewhere wherethere's something going on. But you know how that is--you must havefelt that way. This very day I saw the signs in the air of the comingdullness, and I said to myself, "How glad I am that I have alreadychartered a steamship!" There was absolutely nothing in the morningpapers. You can see for yourself what the telegraphic headings were: BY TELEGRAPH A Father Killed by His Son A Bloody Fight in Kentucky A Court House Fired, and Negroes Therein Shot while Escaping A Louisiana Massacre An Eight-year-old murderer Two to Three Hundred Men Roasted Alive! A Town in a State of General Riot A Lively Skirmish in Indiana (and thirty other similar headings. ) The items under those headings all bear date yesterday, Apl. 16 (referto your own paper)--and I give you my word of honor that that string ofcommonplace stuff was everything there was in the telegraphic columnsthat a body could call news. Well, said I to myself this is gettingpretty dull; this is getting pretty dry; there don't appear to beanything going on anywhere; has this progressive nation gone to sleep?Have I got to stand another month of this torpidity before I can beginto browse among the lively capitals of Europe? But never mind-things may revive while I am away. During the last twomonths my next-door neighbor, Chas. Dudley Warner, has droppedhis "Back-Log Studies, " and he and I have written a bulky novel inpartnership. He has worked up the fiction and I have hurled in thefacts. I consider it one of the most astonishing novels that ever waswritten. Night after night I sit up reading it over and over again andcrying. It will be published early in the Fall, with plenty of pictures. Do you consider this an advertisement?--and if so, do you charge forsuch things when a man is your friend? Yours truly, SAML. L. CLEMENS, "MARK TWAIN, " An amusing, even if annoying, incident happened about the time of Mark Twain's departure. A man named Chew related to Twichell a most entertaining occurrence. Twichell saw great possibilities in it, and suggested that Mark Twain be allowed to make a story of it, sharing the profits with Chew. Chew agreed, and promised to send the facts, carefully set down. Twichell, in the mean time, told the story to Clemens, who was delighted with it and strongly tempted to write it at once, while he was in the spirit, without waiting on Chew. Fortunately, he did not do so, for when Chew's material came it was in the form of a clipping, the story having been already printed in some newspaper. Chew's knowledge of literary ethics would seem to have been slight. He thought himself entitled to something under the agreement with Twichell. Mark Twain, by this time in London, naturally had a different opinion. ***** To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: LONDON, June 9, '73. DEAR OLD JOE, --I consider myself wholly at liberty to decline to payChew anything, and at the same time strongly tempted to sue him into thebargain for coming so near ruining me. If he hadn't happened to send methat thing in print, I would have used the story (like an innocent fool)and would straightway have been hounded to death as a plagiarist. Itwould have absolutely destroyed me. I cannot conceive of a man beingsuch a hopeless ass (after serving as a legislative reporter, too) as toimagine that I or any other literary man in his senses would consent tochew over old stuff that had already been in print. If that man weren'tan infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition wouldhave been, "It has been in print. " It makes me as mad as the very OldHarry every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape Ihave had at his hands. Confound Mr. Chew, with all my heart! I'm willingthat he should have ten dollars for his trouble of warming over his coldvictuals--cheerfully willing to that--but no more. If I had had him nearwhen his letter came, I would have got out my tomahawk and gone for him. He didn't tell the story half as well as you did, anyhow. I wish to goodness you were here this moment--nobody in our parlor butLivy and me, --and a very good view of London to the fore. We have aluxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor, our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor havinga noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (PortlandPlace and the crook that joins it to Regent Street. ) 9 P. M. Full twilight--rich sunset tints lingering in the west. I am not going to write anything--rather tell it when I get back. I loveyou and Harmony, and that is all the fresh news I've got, anyway. And Imean to keep that fresh all the time. Lovingly MARK. P. S. --Am luxuriating in glorious old Pepy's Diary, and smoking. Letters are exceedingly scarce through all this period. Mark Twain, now on his second visit to London, was literally overwhelmed with honors and entertainment; his rooms at the Langham were like a court. Such men as Robert Browning, Turgenieff, Sir John Millais, and Charles Kingsley hastened to call. Kingsley and others gave him dinners. Mrs. Clemens to her sister wrote: "It is perfectly discouraging to try to write you. " The continuous excitement presently told on her. In July all further engagements were canceled, and Clemens took his little family to Scotland, for quiet and rest. They broke the journey at York, and it was there that Mark Twain wrote the only letter remaining from this time. ***** Fragment of a letter to Mrs. Jervis Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y. : For the present we shall remain in this queer old walled town, withits crooked, narrow lanes, that tell us of their old day that knew nowheeled vehicles; its plaster-and-timber dwellings, with upper storiesfar overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say threehundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, theivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in theheart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance;the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly picturedwindows, preaching of still remoter days; the outlandish names ofstreets and courts and byways that stand as a record and a memorial, all these centuries, of Danish dominion here in still earlier times;the hint here and there of King Arthur and his knights and theirbloody fights with Saxon oppressors round about this old city more thanthirteen hundred years gone by; and, last of all, the melancholy oldstone coffins and sculptured inscriptions, a venerable arch and a hoarytower of stone that still remain and are kissed by the sun and caressedby the shadows every day, just as the sun and the shadows have kissedand caressed them every lagging day since the Roman Emperor's soldiersplaced them here in the times when Jesus the Son of Mary walkedthe streets of Nazareth a youth, with no more name or fame than theYorkshire boy who is loitering down this street this moment. Their destination was Edinburgh, where they remained a month. Mrs. Clemens's health gave way on their arrival there, and her husband, knowing the name of no other physician in the place, looked up Dr. John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, and found in him not only a skilful practitioner, but a lovable companion, to whom they all became deeply attached. Little Susy, now seventeen months old, became his special favorite. He named her Megalops, because of her great eyes. Mrs. Clemens regained her strength and they returned to London. Clemens, still urged to lecture, finally agreed with George Dolby to a week's engagement, and added a promise that after taking his wife and daughter back to America he would return immediately for a more extended course. Dolby announced him to appear at the Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, for the week of October 13-18, his lecture to be the old Sandwich Islands talk that seven years before had brought him his first success. The great hall, the largest in London, was thronged at each appearance, and the papers declared that Mark Twain had no more than "whetted the public appetite" for his humor. Three days later, October 1873, Clemens, with his little party, sailed for home. Half-way across the ocean he wrote the friend they had left in Scotland: ***** To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: MID-ATLANTIC, Oct. 30, 1873. OUR DEAR FRIEND THE DOCTOR, --We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there's twenty-two hundred miles of restless water between us, now, besides the railway stretch. And yet you are so present with us, soclose to us that a span and a whisper would bridge the distance. The first three days were stormy, and wife, child, maid, and MissSpaulding were all sea-sick 25 hours out of the 24, and I was sorryI ever started. However, it has been smooth, and balmy, and sunny andaltogether lovely for a day or two now, and at night there is a broadluminous highway stretching over the sea to the moon, over which thespirits of the sea are traveling up and down all through the secretnight and having a genuine good time, I make no doubt. Today they discovered a "collie" on board! I find (as per advertisementwhich I sent you) that they won't carry dogs in these ships at anyprice. This one has been concealed up to this time. Now his owner has topay L10 or heave him overboard. Fortunately the doggie is a performingdoggie and the money will be paid. So after all it was just as well youdidn't intrust your collie to us. A poor little child died at midnight and was buried at dawn thismorning--sheeted and shotted, and sunk in the middle of the lonely oceanin water three thousand fathoms deep. Pity the poor mother. With our love. S. L. CLEMENS. Mark Twain was back in London, lecturing again at the Queen's Concert Rooms, after barely a month's absence. Charles Warren Stoddard, whom he had known in California, shared his apartment at the Langham, and acted as his secretary--a very necessary office, for he was besieged by callers and bombarded with letters. He remained in London two months, lecturing steadily at Hanover Square to full houses. It is unlikely that there is any other platform record to match it. One letter of this period has been preserved. It is written to Twichell, near the end of his engagement. ***** To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford: LONDON, Jan. 5 1874. MY DEAR OLD JOE, --I knew you would be likely to graduate into an ass ifI came away; and so you have--if you have stopped smoking. However, I have a strong faith that it is not too late, yet, and that thejudiciously managed influence of a bad example will fetch you backagain. I wish you had written me some news--Livy tells me precious little. Shemainly writes to hurry me home and to tell me how much she respects me:but she's generally pretty slow on news. I had a letter from her alongwith yours, today, but she didn't tell me the book is out. However, it'sall right. I hope to be home 20 days from today, and then I'll see her, and that will make up for a whole year's dearth of news. I am right downgrateful that she is looking strong and "lovelier than ever. " I onlywish I could see her look her level best, once--I think it would be avision. I have just spent a good part of this day browsing through the RoyalAcademy Exhibition of Landseer's paintings. They fill four or fivegreat salons, and must number a good many hundreds. This is the onlyopportunity ever to see them, because the finest of them belong tothe queen and she keeps them in her private apartments. Ah, they'rewonderfully beautiful! There are such rich moonlights and dusks in "TheChallenge" and "The Combat;" and in that long flight of birds acrossa lake in the subdued flush of sunset (or sunrise--for no man can evertell tother from which in a picture, except it has the filmy morningmist breathing itself up from the water). And there is such a graveanalytical profundity in the faces of "The Connoisseurs;" and suchpathos in the picture of the fawn suckling its dead mother, on a snowywaste, with only the blood in the footprints to hint that she is notasleep. And the way he makes animals absolute flesh and blood--insomuchthat if the room were darkened ever so little and a motionless livinganimal placed beside a painted one, no man could tell which was which. I interrupted myself here, to drop a line to Shirley Brooks and suggesta cartoon for Punch. It was this. In one of the Academy salons (in thesuite where these pictures are), a fine bust of Landseer stands on apedestal in the centre of the room. I suggest that some of Landseer'sbest known animals be represented as having come down out of theirframes in the moonlight and grouped themselves about the bust inmourning attitudes. Well, old man, I am powerful glad to hear from you and shall be powerfulglad to see you and Harmony. I am not going to the provinces because Icannot get halls that are large enough. I always felt cramped in HanoverSquare Rooms, but I find that everybody here speaks with awe and respectof that prodigious place, and wonder that I could fill it so long. I am hoping to be back in 20 days, but I have so much to go home to andenjoy with a jubilant joy, that it seems hardly possible that it canever come to pass in so uncertain a world as this. I have read the novel--[The Gilded Age, published during his absence, December, 1873. ]--here, and I like it. I have made no inquiries aboutit, though. My interest in a book ceases with the printing of it. With a world of love, SAML. XIII. LETTERS 1874. HARTFORD AND ELMIRA. A NEW STUDY. BEGINNING "TOMSAWYER. " THE SELLERS PLAY. Naturally Redpath would not give him any peace now. His London successmust not be wasted. At first his victim refused point-blank, and withgreat brevity. But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasionalappearances, wiring at last this final defiant word: ***** Telegram to James Redpath, in Boston: HARTFORD, March 3, 1874. JAMES REDPATH, --Why don't you congratulate me? I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursdaynight. MARK. That he was glad to be home again we may gather from a letter sent at this time to Doctor Brown, of Edinburgh. ***** To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD Feby. 28, 1874. MY DEAR FRIEND, --We are all delighted with your commendations of theGilded Age-and the more so because some of our newspapers have set forththe opinion that Warner really wrote the book and I only added my nameto the title page in order to give it a larger sale. I wrote the firsteleven chapters, every word and every line. I also wrote chapters 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 21, 42, 43, 45, 51, 52. 53, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, and portions of 35, 49 and 56. So I wrote 32 of the 63chapters entirely and part of 3 others beside. The fearful financial panic hit the book heavily, for we published it inthe midst of it. But nevertheless in the 8 weeks that have now elapsedsince the day we published, we have sold 40, 000 copies; which givesL3, 000 royalty to be divided between the authors. This is really thelargest two-months' sale which any American book has ever achieved(unless one excepts the cheaper editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin). Theaverage price of our book is 16 shillings a copy--Uncle Tom was 2shillings a copy. But for the panic our sale would have been doubled, I verily believe. I do not believe the sale will ultimately go over100, 000 copies. I shipped to you, from Liverpool, Barley's Illustrations of Judd's"Margaret" (the waiter at the Adelphi Hotel agreeing to ship it securelyper parcel delivery, ) and I do hope it did not miscarry, for wein America think a deal of Barley's--[Felix Octavius Carr barley, 1822-1888, illustrator of the works of Irving, Cooper, etc. Probably themost distinguished American illustrator of his time. ]--work. I shippedthe novel ("Margaret") to you from here a week ago. Indeed I am thankful for the wife and the child--and if there is oneindividual creature on all this footstool who is more thoroughly anduniformly and unceasingly happy than I am I defy the world to producehim and prove him. In my opinion, he doesn't exist. I was a mightyrough, coarse, unpromising subject when Livy took charge of me 4 yearsago, and I may still be, to the rest of the world, but not to her. Shehas made a very creditable job of me. Success to the Mark Twain Club!--and the novel shibboleth of theWhistle. Of course any member rising to speak would be required topreface his remark with a keen respectful whistle at the chair-the chairrecognizing the speaker with an answering shriek, and then as thespeech proceeded its gravity and force would be emphasized and itsimpressiveness augmented by the continual interjection of whistles inplace of punctuation-pauses; and the applause of the audience would bemanifested in the same way. .. . They've gone to luncheon, and I must follow. With strong love from usboth. Your friend, SAML. L. CLEMENS. These were the days when the Howells and Clemens families began visiting back and forth between Boston and Hartford, and sometimes Aldrich came, though less frequently, and the gatherings at the homes of Warner and Clemens were full of never-to-be-forgotten happiness. Of one such visit Howells wrote: "In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his round. There was constant running in and out of friendly houses, where the lively hosts and guests called one another by their christian names or nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at doors. Clemens was then building the stately mansion in which he satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance. " It was the delight of such a visit that kept Clemens constantly urging its repetition. One cannot but feel the genuine affection of these letters. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: Mch. 1, 1876. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --Now you will find us the most reasonable people in theworld. We had thought of precipitating upon you George Warner and wifeone day; Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Chas. Perkinsand wife another. Only those--simply members of our family, they are. But I'll close the door against them all--which will "fix" all of thelot except Twichell, who will no more hesitate to climb in at the backwindow than nothing. And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please, talkwhen you please, read when you please. Mrs. Howells may even go to NewYork Saturday if she feels that she must, but if some gentle, unannoyingcoaxing can beguile her into putting that off a few days, we shall bemore than glad, for I do wish she and Mrs. Clemens could have a goodsquare chance to get acquainted with each other. But first and lastand all the time, we want you to feel untrammeled and wholly free fromrestraint, here. The date suits--all dates suit. Yrs ever MARK. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Mch. 20, 1876. DEAR HOWELLS, --You or Aldrich or both of you must come to Hartford tolive. Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe's (just wherewe drive in to go to our new house) will sell for $16, 000 or $17, 000. The lot is 85 feet front and 150 deep--long time and easy payments onthe purchase? You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can't you? Come, will one of you boys buy that house? Now say yes. Mrs. Clemens is an invalid yet, but is getting along pretty fairly. We send best regards. MARK. April found the Clemens family in Elmira. Mrs. Clemens was not over-strong, and the cares of house-building were many. They went early, therefore, remaining at the Langdon home in the city until Quarry Farm should feel a touch of warmer sun, Clemens wrote the news to Doctor Brown. ***** To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: ELMIRA, N. Y. , April 27, '86. DEAR DOCTOR, --This town is in the interior of the State of New York--andwas my wife's birth-place. We are here to spend the whole summer. Although it is so near summer, we had a great snow-storm yesterday, andone the day before. This is rather breaking in upon our plans, as it maykeep us down here in the valley a trifle longer than we desired. It getsfearfully hot here in the summer, so we spend our summers on top of ahill 6 or 700 feet high, about two or three miles from here--it nevergets hot up there. Mrs. Clemens is pretty strong, and so is the "little wifie" barringa desperate cold in the head the child grows in grace and beautymarvellously. I wish the nations of the earth would combine in a babyshow and give us a chance to compete. I must try to find one of herlatest photographs to enclose in this. And this reminds me that Mrs. Clemens keeps urging me to ask you for your photograph and last nightshe said, "and be sure to ask him for a photograph of his sister, andJock-but say Master Jock--do not be headless and forget that courtesy;he is Jock in our memories and our talk, but he has a right to his titlewhen a body uses his name in a letter. " Now I have got it all in--Ican't have made any mistake this time. Miss Clara Spaulding looked in, amoment, yesterday morning, as bright and good as ever. She would like tolay her love at your feet if she knew I was writing--as would also fiftyfriends of ours whom you have never seen, and whose homage is as ferventas if the cold and clouds and darkness of a mighty sea did not liebetween their hearts and you. Poor old Rab had not many "friends" atfirst, but if all his friends of today could gather to his grave fromthe four corners of the earth what a procession there would be! AndRab's friends are your friends. I am going to work when we get on the hill-till then I've got to liefallow, albeit against my will. We join in love to you and yours. Your friend ever, SAML. L. CLEMENS. P. S. I enclose a specimen of villainy. A man pretends to be my brotherand my lecture agent--gathers a great audience together in a city morethan a thousand miles from here, and then pockets the money and elopes, leaving the audience to wait for the imaginary lecturer! I am after himwith the law. It was a historic summer at the Farm. A new baby arrived in June; a new study was built for Mark Twain by Mrs. Crane, on the hillside near the old quarry; a new book was begun in it--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer--and a play, the first that Mark Twain had really attempted, was completed--the dramatization of The Gilded Age. An early word went to Hartford of conditions at the Farm. ***** To Rev. And Mrs. Twichell, in Hartford: ELMIRA, June 11, 1874. MY DEAR OLD JOE AND HARMONY, --The baby is here and is the great AmericanGiantess--weighing 7 3/4 pounds. We had to wait a good long time forher, but she was full compensation when she did come. The Modoc was delighted with it, and gave it her doll at once. There isnothing selfish about the Modoc. She is fascinated with the new baby. The Modoc rips and tears around out doors, most of the time, andconsequently is as hard as a pine knot and as brown as an Indian. She isbosom friend to all the ducks, chickens, turkeys and guinea hens on theplace. Yesterday as she marched along the winding path that leads up thehill through the red clover beds to the summer-house, there was a longprocession of these fowls stringing contentedly after her, led by astately rooster who can look over the Modoc's head. The devotion ofthese vassals has been purchased with daily largess of Indian meal, andso the Modoc, attended by her bodyguard, moves in state wherever shegoes. Susie Crane has built the loveliest study for me, you ever saw. Itis octagonal, with a peaked roof, each octagon filled with a spaciouswindow, and it sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevationthat commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges ofdistant blue hills. It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofaand a table and three or four chairs--and when the storms sweep down theremote valley and the lightning flashes above the hills beyond, andthe rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it! Itstands 500 feet above the valley and 2 1/2 miles from it. However one must not write all day. We send continents of love to youand yours. Affectionately MARK. We have mentioned before that Clemens had settled his mother and sister at Fredonia, New York, and when Mrs. Clemens was in condition to travel he concluded to pay them a visit. It proved an unfortunate journey; the hot weather was hard on Mrs. Clemens, and harder still, perhaps, on Mark Twain's temper. At any period of his life a bore exasperated him, and in these earlier days he was far more likely to explode than in his mellower age. Remorse always followed--the price he paid was always costly. We cannot know now who was the unfortunate that invited the storm, but in the next letter we get the echoes of it and realize something of its damage. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia: ELMIRA, Aug. 15. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --I came away from Fredonia ashamed ofmyself;--almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye. For I began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you sociallyin your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brainedbore and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that Iwas satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive anapology with magnanimity. Pamela appalled me by saying people had hinted that they wished to visitLivy when she came, but that she had given them no encouragement. Ifeared that those people would merely comprehend that their courtesieswere not wanted, and yet not know exactly why they were not wanted. I came away feeling that in return for your constant and tirelessefforts to secure our bodily comfort and make our visit enjoyable, I hadbasely repaid you by making you sad and sore-hearted and leaving youso. And the natural result has fallen to me likewise--for a guiltyconscience has harassed me ever since, and I have not had one shortquarter of an hour of peace to this moment. You spoke of Middletown. Why not go there and live? Mr. Crane says it isonly about a hundred miles this side of New York on the Erie road. Thefact that one or two of you might prefer to live somewhere else is nota valid objection--there are no 4 people who would all choose the sameplace--so it will be vain to wait for the day when your tastes shall bea unit. I seriously fear that our visit has damaged you in Fredonia, andso I wish you were out of it. The baby is fat and strong, and Susie the same. Susie was charmed withthe donkey and the doll. Ys affectionately SAML. P. S. --DEAR MA AND PAMELA--I am mainly grieved because I have been rudeto a man who has been kind to you--and if you ever feel a desireto apologize to him for me, you may be sure that I will endorse theapology, no matter how strong it may be. I went to his bank to apologizeto him, but my conviction was strong that he was not man enough to knowhow to take an apology and so I did not make it. William Dean Howells was in those days writing those vividly realistic, indeed photographic stories which fixed his place among American men of letters. He had already written 'Their Wedding Journey' and 'A Chance Acquaintance' when 'A Foregone Conclusion' appeared. For the reason that his own work was so different, and perhaps because of his fondness for the author, Clemens always greatly admired the books of Howells. Howells's exact observation and his gift for human detail seemed marvelous to Mark Twain, who with a bigger brush was inclined to record the larger rather than the minute aspects of life. The sincerity of his appreciation of Howells, however, need not be questioned, nor, for that matter, his detestation of Scott. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: ELMIRA, Aug. 22, 1874. DEAR HOWELLS, --I have just finished reading the 'Foregone Conclusion' toMrs. Clemens and we think you have even outdone yourself. I should thinkthat this must be the daintiest, truest, most admirable workmanshipthat was ever put on a story. The creatures of God do not act out theirnatures more unerringly than yours do. If your genuine stories can die, I wonder by what right old Walter Scott's artificialities shall continueto live. I brought Mrs. Clemens back from her trip in a dreadfully broken-downcondition--so by the doctor's orders we unpacked the trunks sorrowfullyto lie idle here another month instead of going at once to Hartford andproceeding to furnish the new house which is now finished. We hate tohave it go longer desolate and tenantless, but cannot help it. By and by, if the madam gets strong again, we are hoping to have theGrays there, and you and the Aldrich households, and Osgood, down toengage in an orgy with them. Ys Ever MARK Howells was editor of the Atlantic by this time, and had been urging Clemens to write something suitable for that magazine. He had done nothing, however, until this summer at Quarry Farm. There, one night in the moonlight, Mrs. Crane's colored cook, who had been a slave, was induced to tell him her story. It was exactly the story to appeal to Mark Twain, and the kind of thing he could write. He set it down next morning, as nearly in her own words and manner as possible, without departing too far from literary requirements. He decided to send this to Howells. He did not regard it very highly, but he would take the chance. An earlier offering to the magazine had been returned. He sent the "True Story, " with a brief note: ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: ELMIRA, Sept. 2, '74. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --. .. .. I enclose also a "True Story" which has no humorin it. You can pay as lightly as you choose for that, if you want it, for it is rather out of my line. I have not altered the old coloredwoman's story except to begin at the beginning, instead of the middle, as she did--and traveled both ways. .. . Yrs Ever MARK. But Howells was delighted with it. He referred to its "realest kind of black talk, " and in another place added, "This little story delights me more and more. I wish you had about forty of them. " Along with the "True Story" Mark Twain had sent the "Fable for Good Old Boys and Girls"; but this Howells returned, not, as he said, because he didn't like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of religion was just in that "Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a little fable like yours wouldn't leave it a single Presbyterian, Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it in the denominational newspapers!" But the shorter MS. Had been only a brief diversion. Mark Twain was bowling along at a book and a play. The book was Tom Sawyer, as already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age. Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his character in a play written for John T. Raymond. Clemens had taken out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the performance by telegraph. A correspondence between the author and the dramatist followed, leading to a friendly arrangement by which the latter agreed to dispose of his version to Mark Twain. A good deal of discussion from time to time having arisen over the authorship of the Sellers play, as presented by Raymond, certain among the letters that follow may be found of special interest. Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, on these matters and events in general. The book MS. , which he mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a year. ***** To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh: QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N. Y. Sept. 4, 1874. DEAR FRIEND, --I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, onan average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequentlyhave been so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that Ihave fallen mighty short in letter-writing. But night before last Idiscovered that that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moraltruth to nature, and execution--enough blemish to impair the excellenceof almost any chapter--and so I must burn up the day's work and do itall over again. It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myselfdry. So I knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change. Ihaven't had an idea or a fancy for two days, now--an excellent time towrite to friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, andso will prefer the offerings of the heart before those of the head. Dayafter to-morrow I go to a neighboring city to see a five-act-drama ofmine brought out, and suggest amendments in it, and would about as soonspend a night in the Spanish Inquisition as sit there and be torturedwith all the adverse criticisms I can contrive to imagine the audienceis indulging in. But whether the play be successful or not, I hope Ishall never feel obliged to see it performed a second time. My interestin my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done. I have invented and patented a pretty good sort of scrap-book (Ithink) but I have backed down from letting it be known as mine justat present--for I can't stand being under discussion on a play and ascrap-book at the same time! I shall be away two days, and then return to take our tribe to New York, where we shall remain five days buying furniture for the new house, andthen go to Hartford and settle solidly down for the winter. After allthat fallow time I ought to be able to go to work again on the book. Weshall reach Hartford about the middle of September, I judge. We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, sixhundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N. Y. , and overlookingthat town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and thenew baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farmbecause there's a quarry on it, ) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs. Crane. A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, andI shall send you the result per this mail. My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 bigwindows, one little one, and a wide doorway (the latter opening uponthe distant town. ) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor mypapers down with brickbats and write in the midst of the hurricanes, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of. The study is nearly onthe peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicularwall of rock left where they used to quarry stones. On the peak of thehill is an old arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you callthe "American Creeper"--its green is almost bloodied with red. TheStudy is 30 yards below the old arbor and 200 yards above thedwelling-house-it is remote from all noises. .. .. Now isn't the whole thing pleasantly situated? In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-handwindow) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the basesof the little trees on top of it. The small square window is overthe fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it. Without thestereoscope it looks like a framed picture. All the study windows haveVenetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but theyhave not been replaced with anything half as good yet. The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that hasmorning-glories climbing about it and a stone stairway leading downthrough and dividing it. There now--if you have not time to read all this, turn it over to "Jock"and drag in the judge to help. Mrs. Clemens must put in a late picture of Susie--a picture which shemaintains is good, but which I think is slander on the child. We revisit the Rutland Street home many a time in fancy, for we holdevery individual in it in happy and grateful memory. Goodbye, Your friend, SAML. L. CLEMENS. P. S. --I gave the P. O. Department a blast in the papers about sendingmisdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, andgot a blast in return, through a New York daily, from the New Yorkpostmaster. But I notice that misdirected letters find me, now, withoutany unnecessary fooling around. The new house in Hartford was now ready to be occupied, and in a letter to Howells, written a little more than a fortnight after the foregoing, we find them located in "part" of it. But what seems more interesting is that paragraph of the letter which speaks of close friendly relations still existing with the Warners, in that it refutes a report current at this time that there was a break between Clemens and Warner over the rights in the Sellers play. There was, in fact, no such rupture. Warner, realizing that he had no hand in the character of Sellers, and no share in the work of dramatization, generously yielded all claim to any part of the returns. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Sept. 20, 1876. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --All right, my boy, send proof sheets here. I amenddialect stuff by talking and talking and talking it till it soundsright--and I had difficulty with this negro talk because a negrosometimes (rarely) says "goin" and sometimes "gwyne, " and they make justsuch discrepancies in other words--and when you come to reproducethem on paper they look as if the variation resulted from the writer'scarelessness. But I want to work at the proofs and get the dialect asnearly right as possible. We are in part of the new house. Goodness knows when we'll get in therest of it--full of workmen yet. I worked a month at my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday. I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It issimply a setting for the one character, Col. Sellers--as a play I guessit will not bear a critical assault in force. The Warners are as charming as ever. They go shortly to the devil for ayear--(which is but a poetical way of saying they are going to afflictthemselves with the unsurpassable--(bad word) of travel for a spell. )I believe they mean to go and see you, first-so they mean to start fromheaven to the other place; not from earth. How is that? I think that is no slouch of a compliment--kind of a dim religious lightabout it. I enjoy that sort of thing. Yrs ever MARK. Raymond, in a letter to the Sun, stated that not "one line" of the California dramatization had been used by Mark Twain, "except that which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age. " Clemens himself, in a statement that he wrote for the Hartford Post, but suppressed, probably at the request of his wife, gave a full history of the play's origin, a matter of slight interest to-day. Sellers on the stage proved a great success. The play had no special merit as a literary composition, but the character of Sellers delighted the public, and both author and actor were richly repaid for their entertainment. XIV. LETTERS 1874. MISSISSIPPI CHAPTERS. VISITS TO BOSTON. A JOKE ONALDRICH. "Couldn't you send me some such story as that colored one for our January number--that is, within a month?" wrote Howells, at the end of September, and during the week following Mark Twain struggled hard to comply, but without result. When the month was nearly up he wrote: ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Oct. 23, 1874. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I have delayed thus long, hoping I might do somethingfor the January number and Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted meday by day with urgings to go to work and do that something, but it'sno use--I find I can't. We are in such a state of weary and endlessconfusion that my head won't go. So I give it up. .. .. Yrs ever, MARK. But two hours later, when he had returned from one of the long walks which he and Twichell so frequently took together, he told a different story. Later, P. M. HOME, 24th '74. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I take back the remark that I can't write for the Jan. Number. For Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods and I gotto telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory andgrandeur as I saw them (during 5 years) from the pilothouse. He said"What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!" I hadn't thought ofthat before. Would you like a series of papers to run through 3 monthsor 6 or 9?--or about 4 months, say? Yrs ever, MARK. Howells himself had come from a family of pilots, and rejoiced in the idea. A few days later Mark Twain forwarded the first instalment of the new series--those wonderful chapters that begin, now, with chapter four in the Mississippi book. Apparently he was not without doubt concerning the manuscript, and accompanied it with a brief line. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: DEAR HOWELLS, --Cut it, scarify it, reject it handle it with entirefreedom. Yrs ever, MARK. But Howells had no doubts as to the quality of the new find. He declared that the "piece" about the Mississippi was capital, that it almost made the water in their ice-pitcher turn muddy as he read it. "The sketch of the low-lived little town was so good that I could have wished that there was more of it. I want the sketches, if you can make them, every month. " The "low-lived little town" was Hannibal, and the reader can turn to the vivid description of it in the chapter already mentioned. In the same letter Howells refers to a "letter from Limerick, " which he declares he shall keep until he has shown it around--especially to Aldrich and Osgood. The "letter from Limerick" has to do with a special episode. Mention has just been made of Mark Twain's walk with Twichell. Frequently their walks were extended tramps, and once in a daring moment one or the other of them proposed to walk to Boston. The time was November, and the bracing air made the proposition seem attractive. They were off one morning early, Twichell carrying a little bag, and Clemens a basket of luncheon. A few days before, Clemens had written Redpath that the Rev. J. H. Twichell and he expected to start at eight o'clock Thursday morning "to walk to Boston in twenty-four hours--or more. We shall telegraph Young's Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average of pedestrianism. " They did not get quite to Boston. In fact, they got only a little farther than the twenty-eight miles they made the first day. Clemens could hardly walk next morning, but they managed to get to North Ashford, where they took a carriage for the nearest railway station. There they telegraphed to Redpath and Howells that they would be in Boston that evening. Howells, of course, had a good supper and good company awaiting them at his home, and the pedestrians spent two happy days visiting and recounting their adventures. It was one morning, at his hotel, that Mark Twain wrote the Limerick letter. It was addressed to Mrs. Clemens, but was really intended for Howells and Twichell and the others whom it mentions. It was an amusing fancy, rather than a letter, but it deserves place here. ***** To Mrs. Clemens---intended for Howells, Aldrich, etc. BOSTON, Nov. 16, 1935. [1874] DEAR LIVY, You observe I still call this beloved old place by the nameit had when I was young. Limerick! It is enough to make a body sick. The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to see me sit here telegraphing thisletter to you, and no doubt they are smiling in their sleeves. But letthem! The slow old fashions are good enough for me, thank God, and Iwill none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed, holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that athousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end ofit, it makes me frantic with rage; and then am I more implacably fixedand resolved than ever, to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraphyou what I communicate in ten sends by the new way if I would so debasemyself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full ofidiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing, " Itug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me theblessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering talkedpure drivel and "rot, " mostly, but better that, a thousand times, thanthese dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in thismad generation. It is sixty years since I was here before. I walked hither, then, withmy precious old friend. It seems incredible, now, that we did it in twodays, but such is my recollection. I no longer mention that we walkedback in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face ofthe hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the puerileorganisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat. My air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loadedwith the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so Iwas nearly an hour on my journey. But by the goodness of God thirteen ofthe missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content tolose the time. I love to lose time, anyway, because it brings soothingreminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to usforever. Our game was neatly played, and successfully. --None expected us, ofcourse. You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when Isaid, "Announce his grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Rt. Hon. TheEarl of Hartford. " Arrived within, we were all eyes to see the Duke ofCambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember their faces, and they ours. In a moment, they came tottering in; he, bent andwithered and bald; she blooming with wholesome old age. He peeredthrough his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice: "Cometo my arms! Away with titles--I'll know ye by no names but Twain andTwichell! Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear, the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: God bless you, oldHowells what is left of you!" We talked late that night--none of your silent idiot "communings" forus--of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over ourtongues and drank till the lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellowpast that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him and resumed its sweeterforgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancientreligion, too, good Jesuit, as he has always been since O'Mulligan theFirst established that faith in the Empire. And we canvassed everybody. Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of Ponkapog, camein, got nobly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost hisearldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor--buthe didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, forengaging in the same enterprise. He was as chaffy as he was sixty yearsago, too, and swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston--butthere was never a day that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the graceof God he got the opportunity. The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon seventyand bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred with thewounds got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in ahigh chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny. Hisgranddaughter (the eldest) is but lately warned to the youngest of theGrand Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of theHowells's may reign in the land? I must not forget to say, while I thinkof it, that your new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig. Keepyour head well bundled with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheatyour persecuting neuralgias and rheumatisms. Would you believe it?--theDuchess of Cambridge is deafer than you--deafer than her husband. Theycall her to breakfast with a salvo of artillery; and usually when itthunders she looks up expectantly and says "come in. .. .. " The monument to the author of "Gloverson and His Silent partners" isfinished. It is the stateliest and the costliest ever erected to thememory of any man. This noble classic has now been translated into allthe languages of the earth and is adored by all nations and known to allcreatures. Yet I have conversed as familiarly with the author of it as Ido with my own great-grandchildren. I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearlyas ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement onidiots. It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointlessanecdotes three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they hadjabbered them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapogstill writes poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps his best effort of late years is this: "O soul, soul, soul of mine: Soul, soul, soul of thine! Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine, And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!" This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuchthat he is become a sore affliction to all that know him. But I must desist. There are drafts here, everywhere and my gout issomething frightful. My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder. God be with you. HARTFORD. These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portionof the city of Dublin. One may imagine the joy of Howells and the others in this ludicrous extravaganza, which could have been written by no one but Mark Twain. It will hardly take rank as prophecy, though certainly true forecast in it is not wholly lacking. Clemens was now pretty well satisfied with his piloting story, but he began to have doubts as to its title, "Old Times on the Mississippi. " It seemed to commit him to too large an undertaking. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: Dec. 3, 1874. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --Let us change the heading to "Piloting on the Missin the Old Times"--or to "Steamboating on the M. In Old Times"--or to"Personal Old Times on the Miss. "--We could change it for Feb. If nowtoo late for Jan. --I suggest it because the present heading is toopretentious, too broad and general. It seems to command me to deliver aSecond Book of Revelation to the world, and cover all the Old Times theMississippi (dang that word, it is worse than "type" or "Egypt ") eversaw--whereas here I have finished Article No. III and am about to starton No. 4. And yet I have spoken of nothing but of Piloting as a scienceso far; and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. AndI don't care to. Any muggins can write about Old Times on the Miss. Of500 different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble aboutthe piloting of that day--and no man ever has tried to scribble about ityet. Its newness pleases me all the time--and it is about the only newsubject I know of. If I were to write fifty articles they would all beabout pilots and piloting--therefore let's get the word Piloting intothe heading. There's a sort of freshness about that, too. Ys ever, MARK. But Howells thought the title satisfactory, and indeed it was the best that could have been selected for the series. He wrote every few days of his delight in the papers, and cautioned the author not to make an attempt to please any "supposed Atlantic audience, " adding, "Yarn it off into my sympathetic ear. " Clemens replied: ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: H't'f'd. Dec. 8, 1874. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --It isn't the Atlantic audience that distresses me; forit is the only audience that I sit down before in perfect serenity (forthe simple reason that it doesn't require a "humorist" to paint himselfstriped and stand on his head every fifteen minutes. ) The trouble was, that I was only bent on "working up an atmosphere" and that is to me amost fidgety and irksome thing, sometimes. I avoid it, usually, butin this case it was absolutely necessary, else every reader would beapplying the atmosphere of his own or sea experiences, and that shirtwouldn't fit, you know. I could have sent this Article II a week ago, or more, but I couldn'tbring myself to the drudgery of revising and correcting it. I have beenat that tedious work 3 hours, now, and by George but I am glad it isover. Say--I am as prompt as a clock, if I only know the day a thing iswanted--otherwise I am a natural procrastinaturalist. Tell me what dayand date you want Nos. 3 and 4, and I will tackle and revise them andthey'll be there to the minute. I could wind up with No. 4. , but there are some things more which I ampowerfully moved to write. Which is natural enough, since I am a personwho would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madamwould stand it. I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time. My wife was afraid to write you--so I said with simplicity, "I will giveyou the language--and ideas. " Through the infinite grace of God therehas not been such another insurrection in the family before as followedthis. However, the letter was written, and promptly, too--whereas, heretofore she has remained afraid to do such things. With kind regards to Mrs. Howells, Yrs ever, MARK. The "Old Times" papers appeared each month in the Atlantic until July, 1875, and take rank to-day with Mark Twain's best work. When the first number appeared, John Hay wrote: "It is perfect; no more nor less. I don't see how you do it. " Which was reported to Howells, who said: "What business has Hay, I should like to know, praising a favorite of mine? It's interfering. " These were the days when the typewriter was new. Clemens and Twichell, during their stay in Boston, had seen the marvel in operation, and Clemens had been unable to resist owning one. It was far from being the perfect machine of to-day; the letters were all capitals, and one was never quite certain, even of those. Mark Twain, however, began with enthusiasm and practised faithfully. On the day of its arrival he wrote two letters that have survived, the first to his brother, the other to Howells. ***** Typewritten letter to W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Dec. 9, 1874. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I want to add a short paragraph to article No. 1, whenthe proof comes. Merely a line or two, however. I don't know whether I am going to make this typewriting machine go ornto: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shallmake some sort of a succss of it before I run it very long. I am sothick-fingered that I miss the keys. You needn't a swer this; I am only practicing to get three; anotherslip-up there; only practici?ng to get the hang of the thing. I noticeI miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters and punctuationmarks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at. Blame my cats butthis thing requires genius in order to work it just right. Yours ever, (M)ARK. Knowing Mark Twain, Howells wrote: "When you get tired of the machine send it to me. " Clemens naturally did get tired of the machine; it was ruining his morals, he said. He presently offered it to Howells, who by this time hesitated, but eventually yielded and accepted it. If he was blasted by its influence the fact has not been recorded. One of the famous Atlantic dinners came along in December. "Don't you dare to refuse that invitation, " wrote Howells, "to meet Emerson, Aldrich, and all those boys at the Parker House, at six o'clock, Tuesday, December 15th. Come!" Clemens had no desire to refuse; he sent word that he would come, and followed it with a characteristic line. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Sunday. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay allnight at the Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, andtake breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you, and a fire. Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go homelate at night, or something like that? That sort of thing rouses Mrs. Clemens's sympathies, easily; the only trouble is to keep them up. Twichell and I talked till 2 or 3 in the morning, the night we supped atyour house and it restored his health, on account of his being droopingfor some time and made him much more robuster than what he was before. Will Mrs. Howells let you? Yrs ever, S. L. C. Aldrich had issued that year a volume of poems, and he presented Clemens with a copy of it during this Boston visit. The letter of appreciation which follows contains also reference to an amusing incident; but we shall come to that presently. ***** To T. B. Aldrich, in Ponkapog, Mass. FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. Dec. 18, 1874. MY DEAR ALDRICH, --I read the "Cloth of Gold" through, coming down in thecars, and it is just lightning poetry--a thing which it gravels me tosay because my own efforts in that line have remained so persistentlyunrecognized, in consequence of the envy and jealousy of thisgeneration. "Baby Bell" always seemed perfection, before, but now thatI have children it has got even beyond that. About the hour that I wasreading it in the cars, Twichell was reading it at home and forthwithfell upon me with a burst of enthusiasm about it when I saw him. Thiswas pleasant, because he has long been a lover of it. "Thos. Bailey Aldrich responded" etc. , "in one of the brightest speechesof the evening. " That is what the Tribune correspondent says. And that is what everybodythat heard it said. Therefore, you keep still. Don't ever be so unwiseas to go on trying to unconvince those people. I've been skating around the place all day with some girls, with Mrs. Clemens in the window to do the applause. There would be a power of funin skating if you could do it with somebody else's muscles. --There areabout twenty boys booming by the house, now, and it is mighty good tolook at. I'm keeping you in mind, you see, in the matter of photographs. I have acouple to enclose in this letter and I want you to say you got them, andthen I shall know I have been a good truthful child. I am going to send more as I ferret them out, about the place. --And Iwon't forget that you are a "subscriber. " The wife and I unite in warm regards to you and Mrs. Aldrich. Yrs ever, S. L. CLEMENS. A letter bearing the same date as the above went back to Howells, we find, in reference to still another incident, which perhaps should come first. Mark Twain up to this time had worn the black "string" necktie of the West--a decoration which disturbed Mrs. Clemens, and invited remarks from his friends. He had persisted in it, however, up to the date of the Atlantic dinner, when Howells and Aldrich decided that something must be done about it. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Dec. 18, 1874. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I left No. 3, (Miss. Chapter) in my eldest's reach, and it may have gone to the postman and it likewise may have gone intothe fire. I confess to a dread that the latter is the case and that thatstack of MS will have to be written over again. If so, O for the returnof the lamented Herod! You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful--Mrs. Clemens. For months--I may even say years--she had shown unaccountableanimosity toward my neck-tie, even getting up in the night to take itwith the tongs and blackguard it--sometimes also going so far as tothreaten it. When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neck-ties, and thatthey were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever ofhappiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the venomin her nature gathered itself together, --insomuch that I, being near toa door, went without, perceiving danger. Now I wear one of the new neck-ties, nothing being sacred in Mrs. Clemens's eyes that can be perverted to a gaud that shall make theperson of her husband more alluring than it was aforetime. Jo Twichell was the delightedest old boy I ever saw, when he read thewords you had written in that book. He and I went to the Concert of theYale students last night and had a good time. Mrs. Clemens dreads our going to New Orleans, but I tell her she'll haveto give her consent this time. With kindest regards unto ye both. Yrs ever, S. L. CLEMENS. The reference to New Orleans at the end of this letter grew naturally out of the enthusiasm aroused by the Mississippi papers. The more Clemens wrote about the river the more he wished to revisit it and take Howells with him. Howells was willing enough to go and they eventually arranged to take their wives on the excursion. This seemed all very well and possible, so long as the time was set for some date in the future still unfixed. But Howells was a busy editor, and it was much more easy for him to promise good-naturedly than to agree on a definite time of departure. He explained at length why he could not make the journey, and added: "Forgive me having led you on to fix a time; I never thought it would come to that; I supposed you would die, or something. I am really more sorry and ashamed than I can make it appear. " So the beautiful plan was put aside, though it was not entirely abandoned for a long time. We now come to the incident mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to Aldrich, of December the 18th. It had its beginning at the Atlantic dinner, where Aldrich had abused Clemens for never sending him any photographs of himself. It was suggested by one or the other that his name be put down as a "regular subscriber" for all Mark Twain photographs as they "came out. " Clemens returned home and hunted up fifty-two different specimens, put each into an envelope, and began mailing them to him, one each morning. When a few of them had arrived Aldrich wrote, protesting. "The police, " he said, "have a way of swooping down on that kind of publication. The other day they gobbled up an entire edition of 'The Life in New York. '" Whereupon Clemens bundled up the remaining collection--forty-five envelopes of photographs and prints-and mailed them together. Aldrich wrote, now, violently declaring the perpetrator of the outrage to be known to the police; that a sprawling yellow figure against a green background had been recognized as an admirable likeness of Mark Twain, alias the jumping Frog, a well-known Californian desperado, formerly the chief of Henry Plummer's band of road agents in Montana. The letter was signed, "T. Bayleigh, Chief of Police. " On the back of the envelope "T. Bayleigh" had also written that it was "no use for the person to send any more letters, as the post-office at that point was to be blown up. Forty-eight hogs-head of nitroglycerine had been syrupticiously introduced into the cellar of the building, and more was expected. R. W. E. H. W. L. O. W. H. , and other conspirators in masks have been seen flitting about the town for some days past. The greatest excitement combined with the most intense quietness reigns at Ponkapog. " XV. LETTERS FROM HARTFORD, 1875. MUCH CORRESPONDENCE WITH HOWELLS Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time. His mentalmake-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any positionlong. He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts. Hisideas were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle. He hadreturned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortunein chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a littlefarm not far from the town. But the chicken business was not lively andOrion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort, which he wanted his brother to take under advisement. Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial. The letters of thelatter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of somerainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty thatsomewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there isa letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some goldenvision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Suchdepression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, newenthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his "brother Sam's" interestand investment. Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasurewas pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the verymeans to insure that result. At one time Clemens made him sign a swornagreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investmentfor the period of twelve months. Orion must have kept this agreement. Hewould have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath, but the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than hissufferings that year. On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and consideratewith Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help. Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, whenhis mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage hisbrother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom. ***** To Mrs. Jane Clemens and Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y. : HARTFORD, Sunday, 1875. MY DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER, --I Saw Gov. Newell today and he said he wasstill moving in the matter of Sammy's appointment--[As a West Pointcadet. ]--and would stick to it till he got a result of a positive natureone way or the other, but thus far he did not know whether to expectsuccess or defeat. Ma, whenever you need money I hope you won't be backward about sayingso--you can always have it. We stint ourselves in some ways, but we haveno desire to stint you. And we don't intend to, either. I can't "encourage" Orion. Nobody can do that, conscientiously, for thereason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on somenew wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a man who, theolder he grows the worse he writes? Would you encourage Orion in theglaring insanity of studying law? If he were packed and crammed full oflaw, it would be worthless lumber to him, for his is such a capriciousand ill-regulated mind that he would apply the principles of the lawwith no more judgment than a child of ten years. I know what I amsaying. I laid one of the plainest and simplest of legal questionsbefore Orion once, and the helpless and hopeless mess he made of it wasabsolutely astonishing. Nothing aggravates me so much as to have Orionmention law or literature to me. Well, I cannot encourage him to try the ministry, because he wouldchange his religion so fast that he would have to keep a traveling agentunder wages to go ahead of him to engage pulpits and board for him. I cannot conscientiously encourage him to do anything but potter aroundhis little farm and put in his odd hours contriving new and impossibleprojects at the rate of 365 a year--which is his customary average. He says he did well in Hannibal! Now there is a man who ought to beentirely satisfied with the grandeurs, emoluments and activities of ahen farm-- If you ask me to pity Orion, I can do that. I can do it every dayand all day long. But one can't "encourage" quick-silver, because theinstant you put your finger on it it isn't there. No, I am sayingtoo much--he does stick to his literary and legal aspirations; andhe naturally would select the very two things which he is wholly andpreposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orionon a regular pension without revealing the fact that it is a pension. That is best for him. Let him consider it a periodical loan, and payinterest out of the principal. Within a year's time he would be lookingupon himself as a benefactor of mine, in the way of furnishing me agood permanent investment for money, and that would make him happy andsatisfied with himself. If he had money he would share with me in amoment and I have no disposition to be stingy with him. Affly SAM. Livy sends love. The New Orleans plan was not wholly dead at this time. Howells wrote near the end of January that the matter was still being debated, now and then, but was far from being decided upon. He hoped to go somewhere with Mrs. Howells for a brief time in March, he said. Clemens, in haste, replied: ***** \To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Jan. 26, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --When Mrs. Clemens read your letter she said: "Well, then, wherever they go, in March, the direction will be southward andso they must give us a visit on the way. " I do not know what sort ofcontrol you may be under, but when my wife speaks as positively as that, I am not in the habit of talking back and getting into trouble. Situatedas I am, I would not be able to understand, now, how you could pass bythis town without feeling that you were running a wanton risk and doinga daredevil thing. I consider it settled that you are to come in March, and I would be sincerely sorry to learn that you and Mrs. Howells feeldifferently about it. The piloting material has been uncovering itself by degrees, untilit has exposed such a huge hoard to my view that a whole book will berequired to contain it if I use it. So I have agreed to write the bookfor Bliss. --[The book idea was later given up for the time being. ]--Iwon't be able to run the articles in the Atlantic later than theSeptember number, for the reason that a subscription book issued in thefall has a much larger sale than if issued at any other season of theyear. It is funny when I reflect that when I originally wrote you andproposed to do from 6 to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thoughtin my mind was that 6 might exhaust the material and 9 would be prettysure to do it. Or rather it seems to me that that was my thought--can'ttell at this distance. But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to morethan open up the subject fairly and start the yarn to wagging. I have been sick a-bed several days, for the first time in 21 years. How little confirmed invalids appreciate their advantages. I was ableto read the English edition of the Greville Memoirs through withoutinterruption, take my meals in bed, neglect all business without a pang, and smoke 18 cigars a day. I try not to look back upon these 21 yearswith a feeling of resentment, and yet the partialities of Providence doseem to me to be slathered around (as one may say) without that gravityand attention to detail which the real importance of the matter wouldseem to suggest. Yrs ever MARK. The New Orleans idea continued to haunt the letters. The thought of drifting down the Mississippi so attracted both Clemens and Howells, that they talked of it when they met, and wrote of it when they were separated. Howells, beset by uncertainties, playfully tried to put the responsibility upon his wife. Once he wrote: "She says in the noblest way, 'Well, go to New Orleans, if you want to so much' (you know the tone). I suppose it will do if I let you know about the middle of February?" But they had to give it up in the end. Howells wrote that he had been under the weather, and on half work the whole winter. He did not feel that he had earned his salary, he said, or that he was warranted in taking a three weeks' pleasure trip. Clemens offered to pay all the expenses of the trip, but only indefinite postponement followed. It would be seven years more before Mark Twain would return to the river, and then not with Howells. In a former chapter mention has been made of Charles Warren Stoddard, whom Mark Twain had known in his California days. He was fond of Stoddard, who was a facile and pleasing writer of poems and descriptive articles. During the period that he had been acting as Mark Twain's secretary in London, he had taken pleasure in collecting for him the news reports of the celebrated Tichborn Claimant case, then in the English courts. Clemens thought of founding a story on it, and did, in fact, use the idea, though 'The American Claimant, ' which he wrote years later, had little or no connection with the Tichborn episode. ***** To C. W. Stoddard: HARTFORD, Feb. 1, 1875. DEAR CHARLEY, --All right about the Tichborn scrapbooks; send them alongwhen convenient. I mean to have the Beecher-Tilton trial scrap-book as acompanion. .. .. I am writing a series of 7-page articles for the Atlantic at $20 a page;but as they do not pay anybody else as much as that, I do not complain(though at the same time I do swear that I am not content. ) However theawful respectability of the magazine makes up. I have cut your articles about San Marco out of a New York paper (JoeTwichell saw it and brought it home to me with loud admiration, ) andsent it to Howells. It is too bad to fool away such good literature in aperishable daily journal. Do remember us kindly to Lady Hardy and all that rare family--my wifeand I so often have pleasant talks about them. Ever your friend, SAML. L. CLEMENS. The price received by Mark Twain for the Mississippi papers, as quoted in this letter, furnishes us with a realizing sense of the improvement in the literary market, with the advent of a flood of cheap magazines and the Sunday newspaper. The Atlantic page probably contained about a thousand words, which would make his price average, say, two cents per word. Thirty years later, when his fame was not much more extended, his pay for the same matter would have been fifteen times as great, that is to say, at the rate of thirty cents per word. But in that early time there were no Sunday magazines--no literary magazines at all except the Atlantic, and Harpers, and a few fashion periodicals. Probably there were news-stands, but it is hard to imagine what they must have looked like without the gay pictorial cover-femininity that to-day pleases and elevates the public and makes author and artist affluent. Clemens worked steadily on the river chapters, and Howells was always praising him and urging him to go on. At the end of January he wrote: "You're doing the science of piloting splendidly. Every word's interesting. And don't you drop the series 'til you've got every bit of anecdote and reminiscence into it. " ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Feb. 10, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --Your praises of my literature gave me the solidestgratification; but I never did have the fullest confidence in mycritical penetration, and now your verdict on S----- has knocked whatlittle I did have gully-west! I didn't enjoy his gush, but I thought alot of his similes were ever so vivid and good. But it's just my luck;every time I go into convulsions of admiration over a picture and wantto buy it right away before I've lost the chance, some wretch who reallyunderstands art comes along and damns it. But I don't mind. I wouldrather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I havegot so much more of it. I send you No. 5 today. I have written and re-written the first half ofit three different times, yesterday and today, and at last Mrs. Clemenssays it will do. I never saw a woman so hard to please about things shedoesn't know anything about. Yours ever, MARK. Of course, the reference to his wife's criticism in this is tenderly playful, as always--of a pattern with the severity which he pretends for her in the next. ***** To Mrs. W. D. Howells, in Boston: 1875 DEAR MRS. HOWELLS, --Mrs. Clemens is delighted to get the pictures, andso am I. I can perceive in the group, that Mr. Howells is feeling as Iso often feel, viz: "Well, no doubt I am in the wrong, though I do notknow how or where or why--but anyway it will be safest to look meek, andwalk circumspectly for a while, and not discuss the thing. " And you lookexactly as Mrs. Clemens does after she has said, "Indeed I do not wonderthat you can frame no reply: for you know only too well, that yourconduct admits of no excuse, palliation or argument--none!" I shall just delight in that group on account of the good old humandomestic spirit that pervades it--bother these family groups that put ona state aspect to get their pictures taken in. We want a heliotype made of our eldest daughter. How soft and rich andlovely the picture is. Mr. Howells must tell me how to proceed in thematter. Truly Yours SAM. L. CLEMENS. In the next letter we have a picture of Susy--[This spelling of the name was adopted somewhat later and much preferred. It appears as "Susie" in most of the earlier letters. ]--Clemens's third birthday, certainly a pretty picture, and as sweet and luminous and tender today as it was forty years ago-as it will be a hundred years hence, if these lines should survive that long. The letter is to her uncle Charles Langdon, the "Charlie" of the Quaker City. "Atwater" was associated with the Langdon coal interests in Elmira. "The play" is, of course, "The Gilded Age. " ***** To Charles Langdon, in Elmira: Mch. 19, 1875. DEAR CHARLIE, --Livy, after reading your letter, used her severest formof expression about Mr. Atwater--to wit: She did not "approve" ofhis conduct. This made me shudder; for it was equivalent to AllieSpaulding's saying "Mr. Atwater is a mean thing;" or Rev. ThomasBeecher's saying "Damn that Atwater, " or my saying "I wish Atwater wasthree hundred million miles in----!" However, Livy does not often get into one of these furies, God bethanked. In Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago, the play paid me an average of nine hundred dollars a week. In smallertowns the average is $400 to $500. This is Susie's birth-day. Lizzie brought her in at 8. 30 this morning(before we were up) hooded with a blanket, red curl-papers in her hair, a great red japonica, in one hand (for Livy) and a yellow rose-budnestled in violets (for my buttonhole) in the other--and she lookedwonderfully pretty. She delivered her memorials and received herbirth-day kisses. Livy laid her japonica, down to get a better "holt"for kissing--which Susie presently perceived, and became thoughtful:then said sorrowfully, turning the great deeps of her eyes upon hermother: "Don't you care for you wow?" Right after breakfast we got up a rousing wood fire in the main hall (itis a cold morning) illuminated the place with a rich glow from all theglobes of the newell chandelier, spread a bright rug before the fire, set a circling row of chairs (pink ones and dove-colored) and in themidst a low invalid-table covered with a fanciful cloth and laden withthe presents--a pink azalia in lavish bloom from Rosa; a gold inscribedRussia-leather bible from Patrick and Mary; a gold ring (inscribed) from"Maggy Cook;" a silver thimble (inscribed with motto and initials) fromLizzie; a rattling mob of Sunday clad dolls from Livy and Annie, and aNoah's Ark from me, containing 200 wooden animals such as only a humanbeing could create and only God call by name without referring to thepassenger list. Then the family and the seven servants assembled there, and Susie and the "Bay" arrived in state from above, the Bay's headbeing fearfully and wonderfully decorated with a profusion of blazingred flowers and overflowing cataracts of lycopodium. Wee congratulatorynotes accompanied the presents of the servants. I tell you it wasa great occasion and a striking and cheery group, taking all thesurroundings into account and the wintry aspect outside. (Remainder missing. ) There was to be a centennial celebration that year of the battles of Lexington and Concord, and Howells wrote, urging Clemens and his wife to visit them and attend it. Mrs. Clemens did not go, and Clemens and Howells did not go, either--to the celebration. They had their own ideas about getting there, but found themselves unable to board the thronged train at Concord, and went tramping about in the cold and mud, hunting a conveyance, only to return at length to the cheer of the home, defeated and rather low in spirits. Twichell, who went on his own hook, had no such difficulties. To Howells, Mark Twain wrote the adventures of this athletic and strenuous exponent of the gospel. The "Winnie" mentioned in this letter was Howells's daughter Winifred. She had unusual gifts, but did not live to develop them. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD. Apl. 23, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I've got Mrs. Clemens's picture before me, and hope Ishall not forget to send it with this. Joe Twichell preached morning and evening here last Sunday; tookmidnight train for Boston; got an early breakfast and started by railat 7. 30 A. M. For Concord; swelled around there until 1 P. M. , seeingeverything; then traveled on top of a train to Lexington; saw everythingthere; traveled on top of a train to Boston, (with hundreds in company)deluged with dust, smoke and cinders; yelled and hurrahed all the waylike a schoolboy; lay flat down to dodge numerous bridges, and sailedinto the depot, howling with excitement and as black as a chimney-sweep;got to Young's Hotel at 7 P. M. ; sat down in reading-room andimmediately fell asleep; was promptly awakened by a porter who supposedhe was drunk; wandered around an hour and a half; then took 9 P. M. Train, sat down in smoking car and remembered nothing more untilawakened by conductor as the train came into Hartford at 1. 30 A. M. Thinks he had simply a glorious time--and wouldn't have missed theCentennial for the world. He would have run out to see us a moment atCambridge, but was too dirty. I wouldn't have wanted him there--hisappalling energy would have been an insufferable reproach to mildadventurers like you and me. Well, he is welcome to the good time he had--I had a deal better one. Mynarrative has made Mrs. Clemens wish she could have been there. --When Ithink over what a splendid good sociable time I had in your house Ifeel ever so thankful to the wise providence that thwarted our severalably-planned and ingenious attempts to get to Lexington. I am comingagain before long, and then she shall be of the party. Now you said that you and Mrs. Howells could run down here nearly anySaturday. Very well then, let us call it next Saturday, for a "starter. "Can you do that? By that time it will really be spring and youwon't freeze. The birds are already out; a small one paid us a visityesterday. We entertained it and let it go again, Susie protesting. The spring laziness is already upon me--insomuch that the spirit beginsto move me to cease from Mississippi articles and everything else andgive myself over to idleness until we go to New Orleans. I have onearticle already finished, but somehow it doesn't seem as proper achapter to close with as the one already in your hands. I hope to getin a mood and rattle off a good one to finish with--but just now all mymoods are lazy ones. Winnie's literature sings through me yet! Surely that child has one ofthese "futures" before her. Now try to come--will you? With the warmest regards of the two of us-- Yrs ever, S. L. CLEMENS. Mrs. Clemens sent a note to Mrs. Howells, which will serve as a pendantto the foregoing. ***** From Mrs. Clemens to Mrs. Howells, in Boston: MY DEAR MRS. HOWELLS, --Don't dream for one instant that my not getting aletter from you kept me from Boston. I am too anxious to go to let sucha thing as that keep me. Mr. Clemens did have such a good time with you and Mr. Howells. Heevidently has no regret that he did not get to the Centennial. I wasdriven nearly distracted by his long account of Mr. Howells and hiswanderings. I would keep asking if they ever got there, he would neveranswer but made me listen to a very minute account of everything thatthey did. At last I found them back where they started from. If you find misspelled words in this note, you will remember myinfirmity and not hold me responsible. Affectionately yours, LIVY L. CLEMENS. In spite of his success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations. All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character- shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those fine artificialities of life which we are likely to associate with culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the hesitation confessed in the letter that follows. Whether the plan suggested interested Howells or not we do not know. In later years Howells wrote a novel called The Story of a Play; this may have been its beginning. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Apl. 26, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --An actor named D. H. Harkins has been here to ask meto put upon paper a 5-act play which he has been mapping out in his mindfor 3 or 4 years. He sat down and told me his plot all through, in aclear, bright way, and I was a deal taken with it; but it is a line ofcharacters whose fine shading and artistic development requires an ablerhand than mine; so I easily perceived that I must not make the attempt. But I liked the man, and thought there was a good deal of stuff in him;and therefore I wanted his play to be written, and by a capable hand, too. So I suggested you, and said I would write and see if you would bewilling to undertake it. If you like the idea, he will call upon youin the course of two or three weeks and describe his plot and hischaracters. Then if it doesn't strike you favorably, of course you cansimply decline; but it seems to me well worth while that you should hearwhat he has to say. You could also "average" him while he talks, andjudge whether he could play your priest--though I doubt if any man cando that justice. Shan't I write him and say he may call? If you wish to communicatedirectly with him instead, his address is "Larchmont Manor, WestchesterCo. , N. Y. " Do you know, the chill of that 19th of April seems to be in my bonesyet? I am inert and drowsy all the time. That was villainous weather fora couple of wandering children to be out in. Ys ever MARK. The sinister typewriter did not find its way to Howells for nearly a year. Meantime, Mark Twain had refused to allow the manufacturers to advertise his ownership. He wrote to them: HARTFORD, March 19, 1875. Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge thefact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybodywithout receiving a request by return mail that I would not onlydescribe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use ofit, etc. , etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want peopleto know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker. Three months later the machine was still in his possession. Bliss had traded a twelve-dollar saddle for it, but apparently showed little enthusiasm in his new possession. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: June 25, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I told Patrick to get some carpenters and box themachine and send it to you--and found that Bliss had sent for themachine and earned it off. I have been talking to you and writing to you as if you were presentwhen I traded the machine to Bliss for a twelve-dollar saddle worth $25(cheating him outrageously, of course--but conscience got the upper handagain and I told him before I left the premises that I'd pay for thesaddle if he didn't like the machine--on condition that he donate saidmachine to a charity) This was a little over five weeks ago--so I had long ago concludedthat Bliss didn't want the machine and did want the saddle--wherefore Ijumped at the chance of shoving the machine off onto you, saddle or nosaddle so I got the blamed thing out of my sight. The saddle hangs on Tara's walls down below in the stable, and themachine is at Bliss's grimly pursuing its appointed mission, slowly andimplacably rotting away another man's chances for salvation. I have sent Bliss word not to donate it to a charity (though it is apity to fool away a chance to do a charity an ill turn, ) but to let meknow when he has got his dose, because I've got another candidate fordamnation. You just wait a couple of weeks and if you don't see theType-Writer come tilting along toward Cambridge with an unsatisfiedappetite in its eye, I lose my guess. Don't you be mad about this blunder, Howells--it only comes of a badmemory, and the stupidity which is inseparable from true genius. Nothingintentionally criminal in it. Yrs ever MARK. It was November when Howells finally fell under the baleful influence of the machine. He wrote: "The typewriter came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to have its effect on me. Of course, it doesn't work: if I can persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won't get down again without digital assistance. The treadle refuses to have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don't know how to get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun several letters to My d-a-r lemans, as it prefers to spell your respected name, and I don't despair yet of sending you something in its beautiful handwriting--after I've had a man out from the agent's to put it in order. It's fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes my time like an old friend. " The Clemens family remained in Hartford that summer, with the exception of a brief season at Bateman's Point, R. I. , near Newport. By this time Mark Twain had taken up and finished the Tom Sawyer story begun two years before. Naturally he wished Howells to consider the MS. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, July 5th, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --I have finished the story and didn't take the chapbeyond boyhood. I believe it would be fatal to do it in any shape butautobiographically--like Gil Blas. I perhaps made a mistake in notwriting it in the first person. If I went on, now, and took him intomanhood, he would just like like all the one-horse men in literature andthe reader would conceive a hearty contempt for him. It is not a boy'sbook, at all. It will only be read by adults. It is only written foradults. Moreover the book is plenty long enough as it stands. It is about 900pages of MS, and may be 1000 when I shall have finished "workingup" vague places; so it would make from 130 to 150 pages of theAtlantic--about what the Foregone Conclusion made, isn't it? I would dearly like to see it in the Atlantic, but I doubt if it wouldpay the publishers to buy the privilege, or me to sell it. Bret Hartehas sold his novel (same size as mine, I should say) to Scribner'sMonthly for $6, 500 (publication to begin in September, I think, ) and hegets a royalty of 7 1/2 per cent from Bliss in book form afterwards. He gets a royalty of ten per cent on it in England (issued in serialnumbers) and the same royalty on it in book form afterwards, and is toreceive an advance payment of five hundred pounds the day the firstNo. Of the serial appears. If I could do as well, here, and there, withmine, it might possibly pay me, but I seriously doubt it though it islikely I could do better in England than Bret, who is not widely knownthere. You see I take a vile, mercenary view of things--but then my householdexpenses are something almost ghastly. By and by I shall take a boy of twelve and run him on through life (inthe first person) but not Tom Sawyer--he would not be a good characterfor it. I wish you would promise to read the MS of Tom Sawyer some time, andsee if you don't really decide that I am right in closing with him as aboy--and point out the most glaring defects for me. It is a tremendousfavor to ask, and I expect you to refuse and would be ashamed to expectyou to do otherwise. But the thing has been so many months in my mindthat it seems a relief to snake it out. I don't know any other personwhose judgment I could venture to take fully and entirely. Don'thesitate about saying no, for I know how your time is taxed, and I wouldhave honest need to blush if you said yes. Osgood and I are "going for" the puppy G---- on infringement oftrademark. To win one or two suits of this kind will set literary folkson a firmer bottom. I wish Osgood would sue for stealing Holmes's poem. Wouldn't it be gorgeous to sue R---- for petty larceny? I will promiseto go into court and swear I think him capable of stealing pea-nuts froma blind pedlar. Yrs ever, CLEMENS. Of course Howells promptly replied that he would read the story, adding: "You've no idea what I may ask you to do for me, some day. I'm sorry that you can't do it for the Atlantic, but I succumb. Perhaps you will do Boy No. 2 for us. " Clemens, conscience-stricken, meantime, hastily put the MS. Out of reach of temptation. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: July 13, 1875 MY DEAR HOWELLS, --Just as soon as you consented I realized all theatrocity of my request, and straightway blushed and weakened. Itelegraphed my theatrical agent to come here and carry off the MS andcopy it. But I will gladly send it to you if you will do as follows: dramatizeit, if you perceive that you can, and take, for your remuneration, halfof the first $6000 which I receive for its representation on the stage. You could alter the plot entirely, if you chose. I could help in thework, most cheerfully, after you had arranged the plot. I have my eyeupon two young girls who can play "Tom" and "Huck. " I believe a gooddeal of a drama can be made of it. Come--can't you tackle this in theodd hours of your vacation? or later, if you prefer? I do wish you could come down once more before your holiday. I'd giveanything! Yrs ever, MARK. Howells wrote that he had no time for the dramatization and urged Clemens to undertake it himself. He was ready to read the story, whenever it should arrive. Clemens did not hurry, however, The publication of Tom Sawyer could wait. He already had a book in press--the volume of Sketches New and Old, which he had prepared for Bliss several years before. Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good notice--possibly better than it deserved. Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection of sketches does not seem especially important. With the exception of the frog story and the "True Story" most of those included--might be spared. Clemens himself confessed to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that he had destroyed a number of them. The book, however, was distinguished in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's first utterance in print on the subject of copyright, a matter in which he never again lost interest. The absurdity and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely instrumental in their improvement. In the book his open petition to Congress that all property rights, as well as literary ownership, should be put on the copyright basis and limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years, " was more or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes, it was founded on reason and justice. He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in the direction of international copyright. It was to be a petition signed by the leading American authors, asking the United States to declare itself to be the first to stand for right and justice by enacting laws against the piracy of foreign books. It was a rather utopian scheme, as most schemes for moral progress are, in their beginning. It would not be likely ever to reach Congress, but it would appeal to Howells and his Cambridge friends. Clemens wrote, outlining his plan of action. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Sept. 18, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --My plan is this--you are to get Mr. Lowell and Mr. Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you mustsign it yourself and get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then Holmes willsign--he said he would if he didn't have to stand at the head. ThenI'm fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages and send himpersonally to every author of distinction in the country, and corralthe rest of the signatures. Then I'll have the whole thing lithographed(about a thousand copies) and move upon the President and Congress inperson, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely theagent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture tolaugh at. I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and ifhe should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I shouldblush--but still I would frame it. ) Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votesenough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill wasoffered. This I would try through my leader and my friends there. And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say withnoble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal but not from foreignauthors--Not from foreign authors!" You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simplefact that the moral law is "Thou shalt not steal"--no matter what Europemay do. I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefitof American booksellers, anyway. If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try makingcopyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it, since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyrightterm--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have hisrights--which is something. If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in sucha sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around. The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, and saidthat the fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell. I have lost my old petition, (which was brief) but will draft andenclose another--not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance. I want Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (and the ideas too, ) if he willdo it. Say--Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November--telegraphsthat Beecher's and Nast's withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind ofa place. So I guess I'll do that old "Roughing It" lecture over again inNovember and repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it. Can I take a carriage after the lecture and go out and stay with youthat night, provided you find at that distant time that it will notinconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet? With love to you all Yrs ever, S. L. C. Of course the petition never reached Congress. Holmes's comment that governments were not in the habit of setting themselves up as high moral examples, except for revenue, was shared by too many others. The petition was tabled, but Clemens never abandoned his purpose and lived to see most of his dream fulfilled. Meantime, Howells's notice of the Sketches appeared in the Atlantic, and brought grateful acknowledgment from the author. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Oct. 19, 1875. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --That is a perfectly superb notice. You can easilybelieve that nothing ever gratified me so much before. The newspaperpraises bestowed upon the "Innocents Abroad" were large and generous, but somehow I hadn't confidence in the critical judgement of the partieswho furnished them. You know how that is, yourself, from reading thenewspaper notices of your own books. They gratify a body, but theyalways leave a small pang behind in the shape of a fear that thecritic's good words could not safely be depended upon as authority. Yours is the recognized critical Court of Last Resort in this country;from its decision there is no appeal; and so, to have gained this decreeof yours before I am forty years old, I regard as a thing to be rightdown proud of. Mrs. Clemens says, "Tell him I am just as grateful to himas I can be. " (It sounds as if she were grateful to you for heroicallytrampling the truth under foot in order to praise me but in reality itmeans that she is grateful to you for being bold enough to utter a truthwhich she fully believes all competent people know, but which none hasheretofore been brave enough to utter. ) You see, the thing that gravelsher is that I am so persistently glorified as a mere buffoon, as if thatentirely covered my case--which she denies with venom. The other day Mrs. Clemens was planning a visit to you, and so I amwaiting with a pleasurable hope for the result of her deliberations. Weare expecting visitors every day, now, from New York; and afterwardsome are to come from Elmira. I judge that we shall then be free togo Bostonward. I should be just delighted; because we could visit incomfort, since we shouldn't have to do any shopping--did it all in NewYork last week, and a tremendous pull it was too. Mrs. C. Said the other day, "We will go to Cambridge if we have to walk;for I don't believe we can ever get the Howellses to come here againuntil we have been there. " I was gratified to see that there was onestring, anyway, that could take her to Cambridge. But I will do herthe justice to say that she is always wanting to go to Cambridge, independent of the selfish desire to get a visit out of you by it. Iwant her to get started, now, before children's diseases are fashionableagain, because they always play such hob with visiting arrangements. With love to you all Yrs Ever S. L. CLEMENS. Mark Twain's trips to Boston were usually made alone. Women require more preparation to go visiting, and Mrs. Clemens and Mrs. Howells seem to have exchanged visits infrequently. For Mark Twain, perhaps, it was just as well that his wife did not always go with him; his absent-mindedness and boyish ingenuousness often led him into difficulties which Mrs. Clemens sometimes found embarrassing. In the foregoing letter they were planning a visit to Cambridge. In the one that follows they seem to have made it--with certain results, perhaps not altogether amusing at the moment. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: Oct. 4, '75. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --We had a royal good time at your house, and have hada royal good time ever since, talking about it, both privately and withthe neighbors. Mrs. Clemens's bodily strength came up handsomely under that cheeryrespite from household and nursery cares. I do hope that Mrs. Howells'sdidn't go correspondingly down, under the added burden to her caresand responsibilities. Of course I didn't expect to get through withoutcommitting some crimes and hearing of them afterwards, so I have takenthe inevitable lashings and been able to hum a tune while the punishmentwent on. I "caught it" for letting Mrs. Howells bother and bother abouther coffee when it was "a good deal better than we get at home. " I"caught it" for interrupting Mrs. C. At the last moment and losing herthe opportunity to urge you not to forget to send her that MS when theprinters are done with it. I "caught it" once more for personating thatdrunken Col. James. I "caught it" for mentioning that Mr. Longfellow'spicture was slightly damaged; and when, after a lull in the storm, Iconfessed, shame-facedly, that I had privately suggested to you thatwe hadn't any frames, and that if you wouldn't mind hinting to Mr. Houghton, &c. , &c. , &c. , the Madam was simply speechless for the spaceof a minute. Then she said: "How could you, Youth! The idea of sending Mr. Howells, with hissensitive nature, upon such a repulsive er--" "Oh, Howells won't mind it! You don't know Howells. Howells is a manwho--" She was gone. But George was the first person she stumbled on inthe hall, so she took it out of George. I was glad of that, because itsaved the babies. I've got another rattling good character for my novel! That great workis mulling itself into shape gradually. Mrs. Clemens sends love to Mrs. Howells--meantime she is diligentlylaying up material for a letter to her. Yrs ever MARK. The "George" of this letter was Mark Twain's colored butler, a valued and even beloved member of the household--a most picturesque character, who "one day came to wash windows, " as Clemens used to say, "and remained eighteen years. " The fiction of Mrs. Clemens's severity he always found amusing, because of its entire contrast with the reality of her gentle heart. Clemens carried the Tom Sawyer MS. To Boston himself and placed it in Howells's hands. Howells had begged to be allowed to see the story, and Mrs. Clemens was especially anxious that he should do so. She had doubts as to certain portions of it, and had the fullest faith in Howells's opinion. It was a gratifying one when it came. Howells wrote: "I finished reading Tom Sawyer a week ago, sitting up till one A. M. To get to the end, simply because it was impossible to leave off. It's altogether the best boy's story I ever read. It will be an immense success. But I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's story. Grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do; and if you should put it forth as a study of boy character from the grown-up point of view, you give the wrong key to it. .. . The adventures are enchanting. I wish I had been on that island. The treasure-hunting, the loss in the cave--it's all exciting and splendid. I shouldn't think of publishing this story serially. Give me a hint when it's to be out, and I'll start the sheep to jumping in the right places"--meaning that he would have an advance review ready for publication in the Atlantic, which was a leader of criticism in America. Mark Twain was writing a great deal at this time. Howells was always urging him to send something to the Atlantic, declaring a willingness to have his name appear every month in their pages, and Clemens was generally contributing some story or sketch. The "proof" referred to in the next letter was of one of these articles. ***** To W. D. Howells, in Boston: HARTFORD, Nov. 23, '75. MY DEAR HOWELLS, --Herewith is the proof. In spite of myself, howawkwardly I do jumble words together; and how often I do use three wordswhere one would answer--a thing I am always trying to guard against. Ishall become as slovenly a writer as Charles Francis Adams, if I don'tlook out. (That is said in jest; because of course I do not seriouslyfear getting so bad as that. I never shall drop so far toward his andBret Harte's level as to catch myself saying "It must have been wiser tohave believed that he might have accomplished it if he could have feltthat he would have been supported by those who should have &c. &c. &c. ")The reference to Bret Harte reminds me that I often accuse him of beinga deliberate imitator of Dickens; and this in turn reminds me that Ihave charged unconscious plagiarism upon Charley Warner; and this inturn reminds me that I have been delighting my soul for two weeks over abran new and ingenious way of beginning a novel--and behold, all at onceit flashes upon me that Charley Warner originated the idea 3 years agoand told me about it! Aha! So much for self-righteousness! I am wellrepaid. Here are 108 pages of MS, new and clean, lying disgraced inthe waste paper basket, and I am beginning the novel over again in anunstolen way. I would not wonder if I am the worst literary thief in theworld, without knowing it. It is glorious news that you like Tom Sawyer so well. I mean to see toit that your review of it shall have plenty of time to appear before theother notices. Mrs. Clemens decides with you that the book should issueas a book for boys, pure and simple--and so do I. It is surely thecorrect idea. As to that last chapter, I think of just leaving it offand adding nothing in its place. Something told me that the book wasdone when I got to that point--and so the strong temptation to putHuck's life at the Widow's into detail, instead of generalizing it ina paragraph was resisted. Just send Sawyer to me by express--I enclosemoney for it. If it should get lost it will be no great matter. Company interfered last night, and so "Private Theatricals" goes overtill this evening, to be read aloud. Mrs. Clemens is mad, but the storywill take that all out. This is going to be a splendid winter night forfireside reading, anyway. I am almost at a dead stand-still with my new story, on account of themisery of having to do it all over again. We--all send love to you--all. Yrs ever MARK. The "story" referred to may have been any one of several begun by him at this time. His head was full of ideas for literature of every sort. Many of his beginnings came to nothing, for the reason that he started wrong, or with no definitely formed plan. Others of his literary enterprises were condemned by his wife for their grotesqueness or for the offense they might give in one way or another, however worthy the intention behind them. Once he wrote a burlesque on family history "The Autobiography of a Damned Fool. " "Livy wouldn't have it, " he said later, "so I gave it up. " The world is indebted to Mark Twain's wife for the check she put upon his fantastic or violent impulses. She was his public, his best public--clearheaded and wise. That he realized this, and was willing to yield, was by no means the least of his good fortunes. We may believe that he did not always yield easily, and perhaps sometimes only out of love for her. In the letter which he wrote her on her thirtieth birthday we realize something of what she had come to mean in his life. ***** To Mrs. Clemens on her Thirtieth Birthday: HARTFORD, November 27, 1875. Livy darling, six years have gone by since I made my first great successin life and won you, and thirty years have passed since Providence madepreparation for that happy success by sending you into the world. Everyday we live together adds to the security of my confidence, that wecan never any more wish to be separated than that we can ever imagine aregret that we were ever joined. You are dearer to me to-day, my child, than you were upon the last anniversary of this birth-day; you weredearer then than you were a year before--you have grown more and moredear from the first of those anniversaries, and I do not doubt that thisprecious progression will continue on to the end. Let us look forward to the coming anniversaries, with their age andtheir gray hairs without fear and without depression, trusting andbelieving that the love we bear each other will be sufficient to makethem blessed. So, with abounding affection for you and our babies, I hail this daythat brings you the matronly grace and dignity of three decades! Always Yours S. L. C.