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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 4,
+1886-1900, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 4, 1886-1900
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: August 20, 2016 [EBook #3196]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAIN LETTERS, VOL. 4 ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1886-1900
+
+VOLUME IV.
+
+
+By Mark Twain
+
+
+ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. LETTERS, 1886-87. JANE CLEMENS'S ROMANCE. UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC.
+
+     When Clemens had been platforming with Cable and returned to
+     Hartford for his Christmas vacation, the Warner and Clemens families
+     had joined in preparing for him a surprise performance of The Prince
+     and the Pauper.  The Clemens household was always given to
+     theatricals, and it was about this time that scenery and a stage
+     were prepared--mainly by the sculptor Gerhardt--for these home
+     performances, after which productions of The Prince and the Pauper
+     were given with considerable regularity to audiences consisting of
+     parents and invited friends.  The subject is a fascinating one, but
+     it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.--[In Mark Twain: A on***n,
+     chaps.  cliii and clx.]--We get a glimpse of one of these occasions
+     as well as of Mark Twain's financial progress in the next brief
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells; in Boston:
+
+
+                                             Jan.  3, '86.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--The date set for the Prince and Pauper play is ten
+days hence--Jan. 13. I hope you and Pilla can take a train that arrives
+here during the day; the one that leaves Boston toward the end of the
+afternoon would be a trifle late; the performance would have already
+begun when you reached the house.
+
+I'm out of the woods. On the last day of the year I had paid out
+$182,000 on the Grant book and it was totally free from debt.
+
+                                              Yrs ever
+
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Mark Twain's mother was a woman of sturdy character and with a keen
+     sense of humor and tender sympathies.  Her husband, John Marshall
+     Clemens, had been a man of high moral character, honored by all who
+     knew him, respected and apparently loved by his wife.  No one would
+     ever have supposed that during all her years of marriage, and almost
+     to her death, she carried a secret romance that would only be told
+     at last in the weary disappointment of old age.  It is a curious
+     story, and it came to light in this curious way:
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, May 19, '86.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--..... Here's a secret. A most curious and pathetic
+romance, which has just come to light. Read these things, but don't
+mention them. Last fall, my old mother--then 82--took a notion to attend
+a convention of old settlers of the Mississippi Valley in an Iowa town.
+My brother's wife was astonished; and represented to her the hardships
+and fatigues of such a trip, and said my mother might possibly not even
+survive them; and said there could be no possible interest for her in
+such a meeting and such a crowd. But my mother insisted, and persisted;
+and finally gained her point. They started; and all the way my mother
+was young again with excitement, interest, eagerness, anticipation. They
+reached the town and the hotel. My mother strode with the same eagerness
+in her eye and her step, to the counter, and said:
+
+“Is Dr. Barrett of St. Louis, here?”
+
+“No. He was here, but he returned to St. Louis this morning.”
+
+“Will he come again?”
+
+“No.”
+
+My mother turned away, the fire all gone from her, and said, “Let us go
+home.”
+
+They went straight back to Keokuk. My mother sat silent and thinking
+for many days--a thing which had never happened before. Then one day she
+said:
+
+“I will tell you a secret. When I was eighteen, a young medical student
+named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; and he used
+to ride over to see me. This continued for some time. I loved him with
+my whole heart, and I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no
+words had been spoken. He was too bashful to speak--he could not do it.
+Everybody supposed we were engaged--took it for granted we were--but we
+were not. By and by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, and
+he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, and asking him to drive me
+over in his buggy and let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might
+have that opportunity to propose. My uncle should have done as he was
+asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the
+letter; and then, of course, I could not go--and did not. He (Barrett)
+left the country presently, and I, to stop the clacking tongues, and to
+show him that I did not care, married, in a pet. In all these sixty-four
+years I have not seen him since. I saw in a paper that he was going to
+attend that Old Settlers' Convention. Only three hours before we reached
+that hotel, he had been standing there!”
+
+Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes
+letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders
+why they neglect her and do not answer.
+
+Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four
+years, and no human being ever suspecting it!
+
+                              Yrs ever,
+
+                                        MARK.
+
+     We do not get the idea from this letter that those two long
+     ago sweethearts quarreled, but Mark Twain once spoke of
+     their having done so, and there may have been a
+     disagreement, assuming that there was a subsequent meeting.
+     It does not matter, now.  In speaking of it, Mark Twain once
+     said: “It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed
+     the field of my personal experience in a long lifetime.”--
+     [When Mark Twain: A Biography was written this letter had
+     not come to light, and the matter was stated there in
+     accordance with Mark Twain's latest memory of it.]
+
+     Howells wrote: “After all, how poor and hackneyed all the
+     inventions are compared with the simple and stately facts.
+     Who could have imagined such a heart-break as that?  Yet it
+     went along with the fulfillment of everyday duty and made no
+     more noise than a grave under foot.  I doubt if fiction will
+     ever get the knack of such things.”
+
+     Jane Clemens now lived with her son Orion and his wife, in
+     Keokuk, where she was more contented than elsewhere.  In
+     these later days her memory had become erratic, her
+     realization of events about her uncertain, but there were
+     times when she was quite her former self, remembering
+     clearly and talking with her old-time gaiety of spirit.
+     Mark Twain frequently sent her playful letters to amuse her,
+     letters full of such boyish gaiety as had amused her long
+     years before.  The one that follows is a fair example.  It
+     was written after a visit which Clemens and his family had
+     paid to Keokuk.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 7, '86.
+
+DEAR MA,--I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but I
+see by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well. When
+we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather
+was pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs. McElroy's and cried
+about it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled
+down, now, so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin
+off. Well it did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my
+shirt, there, with some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told
+me they never used a stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped
+table in the drawing-room, just with the natural heat. If anybody else
+had told me, I would not have believed it. I was told by the Bishop of
+Keokuk that he did not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the
+furniture. If Miss Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it.
+This reminds me that you speak of Dr. Jenkins and his family as if they
+were strangers to me. Indeed they are not. Don't you suppose I remember
+gratefully how tender the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm,
+and how quickly he got the pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it
+was going to last at least an hour? No, I don't forget some things as
+easily as I do others.
+
+Yes, it was pretty hot weather. Now here, when a person is going to die,
+he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of
+course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything. It has
+set me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson. By and by, when my health
+fails, I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my
+friends here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk
+and prepare for death.
+
+They are all well in this family, and we all send love.
+
+                                   Affly Your Son
+                                                  SAM.
+
+
+     The ways of city officials and corporations are often past
+     understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write
+     picturesque letters of protest.  The following to a Hartford
+     lighting company is a fair example of these documents.
+
+
+*****
+
+To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford:
+
+GENTLEMEN,--There are but two places in our whole street where lights
+could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and
+appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places
+in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness. When I
+noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I
+could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it
+was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be
+corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out.
+My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned. For
+fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept
+a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find
+either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I
+had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running
+into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a
+little more in the dark.
+
+Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no
+rights which you are in any way bound to respect. Please take your
+electric light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest;
+you will probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on
+divine assistance if you lose your bearings.
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+     [Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
+     Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
+     include in these volumes:
+
+     “Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point
+     of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of
+     turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your
+     God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--”
+      D.W.]
+
+     Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
+     written.  Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
+     sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
+     relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
+     wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all.  A few such
+     letters here follow.
+
+     Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
+     wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
+     tobacco, and what not.  They were generally persistent people,
+     unable to accept a polite or kindly denial.  Once he set down some
+     remarks on this particular phase of correspondence.  He wrote:
+
+
+I
+
+No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many
+an electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal.
+And no doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of
+activity whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this
+sort of solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt
+from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
+
+And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
+the loan of somebody else's.
+
+As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees
+that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle
+better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing
+to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his full
+money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are you
+not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do
+that?
+
+That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
+other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon
+a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
+How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred
+who can, be made to see it.
+
+When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is
+an indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp
+answer. He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very
+base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it
+would not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the
+same, that application has done its work, and taken you down in your own
+estimation. You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion
+of you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an
+interval during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird
+as you were before.
+
+However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter,
+but leave it lying a day. That saves you. For by that time you have
+begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and
+exaggerations are lies. You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
+made them unmistakably so. But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a
+man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious
+side of things. You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless
+extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good
+time you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at
+your word and believed you. And presently they find out that you were
+not in earnest. They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue--and
+there is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver. If you will
+deceive in one way, why shouldn't you in another? So they apply for the
+use of your trade-mark. You are amazed and affronted. You retort that
+you are not that kind of person. Then they are amazed and affronted; and
+wonder “since when?”
+
+By this time you have got your bearings. You realize that perhaps there
+is a little blame on both sides. You are in the right frame, now. So
+you write a letter void of offense, declining. You mail this one; you
+pigeon-hole the other.
+
+That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career,
+you don't: you mail the first one.
+
+
+II
+
+An enthusiast who had a new system of musical notation, wrote to me and
+suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities
+of the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to
+make a “rousing hit.” He shouted and shouted over the marvels wrought by
+his system, and quoted the handsome compliments which had been paid it
+by famous musical people; but he forgot to tell me what his notation was
+like, or what its simplicities consisted in. So I could not have written
+the article if I had wanted to--which I didn't; because I hate strangers
+with axes to grind. I wrote him a courteous note explaining how busy I
+was--I always explain how busy I am--and casually drooped this remark:
+
+“I judge the X-X notation to be a rational mode of representing music,
+in place of the prevailing fashion, which was the invention of an
+idiot.”
+
+Next mail he asked permission to print that meaningless remark. I
+answered, no--courteously, but still, no; explaining that I could not
+afford to be placed in the attitude of trying to influence people with a
+mere worthless guess. What a scorcher I got, next mail! Such irony! such
+sarcasm, such caustic praise of my superhonorable loyalty to the public!
+And withal, such compassion for my stupidity, too, in not being able to
+understand my own language. I cannot remember the words of this letter
+broadside, but there was about a page used up in turning this idea round
+and round and exposing it in different lights.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--What is the trouble with you? If it is your viscera, you
+cannot have them taken out and reorganized a moment too soon. I mean,
+if they are inside. But if you are composed of them, that is another
+matter. Is it your brain? But it could not be your brain. Possibly it is
+your skull: you want to look out for that. Some people, when they get an
+idea, it pries the structure apart. Your system of notation has got in
+there, and couldn't find room, without a doubt that is what the trouble
+is. Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to throw
+potatoes at.
+
+                         Yours Truly.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--Come, come--take a walk; you disturb the children.
+
+                         Yours Truly.
+
+
+There was a day, now happily nearly over, when certain newspapers made a
+practice of inviting men distinguished in any walk of life to give their
+time and effort without charge to express themselves on some subject of
+the day, or perhaps they were asked to send their favorite passages in
+prose or verse, with the reasons why. Such symposiums were “features”
+ that cost the newspapers only the writing of a number of letters,
+stationery, and postage. To one such invitation Mark Twain wrote two
+replies. They follow herewith:
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have received your proposition--which you have imitated
+from a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the idea
+of this sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism, where
+it originated as a variation of the inexpensive “interview.”
+
+Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches? To make your paper the
+more salable, you answer. But why don't you try to beg them? Why do
+you discriminate? I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you? Why
+don't you ask me for a shirt? What is the difference between asking me
+for the worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself? Perhaps you
+didn't know you were begging. I would not use that argument--it makes
+the user a fool. The passage of poetry--or prose, if you will--which
+has taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and
+dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this: That the proper place
+for journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner
+with their hats in their hands.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by
+press of work to decline.
+
+
+     The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had
+     taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the
+     use of the author's name--the idea being to convey to the public
+     that it was a Mark Twain play.  In return for this slight favor the
+     manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play
+     --to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the
+     manager's) expense.  He added that if the play should be a go in the
+     cities there might be some “arrangement” of profits.  Apparently
+     these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain.  The long unmailed
+     reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that
+     follows it was quite as effective.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87.
+
+DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have
+“taken the liberty.” You are No. 1365. When 1364 sweeter and better
+people, including the author, have “tried” to dramatize Tom Sawyer and
+did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand? That is a
+book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized. One might as well try to
+dramatize any other hymn. Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose
+form to give it a worldly air.
+
+Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
+of your third sentence? Have no fears. Your piece will be a Go. It will
+go out the back door on the first night. They've all done it--the
+1364. So will 1365. Not one of us ever thought of the simple device
+of half-soling himself with a stove-lid. Ah, what suffering a little
+hindsight would have saved us. Treasure this hint.
+
+How kind of you to invite me to the funeral. Go to; I have attended a
+thousand of them. I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
+kinds of dramatic shrouds there are. You cannot start anything fresh.
+Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the
+Susquehannian way of spelling it? And can you be aware that I charge a
+hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure? Do you realize that
+it is 432 miles to Susquehanna? Would it be handy for you to send me
+the $43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
+railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
+sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
+
+Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
+recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put
+me in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know that
+this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now? Listen.
+
+Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are
+still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human
+activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even
+inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district
+messenger boys and so-on. In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was
+often mistaken for fair weather. Upon one occasion I was traveling in
+the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my
+horse and myself. All the town came out to look. The tribes of Indians
+gathered to look. A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary
+compliment which pleased me greatly. Other attentions were paid me.
+Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University
+and offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic
+Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my
+duties. But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly kindness
+of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me. I tried to
+stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should object to so
+manifest a compliment. The thing grew and grew and spread and spread
+and became exceedingly embarrassing. The University stood it a couple of
+years; but then for the sake of the college they felt obliged to call
+a halt, although I had the sympathy of the whole faculty. The president
+himself said to me, “I am as sorry as I can be for you, and would still
+hold out if there were any hope ahead; but you see how it is: there are
+a hundred and thirty-two of them already, and fourteen precincts to
+hear from. The circumstance has brought your name into most wide and
+unfortunate renown. It causes much comment--I believe that that is
+not an over-statement. Some of this comment is palliative, but some of
+it--by patrons at a distance, who only know the statistics without
+the explanation,--is offensive, and in some cases even violent. Nine
+students have been called home. The trustees of the college have been
+growing more and more uneasy all these last months--steadily along with
+the implacable increase in your census--and I will not conceal from you
+that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a change in
+the Professorship of Moral Culture. The coarsely sarcastic editorial
+in yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest--has brought
+things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of
+receiving your resignation.”
+
+I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly
+mistake. Please do not name your Injun for me. Truly Yours.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+
+                                        NEW YORK, Sept. 8.  1887.
+
+DEAR SIR,--Necessarily I cannot assent to so strange a proposition. And
+I think it but fair to warn you that if you put the piece on the stage,
+you must take the legal consequences.
+
+                         Yours respectfully,
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Before the days of international copyright no American author's
+     books were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of
+     Mark Twain.  It was always a sore point with him that these books,
+     cheaply printed, found their way into the United States, and were
+     sold in competition with his better editions.  The law on the
+     subject seemed to be rather hazy, and its various interpretations
+     exasperating.  In the next unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves
+     himself to a misguided official.  The letter is worth reading today,
+     if for no other reason, to show the absurdity of copyright
+     conditions which prevailed at that time.
+
+
+          Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+
+H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR,--As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government is
+this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds
+in his hands--bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance--the
+procedure in his case shall be as follows:
+
+1. If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police
+offices along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the
+bonds, the government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits,
+and then let them go ahead and circulate in this country.
+
+2. But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C. may pay the
+duty and take the counterfeits.
+
+But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of
+the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth
+turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing
+them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with
+foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the
+foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and
+robbing the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more
+respectable than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution
+of his own daughter; in fact it is the same thing. Upon these terms,
+what is a U. S. custom house but a “fence?” That is all it is: a
+legalized trader in stolen goods.
+
+And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself
+a “regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!” Can sarcasm go
+further than that? In what way does it protect them? Inspiration itself
+could not furnish a rational answer to that question. Whom does
+it protect, then? Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign
+thief--sometimes--and his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the
+time. What could the Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after
+it had bought them of the star spangled banner Master-thief? Sell
+them at a dollar apiece and fetch down the market for the genuine
+hundred-dollar bond? What could I do with that 20-cent copy of “Roughing
+It” which the United States has collared on the border and is waiting
+to release to me for cash in case I am willing to come down to its
+moral level and help rob myself? Sell it at ten or fifteen cents--duty
+added--and destroy the market for the original $3,50 book? Who ever did
+invent that law? I would like to know the name of that immortal jackass.
+
+Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the
+desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it. But I have
+no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay
+duty on in either to get it or suppress it. No doubt there are ways in
+which I might consent to go into partnership with thieves and fences,
+but this is not one of them. This one revolts the remains of my
+self-respect; turns my stomach. I think I could companion with a
+highwayman who carried a shot-gun and took many risks; yes, I think
+I should like that if I were younger; but to go in with a big rich
+government that robs paupers, and the widows and orphans of paupers and
+takes no risk--why the thought just gags me.
+
+Oh, no, I shall never pay any duties on pirated books of mine. I am much
+too respectable for that--yet awhile. But here--one thing that grovels
+me is this: as far as I can discover--while freely granting that the U.
+S. copyright laws are far and away the most idiotic that exist anywhere
+on the face of the earth--they don't authorize the government to admit
+pirated books into this country, toll or no toll. And so I think that
+that regulation is the invention of one of those people--as a rule,
+early stricken of God, intellectually--the departmental interpreters
+of the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any
+reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.
+They can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it
+inoperative--yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter
+and derision. Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department,
+for instance--though I do not mean to suggest that that asylum is any
+worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of incredible
+lunatics--I merely instance it because it happens to be the first to
+come into my mind. Take that case of a few years ago where the P. M.
+General suddenly issued an edict requiring you to add the name of the
+State after Boston, New York, Chicago, &c, in your superscriptions,
+on pain of having your letter stopped and forwarded to the dead-letter
+office; yes, and I believe he required the county, too. He made one
+little concession in favor of New York: you could say “New York City,”
+ and stop there; but if you left off the “city,” you must add “N. Y.” to
+your “New York.” Why, it threw the business of the whole country into
+chaos and brought commerce almost to a stand-still. Now think of that!
+When that man goes to--to--well, wherever he is going to--we shan't want
+the microscopic details of his address. I guess we can find him.
+
+Well, as I was saying, I believe that this whole paltry and ridiculous
+swindle is a pure creation of one of those cabbages that used to be at
+the head of one of those Retreats down there--Departments, you know--and
+that you will find it so, if you will look into it. And moreover--but
+land, I reckon we are both tired by this time.
+
+                              Truly Yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF 1887. LITERARY ARTICLES. PEACEFUL DAYS
+AT THE FARM. FAVORITE READING. APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC.
+
+We have seen in the preceding chapter how unknown aspirants in one field
+or another were always seeking to benefit by Mark Twain's reputation.
+Once he remarked, “The symbol of the human race ought to be an ax; every
+human being has one concealed about him somewhere.” He declared when
+a stranger called on him, or wrote to him, in nine cases out of ten he
+could distinguish the gleam of the ax almost immediately. The following
+letter is closely related to those of the foregoing chapter, only that
+this one was mailed--not once, but many times, in some form adapted to
+the specific applicant. It does not matter to whom it was originally
+written, the name would not be recognized.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. T. Concerning unearned credentials, etc.
+
+                                                  HARTFORD, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR MADAM,--It is an idea which many people have had, but it is of
+no value. I have seen it tried out many and many a time. I have seen
+a lady lecturer urged and urged upon the public in a lavishly
+complimentary document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and some
+others of supreme celebrity, but--there was nothing in her and she
+failed. If there had been any great merit in her she never would have
+needed those men's help and (at her rather mature age,) would never have
+consented to ask for it.
+
+There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must
+bow to that law, she must submit to its requirements. In brief this law
+is:
+
+     1.  No occupation without an apprenticeship.
+
+     2.  No pay to the apprentice.
+
+This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a
+General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in
+everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served
+his apprenticeship and proved himself. Your sister's course is perfectly
+plain. Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to
+lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to
+be annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not
+annullable by her at all. The second year, he to have her services, if
+he wants them, at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody
+else.
+
+She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to
+remuneration--but she can not learn it in any less time than that,
+unless she is a human miracle.
+
+Try it, and do not be afraid. It is the fair and right thing. If she
+wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.
+
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the
+     Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands.  Howells had been paid
+     twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience
+     hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used.  In
+     this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in
+     which Clemens had invested--a method of casting brass dies for
+     stamping book-covers and wall-paper.  Howells's purpose was to
+     introduce something of the matter into his next story.  Mark Twain's
+     reply gives us a light on this particular invention.
+
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned
+the Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence.
+I have written him your proposition to-day. (The Library is part of the
+property of the C. L. W. & Co. firm.)
+
+I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will
+find it in any Cyclopedia under the head of “Brass.” The thing I best
+remember is, that the self-styled “inventor” had a very ingenious way
+of keeping me from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment
+was spoiled by his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be
+done, the night before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his
+own shop the night before. He unquestionably did both of these things.
+He really had no invention; the whole project was a blackmailing
+swindle, and cost me several thousand dollars.
+
+The slip you sent me from the May “Study” has delighted Mrs. Clemens and
+me to the marrow. To think that thing might be possible to many; but to
+be brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly
+believe. The longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how
+unapproachable, a compliment one pays when he says of a man “he has the
+courage (to utter) his convictions.” Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps
+to you, and then print potato hills?
+
+I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've
+always done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it.
+I've always said to myself, “Everybody reads it and that's something--it
+surely isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty
+tired of it.” And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't
+high and fine, through the remark “High and fine literature is wine” I
+retorted (confidentially, to myself,) “yes, high and fine literature is
+wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.”
+
+You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into
+my private scrap-book. None will see it there. With a thousand thanks.
+
+                              Ys Ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with
+     the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different
+     sort.  Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's
+     valued friends.  In the comment which he made, when it was shown to
+     him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter
+     was not sent.  The name, “Rest-and-be-Thankful,” was the official
+     title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often
+     known as “Quarry.”
+
+
+*****
+
+To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed):
+
+                                                  HARTFORD, May 14, '87.
+
+MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old
+place-the remote farm called “Rest-and-be-Thankful,” on top of the hills
+three miles from Elmira, N. Y. Your other question is harder to answer.
+It is my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the
+time, and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of
+them; but I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be.
+It takes seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is
+a good method: gives the public a rest. I have been accused of “rushing
+into print” prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in
+truth I have never done that. Do you care for trifles of information?
+(Well, then, “Tom Sawyer” and “The Prince and the Pauper” were each
+on the stocks two or three years, and “Old Times on the Mississippi”
+ eight.) One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years;
+another seventeen. This latter book could have been finished in a day,
+at any time during the past five years. But as in the first of these two
+narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other
+the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I
+have not hurried. Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do
+not need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting. In
+twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written
+and completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that
+a journalist does I could have written sixty in that time. I do not
+greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but
+at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded.
+Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for?
+Go to---remember the forty-nine which I didn't write.
+
+                              Truly Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                  Notes (added twenty-two years later):
+
+Stormfield, April 30, 1909. It seems the letter was not sent. I probably
+feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so without
+running a risk of hurting her. No one would hurt Jeannette Gilder
+purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it
+unintentionally. She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must ask
+her about this ancient letter.
+
+I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent
+answer. I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around
+years and years, waiting. I have four or five novels on hand at present
+in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I
+have looked at any of them. I have no intention of finishing them. I
+could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should
+come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that
+impulse once, (“Following the Equator”), but mere desire for money has
+never furnished it, so far as I remember. Not even money-necessity was
+able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to
+have allowed it to succeed. While I was a bankrupt and in debt two
+offers were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during
+a year, and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined
+them, with my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where
+a man had pumped himself out once a week and failed to run “emptyings”
+ before the year was finished.
+
+As to that “Noah's Ark” book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is
+not quite correct. The “Noah's Ark” book was begun in Buffalo in
+1870.] I don't know where the manuscript is now. It was a Diary, which
+professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't. I began it again several
+months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying
+it to a finish--or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
+
+As to the book whose action “takes place in Heaven.” That was a
+small thing, (“Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.”) It lay in my
+pigeon-holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's
+Monthly last year.
+
+                         S. L. C.
+
+
+In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of
+“Rest-and-be-Thankful.” These were Mark Twain's balmy days. The
+financial drain of the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting,
+and the prospect of vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter
+each day. His publishing business, though less profitable, was still
+prosperous, his family life was ideal. How gratefully, then, he could
+enter into the peace of that “perfect day.”
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+
+                                   ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87.
+
+DEAR MOLLIE,--This is a superb Sunday for weather--very cloudy, and the
+thermometer as low as 65. The city in the valley is purple with shade,
+as seen from up here at the study. The Cranes are reading and loafing
+in the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the
+highest) point; the cats are loafing over at “Ellerslie” which is the
+children's estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by
+deed from Susie Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the
+clover and young oaks and willows. Livy is down at the house, but
+I shall now go and bring her up to the Cranes to help us occupy the
+lounges and hammocks--whence a great panorama of distant hill and
+valley and city is seeable. The children have gone on a lark through the
+neighboring hills and woods. It is a perfect day indeed.
+
+                         With love to you all.
+                                                  SAM.
+
+
+Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the
+beginning of business trouble--that is to say, of the failing health of
+Charles L. Webster. Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust. He
+had overworked and was paying the penalty. His trouble was neurasthenia,
+and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the business. The
+“Sam and Mary” mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 12, '87
+
+MY DEAR SISTER,--I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious. I
+knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size of
+the matter.
+
+I have just been writing to a friend in Hartford' who treated what
+I imagine was a similar case surgically last fall, and produced a
+permanent cure. If this is a like case, Charley must go to him.
+
+If relief fails there, he must take the required rest, whether the
+business can stand it or not.
+
+It is most pleasant to hear such prosperous accounts of Sam and Mary, I
+do not see how Sam could well be more advantageously fixed. He can grow
+up with that paper, and achieve a successful life.
+
+It is not all holiday here with Susie and Clara this time. They have to
+put in some little time every day on their studies. Jean thinks she is
+studying too, but I don't know what it is unless it is the horses;
+she spends the day under their heels in the stables--and that is but a
+continuation of her Hartford system of culture.
+
+With love from us all to you all.
+
+                              Affectionately
+                                             SAM.
+
+
+Mark Twain had a few books that he read regularly every year or two.
+Among these were 'Pepys's Diary', Suetonius's 'Lives of the Twelve
+Caesars', and Thomas Carlyle's 'French Revolution'. He had a passion for
+history, biography, and personal memoirs of any sort. In his early life
+he had cared very little for poetry, but along in the middle eighties
+he somehow acquired a taste for Browning and became absorbed in it. A
+Browning club assembled as often as once a week at the Clemens home in
+Hartford to listen to his readings of the master. He was an impressive
+reader, and he carefully prepared himself for these occasions,
+indicating by graduated underscorings, the exact values he wished to
+give to words and phrases. Those were memorable gatherings, and they
+must have continued through at least two winters. It is one of the
+puzzling phases of Mark Twain's character that, notwithstanding his
+passion for direct and lucid expression, he should have found pleasure
+in the poems of Robert Browning.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  22, '87.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man
+while he sleeps. When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871,
+I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it
+differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and
+environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down
+once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale,
+characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel
+so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.
+
+People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did
+at all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so.
+It comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or
+Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look at
+the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance
+of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination
+call for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't
+altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.
+
+Well, that's loss. To have house and Bible shrink so, under the
+disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment. But there are
+compensations. You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets
+and corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the
+field. Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi. I haven't got him
+in focus yet, but I've got Browning....
+
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to
+     absentmindedness.  He was always forgetting engagements, or getting
+     them wrong.  Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the
+     mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably
+     for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all.  It was only
+     when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place
+     the week before.  It was always dangerous for him to make
+     engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience.
+     We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov.  6, 1887.
+
+MY DEAR MADAM,--I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this
+house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run
+itself without the help of the major half it gets aground. Last night
+when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open
+the Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate
+women, I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my
+chance. I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of
+my mind. If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the
+administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but
+I never thought of that. So when I did lay it before her, later, I
+realized once more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a
+combination to try to manage affairs which properly belong in the office
+of the business bulk of it. I suppose the President often acts just like
+that: goes and makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out
+until it is next to impossible to break it up and set things
+straight again. Well, that is just our way, exactly-one half of the
+administration always busy getting the family into trouble, and the
+other half busy getting it out again. And so we do seem to be all pretty
+much alike, after all. The fact is, I had forgotten that we were to have
+a dinner party on that Bridgeport date--I thought it was the next day:
+which is a good deal of an improvement for me, because I am more used
+to being behind a day or two than ahead. But that is just the difference
+between one end of this kind of an administration and the other end of
+it, as you have noticed, yourself--the other end does not forget these
+things. Just so with a funeral; if it is the man's funeral, he is most
+always there, of course--but that is no credit to him, he wouldn't be
+there if you depended on him to remember about it; whereas, if on the
+other hand--but I seem to have got off from my line of argument somehow;
+never mind about the funeral. Of course I am not meaning to say
+anything against funerals--that is, as occasions--mere occasions--for as
+diversions I don't think they amount to much But as I was saying--if you
+are not busy I will look back and see what it was I was saying.
+
+I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever
+anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was
+no help for it. And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely
+ashamed of having made an engagement to go without first making sure
+that I could keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my
+heedless breach of good manners.
+
+                    With the sincerest respect,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book
+     in England before the enactment of the international copyright law.
+     As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'Roughing It' in England, and
+     piratical publishers there respected his rights.  Finally, in 1887,
+     the inland revenue office assessed him with income tax, which he
+     very willingly paid, instructing his London publishers, Chatto &
+     Windus, to pay on the full amount he had received from them.  But
+     when the receipt for his taxes came it was nearly a yard square with
+     due postage of considerable amount.  Then he wrote:
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. Chatto, of Chatto & Windus, in London:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 5, '87.
+
+MY DEAR CHATTO,--Look here, I don't mind paying the tax, but don't you
+let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for the
+postage is something perfectly demoralizing. If they feel obliged to
+print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don't they hire a ship and send
+it over at their own expense?
+
+Wasn't it good that they caught me out with an old book instead of a new
+one? The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body. It was my purpose to
+go to England next May and stay the rest of the year, but I've found
+that tax office out just in time. My new book would issue in March,
+and they would tax the sale in both countries. Come, we must get up a
+compromise somehow. You go and work in on the good side of those revenue
+people and get them to take the profits and give me the tax. Then I will
+come over and we will divide the swag and have a good time.
+
+I wish you to thank Mr. Christmas for me; but we won't resist. The
+country that allows me copyright has a right to tax me.
+
+                              Sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Another English tax assessment came that year, based on the report
+     that it was understood that he was going to become an English
+     resident, and had leased Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year.
+     Clemens wrote his publishers: “I will explain that all that about
+     Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake.  I was not in
+     England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall,
+     anyway, but at Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to find
+     out the reason why.”  Clemens made literature out of this tax
+     experience.  He wrote an open letter to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
+     Such a letter has no place in this collection.  It was published in
+     the “Drawer” of Harper's Magazine, December, 1887, and is now
+     included in the uniform edition of his works under the title of,
+     “A Petition to the Queen of England.”
+
+     From the following letter, written at the end of the year, we gather
+     that the type-setter costs were beginning to make a difference in
+     the Clemens economies.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+
+DEAR PAMELA,--will you take this $15 and buy some candy or some other
+trifle for yourself and Sam and his wife to remember that we remember
+you, by?
+
+If we weren't a little crowded this year by the typesetter, I'd send a
+check large enough to buy a family Bible or some other useful thing like
+that. However we go on and on, but the type-setter goes on forever--at
+$3,000 a month; which is much more satisfactory than was the case the
+first seventeen months, when the bill only averaged $2,000, and promised
+to take a thousand years. We'll be through, now, in 3 or 4 months, I
+reckon, and then the strain will let up and we can breathe freely once
+more, whether success ensues or failure.
+
+Even with a type-setter on hand we ought not to be in the least
+scrimped--but it would take a long letter to explain why and who is to
+blame.
+
+All the family send love to all of you and best Christmas wishes for
+your prosperity.
+
+                    Affectionately,
+                                        SAM.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. LETTERS,1888. A YALE DEGREE. WORK ON “THE YANKEE.” ON
+INTERVIEWING, ETC.
+
+     Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master
+     of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888.  Editor of the Courant, Charles H.
+     Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title.  Clarke was an
+     old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Charles H. Clarke, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 2, '88.
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,--Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation
+intentions. I shall be ready for you. I feel mighty proud of that
+degree; in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain
+of it. And why shouldn't I be?--I am the only literary animal of my
+particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in
+any age of the world, as far as I know.
+
+                                   Sincerely Yours
+                                             S. L. Clemens M. A.
+
+
+                Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens:
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND, You are “the only literary animal of your particular
+subspecies” in existence and you've no cause for humility in the fact.
+Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and
+“Don't you forget it.”
+
+                              C. H. C.
+
+
+     With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882.  Mark
+     Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting.
+     Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old
+     times and for old river comrades.  Major “Jack” Downing had been a
+     Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the
+     river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town.  Clemens had
+     not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the
+     following answer.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Major “Jack” Downing, in Middleport Ohio:
+
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y.[no month] 1888.
+
+DEAR MAJOR,--And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak?
+For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard
+your name.
+
+And how young you've grown! I was a mere boy when I knew you on the
+river, where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a
+year and a half older than I am! I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and
+get 30 or 40 years knocked off my age. It's manifestly the place that
+Ponce de Leon was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail.
+
+Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in
+November. I propose to go down the river and “note the changes” once
+more before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there.
+Will you? I want to see all the boys that are left alive.
+
+And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet? A mighty good fellow, and
+smart too. When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers,
+which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting
+such a thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so
+I resigned in Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my
+admiration. We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in
+authority. I always had good judgement, more judgement than talent, in
+fact.
+
+No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way. Capt. Sellers used
+the signature, “Mark Twain,” himself, when he used to write up the
+antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans
+Picayune. He hated me for burlesquing them in an article in the True
+Delta; so four years later when he died, I robbed the corpse--that is
+I confiscated the nom de plume. I have published this vital fact 3,000
+times now. But no matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact
+that I can tell the same way every time. Very glad, indeed, to hear from
+you Major, and shall be gladder still to see you in November.
+
+                              Truly yours,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year.
+     He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but
+     one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.
+
+     Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and
+     no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings,
+     more generously considerate of the senders.  Louis Pendleton was a
+     young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his
+     story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost
+     precious time, thought, and effort.  It must have rejoiced the young
+     man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young
+     authors held supreme.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:
+
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--I found your letter an hour ago among some others which
+had lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to
+read Ariadne. Stole is the right word, for the summer “Vacation” is
+the only chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is
+borrowed, it is stolen. But this time I do not repent. As a rule,
+people don't send me books which I can thank them for, and so I
+say nothing--which looks uncourteous. But I thank you. Ariadne is a
+beautiful and satisfying story; and true, too--which is the best part of
+a story; or indeed of any other thing. Even liars have to admit that,
+if they are intelligent liars; I mean in their private [the word
+conscientious written but erased] intervals. (I struck that word out
+because a man's private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is
+to him the truth, always; what he speaks--but these be platitudes.)
+
+If you want me to pick some flaws--very well--but I do it unwillingly.
+I notice one thing--which one may notice also in my books, and in all
+books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement
+or Expression. If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from
+the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence--it is
+almost proof--that your words were not as clear as they should have
+been. True, it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror. I
+would have hung the pail on Ariadne's arm. You did not deceive me when
+you said that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn't; still
+it was not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture. If
+the pail had been a portfolio, I wouldn't be making these remarks. The
+engraver of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises--and then
+revises, and revises, and revises; and then repeats. And always
+the charm of that picture grows, under his hand. It was good enough
+before--told its story, and was beautiful. True: and a lovely girl is
+lovely, with freckles; but she isn't at her level best with them.
+
+This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.
+
+So much concerning exactness of statement. In that other not-small
+matter--selection of the exact single word--you are hard to catch.
+Still, I should hold that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no
+occasion for concealment; that “motive” implied a deeper mental search
+than she expended on the matter; that it doesn't reflect the attitude of
+her mind with precision. Is this hypercriticism? I shan't dispute it.
+I only say, that if Mrs. Walker didn't go so far as to have a motive,
+I had to suggest that when a word is so near the right one that a body
+can't quite tell whether it is or isn't, it's good politics to strike it
+out and go for the Thesaurus. That's all. Motive may stand; but you have
+allowed a snake to scream, and I will not concede that that was the best
+word.
+
+I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the
+speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can. They
+would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to
+you, said once.
+
+I save the other stories for my real vacation--which is nine months
+long, to my sorrow. I thank you again.
+
+                              Truly Yours
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine,
+     the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and
+     holding out false hopes of relief and golden return.  The program
+     here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet,
+     with the end always in sight, but never quite attained.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+
+                                                       Oct. 3, '88.
+
+Private.
+
+Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days'
+work to do on the machine.
+
+We can use 4 men, but not constantly. If they could work constantly it
+would complete the machine in 21 days, of course. They will all be
+on hand and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is
+opportunity for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the
+21 days, nobody can tell.
+
+*****
+
+To-day I pay Pratt & Whitney $10,000. This squares back indebtedness and
+everything to date. They began about May or April or March 1886--along
+there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen
+master-hands on the machine.
+
+That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak
+and caulk it. Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a
+conclusion.
+
+Love to you both. All well here.
+
+And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea.
+
+                                        SAM.
+
+
+     Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on 'The Yankee at
+     King Arthur's Court', a book which he had begun two years before.
+     He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company
+     was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction.  Also
+     it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set
+     to work to finish the Yankee story.  He had worked pretty steadily
+     that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found
+     a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell's,
+     where carpenter work was in progress.  He seems to have worked there
+     successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that
+     numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult
+     to say.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Theodore W. Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N. Y.
+
+                                                  Friday, Oct.,5, '88.
+
+DEAR THEO,--I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of the
+children and an army of carpenters to help. Of course they don't help,
+but neither do they hinder. It's like a boiler-factory for racket, and
+in nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles
+my feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never
+am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of
+relief without knowing when I do it. I began here Monday morning, and
+have done eighty pages since. I was so tired last night that I thought I
+would lie abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn't resist. I mean to try to
+knock off tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do. I want to finish the day
+the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that
+indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that their calculations
+will miss fire, as usual.
+
+The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to
+furnish the money--a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea. She
+said: “We haven't got any money. Children, if you would think, you would
+remember the machine isn't done.”
+
+It's billiards to-night. I wish you were here.
+
+                    With love to you both
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She
+wanted a box of blacking, for the children's shoes. Jean reproved
+her--and said:
+
+“Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now. The machine isn't done.”
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one
+     who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal.  There is today
+     no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written,
+     but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief
+     value.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88.
+
+DEAR WILL,--I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was
+starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately
+busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff
+and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves,
+examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by
+surroundings--unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but
+not uninfluenced by them. Here was the near presence of the two supreme
+events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death
+which is the end of it. I found myself seeking chances to shirk into
+corners where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my
+thought, was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one
+promises happiness, doubtless the other assures it. A long procession of
+people filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years
+ago--so many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched
+to the soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of
+the house; and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in
+right accord with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a
+procession of the dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the
+living, but there it was, and to me there was nothing uncanny about it;
+Rio, they were welcome faces to me. I would have liked to bring up
+every creature we knew in those days--even the dumb animals--it would be
+bathing in the fabled Fountain of Youth.
+
+We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might,
+but your words deny us that privilege. To die one's self is a thing
+that must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's
+self--well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that
+disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
+
+                              Sincerely your friend
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     His next is of quite a different nature.  Evidently the typesetting
+     conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies
+     with a view of retrenchment.  Orion was always reducing economy to
+     science.  Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured
+     his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but
+     inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the
+     sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted.  Orion was a trial,
+     certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse.
+     Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds.  Mark Twain's rages
+     always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more
+     than Orion himself would appreciate.  He preserved this letter,
+     quietly noting on the envelope, “Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse.”
+
+
+                Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
+
+                                                       NOV. 29, '88.
+
+Jesus Christ!--It is perilous to write such a man. You can go crazy on
+less material than anybody that ever lived. What in hell has produced
+all these maniacal imaginings? You told me you had hired an attendant
+for ma. Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing
+Mollie and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves. Hire the
+attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co. to
+add it every month to what they already send. Don't fool away any more
+time about this. And don't write me any more damned rot about “storms,”
+ and inability to pay trivial sums of money and--and--hell and damnation!
+You see I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read
+the rest for a million dollars.
+
+                                   Yr
+                                         SAM.
+
+P. S. Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear. I swear
+all day, but I do not lose my temper. And don't imagine that I am on my
+way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am not;
+or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy--for I never am. I don't know what
+it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn how,
+at this late day.
+
+                                   SAM.
+
+
+     Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never
+     welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them.  “What I
+     say in an interview loses it character in print,” he often remarked,
+     “all its life and personality.  The reporter realizes this himself,
+     and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn't help matters any.”
+
+     Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal,
+     was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of “Bok's
+     Literary Leaves.”  It usually consisted of news and gossip of
+     writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional
+     interviews with distinguished authors.  He went up to Hartford one
+     day to interview Mark Twain.  The result seemed satisfactory to Bok,
+     but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens,
+     he sent him a copy for approval.  The interview was not returned;
+     in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as
+     the reader may believe.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Edward W. Bok, in New York:
+
+MY DEAR MR. BOK,--No, no. It is like most interviews, pure twaddle and
+valueless.
+
+For several quite plain and simple reasons, an “interview” must, as a
+rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason--It is an attempt to
+use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken
+speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is the
+proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former. The moment
+“talk” is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when
+you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared
+from it. That is its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left
+on your hands. Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of the
+voice, the laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that
+gave that body warmth, grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to
+your affections--or, at least, to your tolerance--is gone and nothing is
+left but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.
+
+Such is “talk” almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an
+“interview”. The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was
+said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there. When one
+writes for print his methods are very different. He follows forms which
+have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader
+understand what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is
+making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his
+characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky
+and difficult thing. “If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,”
+ said Alfred, “taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance
+upon the company, blood would have flowed.”
+
+“If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,” said Hawkwood,
+with that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty
+assemblage to quake, “blood would have flowed.”
+
+“If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,” said the paltry
+blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, “blood would
+have flowed.”
+
+So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no
+meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance
+of his characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud
+confession that print is a poor vehicle for “talk”; it is a recognition
+that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the
+reader, not instruction.
+
+Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have
+set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word
+of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated.
+Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and
+where I was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest
+altogether. Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can
+convey many meanings to the reader, but never the right one. To add
+interpretations which would convey the right meaning is a something
+which would require--what? An art so high and fine and difficult that no
+possessor of it would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.
+
+No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it
+is rubbish. I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than
+that.
+
+If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some
+value, for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in
+interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.
+
+                         Very sincerely yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. LETTERS, 1889. THE MACHINE. DEATH OF MR. CRANE. CONCLUSION OF THE
+YANKEE.
+
+In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of
+waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine. Paige,
+the inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches.
+The mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and
+a fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and
+touch--the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world. To
+George Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: “The
+machine is finished!” and added, “This is by far the most marvelous
+invention ever contrived by man. And it is not a thing of rags and
+patches; it is made of massive steel, and will last a century.”
+
+In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in
+operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters. They were more or
+less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and
+more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation
+here.
+
+
+
+*****
+
+To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89.
+
+DEAR ORION,--At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was
+spaced and justified by machinery, for the first time in
+the history of the world! And I was there to see. It was done
+automatically--instantly--perfectly. This is indeed the first line of
+movable types that ever was perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on
+this earth.
+
+This was the last function that remained to be tested--and so by long
+odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain
+of man stands completed and perfect. Livy is down stairs celebrating.
+
+But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!--and knows more than any man
+that ever lived. You shall see. We made the test in this way. We set up
+a lot of random letters in a stick--three-fourths of a line; then filled
+out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be 35/1000
+of an inch thick. Then we threw aside the quads and put the letters into
+the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words, leaving the words
+separated by two-inch vacancies. Then we started up the machine slowly,
+by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting pins. The first
+pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came traveling along
+the race-way; second block did the same; but the third block projected
+its second pin!
+
+“Oh, hell! stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a
+30/1000 space!”
+
+General consternation. “A foreign substance has got into the spacing
+plates.” This from the head mathematician.
+
+“Yes, that is the trouble,” assented the foreman.
+
+Paige examined. “No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
+the kind.” Further examination. “Now I know what it is--what it must be:
+one of those plates projects and binds. It's too bad--the first test is
+a failure.” A pause. “Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work--take the
+machine down.--No--Hold on! don't touch a thing! Go right ahead! We are
+fools, the machine isn't. The machine knows what it's about. There is
+a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine is putting in a
+thinner space to allow for it!”
+
+That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line,
+justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and
+perfect! We took it out and examined it with a glass. You could not tell
+by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but the
+glass and the calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said
+that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for
+them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
+
+All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical
+birth--the first justification of a line of movable type by
+machinery--and also set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had
+drank anything, and yet everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied,
+stunned.
+
+All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty
+nearly into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
+Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
+Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's
+frames--all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone
+and far in the lead of human inventions.
+
+In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
+have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
+shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
+
+Return me this letter when you have read it.
+
+                                   SAM.
+
+
+     Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
+     Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a
+     time.
+
+     Then further delays.  Before the machine got “the stiffness out of
+     her joints” that “cunning devil” manifested a tendency to break the
+     types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling
+     things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart
+     again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.
+
+     There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring.  Theodore Crane,
+     who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse.  In
+     February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in
+     operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious.
+     Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him
+     cheering and amusing incidents.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Theodore Crane. in Elmira, N. Y.:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, May 28, '89.
+
+Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore. You know how
+absent-minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is
+in that frame. At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the
+street and is not aware of the meeting at all. Twice in a week, our
+Clara had this latter experience with him within the past month. But
+the second instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his
+tracks, with a reproach. She said:
+
+“Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into
+the grave, when you meet a person on the street?”--and then went on
+to reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such
+occasions. Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would
+swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth. As soon as he
+sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is,
+he makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts
+of frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and
+pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven.
+
+With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.
+
+                                                  S. L. C.
+
+
+     The reference in the next to the “closing sentence” in a letter
+     written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a
+     heart-broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter
+     Winnie, who had died some time before.  She had been a gentle
+     talented girl, but never of robust health.  Her death had followed
+     a long period of gradual decline.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left
+a house of mourning. Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two
+whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who
+had always hoped for a swift death. Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the
+children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen
+years ago, when Mr. Langdon died. It is heart-breaking to see Mrs.
+Crane. Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded
+me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing
+sentence of your last letter to me. I do see that there is an argument
+against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful
+famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
+
+I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the
+servants. Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me? Can't you come and
+stay with me? The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be
+interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do
+the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find
+the Children's schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection
+of a retired and silent den for work. There isn't a fly or a mosquito on
+the estate. Come--say you will.
+
+With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,
+
+                                   Yours Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+Howells was more hopeful. He wrote: “I read something in a strange book,
+The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we
+see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer
+the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel.” And a
+few days later, he wrote: “I would rather see and talk with you than any
+other man in the world outside my own blood.”
+
+A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that
+year and given to the artist and printer. Dan Beard was selected for the
+drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster & Co.:
+
+[Charles L. Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired from
+the firm.]
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 20, '89.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Upon reflection--thus: tell Beard to obey his own
+inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on
+paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly
+unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result. They will be better
+pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own
+trade.
+
+Send this note and he'll understand.
+
+                                        Yr
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the
+     illustrations.  He was well qualified for the work, and being of a
+     socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it.  When the
+     drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: “Hold me under permanent
+     obligations.  What luck it was to find you!  There are hundreds of
+     artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was
+     only one who could illustrate this one.  Yes, it was a fortunate
+     hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor.
+     Live forever!”
+
+     Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and
+     Mrs. Clemens particularly so.  Her eyes were giving her trouble that
+     summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had
+     grave doubts as to some of its chapters.  It may be said here that
+     the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able
+     to read it.  Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary
+     subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps
+     somewhat blinded to its literary defects.  However, this is
+     premature.  Howells did not at once see the story.  He had promised
+     to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his
+     visit impossible.  From the next letter we get the situation at this
+     time.  The “Mr. Church” mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the
+     well-known artist.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, July 24, '89.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately
+disappointed. I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off to New York
+lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it. Not
+that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would;
+but not on a holiday that's not the time. I see how you were
+situated--another familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton
+intrusion--and of course we could not help ourselves. Well, just
+think of it: a while ago, while Providence's attention was absorbed in
+disordering some time-tables so as to break up a trip of mine to Mr.
+Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown dam got loose. I swear I was
+afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh. Well, I'm not going to despair;
+we'll manage a meet yet.
+
+I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have
+to come back here and fetch the family. And, along there in August, some
+time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I
+am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem
+we will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time. I have
+noticed that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
+
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should
+     see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of
+     his more violent fulminations and wild fancies.  However this may
+     be, further postponement was soon at an end.  Mrs. Clemens's eyes
+     troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that
+     the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells
+     and Edmund Clarence Stedman.  Howells wrote that even if he hadn't
+     wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake,
+     he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's.  Whereupon the
+     proofs were started in his direction.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  24, '89.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study,
+I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the
+book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November
+number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that. Well,
+anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps
+to Stedman. I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves
+critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all. It's my
+swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass
+to the cemetery unclodded.
+
+I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I
+had some (though not revises,) this morning. I'm sure I'm going to be
+charmed with Beard's pictures. Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age
+art-dinner-table scene.
+
+                              Ys sincerely
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant
+     shouts, one after reading each batch of proof.  First he wrote:
+     “It's charming, original, wonderful! good in fancy and sound to the
+     core in morals.”  And again, “It's a mighty great book, and it makes
+     my heart burn with wrath.  It seems God did not forget to put a soul
+     into you.  He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely.”
+      Then, a few days later: “The book is glorious--simply noble; what
+     masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!” and, finally,
+     “Last night I read your last chapter.  As Stedman says of the whole
+     book, it's titanic.”
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept.  22, '89.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff
+for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful
+to you as a body can be. I am glad you approve of what I say about the
+French Revolution. Few people will. It is odd that even to this day
+Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and
+other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that
+they didn't get at second-hand.
+
+Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the
+holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth.
+And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote
+neighborhood of it.
+
+Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your
+corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest. We issue the book Dec.
+10; consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good
+time.
+
+I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism. When that
+happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three
+centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a
+humaner.
+
+As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but
+by the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your
+approval, and as valuable. I do not know what the secret of it is,
+unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and
+brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all
+this long time--superior being lecturing a boy.
+
+Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over
+again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and
+they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
+And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.
+
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
+     Clemens believed it perfected by this time.  Paige had got it
+     together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so
+     --setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy.  In
+     time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight
+     thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good
+     compositor could set and distribute by hand.  Those who saw it were
+     convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by
+     this great mechanical miracle.  If there were any who doubted, it
+     was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only
+     admired.  Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required
+     absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great
+     inventor--“the poet in steel,” as Clemens once called him--was no
+     longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
+     But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the
+     machine as reliable as a constellation.
+
+     But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the
+     wonder.  Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator
+     Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe
+     Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence.  He
+     wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition
+     of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889.  We note in
+     this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine
+     three years and seven months, but this was only the period during
+     which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand
+     dollars.  His interest in the invention had begun as far back as
+     1880.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Joseph T. Goodman, in Nevada:
+
+                                        Private.  HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89.
+
+DEAR JOE,--I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday, and
+in answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider
+a secret except to you and John McComb,--[This is Col. McComb, of
+the Alta-California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City
+excursion]--as I am not ready yet to get into the newspapers.
+
+I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it
+wasn't ripe, and I waited. It is ripe, now. It is a type-setting machine
+which I undertook to build for the inventor (for a consideration). I
+have been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a
+cost of $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known
+nothing about it. Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter. I
+have reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the N. Y.
+Sun, Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also to the
+proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. Three years ago I
+asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to load up their
+offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and wait for mine
+and then choose between the two. They have waited--with no very gaudy
+patience--but still they have waited; and I could prove to them to-day
+that they have not lost anything by it. But I reserve the proof for the
+present--except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an invitation
+there the other day--a courtesy due a paper which ordered $240,000 worth
+of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude condition. The
+Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next Thursday; but that
+is the only invitation which will go out for some time yet.
+
+The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever
+since in the machine shop. It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of
+Pratt & Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and as
+accurate as a watch. In construction it is as elaborate and complex
+as that machine which it ranks next to, by every right--Man--and in
+performance it is as simple and sure.
+
+Anybody can set type on it who can read--and can do it after only 15
+minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at
+the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything
+but strike the keys and set type--merely one function; the spacing,
+justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is
+all done by the machine without anybody's help--four functions.
+
+The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising. Day before yesterday
+I saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150
+ems of solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the
+same hour--and six hours previously he had never seen the machine or
+its keyboard. It was a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other
+type-setting machines to do. We have 3 cubs. The dean of the trio is a
+school youth of 18. Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the
+machine 16 working days (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he
+could do in an hour. In the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and
+the machine perfectly spaced and justified it, and of course distributed
+the like amount in the same hour. Considering that a good fair
+compositor sets 700 and distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did
+the work of about 8 x a compositors in that hour. This fact sends all
+other type-setting machines a thousand miles to the rear, and the best
+of them will never be heard of again after we publicly exhibit in New
+York.
+
+We shall put on 3 more cubs. We have one school boy and two compositors,
+now,--and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and
+perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are
+required with this machine. We shall train these beginners two or three
+months--or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour--then we will
+show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in the
+week, for several months--to prove that this is a machine which will
+never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an anvil
+can stand. You know there is no other typesetting machine that can
+run two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its
+incurable caprices.
+
+We own the whole field--every inch of it--and nothing can dislodge us.
+
+Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and
+purpose of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a
+week and satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you
+please, and sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property
+and take ten per cent in cash or the “property” for your trouble--the
+latter, if you are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of
+the value.
+
+What I call “property” is this. A small part of my ownership consists of
+a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents.
+My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every
+American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand
+paid. We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years--a
+return of fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand. A royalty is better
+than stock, in one way--it must be paid, every six months, rain or
+shine; it is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared. By
+and by, when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back
+for stock if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.
+
+I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a
+penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished
+and proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to
+be--perfect, permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all
+kindred machines, which the City of Paris occupies as regards the
+canvas-backs of the mercantile marine.
+
+It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the
+above price during the next two months and keep the other $300.
+
+Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for
+not writing the message herself--which would be a pathetically-welcome
+spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since
+her eyes failed her. Yours as always
+
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to
+     astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different,
+     but equally characteristic sort.  We may assume that Mark Twain's
+     sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making
+     a visit in Keokuk.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89.
+
+DEAR PAMELA,--An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a
+realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine:
+to send your trunk after you. Land! it was idiotic. None but a lunatic
+would, separate himself from his baggage.
+
+Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating
+my insane inspiration. I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
+him again. I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.
+
+I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
+Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York
+today. I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope
+soiled, and asked Livy to put on a clean one. That is why I am going to
+the banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going
+to punch billiards with, upstairs to-night.
+
+Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck. And I am the
+other.
+
+                         Your Brother
+                                             SAM.
+
+
+     The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
+     already in the reviewers' hands.  Just at this moment the Brazilian
+     monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
+     of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
+     prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
+     suspected.
+
+
+DEAR MR. BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
+satisfaction. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
+see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I
+should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
+swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven
+image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
+wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
+reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
+kingship and so-called “nobility.” It is enough to make the monarchs
+and nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no
+question about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and
+that is the spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys
+and Huntingtons and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves,
+for rotten carcases and stolen titles. When our great brethren the
+disenslaved Brazilians frame their Declaration of Independence, I
+hope they will insert this missing link: “We hold these truths to
+be self-evident: that all monarchs are usurpers, and descendants of
+usurpers; for the reason that no throne was ever set up in this world by
+the will, freely exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate
+right to set it up--the numerical mass of the nation.”
+
+You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your
+hands. If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will
+find a state paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces
+the dissolution of King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English
+Republic. Compare it with the state paper which announces the downfall
+of the Brazilian monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United
+States of Brazil, and stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism.
+There is merely a resemblance of ideas, nothing more. The Yankee's
+proclamation was already in print a week ago. This is merely one of
+those odd coincidences which are always turning up. Come, protect
+the Yank from that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism.
+Otherwise, you see, he will have to protect himself by charging
+approximate and indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our
+majestic twin down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar
+annoyance.
+
+Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
+that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive? Also, that the head
+slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
+order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half
+time now? Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added
+stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent
+because there wasn't any more room for it at home? Things are working.
+By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be. Of course we shall
+make no preparation; we never do. In a few years from now we shall have
+nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the
+horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the
+avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late,
+that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at
+Castle Garden.
+
+
+     There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
+     there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
+     Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
+     schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
+     concerned.  When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
+     telegrams.  In one of the letters Goodman is promised “five hundred
+     thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
+     ourselves.”  One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
+     has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
+     perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
+     perfections were not permanent.  A letter at the end of November
+     seems worth preserving here.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Joseph T. Goodman, in California:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.
+
+DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every
+day. Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising
+of capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for
+the capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me. I don't want to
+dicker with anybody but Jones. I know him; that is to say, I want to
+dicker with you, and through you with Jones. Try to see if you can't be
+here by the 15th of January.
+
+The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other
+day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her
+to be perfecter than a watch.
+
+Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you
+can, for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York. You
+know the machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better
+than any man I know. At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines
+a year,) we shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent--17 years.
+
+All the family send love to you--and they mean it, or they wouldn't say
+it.
+
+                              Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in
+     the “Editor's Study” in Harper's Magazine.  He had given it his
+     highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not
+     change with time.  “Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me
+     most,” he in one place declared, and again referred to it as
+     “a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale.”
+
+     In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come
+     East without delay.  “Take the train, Joe, and come along,” he wrote
+     early in December.  And we judge from the following that Joe had
+     decided to come.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is
+just great. The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious
+if the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it
+does, though of course I can't realize it and believe it. But I am your
+grateful servant, anyway and always.
+
+I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11. I go from here
+to New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th. Can't you go with me?
+It's great fun. I'm going to read the passages in the “Yankee” in which
+the Yankee's West Point cadets figure--and shall covertly work in
+a lecture on aristocracy to those boys. I am to be the guest of the
+Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to
+the hotel. He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take
+that liberty.
+
+And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January?
+For two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we
+want to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking
+about it and hankering for it. And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again
+by that time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly. It's well
+worth it. I am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I
+can get a chance.
+
+We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is,
+too. You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect
+and complete. All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs. Clemens,
+whereas I was expecting nothing but praises. I made a party call the day
+after the party--and called the lady down from breakfast to receive
+it. I then left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her
+dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon.
+The error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the
+afternoon, and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another
+part of the town. However, as I meant well, none of these disasters
+distressed me.
+
+                         Yrs ever
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England.  English
+     readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or
+     American strictures on their institutions.  Mark Twain's publishers
+     had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for
+     the English edition.  Clemens, however, would not listen to any
+     suggestions of the sort.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Messrs. Chatto & Windus, in London, Eng.:
+
+GENTLEMEN,--Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story
+twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund
+Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several
+passages that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others.
+Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen
+were present and have profited by their suggestions.
+
+Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a
+Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props,
+and yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it
+comes to you, without altering a word.
+
+We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who
+are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness
+about any man or institution among us and we republish him without
+dreaming of altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand
+that kind of a book written about herself. It is England that is
+thin-skinned. It causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my
+language which have been made in my English editions to fit them for the
+sensitive English palate.
+
+Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of
+offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands.
+I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can. I want you
+to read it carefully. If you can publish it without altering a single
+word, go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for
+him to have it published at my expense.
+
+This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for
+America; it was written for England. So many Englishmen have done their
+sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems
+to me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good
+intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level
+of manhood in turn.
+
+                    Very truly yours,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish
+to be “pried up to a higher level of manhood” by a Connecticut Yankee.
+The papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a
+vulgar travesty. Some of the critics concluded that England, after all,
+had made a mistake in admiring Mark Twain. Clemens stood this for a time
+and then seems to have decided that something should be done. One of the
+foremost of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state
+the case to him fully and invite his assistance.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Andrew Lang, in London:
+
+[First page missing.]
+
+                                                            1889
+
+They vote but do not print. The head tells you pretty promptly whether
+the food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the
+whole man has spoken. It is a delusion. Only his taste and his smell
+have been heard from--important, both, in a way, but these do not build
+up the man; and preserve his life and fortify it.
+
+The little child is permitted to label its drawings “This is a cow this
+is a horse,” and so on. This protects the child. It saves it from
+the sorrow and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as
+kangaroos and work benches. A man who is white-washing a fence is doing
+a useful thing, so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house
+with costly frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these
+performances by standards proper to each. Now, then, to be fair, an
+author ought to be allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line:
+“This is written for the Head;” “This is written for the Belly and the
+Members.” And the critic ought to hold himself in honor bound to put
+away from him his ancient habit of judging all books by one standard,
+and thenceforth follow a fairer course.
+
+The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the
+cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable. Let us apply his law all
+around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures,
+and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps
+which lead up to culture and make culture possible. It condemns the
+spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture;
+it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the
+child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the
+university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the
+cheap terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo
+and the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till
+he can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will
+grant its sanction to nothing below the “classic.”
+
+Is this an extravagant statement? No, it is a mere statement of fact.
+It is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque. And what is the
+result? This--and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually
+imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is
+more valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo;
+and the august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing
+society; and Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in
+all mouths today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and
+the Latin classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan
+Edwards than the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the
+plaster-cast peddler; the superstition, in a word, that the vast and
+awful comet that trails its cold lustre through the remote abysses of
+space once a century and interests and instructs a cultivated handful
+of astronomers is worth more to the world than the sun which warms and
+cheers all the nations every day and makes the crops to grow.
+
+If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but
+to convert angels: and they wouldn't need it. The thin top crust of
+humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth
+coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies,
+it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very
+dignified or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding
+the over-fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that. It is not
+that little minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to
+uplift, I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are
+underneath. That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for
+the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward
+appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy
+and the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they
+will never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves
+them higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin
+classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they
+will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their
+slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air
+and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name
+to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by
+the ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its
+place upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.
+
+Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first. I have never tried
+in even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I
+was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training. And I
+never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
+game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them,
+but have done my best to entertain them. To simply amuse them would
+have satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get
+instruction elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's
+one: for amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of
+fatigue after it. My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and
+so I cannot know whether I have won its approbation or only got its
+censure.
+
+Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members,
+but have been served like the others--criticized from the
+culture-standard--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never
+cared what became of the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre
+and the opera--they had no use for me and the melodeon.
+
+And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
+supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing
+the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done
+for them shall be judged. Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further
+than yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
+
+
+     Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on “The
+     Art of Mark Twain.”  Lang had no admiration to express for the
+     Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
+     glorified Huck Finn to the highest.  “I can never forget, nor be
+     ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
+     Finn for the first time, years ago,” he wrote; “I read it again last
+     night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck.  I never laid it down till I
+     had finished it.”
+
+     Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
+     “great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
+     watched to see this new planet swim into their ken.”
+
+
+
+
+XXX. LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN. THE GREAT MACHINE
+ENTERPRISE
+
+     Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873
+     as “Jock,” sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by
+     E.  T.  McLaren.  It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.
+
+DEAR MR. BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading
+the one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of “Rab and
+his Friends.” It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary
+workmanship. It says in every line, “Don't look at me, look at him”--and
+one tries to be good and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong
+that one can't keep his entire attention on the developing portrait, but
+must steal side-glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of
+her felicitous brush. In this book the doctor lives and moves just as
+he was. He was the most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the
+kindest; and yet he died without setting one of his bondmen free. We all
+send our very, very kindest regards.
+
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine
+     he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers
+     play, which he had written with Howells seven years before.  The
+     play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York,
+     with A. P. Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as
+     financial backers.  But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay
+     any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road.
+     Now, however, James A.  Herne, a well-known actor and playwright,
+     became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with
+     Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under
+     Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful.
+
+     But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine,
+     and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture.  His
+     next letter to Goodman is illuminating--the urgency of his need for
+     funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most
+     positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual.  The Mr. Arnot of
+     this letter was an Elmira capitalist.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Jos. T. Goodman, in California:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, March 31, '90.
+
+DEAR JOE,--If you were here, I should say, “Get you to Washington and
+beg Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or “--no, I
+wouldn't. The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from
+me if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and
+mine and without other evidence. It is too much of a responsibility.
+
+But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the
+last month's machine-expenses, and the purse empty. I notified Mr. Arnot
+a month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last
+night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the
+9th of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and
+that before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and
+approved, or done the other thing. If Jones should arrive here a week
+or ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve,
+and shouldn't buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be
+symmetrically square, and then how could I refund? The surest way was to
+return his check.
+
+I have talked with the madam, and here is the result. I will go down to
+the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet
+the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April
+and return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found
+financial relief.
+
+It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a
+bird to go! I think she's going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the
+hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year's practice. I may be in
+error, but I most solidly believe it.
+
+There's an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I
+watched it two whole afternoons.
+
+                         With the love of us all,
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand
+     dollars in this moment of need.  Clemens was probably as sorely
+     tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his
+     life, but his resolution field firm.
+
+
+*****
+
+To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N. Y.:
+
+MR. M. H. ARNOT
+
+DEAR SIR,--No--no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied;
+and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal
+examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of
+disinterested people, besides. My own perfect knowledge of what is
+required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact
+that this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it
+difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted
+men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus
+would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself. And now
+that I go back over the ground, I remember that where I said I could get
+along 3 months without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit
+from you to the machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its
+character and prospects. I had forgotten all that. But I remember it
+now; and the fact that it was not “so nominated in the bond” does not
+alter the case or justify me in making my call so prematurely. I do not
+know that you regarded all that as a part of the bargain--for you
+were thoroughly and magnanimously unexacting--but I so regarded it,
+notwithstanding I have so easily managed to forget all about it.
+
+You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me
+in a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but
+my honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap
+a money advantage from it.
+
+With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours
+
+                                             S L. CLEMENS.
+
+P. S. I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed
+to say the main thing in exact enough language--which is, that the
+transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall
+have convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are
+satisfactory.
+
+I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we
+have since been waiting for Mr. Jones. When he was ready, we were not;
+and now we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in
+Washington by the Silver bill. He said the other day that to venture out
+of the Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him
+if the bill came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the
+bill, which would pass anyway. Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or
+three days' notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they
+would follow as soon as I should return word that their coming would not
+inconvenience us. I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting
+for Mr. Jones, but it would not be wise to go there without money.
+
+The bill is still pending.
+
+
+     The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in
+     the middle stages of experimental development.  It was a slower
+     machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room.
+     There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so
+     delicate, not so human.  These were immense advantages.
+
+     But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter
+     would reap the harvest of millions.  It was only sure that at least
+     one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade
+     stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial
+     success for both, whichever won.  Clemens, with a faith that never
+     faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him
+     millions.
+
+     Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had
+     been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich
+     Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the
+     machine's manufacture.  Goodman was spending a large part of his
+     time traveling back and forth between California and Washington,
+     trying to keep business going at both ends.  Paige spent most of his
+     time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate
+     attachments which complicated its construction more and more.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Joe T. Goodman, in Washington:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, June 22, '90.
+
+DEAR JOE,--I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this afternoon,
+and my admiration of it towers higher than ever. There is no sort of
+mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza. In the 2 hours, the time lost
+by type-breakage was 3 minutes.
+
+This machine is totally without a rival. Rivalry with it is impossible.
+Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship
+on the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and
+the type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day.
+
+I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad
+and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything
+about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within
+the life of the patents. Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the
+wealthiest grandees in America--one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact--and
+yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask
+you to take my note instead.
+
+It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman
+and refresh yourself with a draught of the same.
+
+                                        Ys ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt
+     Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force
+     from doing so.  He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking
+     the machine apart or setting it up again.  Finally, he was allowed
+     to go at it--a disasterous permission, for it was just then that
+     Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch
+     the type-setter in operation.  Paige already had it in parts when
+     this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off.
+     His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day.  In July,
+     Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat
+     diffident in the matter of huge capitalization.  He thought it
+     partly due, at least, to “the fatal delays that have sicklied over
+     the bloom of original enthusiasm.”  Clemens himself went down to
+     Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least,
+     Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a
+     qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and
+     capitalist.  How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but
+     certainly more than one.  Jones would seem to have suggested forms
+     of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no
+     evidence of it to-day.
+
+     Any one who has read Mark Twain's, “A Connecticut Yankee in King
+     Arthur's Court,” has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in
+     general, and tyrants in particular.  Rule by “divine right,” however
+     liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it
+     stirred him to violence.  In his article, “The Czar's Soliloquy,” he
+     gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master
+     of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890,
+     he offered a hint as to remedies.  The letter was written by
+     editorial request, but was never mailed.  Perhaps it seemed too
+     openly revolutionary at the moment.
+
+     Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it
+     “timely.”  Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the
+     Catskills when it was written.
+
+
+*****
+
+An unpublished letter on the Czar.
+
+                                                  ONTEORA, 1890.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your
+invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on
+your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of
+the objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite
+know how to proceed. Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:
+
+“But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for
+a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting
+to a dire fate they cannot escape. Besides, foreigners could not see so
+clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the
+grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the
+moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated
+Russia. But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners
+are there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of
+no excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity
+against Russian tyranny. And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident
+in its apparently unassailable position, instead of taking warning
+from the first rebukes, seems to mock this humanitarian age by the
+aggravation of brutalities. Not satisfied with slowly killing its
+prisoners, and with burying the flower of our young generation in the
+Siberian desserts, the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break
+their spirit by deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of
+brutality and degradation.”
+
+When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's
+revelations, and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly
+figures fail to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend
+into hell to find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement
+of the objects of the several liberation-parties--and is disappointed.
+Apparently none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell
+entirely, they merely want the temperature cooled down a little.
+
+I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of
+the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech.
+Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it
+differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it
+somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and
+fine, when properly “modified,” something entitling it to protection
+from the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole. It
+seems a most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition
+that man is a reasoning being. If a house is afire, we reason
+confidently that it is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out
+in any way he can--drown it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use
+any and all means to stop the spread of the fire and save the rest of
+the city. What is the Czar of Russia but a house afire in the midst of
+a city of eighty millions of inhabitants? Yet instead of extinguishing
+him, together with his nest and system, the liberation-parties are all
+anxious to merely cool him down a little and keep him.
+
+It seems to me that this is illogical--idiotic, in fact. Suppose you had
+this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your house,
+chasing the helpless women and little children--your own. What would
+you do with him, supposing you had a shotgun? Well, he is loose in your
+house-Russia. And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to
+think up ways to “modify” him.
+
+Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project
+which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and
+has never in one single instance been successful--the “modification” of
+a despotism by other means than bloodshed? They seem to think they can.
+My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was
+bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands,
+but I possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come
+to me as a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any
+kindred method of procedure. When we consider that not even the most
+responsible English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right
+until it was wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to
+suppose that gentler methods can win privileges in Russia?
+
+Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne
+would be by revolution. But it is not possible to get up a revolution
+there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne
+vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with
+thanks. Then organize the Republic. And on the whole this method has
+some large advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives
+which cannot well be spared, the dynamite way doesn't. Consider this:
+the conspirators against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of
+life, from the low to the high. And consider: if so many take an
+active part, where the peril is so dire, is this not evidence that the
+sympathizers who keep still and do not show their hands, are countless
+for multitudes? Can you break the hearts of thousands of families with
+the awful Siberian exodus every year for generations and not eventually
+cover all Russia from limit to limit with bereaved fathers and mothers
+and brothers and sisters who secretly hate the perpetrator of this
+prodigious crime and hunger and thirst for his life? Do you not believe
+that if your wife or your child or your father was exiled to the mines
+of Siberia for some trivial utterances wrung from a smarting spirit by
+the Czar's intolerable tyranny, and you got a chance to kill him and did
+not do it, that you would always be ashamed to be in your own society
+the rest of your life? Suppose that that refined and lovely Russian lady
+who was lately stripped bare before a brutal soldiery and whipped to
+death by the Czar's hand in the person of the Czar's creature had been
+your wife, or your daughter or your sister, and to-day the Czar should
+pass within reach of your hand, how would you feel--and what would you
+do? Consider, that all over vast Russia, from boundary to boundary,
+a myriad of eyes filled with tears when that piteous news came, and
+through those tears that myriad of eyes saw, not that poor lady, but
+lost darlings of their own whose fate her fate brought back with new
+access of grief out of a black and bitter past never to be forgotten or
+forgiven.
+
+If I am a Swinburnian--and clear to the marrow I am--I hold human nature
+in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians
+that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that isn't.
+
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     Type-setter matters were going badly.  Clemens still had faith in
+     Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine.  The money
+     situation, however, was troublesome.  With an expensive
+     establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on
+     the machine, his income would not reach.  Perhaps Goodman had
+     already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from
+     California after the next letter was written--a colorless letter
+     --in which we feel a note of resignation.  The last few lines are
+     sufficient.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Joe T. Goodman, in California:
+
+DEAR JOE,--...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two or
+three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money
+before long.
+
+I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon.
+
+I guess we've got a perfect machine at last. We never break a type, now,
+and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters
+and justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm.
+
+                         With love to you both,
+                                                  MARK
+
+
+     The year closed gloomily enough.  The type-setter seemed to be
+     perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.
+     The publishing business of Charles L. Webster & Co. was returning
+     little or no profit.  Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end
+     of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later.  Mark
+     Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager,
+     Fred J. Ball, closed it: “Merry Xmas to you!--and I wish to God I
+     could have one myself before I die.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXI. LETTERS, 1891, TO HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS. RETURN TO
+LITERATURE. AMERICAN CLAIMANT. LEAVING HARTFORD. EUROPE. DOWN THE RHINE.
+
+     Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the
+     beginning of the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer
+     active, and it presently became a moribund.  Jones, on about
+     the middle of February, backed out altogether, laying the
+     blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he said, had
+     decided not to invest.  Jones “let his victim down easy”
+      with friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at
+     least, of machine financiering.
+
+     It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital.  His publishing
+     business was not good.  It was already in debt and needing
+     more money.  There was just one thing for him to do and he
+     did it at once, not stopping to cry over spilt milk, but
+     with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never failed
+     him, he returned to the trade of authorship.  He dug out
+     half-finished articles and stories, finished them and sold
+     them, and within a week after the Jones collapse he was at
+     work on a novel based an the old Sellers idea, which eight
+     years before he and Howells had worked into a play.  The
+     brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells bears
+     no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his
+     fifty-sixth year; he was by no means well, and his financial
+     prospects were anything but golden.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but
+is up and around the room now, and gaining. I don't know whether she has
+written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet,
+if she hasn't. We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in
+the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.
+
+Does this item stir an interest in you? Began a novel four days ago, and
+this moment finished chapter four. Title of the book:
+
+                       “Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
+                           American Claimant
+                                 Of the
+                       Great Earldom of Rossmore'
+                                 in the
+                       Peerage of Great Britain.”
+
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly. He had
+always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than
+ever for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned. There
+exists a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in
+which he recites his qualifications. It bears evidence of having been
+written just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Fragment of Letter to -------, 1891:
+
+.... I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when pretending
+to portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life out on the
+Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because
+I was not familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier two weeks
+once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole
+time. Familiar? My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more
+burnt-in, hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that
+death-on-the-pale-horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw
+soldier's first fortnight in the field--and which, without any doubt, is
+the most tremendous fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see.
+
+Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of
+weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction.
+And I've done “pocket-mining” during three months in the one little
+patch of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in
+pockets--or did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted,
+obliterated, annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in.
+There are not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket
+hidden on the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find
+it, or have even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one
+of the possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put
+my hand on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.
+
+And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find
+it--just with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner and
+know how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so I know
+the mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them
+exteriorly.
+
+And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
+inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions
+and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know
+personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest
+souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
+
+And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the
+different kinds of steam-boatmen--a race apart, and not like other folk.
+
+And I was for some years a traveling “jour” printer, and wandered from
+city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.
+
+And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was
+a responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets--and so I
+know a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of
+books, but only acquirable by experience.
+
+And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune
+on it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that would make a
+large book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror;
+and they would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this
+fellow has been there--and after would cast dust upon their heads,
+cursing and blaspheming.
+
+And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General
+Grant's) the largest copyright checks this world has seen--aggregating
+more than L80,000 in the first year.
+
+And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
+
+Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable
+in the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well
+equipped for that trade.
+
+I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of
+it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his
+     shoulder.  The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated
+     his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled.  The phonograph
+     for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
+     Twain was always ready for any innovation.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, Feb.  28, '91.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New
+England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary
+conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it)
+can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them
+to you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a
+message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out
+without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent
+me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry
+75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it?
+
+I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by
+rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies
+of it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the
+book into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a
+day; I think I can dictate twice as many.
+
+But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and
+do it, all the same.
+
+                                   Ys ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
+     few days later reported results.  He wrote: “I talked your letter
+     into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech.  Then
+     the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
+     Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
+     put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out.  I send you the
+     result.  There is a mistake of one word.  I think that if you have
+     the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
+     perfectly easy.  It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
+     did.”
+
+     Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
+     not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily.  His
+     early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to
+acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
+so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere
+letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write
+literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift
+for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity
+of expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental,
+and as grave and unsmiling as the devil.
+
+I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could
+have said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better. Then I
+resigned.
+
+I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a
+phonographer--and some time I will experiment in that line.
+
+The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me. But it
+flies too high for me. Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to
+me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as
+embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly. I'm
+going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge
+my memory. Charging my memory is one of my chief industries....
+
+With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according
+to the proprieties.
+
+                              Yrs ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+P. S.--I'm sending that ancient “Mental Telegraphy” article to
+Harper's--with a modest postscript. Probably read it to you years ago.
+
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     The “little book” mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an
+     author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.
+     “Mental Telegraphy” appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now
+     included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books.  It was
+     written in 1878.
+
+     Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear
+     that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington.  On receipt
+     of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word.
+     Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance,
+     and possibly hold him in some measure to blame.  But it was
+     generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage;
+     the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.
+
+     The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following
+     letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence
+     Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Joe T. Goodman:
+
+                                                  April [?] 1891.
+
+DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway. Diplomacy couldn't have saved
+it--diplomacy of mine--at that late day. I hadn't any diplomacy in
+stock, anyway. In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender
+the old contract (a contract which made me boss of the situation and
+gave me the whip-hand of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and
+put in its place. I was running an immense risk, but it was justified by
+Jones's promises--promises made to me not merely once but every time I
+tallied with him. When February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty
+plain reading. Signs which meant that Paige was hoping and praying that
+Jones would go back on me--which would leave Paige boss, and me robbed
+and out in the cold. His prayers were answered, and I am out in the
+cold. If I ever get back my nine-twentieths interest, it will be by
+law-suit--which will be instituted in the indefinite future, when the
+time comes.
+
+I am at work again--on a book. Not with a great deal of spirit, but with
+enough--yes, plenty. And I am pushing my publishing house. It has turned
+the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive
+years, and piling every cent of it into one book--Library of American
+Literature--and from next January onward it will resume dividends. But
+I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then--which I will do if
+I keep my health. This additional capital is needed for that same book,
+because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting.
+
+It is dreadful to think of you in ill health--I can't realize it; you
+are always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless
+health, and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with
+us. Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that
+has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
+
+                    With love to you both from us all.
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close.
+     Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain.  They
+     believed that some of the European baths would help them.
+     Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his
+     Hartford home.  In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper.
+     He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters,
+     by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun.  This would
+     at least give him a start on the other side.  The family began
+     immediately their sad arrangements for departure.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster & Co.), N. Y.:
+
+                                   HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Privately--keep it to yourself--as you, are already
+aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay. We shall
+sell the horses and shut up the house. We wish to provide a place for
+our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,
+diligent, and unusually bright and capable. You spoke of hiring a
+colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would
+soon learn that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by
+the middle or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with
+the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he
+would like to try?
+
+I have not said anything to him about it yet.
+
+                                   Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful
+     establishment.  Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of
+     their household help had been like members of the family.  We may
+     guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain
+     cheerful.
+
+     Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to
+     be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it
+     from the papers, and wrote for information.  Likely enough Clemens
+     had not until then had the courage to confess.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, May 20, '91.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths
+somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe.
+The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and
+little-visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you
+get to it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach. Come, get “sick
+or sorry enough” and join us. We shall be a little while at that bath,
+and the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute
+Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don't know
+how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it. I'm
+going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind,
+without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any
+charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except
+heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of
+those.
+
+I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its
+lines when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of
+dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved
+me half a days work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was abundance
+of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of
+the story.
+
+Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years
+thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich
+newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my
+time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was
+harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was
+going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the
+other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me
+and I couldn't think of any rational excuse.
+
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial
+     rights to the McClure syndicate.  The house in Hartford was closed
+     early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie
+     Leary, sailed on the Gascogne.  Two weeks later they had begun a
+     residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.
+
+     It was not easy to get to work in Europe.  Clemens's arm remained
+     lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering.  The Century
+     Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he
+     had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan.  In
+     August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the
+     baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,
+     and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a
+     time.  He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters
+     when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.
+     He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some
+     fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.
+
+     The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the
+     family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.
+     He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged
+     Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European
+     trip, to accompany him.  The courier went over to Bourget and bought
+     for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their
+     pilot.  It was the morning of September 20, when they began their
+     floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through
+     the loveliest and most romantic region of France.  He wrote daily to
+     Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy
+     experience better than the notes made with a view to publication.
+     Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the
+     morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an
+     old castle of the same name.  Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone
+     by a small canal.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                                             Sept. 20, 1891.
+
+                                             Sunday, 11 a.m.
+
+On the lake Bourget--just started. The castle of Chatillon high overhead
+showing above the trees. It was a wonderfully still place to sleep in.
+Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog. A Pope
+was born in the room I slept in. No, he became a Pope later.
+
+The lake is smooth as glass--a brilliant sun is shining.
+
+Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning.
+
+11.20 We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal. Shall
+presently be in the Rhone.
+
+Noon. Nearly down to the Rhone. Passing the village of Chanaz.
+
+3.15 p. m. Sunday. We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is unimaginably
+still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy. No rowing or work of
+any kind to do--we merely float with the current--we glide noiseless and
+swift--as fast as a London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an hour--the
+swiftest current I've ever boated in. We have the entire river to
+ourselves--nowhere a boat of any kind.
+
+                         Good bye Sweetheart
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                                        PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m.
+
+                                             [Sept. 21, 1891]
+
+Name of the village which we left five minutes ago.
+
+We went ashore at 5 p. m. yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile
+to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had
+a good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the
+Guiers till 7.30.
+
+Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and
+newspapers till midnight. Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay
+till noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the
+day was still dark and lowering. But at noon the sun broke through and
+in 15 minutes we were tramping toward the river. Got afloat at 1 p. m.
+but at 2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above
+village. Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn,
+the rain let go and came down in great style. We lost an hour and a half
+there, but we are off again, now, with bright sunshine.
+
+I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every
+day.
+
+Good-day, and love to all of you.
+
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+                                        ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS,
+
+                                                  Tuesday noon.
+
+Good morning, sweetheart. Night caught us yesterday where we had to take
+quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot
+of cows and calves--also several rabbits.--[His word for fleas.]--The
+latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly
+and didn't bite.
+
+The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their
+best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the shore in
+the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat. Clean cloth, napkin and
+table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good
+bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught.
+Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a
+phenomenally dirty house.
+
+An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and
+dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm. It
+was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management I
+ever saw. Our admiral knew his business.
+
+We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained
+heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a
+water-proof sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although
+we had many heavy showers this morning.
+
+With a word of love to you all and particularly you,
+
+                                                       SAML.
+
+
+                                             ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA.
+
+I salute you, my darling. Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night
+and was very pleasant news indeed.
+
+I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't
+sail from Lyons till 10.30--an hour and a half lost. And we've lost
+another hour--two of them, I guess--since, by an error. We came in sight
+of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed
+to walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and I got
+out and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by
+came out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we
+followed that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of
+that slough. Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by
+George it had a distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know
+when I have felt so much like a donkey. On an island! I wanted to drown
+somebody, but I hadn't anybody I could spare. However, after another
+long tramp we found a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were
+on the mainland--yes, and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we
+were when we started.
+
+Notes--I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you. If
+you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon. I may
+not need it but I fear I shall.
+
+I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close
+fit, I reckon.
+
+
+                                   AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91.
+
+Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are
+now approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make
+Valence, a City Of 25,000 people. It's too delicious, floating with the
+swift current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace
+and quietness. Some of these curious old historical towns strangely
+persuade me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them
+from the outside and sail on. We get abundance of grapes and peaches for
+next to nothing.
+
+Joseph is perfect. He is at his very best--and never was better in his
+life. I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way when
+he is lying around--but here he is perfection, and brim full of useful
+alacrities and helps and ingenuities.
+
+When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said “I seem
+to have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed
+mighty early; I wonder what time I did go to bed.” And I got up and lit
+a candle and looked at my watch to see.
+
+
+                                                       AFLOAT
+
+                                        2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL.
+
+                                        Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28.
+
+Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday. We left La Voulte in a driving
+storm of cold rain--couldn't write in it--and at 1 p. m. when we were
+not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a high
+hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it;
+so we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the
+boat ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those
+cloudy heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle
+built by two crusaders 650 years ago. The work of these asses was
+full of interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and
+scrutinizing it. All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and
+precipices, and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and
+broken towers. The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced
+the Romans, the Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians
+displaced the Saracens, and it was these pious animals who built these
+strange lairs and cut each other's throats in the name and for the glory
+of God, and robbed and burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper
+and the slave built churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop
+who racked the money out of them. These are pathetic shores, and they
+make one despise the human race.
+
+We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till
+this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office
+to go to the circus. I went, too. It was all one family--parents and
+5 children--performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted
+villagers, who contributed coppers when called on. It was a most gay and
+strange and pathetic show. I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor
+devils cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries.
+
+This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon
+before 4 o'clock. I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St.
+Andeol.
+
+               With a power of love, Sweetheart,
+                                                  SAML.
+
+
+                                             HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,
+
+                                             Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.
+
+Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an
+hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart. It's like hearing
+from home after a long absence.
+
+It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage;
+and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip
+again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to
+sea as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water-nothing can
+be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you
+and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous
+sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming
+dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But it had
+interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world;
+for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette
+mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most
+noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which
+I had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this
+prodigious face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil,
+reposeful, lay against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden
+splendors all rayed like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching
+lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for delight, it was so
+supreme in its unimaginable majesty and beauty.
+
+We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed and
+directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before
+4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned
+in our “particularizes” and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting
+along by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river!
+Confound it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat
+and search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had
+happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers
+and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet
+we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.
+
+Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted
+down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the
+Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it
+and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden
+masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.
+
+It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the
+letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed.
+
+We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving
+about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.
+Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday
+morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel
+at 11 at night if the train isn't late.
+
+Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin. But I
+shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.
+
+          With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you,
+               sweetheart,
+                         SAML.
+
+I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.
+
+
+     The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the
+     beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode.  Mark
+     Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the
+     giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.
+     In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to
+     be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile.  But then he
+     characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the
+     incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the
+     village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;
+     also, that he had made a record of the place.
+
+     But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery
+     was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great
+     natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls.  Theodore Stanton was
+     visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to
+     France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost
+     Napoleon, as he now called it.  But Clemens remembered the wonder as
+     being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a
+     hundred miles above the last-named town.  Stanton naturally failed
+     to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring
+     up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the
+     first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first
+     consul of France, “dreaming of Universal Empire.”  The re-discovery
+     was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it
+     was worth while.  Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a
+     natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,
+     and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will
+     long hold the traveler's attention.
+
+
+
+*****
+
+To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                              AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.
+
+DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient
+papal palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island
+a mile up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to
+Arles. It is a perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very
+hot--outside; but I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and
+shady in here.
+
+Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I
+perceive by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday
+midnight. I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am
+proposing to do during the next two or three days and get there earlier.
+I could put in the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it
+without telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow,
+Oct. 1, care Hotel Manivet.
+
+The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and
+then. They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it.
+Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably
+in charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were
+allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon
+below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head. Of course I
+lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of
+the tossing waters. I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in
+deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment
+told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river. I could
+have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip. A
+boatman in command should obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield to
+nobody's suggestions.
+
+It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so
+much. With greatest love and kisses,
+
+                                   PAPA.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                                             ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.
+
+Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight
+seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.
+
+Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday
+evening. We had ten great days in her.
+
+We reached here after dark. We were due about 4.30, counting by
+distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we
+found.
+
+               I love you, sweetheart.
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+     It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend
+     Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days
+     thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and
+     Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi
+     Pass.  He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn:
+
+                                                  NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.
+
+DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from
+Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been.
+You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily--and
+you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with
+a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with
+the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the
+world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy
+comfort, and solid happiness. In fact there's nothing that's so lovely.
+
+But it's all over. I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am
+loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where
+the tribe are staying.
+
+                         Love to you all
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse,
+     and later at the Hotel Royal.  There had been no permanent
+     improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.
+     Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still
+     unfinished.
+
+     Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to
+     keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his
+     years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could.  We may
+     believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who
+     found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable. It came this
+morning. This is the first time since the business began that I have had
+a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was
+really enlightening and satisfactory. Keep it up. Don't let it fall into
+desuetude.
+
+Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that
+I feel a great let-up from depression. The rewards of your long and
+patient industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port,
+presently, seems assured.
+
+By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in!
+
+My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to
+250 Americans. But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was
+a sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and
+hadn't a gray hair in it. And now that my arm is better, I have stolen
+a couple of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have
+been lying a long time.
+
+I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday--registered. Lookout for
+it.
+
+I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the “Jungfrau”) next
+Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have
+arrived.
+
+I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied
+Berlin sufficiently.
+
+Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's
+Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes,
+
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+       Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter:
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--This is my birthday and your letter this morning was a
+happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table. I thought of
+going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came,
+but concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer.
+
+                                   Sincerely yours
+                                             O. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     “The German Chicago” was the last of the six McClure letters and was
+     finished that winter in Berlin.  It is now included in the Uniform
+     Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive
+     articles of the German capital ever written.  He made no use of the
+     Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form.
+     They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant
+     publication.  A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December,
+     we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract
+     comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports.
+
+
+                 Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and
+are written on rather stiff pale green paper. If you will have those
+type-writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per
+mail, not two.) I'll see if I can use them.
+
+But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything
+are very slender--I seem to be disabled for life.
+
+Drop McClure a line and tell him the same. I can't dare to make an
+engagement now for even a single letter.
+
+I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study. I
+shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to hold
+my nose down to the grind-stone much longer.
+
+I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 30 days--then the annual statement
+will arrive and I shall know how we feel! Merry Xmas to you from us all.
+
+                         Sincerely,
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+P. S. Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German
+tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say
+about the past year's business got knocked out of me. After writing this
+present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and
+overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them
+with the splendid Oct.-Nov. business, and went to bed feeling refreshed
+and fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year. Now rush me along
+the Annual Report and let's see how we feel!
+
+                                                  S. L. C.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII. LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE. IN BERLIN,
+MENTONE, BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE.
+
+Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the
+center of every great gathering. He was entertained by the Kaiser, and
+shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank. His books were
+as well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and
+embassies he was always a chief center of interest.
+
+He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on
+him. Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he
+contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and
+a few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia. It was not a
+severe attack, but it was long continued. He could write some letters
+and even work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many
+weeks, a condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever
+enjoyed the loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more
+than Mark Twain. In a memorandum of that time he wrote: “I am having a
+booming time all to myself.”
+
+Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the
+publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits.
+He wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most
+part are purely of a business nature and of little interest to the
+general reader.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                        HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Daly wants to get the stage rights of the “American
+Claimant.” The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the
+same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years. That
+play cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought
+me any. I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give
+me back his rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and
+utilize this chance to even myself up. Burbank is a lovely fellow, and
+if he objects I can't urge him. But you run in at the Lotos and see him;
+and if he relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the
+business with Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under
+your supervision if you prefer.
+
+This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot.
+
+I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to
+start by the end of this month.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+
+     It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so
+     long to place their “Sellers” Play, that now, when the story
+     appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth
+     dramatizing.  Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem
+     that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was
+     going the rounds.  But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in
+     the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers.  The
+     matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should
+     have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in
+     it seems interesting.
+
+     Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as
+     soon as he was able to travel.  This was not until the first of
+     March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the
+     children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Susy Clemens, in Berlin:
+
+                                             MENTONE, Mch 22, '92.
+
+SUSY DEAR,--I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your
+pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and
+another--clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression,
+photographic ability in setting forth an incident--style--good style--no
+barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman
+scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait
+and straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or
+short--and so ought I, but I don't.
+
+Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan
+comes back mended.
+
+We couldn't go to Nice to-day--had to give it up, on various
+accounts--and this was the last chance. I am sorry for Mamma--I wish she
+could have gone. She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty
+stiff and lame this morning, but is working it off trunk packing.
+
+Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking--and to get the
+pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed
+she didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did, she took nine
+pictures on top of each other--composites.
+
+                              With lots of love.
+                                                  PAPA.
+
+
+     In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence,
+     where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage
+     a villa for the next winter.  Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they
+     discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace
+     beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a
+     wonderful view of the ancient city.  Clemens felt that he could work
+     there, and time proved that he was right.
+
+     For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at
+     Bad-Nauheim.  Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to
+     give some personal attention to business matters.  For one thing,
+     his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to
+     be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been
+     persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter.
+     It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would
+     make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                        BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92.
+
+                                                       Saturday.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I am
+leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the “Havel.”
+
+If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away
+from the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other
+lodgings where they can't find me.
+
+But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself
+somewhere till I can come to the office.
+
+Yours sincerely                         S. L. C.
+
+
+     Nothing of importance happened in America.  The new Paige company
+     had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty
+     machines as a beginning.  They claimed to have capital, or to be
+     able to command it, and as the main control had passed from
+     Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and
+     hope for the best.  As for the business, about all that he could do
+     was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional
+     capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would
+     concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way
+     of new enterprise.  Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down
+     to literature.  This was the middle of July, and he must have worked
+     pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to
+     offer.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       Aug. 10, '92.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I
+saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling
+it through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom
+Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around
+the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after
+the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then
+nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe
+circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the
+same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words
+of this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the
+adventures and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from
+50,000 to 100,000 words.
+
+It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy
+between 8 years and 80.
+
+When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,
+wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000
+words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my
+mind, then.
+
+I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so
+that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any
+man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
+
+Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it
+is proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I
+don't swear it, but I think so.
+
+Proposed title of the story, “New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     The “novel” mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,
+     a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later.  It was
+     a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then
+     Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself
+     out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.
+     Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was
+     completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.
+
+     The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.
+     The next letter records a pleasant incident.  The Prince of Wales of
+     that day later became King Edward VII.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:
+
+                                   Private.  BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.
+
+DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--(“Private” because no newspaper-man or other
+gossip must get hold of it)
+
+Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer
+here will cure her.
+
+The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times
+with them. Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort,
+Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking
+in the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin,
+and he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most
+unusually comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick
+to see the obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is
+spontaneous and catching. Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him
+at dinner day after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the
+brass band will smash the talk and spoil everything.
+
+We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if
+this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler. I take Clara to
+Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added. Thus
+far, Jean is our only glib French scholar.
+
+We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.
+
+                                   SAM
+
+
+     Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.
+     In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with
+     them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.
+     Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means
+     recovered her health.  We get a general report of conditions from
+     the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,
+     where the party rested for several days.  The “Phelps” mentioned in
+     this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to
+     Germany.  The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated
+     in Berlin.  “Mason” was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,
+     and in later years at Paris.  “Charlie and Ida” were Charles and
+     Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N. Y.:
+
+                                             LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.
+
+DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone
+off without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me! I found it
+out yesterday. Livy advised me to write you about it.
+
+I have been driving this pen hard. I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called
+“Tom Sawyer Abroad,” then took up the “Twins” again, destroyed the last
+half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to
+continue it and finish it in Florence. “Tom Sawyer” seems rather pale to
+the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like
+it after they got used to it.
+
+We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left there four or
+five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the
+time we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be
+erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches. We
+lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring. We started Thursday and made
+Bale. Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired
+every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour. It took
+us 3 1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20. We reached
+here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. The rest
+has made the headaches better. We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow
+if possible. Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make
+Bologna, 5 hours. Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V. Next year we will
+walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again. I've got
+seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express
+them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late. All
+continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should
+travel a mile except in the company of the owner. (All over Europe
+people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get
+it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day. It is very
+amusing--uncommonly so. There seemed grave doubts about our being able
+to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very
+handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all
+Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does.
+
+The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at
+his hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it. She was
+merely allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course, Phelps said she was merely
+pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.
+
+The children are all right. They paddle around a little, and drive-so
+do we all. Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists. The Fleulen boat
+went out crowded yesterday morning.
+
+The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its
+correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they
+would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and
+strong, and much hope is felt.
+
+Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves
+to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up. Which I
+do--and shut up.
+
+                              S. L. C.
+
+
+     They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find
+     Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.
+     Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.
+     Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be
+     out of place.  Of the villa he wrote: “It is a plain, square
+     building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green
+     window-shutters.  It stands in a commanding position on the
+     artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around
+     with masonry.  From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the
+     estate slant away toward the valley....  Roses overflow the
+     retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the
+     gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the
+     drop-curtains in the theaters.  The house is a very fortress for
+     strength.”
+
+     The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
+     Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters.  The Ross castle
+     was but a little distance away.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+
+                                   VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
+
+                                                  Sept.  30, 1892
+
+DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a
+beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a
+deep leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and
+occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
+black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most
+conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
+looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this
+hillock five and six hundred years ago.
+
+The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
+cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a
+little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but
+it won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the
+Italian tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman
+understand only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn,
+but Jean and the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is
+the worst off of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all
+among the help.
+
+With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
+not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy
+had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle. This sounds kind
+of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain
+or pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this
+fortress. There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or
+enable a conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.
+
+Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are
+excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains
+washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put
+together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain
+stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't
+quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.
+
+Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house.
+
+Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and
+the best is yet to come. There is going to be absolute seclusion here--a
+hermit life, in fact. We (the rest of us) shall run over to the Ross's
+frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy--that is
+all. Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on his house
+has been stopped and his servants discharged. Therefore we shall merely
+go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate in Florence
+until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it.
+
+This present house is modern. It is not much more than two centuries
+old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity.
+The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large
+ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past.
+One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see. Another
+is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons
+in Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales. Another is dated 1463--he
+could have met Columbus.....
+
+Evening. The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in
+floods. For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such
+a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe
+tumbles together in wreck and ruin. I have never seen anything more
+spectacular and impressive.
+
+One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway. Jean prefers it to all
+Europe, save Venice. Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,
+now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she
+learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.
+
+I am the head French duffer of the family. Most of the talk goes over my
+head at the table. I catch only words, not phrases. When Italian comes
+to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.
+
+This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, “Man hat
+mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe”--unconsciously dropping
+in a couple of Italian words, you see. So she is going to join the
+polyglots, too, it appears. They say it is good entertainment to hear
+her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing
+out and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go
+along. Five languages in use in the house (including the
+sign-language-hardest-worked of them all) and yet with all this opulence
+of resource we do seem to have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves
+understood.
+
+What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germania! That was the most
+satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in
+the raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the
+spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again....
+
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens got well settled down to work presently.  He found the
+     situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary
+     production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at
+     any other time since his arrival in Europe.  From letters to Mrs.
+     Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his
+     satisfaction.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+
+                                                  VILLA VIVIANI
+
+                              SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.  Oct. 22, '92.
+
+DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the
+cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy
+and the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of
+times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the
+sunset for company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun
+gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to
+wonder and exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new
+and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15
+minutes between dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude
+of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far
+hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick
+with them, clear to the summit.
+
+The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something
+not to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am
+acquainted with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy,
+charm, exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of
+change. It keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes
+Florence ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream,
+with domes and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it
+away with a puff of his breath.
+
+Livy is progressing admirably. This is just the place for her.
+
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  Dec.  12, '92.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.
+
+I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author
+Club Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name
+arrives too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in
+a book of ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to
+decide--and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my
+part, prefer the “$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories” by Mark Twain
+as a title, but above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this--it is not
+taffy.
+
+I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only
+the Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that
+in the book I am now writing.
+
+I finished “Those Extraordinary Twins” night before last makes 60 or
+80,000 words--haven't counted.
+
+The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely
+recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor
+characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and
+the Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.
+
+The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
+story after him--“Puddn'head Wilson.”
+
+Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!
+
+                                                  S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII. LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
+BUSINESS TROUBLES. “PUDD'NHEAD WILSON.” “JOAN OF ARC.” AT THE PLAYERS,
+NEW YORK.
+
+The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
+his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
+Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager. The business
+had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
+publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of
+the typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
+commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
+volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
+had undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty
+of sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
+payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and
+the liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
+considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into
+a tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale
+of twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital
+could be raised from some other source to make and market those books
+through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant
+bankruptcy in reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to
+keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It
+was also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant
+himself, and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders
+were pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always
+a little higher upon the horizon. If Hall had not been young and an
+optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the
+game. As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and
+stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would
+happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from
+the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until
+the L. A. L. tide should turn and float it into safety.
+
+Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him. He never found fault with
+him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value.
+He lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely
+needed for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs.
+Clemens to put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had
+spared.
+
+The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined. The letters to Hall of
+that year are frequent and carry along the story. To any who had formed
+the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they
+will perhaps be a revelation.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply
+distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with
+you about something. But most surely that cannot be. I tell her that
+although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other
+people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't
+believe I have done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of
+fire on my head, for I deserve it!
+
+I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have
+to deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an
+encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak. I
+have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought
+you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I
+drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for
+you.
+
+I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my
+monthly check pass over a couple of months. I could have stood that by
+drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would
+have done it cheerfully.
+
+I will write Whitmore to send you the “Century” check for $1,000, and
+you can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney
+which I think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.)
+If you need that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send
+Whitmore the Company's note for a year. If you don't need it, turn it
+over to Mr. Halsey and let him invest it for me.
+
+I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me
+if I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per
+cent I pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent? Now don't
+laugh if that is stupid.
+
+Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L.
+for $200,000. I judged he would. I hoped he would offer $100,000, but
+he didn't. If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence,
+we can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise
+$100,000. I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.
+
+I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour
+ago, and I believe I am all right again.
+
+How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York
+last summer! I would have tried my best to raise it. It would make us
+able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L. per month, but not any more, I
+guess.
+
+You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the
+money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.
+
+                              Sincerely Yours
+
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+“Whitmore,” in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark
+Twain's financial agent. The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on
+Tom Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas. Mr. Halsey
+was a down-town broker.
+
+Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had
+conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it
+for enough cash to finance its manufacture.
+
+We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest
+for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars. But in the next
+letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you
+think of it. We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a
+valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and
+well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of
+a money-breeding species. Now then I think that the association with
+us of some one of great name and with capital would give our business a
+prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong.
+
+As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were
+all, the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying
+venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from
+a business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been
+great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man. It
+is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners.
+Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in
+the several lines I speak of. Do you know him? You do by correspondence
+or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so
+that it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this
+desire of mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you
+fail to interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable
+suggestions from him. I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't
+use it if you don't need to.
+
+                                   Yours S. L. C.
+
+P. S. Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec. $1,000 and the
+Jan. $500--and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no hiatus.
+
+I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover
+the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of
+it.
+
+Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my
+intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000
+ourselves. I mean, wait for nothing. To make my suggestion available I
+should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can
+mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us.
+
+My book is type-written and ready for print--“Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale.”
+ (Or, “Those Extraordinary Twins,” if preferable.)
+
+It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn. But I don't know what
+to do with it. Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am.
+Pub. Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription
+machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as
+money-profit goes. I am in a quandary. Give me a lift out of it.
+
+I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is
+good or if it is bad. I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant
+bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am
+destitute of it.
+
+I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done
+and will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were
+gotten up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high
+enough price maybe the L. A. L. canvassers would take it and run it with
+that book. Would they? It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10,
+according to how it was gotten up, I suppose.
+
+I don't want it to go into a magazine.
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+I am having several short things type-“writered.” I will send them to
+you presently. I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that
+I have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good
+rates. I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be
+only superstition. What do you think?
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     “The companion to The Prince and the Pauper,” mentioned in this
+     letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of
+     Mark Twain's literary productions.  His interest in Joan had been
+     first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had
+     found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story
+     of her life.  That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,
+     insulted and mistreated by ruffians.  It had aroused all the
+     sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had
+     awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.
+
+     His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until
+     in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story.  As far back
+     as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had
+     begun to make the notes.  One thing and another had interfered, and
+     he had found no opportunity for such a story.  Now, however, in
+     Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking
+     across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the
+     Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of
+     France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, “The noble child,
+     the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have
+     produced.”  His surroundings and background would seem to have been
+     perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have
+     completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six
+     weeks.
+
+     Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing
+     seems to have come of the idea.  Once, at a later time, Mask Twain
+     himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that
+     it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket,
+     meaning into iron.  But Carnegie answered, “That's a mistake; put
+     all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket.”
+
+     It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was
+     demanded in America.  He must see if anything could be realized from
+     the type-setter or L. A. L.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       March 13, '93.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the Kaiser
+Wilhelm II.
+
+I send herewith 2 magazine articles.
+
+The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words.
+
+The “Diary” contains 3,800 words.
+
+Each would make about 4 pages of the Century.
+
+The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't.
+
+If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for
+both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead
+of breaking into your treasury.
+
+If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the
+Century, without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I
+will call and abuse them when I come.
+
+I signed and mailed the notes yesterday.
+
+                                        Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to
+     Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair
+     and be laid up with a severe cold.  The machine situation had not
+     progressed.  The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything
+     to a standstill.  The New York bank would advance Webster & Co. no
+     more money.  So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was
+     everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid
+     unrealities.  A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this:
+
+     “I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi
+     and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker
+     City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at
+     Florence--and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real
+     that I almost believe it is real.  I wonder if it is?  But there is
+     no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the
+     dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit.  I wish I knew
+     whether it is a dream or real.”
+
+     He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New
+     York, but he had little time for visiting.  On May 13th he sailed
+     again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  On the night before
+     sailing he sent Howells a good-by word.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York City:
+
+                              MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893.
+
+                                                            Midnight.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS--I am so sorry I missed you.
+
+I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you
+ever so much for it.
+
+I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I
+wasn't going to have a chance to see him at all. I forgot to tell you
+how thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office,
+and how true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its
+details. But Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me,
+and I am glad, for I wanted to speak of it.
+
+You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought
+a couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me
+two bottles of whisky and a box of cigars--I go to sea nobly equipped.
+
+Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours--and upon you all I
+leave my benediction.
+
+                              MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to
+     Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families.
+     There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in
+     the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary
+     of Agriculture.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.: Editorial Department
+Century Magazine, Union Square,
+
+                                             NEW YORK, April 6, 1893.
+
+TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,--Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark Twain,
+a poor farmer of Connecticut--indeed, the poorest one there, in the
+opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize), and in
+return will zealously support the Administration in all ways honorable
+and otherwise.
+
+To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an
+English lady. She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a
+great garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had
+the right ammunition. I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise,
+both on patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which
+I got made from a wax impression. It is not very good soil, still I
+think she can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select
+the table. If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and
+Gilder thinks you are,) please find the signature and address of your
+petitioner below.
+
+Respectfully and truly yours.
+
+                              MARK TWAIN,
+
+67 Fifth Avenue, New York.
+
+P. S.--A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would pleasantly
+add to that lady's employments and give my table a corresponding lift.
+
+
+     His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time
+     he had returned to Florence.  He was not hopeless yet, but he was
+     clearly a good deal disheartened--anxious for freedom.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  FLORENCE May 30, '93
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--You were to cable me if you sold any machine
+royalties--so I judge you have not succeeded.
+
+This has depressed me. I have been looking over the past year's letters
+and statements and am depressed still more.
+
+I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfitted
+for it and I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris
+volcano with help from the machine a long way off--doubtless a long way
+further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines.
+
+Now here is my idea for getting out.
+
+The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me--I do not know quite how much, but
+it is about $170,000 or $175,000, I suppose (I make this guess from the
+documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.)
+
+The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover
+the entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over. Is that it? In addition
+we have the L. A. L. plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000--is
+that correct?
+
+That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above
+indebtedness, I suppose--or, by one of your estimates, $300,000? The
+greater part of the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent. The
+rest (the old $70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest.
+
+Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those
+debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm? (The firm of course taking
+the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me
+clear of all responsibility.)
+
+I don't want much money. I only want first class notes--$200,000
+worth of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;--yearly notes, renewable
+annually for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at the
+beginning and middle of each year. After that, the notes renewable
+annually and (perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable
+semi-annually.
+
+Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above
+scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not
+able to learn a single detail of it.
+
+Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash
+capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity. Then your one-third
+would be a fortune--and I hope to see that day!
+
+I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any
+royalties. But if you can't make this deal don't make any. Wait a little
+and see if you can't make the deal. Do make the deal if you possibly
+can. And if any presence shall be necessary in order to complete it I
+will come over, though I hope it can be done without that.
+
+Get me out of business!
+
+And I will be yours forever gratefully,
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for
+thirty or forty thousand dollars. Is that it?
+
+P. S. S. The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a 10
+percent royalty.
+
+                                    S. L. C.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                              VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE)
+
+                                                       June 9, '93.
+
+DEAR JOE,--The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in
+tolerable condition--nothing left but weakness, cough all gone.
+
+Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet
+Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading
+his account of the adventures of his youth in the far East. In a
+footnote he has something to say about a sailor which I thought might
+interest you--viz:
+
+“This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia
+for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The
+windy and watery elements raged. Tears and prayers was had recourse to,
+but was of no manner of use. So we hauled up the anchor and got round
+the point.'”
+
+There--it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day.
+
+               With love,
+                         MARK.
+
+
+     They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month
+     arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the
+     German baths.  The next letter is written by her and shows her deep
+     sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle.  There have been few
+     more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's
+     wife.
+
+
+*****
+
+From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York:
+
+
+                                                  June 27th 1893
+
+                                                  MUNICH.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just reached
+here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you just a
+line in answer to it.
+
+Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter
+should reach you or he would not have sent it just then. I hope you will
+not worry any more than you can help. Do not let our interests weigh
+on you too heavily. We both know you will, as you always have, look in
+every way to the best interests of all.
+
+I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of
+business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much.
+
+But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the
+very farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your
+interests in order to save his own.
+
+I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would
+simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be
+released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not
+endanger your interest or the safety of the business.
+
+I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens'
+should have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible
+pressure. I hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy. He would
+not have written you about the money if he had known that it was an
+inconvenience for you to send it. He thought the book-keeper whose duty
+it is to forward it had forgotten.
+
+We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are
+a little easier with you. As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say “do not
+send us any more money at present” if we were not afraid to do so. I
+will say, however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are
+not able to send the usual amount.
+
+Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in
+any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you.
+
+I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some
+helpful light on the situation.
+
+Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit
+of your long and hard labor.
+
+               Believe me
+                    Very Cordially yours
+                              OLIVIA L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business. He
+realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the
+public, if his distinguished partner should retire. He wrote, therefore,
+proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set
+that was swamping them. It was a good plan--if it would work--and we
+find Clemens entering into it heartily.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             MUNICH, July 3, '93.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted
+dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L.
+
+I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible,
+whereas the other is perhaps not.
+
+The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free--and not only free but has
+large money owing to it. A proposition to sell that by itself to a big
+house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we
+cannot spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge
+scale necessary to make it an opulent success.
+
+It will be selling a good thing--for somebody; and it will be getting
+rid of a load which we are clearly not able to carry. Whoever buys
+will have a noble good opening--a complete equipment, a well organized
+business, a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not
+experimental but under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per
+cent a year on every dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it--I
+mean in making and selling the books.
+
+I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the
+over-supply which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so
+troubled, myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper
+and deeper in debt and the L. A. L. getting to be a heavier and heavier
+burden all the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief.
+
+It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you--for that
+I am not going to do. But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it will
+put you in better shape.
+
+               Sincerely Yours
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  July 8, '92.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L. I am
+glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will
+be out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again. With
+nothing but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value
+for us, rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it.
+
+I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many
+agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property.
+
+We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break
+for some country resort in a few days now.
+
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+                                                            July 8
+
+P. S. No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment
+before discharging your L. A. L. agents--in fact I didn't mean that. I
+judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once,
+since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us. It is they
+who have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no
+doubt.
+
+I feel panicky.
+
+I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than
+later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.
+
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+P. S. No monthly report for many months.
+
+
+     Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall
+     it as a black financial season.  Banks were denying credit,
+     businesses were forced to the wall.  It was a poor time to float any
+     costly enterprise.  The Chicago company who was trying to build the
+     machines made little progress.  The book business everywhere was
+     bad.  In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote
+     Hall:
+
+     “It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the
+     machine is finished.  We are afraid you are having miserable days
+     and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but
+     it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say
+     or do.”
+
+     He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben
+     Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: “It is my ingenious
+     scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more
+     year--and after that--well, goodness knows!  I have never felt so
+     desperate in my life--and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to
+     my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep
+     us two months.”
+
+     It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project
+     an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning
+     success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions
+     and the steps necessary to achievement.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       July 26, '93.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--..... I hope the machine will be finished this month;
+but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other
+machine after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like
+a house-afire.
+
+I wonder what they call “finished.” After it is absolutely perfect it
+can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running
+night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge.
+
+I may be able to run over about mid-October. Then if I find you relieved
+of L. A. L. we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely
+unique sort. Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it. Arthur could
+do all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval.
+
+The first number should pay--and all subsequent ones--25 cents a number.
+Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000. Give most of them away,
+sell the rest. Advertising and other expenses--cost unknown. Send one to
+all newspapers--it would get a notice--favorable, too.
+
+But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way. With our
+hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum.
+
+Where is the Shelley article? If you have it on hand, keep it and I will
+presently tell you what to do with it.
+
+Don't forget to tell me.
+
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+
+     The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the “Defense of
+     Harriet Sheller,” one of the very best of his essays.  How he could
+     have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction
+     passes comprehension.  Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised,
+     indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  July 30, '93.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--This time “Pudd'nhead Wilson” is a success! Even Mrs.
+Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without
+reserves or qualifications. Formerly she would not consent that it be
+published either before or after my death. I have pulled the twins apart
+and made two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they
+are mere flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has
+disappeared from the book. Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving
+not a trace behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have
+almost disappeared--they scarcely walk across the stage. The whole story
+is centered on the murder and the trial; from the first chapter the
+movement is straight ahead without divergence or side-play to the murder
+and the trial; everything that is done or said or that happens is a
+preparation for those events. Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from
+beginning to end, and only 3--Pudd'nhead, “Tom” Driscoll, and his nigger
+mother, Roxana; none of the others are important, or get in the way of
+the story or require the reader's attention. Consequently, the scenes
+and episodes which were the strength of the book formerly are stronger
+than ever, now.
+
+When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words,
+now it contains only 58,000. I have knocked out everything that delayed
+the march of the story--even the description of a Mississippi steamboat.
+There's no weather in, and no scenery--the story is stripped for flight!
+
+Now, then what is she worth? The amount of matter is but 3,000 words
+short of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500.
+There was nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one
+is virgin ground--absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting
+to everybody.
+
+I don't want any more syndicating--nothing short of $20,000, anyway,
+and that I can't get--but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan will
+stand?
+
+Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the
+poor-house.
+
+This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just
+received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring. Everything does look
+so blue, so dismally blue!
+
+By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not
+now--we are going to be moving around too much. I have torn up some of
+it, but still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that
+I like. I may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know
+I can write it to suit me.
+
+Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a
+friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools.
+I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his
+childish and ignorant impressions and opinions for him.
+
+Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days. When you get it cable
+
+                    Mark Twain
+                         Care Brownship, London
+                                        Received.
+
+I mean to ship “Pudd'nhead Wilson” to you-say, tomorrow. It'll furnish
+me hash for awhile I reckon. I am almost sorry it is finished; it was
+good entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things.
+
+We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans
+again. I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end
+of September, then go to Paris and take a rest.
+
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+P. S. Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is
+deeply distressed. She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have
+reproached you. She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship
+afloat in this storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from
+what she learns of the American business-situation from her home letters
+you have accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot
+bear to have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and
+the heartiest appreciation--and not the shadow of a reproach will she
+allow.
+
+I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing. And
+I said I would break open my letter and say so.
+
+Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or
+two--so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power. All
+right--I'm willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would send
+along his little yearly contribution. I dropped him a line about another
+matter a week ago--asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for me--you
+see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up time--but
+doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I don't
+hear from him and don't get any Daily News either.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             Aug.  6, '93.
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very sorry--it was thoughtless in me. Let the
+reports go. Send me once a month two items, and two only:
+
+Cash liabilities--(so much) Cash assets--(so much)
+
+I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that
+will be sufficient.
+
+Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
+anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you
+have been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do
+that--but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I
+have been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is
+a thing that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees
+his resources melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure
+daylight beyond. The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and
+will still offer nothing much better for a long time to come; for when
+Davis's “three weeks” is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I
+guess. That is unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the
+toughest one on prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has
+ever seen the light. Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with
+any considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down
+to actual work in a printing office.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:
+
+     “Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me!  I never knew the
+     almanac to drag so.  At least since I was finishing that other
+     machine.
+
+     “I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
+     cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week
+     certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old
+     familiar tune I used to hear so much.  Ward don't know what
+     sick-heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out.”
+
+     Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.
+     We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and
+     smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out.  It was not the
+     kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;
+     not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       Aug. 14, '93
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able
+to see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that
+every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may
+be in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course
+open. We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders--none to the
+Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and
+copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square
+up and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the
+present condition of things.
+
+What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties. If they come into
+danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save
+them, for if they go I am a beggar.
+
+I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and
+help them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors. I may
+be able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so.
+
+We can never resurrect the L. A. L. I would not spend any more money on
+that book. You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a
+preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that,
+I think. It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that.
+
+                    Yours Sincerely
+
+                              S. L. C.
+
+Aug. 16. I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any
+very definite place. Of course you will not have an instant's safety
+until the bank debts are paid. There is nothing to be thought of but
+to hand over every penny as fast as it comes in--and that will be slow
+enough! Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets
+and--
+
+I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and
+settled.
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Two weeks following this letter he could endure the suspense no
+     longer, and on August 29th sailed once more for America.  In New
+     York, Clemens settled down at the Players Club, where he could live
+     cheaply, and undertook some literary work while he was casting about
+     for ways and means to relieve the financial situation.  Nothing
+     promising occurred, until one night at the Murray Hill Hotel he was
+     introduced by Dr. Clarence C. Rice to Henry H. Rogers, of the
+     Standard Oil group of financiers.  Rogers had a keen sense of humor
+     and had always been a great admirer of Mark Twain's work.  It was a
+     mirthful evening, and certainly an eventful one in Mark Twain's
+     life.  A day or two later Doctor Rice asked the millionaire to
+     interest himself a little in Clemens's business affairs, which he
+     thought a good deal confused.  Just what happened is not remembered
+     now, but from the date of the next letter we realize that a
+     discussion of the matter by Clemens and Rogers must have followed
+     pretty promptly.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Europe:
+
+                                                  Oct. 18, '93.
+
+DEAR, DEAR SWEETHEART,--I don't seem to get even half a chance to write
+you, these last two days, and yet there's lots to say.
+
+Apparently everything is at last settled as to the giveaway of L. A. L.,
+and the papers will be signed and the transfer made to-morrow morning.
+
+Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil
+group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the
+type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching
+into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, “I find
+the machine to be all you represented it--I have here exhaustive reports
+from my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its
+immense value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its
+inventor's character. I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co.
+are both stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of
+money and in a hopeless boggle.”
+
+Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: “If I can arrange
+with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks to find
+out--I will see to it that they get the money they need. Then the thing
+will move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste paper.
+I will post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds. In the meantime,
+you stop walking the floor. Go off to the country and try to be gay.
+You may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you my
+scheme has failed.” And he added: “Keep me posted always as to where you
+are--for if I need you and can use you--I want to know where to put my
+hand on you.”
+
+If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely
+talking remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my
+royalties up.
+
+With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all,
+
+                                                       SAML.
+
+
+With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders
+of H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward
+the stars. He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and
+found pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed
+mainly mockery. We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to
+John Mackay's, and elsewhere.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       Dec. 2, '93.
+
+LIVY DARLING,--Last night at John Mackay's the dinner consisted of soup,
+raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, and something like a custard.
+I ate without fear or stint, and yet have escaped all suggestion of
+indigestion. The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew
+when I and they were young and not gray. The talk was of the days when
+we went gypsying a long time ago--thirty years. Indeed it was a talk
+of the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked, and the harum-scarum
+things they did and said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches
+and pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the
+night) to work off one's surplus vigor and energy. Of the mid-night
+highway robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the
+windswept and desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the
+victim. All the friendly robbers are gone. These old fools last night
+laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten
+crime.
+
+John Mackay has no family here but a pet monkey--a most affectionate and
+winning little devil. But he makes trouble for the servants, for he is
+full of curiosity and likes to take everything out of the drawers and
+examine it minutely; and he puts nothing back. The examinations of
+yesterday count for nothing to-day--he makes a new examination every
+day. But he injures nothing.
+
+I went with Laffan to the Racquet Club the other night and played,
+billiards two hours without starting up any rheumatism. I suppose it was
+all really taken out of me in Berlin.
+
+Richard Harding Davis spoke yesterday of Clara's impersonations at Mrs.
+Van Rensselaer's here and said they were a wonderful piece of work.
+
+Livy dear, I do hope you are comfortable, as to quarters and food at
+the Hotel Brighton. But if you're not don't stay there. Make one
+more effort--don't give it up. Dear heart, this is from one who loves
+you--which is Saml.
+
+
+     It was decided that Rogers and Clemens should make a trip to Chicago
+     to investigate personally the type-setter situation there.  Clemens
+     reports the details of the excursion to Mrs. Clemens in a long
+     subdivided letter, most of which has no general interest and is here
+     omitted.  The trip, as a whole, would seem to have been
+     satisfactory.  The personal portions of the long Christmas letter
+     may properly be preserved.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             THE PLAYERS, Xmas, 1893.
+
+                                  No. 1.
+
+Merry Xmas, my darling, and all my darlings! I arrived from Chicago
+close upon midnight last night, and wrote and sent down my Christmas
+cablegram before undressing: “Merry Xmas! Promising progress made in
+Chicago.” It would get to the telegraph office toward 8 this morning and
+reach you at luncheon.
+
+I was vaguely hoping, all the past week, that my Xmas cablegram would be
+definite, and make you all jump with jubilation; but the thought always
+intruded itself, “You are not going out there to negotiate with a man,
+but with a louse. This makes results uncertain.”
+
+I was asleep as Christmas struck upon the clock at mid night, and didn't
+wake again till two hours ago. It is now half past 10 Xmas morning; I
+have had my coffee and bread, and shan't get out of bed till it is time
+to dress for Mrs. Laflan's Christmas dinner this evening--where I shall
+meet Bram Stoker and must make sure about that photo with Irving's
+autograph. I will get the picture and he will attend to the rest. In
+order to remember and not forget--well, I will go there with my dress
+coat wrong side out; it will cause remark and then I shall remember.
+
+
+                               No. 2 and 3.
+
+I tell you it was interesting! The Chicago campaign, I mean. On the way
+out Mr. Rogers would plan out the campaign while I walked the floor and
+smoked and assented. Then he would close it up with a snap and drop it
+and we would totally change the subject and take up the scenery, etc.
+
+(Here follows the long detailed report of the Chicago conference, of
+interest only to the parties directly concerned.)
+
+
+                                  No. 4.
+
+We had nice tripe, going and coming. Mr. Rogers had telegraphed the
+Pennsylvania Railroad for a couple of sections for us in the fast train
+leaving at 2 p. m. the 22nd. The Vice President telegraphed back that
+every berth was engaged (which was not true--it goes without saying)
+but that he was sending his own car for us. It was mighty nice and
+comfortable. In its parlor it had two sofas, which could become beds at
+night. It had four comfortably-cushioned cane arm-chairs. It had a very
+nice bedroom with a wide bed in it; which I said I would take because
+I believed I was a little wider than Mr. Rogers--which turned out to
+be true; so I took it. It had a darling back-porch--railed, roofed and
+roomy; and there we sat, most of the time, and viewed the scenery and
+talked, for the weather was May weather, and the soft dream-pictures of
+hill and river and mountain and sky were clear and away beyond anything
+I have ever seen for exquisiteness and daintiness.
+
+The colored waiter knew his business, and the colored cook was a
+finished artist. Breakfasts: coffee with real cream; beefsteaks,
+sausage, bacon, chops, eggs in various ways, potatoes in various--yes,
+and quite wonderful baked potatoes, and hot as fire. Dinners--all manner
+of things, including canvas-back duck, apollinaris, claret, champagne,
+etc.
+
+We sat up chatting till midnight, going and coming; seldom read a line,
+day or night, though we were well fixed with magazines, etc.; then I
+finished off with a hot Scotch and we went to bed and slept till 9.30
+a.m. I honestly tried to pay my share of hotel bills, fees, etc., but I
+was not allowed--and I knew the reason why, and respected the motive. I
+will explain when I see you, and then you will understand.
+
+We were 25 hours going to Chicago; we were there 24 hours; we were 30
+hours returning. Brisk work, but all of it enjoyable. We insisted on
+leaving the car at Philadelphia so that our waiter and cook (to whom Mr.
+R. gave $10 apiece,) could have their Christmas-eve at home.
+
+Mr. Rogers's carriage was waiting for us in Jersey City and deposited
+me at the Players. There--that's all. This letter is to make up for the
+three letterless days. I love you, dear heart, I love you all.
+
+                                                                 SAML.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV. LETTERS 1894. A WINTER IN NEW YORK. BUSINESS FAILURE. END OF THE
+MACHINE.
+
+The beginning of the new year found Mark Twain sailing buoyantly on a
+tide of optimism. He believed that with H. H. Rogers as his financial
+pilot he could weather safely any storm or stress. He could divert
+himself, or rest, or work, and consider his business affairs with
+interest and amusement, instead of with haggard anxiety. He ran over to
+Hartford to see an amateur play; to Boston to give a charity reading; to
+Fair Haven to open the library which Mr. Rogers had established there;
+he attended gay dinners, receptions, and late studio parties, acquiring
+the name of the “Belle of New York.” In the letters that follow we get
+the echo of some of these things. The Mrs. Rice mentioned in the next
+brief letter was the wife of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, who had introduced H.
+H. Rogers to Mark Twain.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             Jan. 12, '94
+
+Livy darling, I came down from Hartford yesterday with Kipling, and
+he and Hutton and I had the small smoking compartment to ourselves and
+found him at last at his ease, and not shy. He was very pleasant company
+indeed. He is to be in the city a week, and I wish I could invite him to
+dinner, but it won't do. I should be interrupted by business, of course.
+The construction of a contract that will suit Paige's lawyer (not Paige)
+turns out to be very difficult. He is embarrassed by earlier advice
+to Paige, and hates to retire from it and stultify himself. The
+negotiations are being conducted, by means of tedious long telegrams and
+by talks over the long-distance telephone. We keep the wires loaded.
+
+Dear me, dinner is ready. So Mrs. Rice says.
+
+                         With worlds of love,
+
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+Clemens and Oliver Wendell Holmes had met and become friends soon after
+the publication of Innocents Abroad, in 1869. Now, twenty-five years
+later, we find a record of what without doubt was their last meeting. It
+occurred at the home of Mrs. James T. Field.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             BOSTON, Jan. 25, '94.
+
+Livy darling, I am caught out worse this time than ever before, in the
+matter of letters. Tuesday morning I was smart enough to finish and
+mail my long letter to you before breakfast--for I was suspecting that
+I would not have another spare moment during the day. It turned out just
+so.
+
+In a thoughtless moment I agreed to come up here and read for the poor.
+I did not reflect that it would cost me three days. I could not get
+released. Yesterday I had myself called at 8 and ran out to Mr. Rogers's
+house at 9, and talked business until half past 10; then caught 11
+o'clock train and arrived here at 6; was shaven and dressed by 7 and
+ready for dinner here in Mrs. Field's charming house.
+
+Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out now (he is in his 84th year,)
+but he came out this time--said he wanted to “have a time” once more
+with me.
+
+Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come and went away crying because
+she wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett and
+sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.
+
+Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking
+(and listening) as ever he did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett
+said he hadn't been in such splendid form in years. He had ordered his
+carriage for 9.
+
+The coachman sent in for him at 9; but he said, “Oh, nonsense!--leave
+glories and grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away and come in an
+hour!”
+
+At 10 he was called for again, and Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose,
+but he wouldn't go--and so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more
+Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--and he didn't go till half
+past 10--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was
+prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, and is having
+Pudd'nhead read to him. I told him you and I used the Autocrat as a
+courting book and marked it all through, and that you keep it in the
+sacred green box with the love letters, and it pleased him.
+
+Good-bye, my dear darling, it is 15 minutes to dinner and I'm not
+dressed yet. I have a reception to-night and will be out very late at
+that place and at Irving's Theatre where I have a complimentary box. I
+wish you were all here.
+
+                         SAML.
+
+
+     In the next letter we meet James J. Corbett--“Gentleman Jim,” as he
+     was sometimes called--the champion pugilist of that day.
+
+     The Howells incident so amusingly dramatized will perhaps be more
+     appreciated if the reader remembers that Mark Twain himself had at
+     intervals been a mind-healing enthusiast.  Indeed, in spite of his
+     strictures on Mrs. Eddy, his interest in the subject of mind-cure
+     continued to the end of his life.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                  Sunday, 9.30 a. m.
+
+Livy dear, when we got out to the house last night, Mrs. Rogers, who is
+up and around, now, didn't want to go down stairs to dinner, but Mr. R.
+persuaded her and we had a very good time indeed. By 8 o'clock we were
+down again and bought a fifteen-dollar box in the Madison Square Garden
+(Rogers bought it, not I,) then he went and fetched Dr. Rice while I
+(went) to the Players and picked up two artists--Reid and Simmons--and
+thus we filled 5 of the 6 seats. There was a vast multitude of people in
+the brilliant place. Stanford White came along presently and invited me
+to go to the World-Champion's dressing room, which I was very glad to
+do. Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being
+the most perfectly and beautifully constructed human animal in the
+world. I said:
+
+“You have whipped Mitchell, and maybe you will whip Jackson in June--but
+you are not done, then. You will have to tackle me.”
+
+He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in
+earnest:
+
+“No--I am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or right to
+require it. You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own,
+but by a purely accidental blow; and then my reputation would be gone
+and you would have a double one. You have got fame enough and you ought
+not to want to take mine away from me.”
+
+Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank in San Francisco.
+
+There were lots of little boxing matches, to entertain the crowd: then
+at last Corbett appeared in the ring and the 8,000 people present went
+mad with enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form. They said
+they had never seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its
+perfection except Greek statues, and they didn't surpass it.
+
+Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion--oh,
+beautiful to see!--then the show was over and we struggled out through a
+perfect wash of humanity. When we reached the street I found I had left
+my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so Simmons said he would go
+back and get them, and I didn't dissuade him. I couldn't see how he was
+going to make his way a single yard into that solid oncoming wave of
+people--yet he must plow through it full 50 yards. He was back with the
+shoes in 3 minutes!
+
+How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By saying:
+
+“Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes.”
+
+The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, and Simmons
+walked comfortably through and back, dry shod. Simmons (this was
+revealed to me under seal of secrecy by Reid) is the hero of “Gwen,” and
+he and Gwen's author were once engaged to marry. This is “fire-escape”
+ Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: “Exit--in case of Simmons.”
+
+I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to the Players for
+10.30; I was there by 10.45. Thirty cultivated and very musical ladies
+and gentlemen present--all of them acquaintances and many of them
+personal friends of mine. That wonderful Hungarian Band was there (they
+charge $500 for an evening.) Conversation and Band until midnight; then
+a bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me and
+I told about Dr. B. E. Martin and the etchings, and followed it with the
+Scotch-Irish Christening. My, but the Martin is a darling story! Next,
+the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the
+company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch
+accompanying on the piano.
+
+Just a little pause--then the Band burst out into an explosion of weird
+and tremendous dance music, a Hungarian celebrity and his wife took the
+floor--I followed; I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one by
+one, and it was Onteora over again.
+
+By half past 4 I had danced all those people down--and yet was not
+tired; merely breathless. I was in bed at 5, and asleep in ten minutes.
+Up at 9 and presently at work on this letter to you. I think I wrote
+until 2 or half past. Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it
+is called 3 miles but it is short of it) arriving at 3.30, but he was
+out--to return at 5.30--(and a person was in, whom I don't particularly
+like)--so I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with the Howellses
+until 6.
+
+First, Howells and I had a chat together. I asked about Mrs. H. He said
+she was fine, still steadily improving, and nearly back to her old best
+health. I asked (as if I didn't know):
+
+“What do you attribute this strange miracle to?”
+
+“Mind-cure--simply mind-cure.”
+
+“Lord, what a conversion! You were a scoffer three months ago.”
+
+“I? I wasn't.”
+
+“You were. You made elaborate fun of me in this very room.”
+
+“I did not, Clemens.”
+
+“It's a lie, Howells, you did.”
+
+I detailed to him the conversation of that time--with the stately
+argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually
+been killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when
+the mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a “regular” at
+last because the former can't procure you a burial permit.
+
+At last he gave in--he said he remembered that talk, but had now been a
+mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever
+been anything else.
+
+Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she
+used to be, so many years ago.
+
+Mrs. H. said: “People may call it what they like, but it is
+just hypnotism, and that's all it is--hypnotism pure and simple.
+Mind-cure!--the idea! Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any mind.
+She's a good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and--”
+
+“Now Eleanor!”
+
+“I know what I'm talking about!--don't I go there twice a week? And Mr.
+Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she
+snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that
+to me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and
+a superstition--oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw! A-n-d-when
+she tilts up her nose-well, it's--it's--Well it's that kind of a nose
+that--”
+
+“Now Eleanor!--the woman is not responsible for her nose--” and so-on
+and so-on. It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having this
+feast and you not there.
+
+She convinced me before she got through, that she and William James are
+right--hypnotism and mind-cure are the same thing; no difference between
+them. Very well; the very source, the very center of hypnotism is Paris.
+Dr. Charcot's pupils and disciples are right there and ready to your
+hand without fetching poor dear old Susy across the stormy sea. Let
+Mrs. Mackay (to whom I send my best respects), tell you whom to go to to
+learn all you need to learn and how to proceed. Do, do it, honey. Don't
+lose a minute.
+
+.... At 11 o'clock last night Mr. Rogers said:
+
+“I am able to feel physical fatigue--and I feel it now. You never show
+any, either in your eyes or your movements; do you ever feel any?”
+
+I was able to say that I had forgotten what that feeling was like. Don't
+you remember how almost impossible it was for me to tire myself at the
+Villa? Well, it is just so in New York. I go to bed unfatigued at 3, I
+get up fresh and fine six hours later. I believe I have taken only one
+daylight nap since I have been here.
+
+When the anchor is down, then I shall say:
+
+“Farewell--a long farewell--to business! I will never touch it again!”
+
+I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it, I will swim
+in ink! Joan of Arc--but all this is premature; the anchor is not down
+yet.
+
+To-morrow (Tuesday) I will add a P. S. if I've any to add; but, whether
+or no, I must mail this to morrow, for the mail steamer goes next day.
+
+5.30 p. m. Great Scott, this is Tuesday! I must rush this letter into
+the mail instantly.
+
+Tell that sassy Ben I've got her welcome letter, and I'll write her
+as soon as I get a daylight chance. I've most time at night, but I'd
+druther write daytimes.
+
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+     The Reid and Simmons mentioned in the foregoing were Robert Reid and
+     Edward Simmons, distinguished painter--the latter a brilliant,
+     fluent, and industrious talker.  The title; “Fire-escape Simmons,”
+      which Clemens gives him, originated when Oliver Herford, whose
+     quaint wit has so long delighted New-Yorkers, one day pinned up by
+     the back door of the Players the notice: “Exit in case of Simmons.”
+      Gwen, a popular novel of that day, was written by Blanche Willis
+     Howard.
+
+     “Jamie” Dodge, in the next letter, was the son of Mrs. Mary Mapes
+     Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Clara Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                   MR. ROGERS'S OFFICE, Feb.  5, '94.
+
+Dear Benny--I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am
+away down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for
+good-fellowship. I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading
+and will ask them to sign them. I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night,
+and if Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody.
+
+I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, and meantime I hope
+to get a good picture of her to sign. She was of the breakfast company
+yesterday, but the picture of herself which she signed and gave me does
+not do her majestic beauty justice.
+
+I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have
+to live up to the name which Jamie Dodge has given me--the “Belle of
+New York”--and it just keeps me rushing. Yesterday I had engagements to
+breakfast at noon, dine at 3, and dine again at 7. I got away from the
+long breakfast at 2 p. m., went and excused myself from the 3 o'clock
+dinner, then lunched with Mrs. Dodge in 58th street, returned to the
+Players and dressed, dined out at 9, and was back at Mrs. Dodge's at 10
+p. m. where we had magic-lantern views of a superb sort, and a lot of
+yarns until an hour after midnight, and got to bed at 2 this morning--a
+good deal of a gain on my recent hours. But I don't get tired; I sleep
+as sound as a dead person, and always wake up fresh and strong--usually
+at exactly 9.
+
+I was at breakfast lately where people of seven separate nationalities
+sat and the seven languages were going all the time. At my side sat
+a charming gentleman who was a delightful and active talker, and
+interesting. He talked glibly to those folks in all those seven
+languages and still had a language to spare! I wanted to kill him, for
+very envy.
+
+               I greet you with love and kisses.
+
+                                                  PAPA.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       Feb.--.
+Livy dear, last night I played billiards with Mr. Rogers until 11, then
+went to Robert Reid's studio and had a most delightful time until 4
+this morning. No ladies were invited this time. Among the people present
+were--
+
+   Coquelin;
+   Richard Harding Davis;
+   Harrison, the great out-door painter;
+   Wm. H. Chase, the artist;
+   Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph.
+   Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about
+   him in Jan. or Feb. Century.
+   John Drew, actor;
+   James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!
+   Smedley the artist;
+   Zorn the artist;
+   Zogbaum the artist;
+   Reinhart the artist;
+   Metcalf the artist;
+   Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;
+
+Oh, a great lot of others. Everybody there had done something and was in
+his way famous.
+
+Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech; John Drew did
+the like for me in English, and then the fun began. Coquelin did some
+excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical Englishman
+telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly killed the fifteen
+or twenty people who understood it.
+
+I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling
+imitations, Harding Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was
+of course good, but he followed it with that most fascinating (for what
+reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, “On the Road to Mandalay,”
+ sang it tenderly, and it searched me deeper and charmed me more than the
+Deever.
+
+Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance music and we all danced
+about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was.
+Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what
+the sense of fatigue is.
+
+Coquelin talks quite good English now. He said:
+
+“I have a brother who has the fine mind--ah, a charming and delicate
+fancy, and he knows your writings so well, and loves them--and that is
+the same with me. It will stir him so when I write and tell him I have
+seen you!”
+
+Wasn't that nice? We talked a good deal together. He is as winning as
+his own face. But he wouldn't sign that photograph for Clara. “That? No!
+She shall have a better one. I will send it to you.”
+
+He is much driven, and will forget it, but Reid has promised to get the
+picture for me, and I will try and keep him reminded.
+
+Oh, dear, my time is all used up and your letters are not answered.
+
+Mama, dear, I don't go everywhere--I decline most things. But there are
+plenty that I can't well get out of.
+
+I will remember what you say and not make my yarning too common.
+
+I am so glad Susy has gone on that trip and that you are trying the
+electric. May you both prosper. For you are mighty dear to me and in my
+thoughts always.
+
+                                   SAML.
+
+
+     The affairs of the Webster Publishing Company were by this time
+     getting into a very serious condition indeed.  The effects of the
+     panic of the year before could not be overcome.  Creditors were
+     pressing their claims and profits were negligible.  In the following
+     letter we get a Mark Twain estimate of the great financier who so
+     cheerfully was willing to undertake the solving of Mark Twain's
+     financial problems.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                              THE PLAYERS, Feb. 15, '94.  11.30 p. m.
+
+Livy darling, Yesterday I talked all my various matters over with Mr.
+Rogers and we decided that it would be safe for me to leave here the
+7th of March, in the New York. So his private secretary, Miss Harrison,
+wrote and ordered a berth for me and then I lost no time in cabling you
+that I should reach Southampton March 14, and Paris the 15th. Land, but
+it made my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again!... One
+thing at a time. I never fully laid Webster's disastrous condition
+before Mr. Rogers until to-night after billiards. I did hate to burden
+his good heart and over-worked head with it, but he took hold with
+avidity and said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a
+pleasure. We discussed it from various standpoints, and found it a
+sufficiently difficult problem to solve; but he thinks that after he has
+slept upon it and thought it over he will know what to suggest.
+
+You must not think I am ever rude with Mr. Rogers, I am not. He is not
+common clay, but fine--fine and delicate--and that sort do not call out
+the coarsenesses that are in my sort. I am never afraid of wounding him;
+I do not need to watch myself in that matter. The sight of him is peace.
+
+He wants to go to Japan--it is his dream; wants to go with me--which
+means, the two families--and hear no more about business for awhile, and
+have a rest. And he needs it. But it is like all the dreams of all busy
+men--fated to remain dreams.
+
+You perceive that he is a pleasant text for me. It is easy to write
+about him. When I arrived in September, lord how black the prospect
+was--how desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster and Co. had to
+have a small sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford--to
+my friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, and I was
+ashamed that I went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got
+the money and was by it saved. And then--while still a stranger--he set
+himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in
+his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity,
+a benevolence--and he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at a
+cost of three months of wearing and difficult labor. He gave that time
+to me--time which could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand
+dollars a month--no, nor for three times the money.
+
+Well, in the midst of that great fight, that long and admirable fight,
+George Warner came to me and said:
+
+“There is a splendid chance open to you. I know a man--a prominent
+man--who has written a book that will go like wildfire; a book that
+arraigns the Standard Oil fiends, and gives them unmitigated hell,
+individual by individual. It is the very book for you to publish; there
+is a fortune in it, and I can put you in communication with the author.”
+
+I wanted to say:
+
+“The only man I care for in the world; the only man I would give a damn
+for; the only man who is lavishing his sweat and blood to save me and
+mine from starvation and shame, is a Standard Oil fiend. If you know me,
+you know whether I want the book or not.”
+
+But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get
+out of the publishing business and out of all business, and was here for
+that purpose and would accomplish it if I could.
+
+But there's enough. I shall be asleep by 3, and I don't need much
+sleep, because I am never drowsy or tired these days. Dear, dear Susy my
+strength reproaches me when I think of her and you, my darling.
+
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+     But even so able a man as Henry Rogers could not accomplish the
+     impossible.  The affairs of the Webster Company were hopeless, the
+     business was not worth saving.  By Mr. Rogers's advice an assignment
+     was made April, 18, 1894.  After its early spectacular success less
+     than ten years had brought the business to failure.  The publication
+     of the Grant memoirs had been its only great achievement.
+
+     Clemens would seem to have believed that the business would resume,
+     and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but
+     we cannot believe that it long survived.  Young Hall, who had made
+     such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must
+     presently have seen the futility of any effort in that direction.
+
+     Of course the failure of Mark Twain's firm made a great stir in the
+     country, and it is easy to understand that loyal friends would rally
+     in his behalf.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       April 22, '94.
+
+Dear old darling, we all think the creditors are going to allow us to
+resume business; and if they do we shall pull through and pay the debts.
+I am prodigiously glad we made an assignment. And also glad that we did
+not make it sooner. Earlier we should have made a poor showing; but now
+we shall make a good one.
+
+I meet flocks of people, and they all shake me cordially by the hand and
+say “I was so sorry to hear of the assignment, but so glad you did it.
+It was around, this long time, that the concern was tottering, and all
+your friends were afraid you would delay the assignment too long.”
+
+John Mackay called yesterday, and said, “Don't let it disturb you,
+Sam--we all have to do it, at one time or another; it's nothing to be
+ashamed of.”
+
+One stranger out in New York State sent me a dollar bill and thought
+he would like to get up a dollar-subscription for me. And Poultney
+Bigelow's note came promptly, with his check for $1,000. I had been
+meeting him every day at the Club and liking him better and better
+all the time. I couldn't take his money, of course, but I thanked him
+cordially for his good will.
+
+Now and then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles with
+me and says “Cheer up--don't be downhearted,” and some other friend
+says, “I am glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are and how
+bravely you stand it”--and none of them suspect what a burden has been
+lifted from me and how blithe I am inside. Except when I think of you,
+dear heart--then I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and
+ashamed, and dreading to look people in the face. For in the thick of
+the fight there is cheer, but you are far away and cannot hear the drums
+nor see the wheeling squadrons. You only seem to see rout, retreat, and
+dishonored colors dragging in the dirt--whereas none of these things
+exist. There is temporary defeat, but no dishonor--and we will march
+again. Charley Warner said to-day, “Sho, Livy isn't worrying. So long as
+she's got you and the children she doesn't care what happens. She knows
+it isn't her affair.” Which didn't convince me.
+
+Good bye my darling, I love you and all of the kids--and you can tell
+Clara I am not a spitting gray kitten.
+
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+     Clemens sailed for Europe as soon as his affairs would permit him
+     to go.  He must get settled where he could work comfortably.
+     Type-setter prospects seemed promising, but meantime there was
+     need of funds.
+
+     He began writing on the ship, as was his habit, and had completed
+     his article on Fenimore Cooper by the time he reached London.  In
+     August we find him writing to Mr. Rogers from Etretat, a little
+     Norman watering-place.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                             ETRETAT, (NORMANDIE)
+
+                                                  CHALET DES ABRIS
+
+                                                       Aug.  25, '94.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I find the Madam ever so much better in health and
+strength. The air is superb and soothing and wholesome, and the Chalet
+is remote from noise and people, and just the place to write in. I shall
+begin work this afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Clemens is in great spirits on, account of the benefit which she
+has received from the electrical treatment in Paris and is bound to take
+it up again and continue it all the winter, and of course I am perfectly
+willing. She requires me to drop the lecture platform out of my mind and
+go straight ahead with Joan until the book is finished. If I should have
+to go home for even a week she means to go with me--won't consent to be
+separated again--but she hopes I won't need to go.
+
+I tell her all right, “I won't go unless you send, and then I must.”
+
+She keeps the accounts; and as she ciphers it we can't get crowded for
+money for eight months yet. I didn't know that. But I don't know much
+anyway.
+
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The reader may remember that Clemens had written the first half of
+     his Joan of Arc book at the Villa Viviani, in Florence, nearly two
+     years before.  He had closed the manuscript then with the taking of
+     Orleans, and was by no means sure that he would continue the story
+     beyond that point.  Now, however, he was determined to reach the
+     tale's tragic conclusion.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                                       ETRETAT,
+                                                  Sunday, Sept. 9, '94.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS, I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down--in my
+head. It has now been three days since I laid up. When I wrote you a
+week ago I had added 10,000 words or thereabout to Joan. Next day I
+added 1,500 which was a proper enough day's work though not a full one;
+but during Tuesday and Wednesday I stacked up an aggregate of 6,000
+words--and that was a very large mistake. My head hasn't been worth a
+cent since.
+
+However, there's a compensation; for in those two days I reached and
+passed--successfully--a point which I was solicitous about before I ever
+began the book: viz., the battle of Patay. Because that would naturally
+be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of either two books
+or one. In the one case one goes right along from that point (as I shall
+do now); in the other he would add a wind-up chapter and make the book
+consist of Joan's childhood and military career alone.
+
+I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an
+intemperate' rate. My head is pretty cobwebby yet.
+
+I am hoping that along about this time I shall hear that the machine is
+beginning its test in the Herald office. I shall be very glad indeed to
+know the result of it. I wish I could be there.
+
+                    Sincerely yours
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Rouen, where Joan met her martyrdom, was only a short distance away,
+     and they halted there en route to Paris, where they had arranged to
+     spend the winter.  The health of Susy Clemens was not good, and they
+     lingered in Rouen while Clemens explored the old city and
+     incidentally did some writing of another sort.  In a note to Mr.
+     Rogers he said: “To put in my odd time I am writing some articles
+     about Paul Bourget and his Outre-Mer chapters--laughing at them and
+     at some of our oracular owls who find them important.  What the hell
+     makes them important, I should like to know!”
+
+     He was still at Rouen two weeks later and had received encouraging
+     news from Rogers concerning the type-setter, which had been placed
+     for trial in the office of the Chicago Herald.  Clemens wrote: “I
+     can hardly keep from sending a hurrah by cable.  I would certainly
+     do it if I wasn't superstitious.”  His restraint, though wise, was
+     wasted the end was near.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Dec. 22; '94.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, and
+also prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know
+ourselves and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It hit me like a
+thunder-clap. It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went
+flying here and there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only
+one clearly defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of
+the crazy storm-drift that my dream of ten years was in desperate
+peril, and out of the 60,000 or 90,000 projects for its rescue that came
+floating through my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me
+to examine it and size it up. Have you ever been like that? Not so much
+so, I reckon.
+
+There was another clearly defined idea--I must be there and see it die.
+That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we might hatch up
+some next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed and take a walk.
+
+So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling and walked over
+to the rue Scribe--4 P. M.--and asked a question or two and was told I
+should be running a big risk if I took the 9 P. M. train for London and
+Southampton; “better come right along at 6.52 per Havre special and step
+aboard the New York all easy and comfortable.” Very! and I about two
+miles from home, with no packing done.
+
+Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation-notions that were
+whirl-winding through my head could be examined or made available unless
+at least a month's time could be secured. So I cabled you, and said
+to myself that I would take the French steamer tomorrow (which will be
+Sunday).
+
+By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational and
+contented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long. So I went
+on thinking--mixing it with a smoke in the dressing room once an
+hour--until dawn this morning. Result--a sane resolution; no matter what
+your answer to my cable might be, I would hold still and not sail until
+I should get an answer to this present letter which I am now writing, or
+a cable answer from you saying “Come” or “Remain.”
+
+I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sediment of
+my 70,000 projects to be of this character:
+
+[Several pages of suggestions for reconstructing the machine follow.]
+
+Don't say I'm wild. For really I'm sane again this morning.
+
+                       ......................
+
+I am going right along with Joan, now, and wait untroubled till I hear
+from you. If you think I can be of the least use, cable me “Come.” I can
+write Joan on board ship and lose no time. Also I could discuss my plan
+with the publisher for a deluxe Joan, time being an object, for some of
+the pictures could be made over here cheaply and quickly, but would cost
+much time and money in America.
+
+                       ......................
+
+If the meeting should decide to quit business Jan. 4, I'd like to have
+Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison doesn't
+mind that disagreeable job. And I'll have to write them, too, of course.
+
+                    With love,
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The “Stoker” of this letter was Bram Stoker, long associated with
+     Sir Henry Irving.  Irving himself had also taken stock in the
+     machine.  The address, 169 Rue de l'Universite, whence these letters
+     are written, was the beautiful studio home of the artist Pomroy
+     which they had taken for the winter.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                        PARIS, Dec. 27, '94.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Notwithstanding your heart is “old and hard,” you make
+a body choke up. I know you “mean every word you say” and I do take it
+“in the same spirit in which you tender it.” I shall keep your regard
+while we two live--that I know; for I shall always remember what you
+have done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything
+that could forfeit it or impair it. I am 59 years old; yet I never had
+a friend before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he
+found me in deep waters.
+
+It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing
+day, and then through a night without sleep; then settled down next day
+into my right mind (or thereabouts,) and wrote you. I put in the rest of
+that day till 7 P. M. plenty comfortably enough writing a long chapter
+of my book; then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus,
+taking Clara along; and we had a good time. I have lost no day since and
+suffered no discomfort to speak of, but drove my troubles out of my mind
+and had good success in keeping them out--through watchfulness. I have
+done a good week's work and put the book a good way ahead in the Great
+Trial, which is the difficult part which requires the most thought and
+carefulness. I cannot see the end of the Trial yet, but I am on the
+road. I am creeping surely toward it.
+
+“Why not leave them all to me.” My business bothers? I take you by the
+hand! I jump at the chance!
+
+I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed--and yet I
+do jump at the chance in spite of it. I don't want to write Irving and
+I don't want to write Stoker. It doesn't seem as if I could. But I can
+suggest something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am
+unwise, you can write them something quite different. Now this is my
+idea:
+
+     1.  To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock.
+
+     2.  And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will make good to
+     him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay him of his $500.
+
+
+P. S. Madam says No, I must face the music. So I enclose my effort to be
+used if you approve, but not otherwise.
+
+There! Now if you will alter it to suit your judgment and bang away, I
+shall be eternally obliged.
+
+We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy
+matter, for it costs heavily to live in. We can never live in it again;
+though it would break the family's hearts if they could believe it.
+
+Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her--which
+is the reason I haven't drowned myself.
+
+We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of yours
+and a Happy New Year!
+
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+Enclosure:
+
+MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed at
+present.
+
+When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my
+machine-enterprise--a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself the
+aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque for
+the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me--I can't
+get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to
+you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage
+presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a
+dab at a time I will make up to him the rest.
+
+I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home.
+Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that London
+lecture-project entirely. Had to--there's never been a chance since to
+find the time.
+
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV. LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS. FINISHING “JOAN OF
+ARC.” THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD. DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                                       [No date.]
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the circular
+to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit--there doesn't seem
+to be any other wise course.
+
+There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize
+that my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it
+reveries my horoscope. The proverb says, “Born lucky, always lucky,” and
+I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It
+was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the
+Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned
+condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be
+a cat in disguise. When the “Pennsylvania” blew up and the telegraph
+reported my brother as fatally injured (with 60 others) but made
+no mention of me, my uncle said to my mother “It means that Sam was
+somewhere else, after being on that boat a year and a half--he was born
+lucky.” Yes, I was somewhere else. I am so superstitious that I have
+always been afraid to have business dealings with certain relatives and
+friends of mine because they were unlucky people. All my life I have
+stumbled upon lucky chances of large size, and whenever they were wasted
+it was because of my own stupidity and carelessness. And so I have felt
+entirely certain that that machine would turn up trumps eventually. It
+disappointed me lots of times, but I couldn't shake off the confidence
+of a life-time in my luck.
+
+Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the
+good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there
+wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.
+
+I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the
+good luck to step promptly ashore.
+
+Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account,
+and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
+prediction sure to be fulfilled.
+
+I've got a first rate subject for a book. It kept me awake all night,
+and I began it and completed it in my mind. The minute I finish Joan I
+will take it up.
+
+               Love and Happy New Year to you all.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
+     was concerned.  Paige succeeded in getting some new people
+     interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
+     affected Mark Twain.  Characteristically he put the whole matter
+     behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
+     a burden of debts with a stout heart.  The beginning of the new year
+     found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
+     but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not
+     permanently--and never more industrious or capable.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought
+I would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate
+holiday since I had the gout. On the first holiday I wrote a tale of
+about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did
+8,000 before midnight. I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
+recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and
+some revision; but this time I fared better--I finished the Huck Finn
+tale that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it.
+
+The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000
+words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank
+the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took
+that other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't
+and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one
+which I finished on my second holiday--“Tom Sawyer, Detective.”
+
+It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks,
+though I expect young folk to read it, too. It transfers to the banks of
+the Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in
+Sweden in old times.
+
+I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss
+Harrison.--[Secretary to Mr. Rogers.]
+
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             Apr. 29, '95.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th arrived
+three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house.
+
+There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me. That is
+Brusnahan's money. If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago
+enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money
+paid back to him. I will give him as many months to decide in as he
+pleases--let him name 6 or 10 or 12--and we will let the money stay
+where it is in your hands till the time is up. Will Miss Harrison
+tell him so? I mean if you approve. I would like him to have a good
+investment, but would meantime prefer to protect him against loss.
+
+At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the
+stake.
+
+With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today,
+but it will be gone tomorrow. I judged that this end of the book would
+be hard work, and it turned out so. I have never done any work before
+that cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and
+cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution. For I wanted
+the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the
+reader's interest would not flag--in fact I wanted the reader's interest
+to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view--with
+the result that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions.
+Although it is mere history--history pure and simple--history stripped
+naked of flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention--the
+family agree that I have succeeded. It was a perilous thing to try in a
+tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one--provided I stuck strictly
+to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and skimp
+the work. The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only needed
+to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference only
+one French history and one English one--and shoveled in as much fancy
+work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I pleased.
+But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and
+five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of
+them has escaped me.
+
+Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was written for
+love.
+
+There--I'm called to see company. The family seldom require this of me,
+but they know I am not working today.
+
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     “Brusnahan,” of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New
+     York Herald, superintendent of the press-room--who had invested some
+     of his savings in the type-setter.
+
+     In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters
+     connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a
+     reading-tour around the world.  He was nearly sixty years old, and
+     time had not lessened his loathing for the platform.  More than
+     once, however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a
+     debt-payer, and never yet had his burden been so great as now.  He
+     concluded arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the
+     Pacific Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of
+     the tour.  In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing
+     to bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London,
+     where he had visited Stanley the explorer--an old friend.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                             169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                                  Sunday, Apr.7,'95.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in
+a grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing
+Street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and
+fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more
+than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight.
+There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
+Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
+equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches.
+I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and
+show them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong
+I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work
+on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture
+there a month or two when I return from Australia.
+
+There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife
+of His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian
+Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me
+in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me
+and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have
+a great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we
+would find him ready. I have a letter from her this morning enclosing
+a letter of introduction to the Admiral. I already know the Admiral
+commanding in the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out
+there. He sleeps with my books under his pillow. P'raps it is the only
+way he can sleep.
+
+According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of
+course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend
+June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture
+in San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia
+before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of
+November. We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and
+they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.
+
+Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
+doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
+finances a little easier.
+
+                    With a power of love to you all,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
+     he wrote: “I am tired to death all the time:”  To a man of less
+     vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
+     under such circumstances this condition would have remained
+     permanent.  But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on
+     things in general that was his chief life-saver.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                              169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Apr. 29, '95.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I have been hidden an hour or two, reading proof of
+Joan and now I think I am a lost child. I can't find anybody on the
+place. The baggage has all disappeared, including the family. I reckon
+that in the hurry and bustle of moving to the hotel they forgot me. But
+it is no matter. It is peacefuller now than I have known it for days and
+days and days.
+
+In these Joan proofs which I have been reading for the September Harper
+I find a couple of tip-top platform readings--and I mean to read them
+on our trip. If the authorship is known by then; and if it isn't, I will
+reveal it. The fact is, there is more good platform-stuff in Joan than
+in any previous book of mine, by a long sight.
+
+Yes, every danged member of the tribe has gone to the hotel and left me
+lost. I wonder how they can be so careless with property. I have got to
+try to get there by myself now.
+
+All the trunks are going over as luggage; then I've got to find
+somebody on the dock who will agree to ship 6 of them to the Hartford
+Customhouse. If it is difficult I will dump them into the river. It is
+very careless of Mrs. Clemens to trust trunks and things to me.
+
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     By the latter part of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens,
+     laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour.
+     The outlook was not a pleasant one.  To Mr. Rogers he wrote: “I
+     sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west.  I
+     sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to
+     appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation.  Nothing in
+     this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting
+     performance.  I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house,
+     and how in the nation am I going to sit?  Land of Goshen, it's this
+     night week!  Pray for me.”
+
+     The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of
+     a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed
+     amusing to him later.
+
+
+*****
+
+To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                                       (Forenoon)
+                                             CLEVELAND, July 16, '95.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory Sunday
+night. But here, last night, I suffered defeat--There were a couple of
+hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of benches
+which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house. And there was
+nobody to watch them or keep them quiet. Why, with their scufflings and
+horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie. Besides, a concert of
+amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,) and their
+families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept encoring
+them and they always responded. So it was 20 minutes to 9 before I got
+the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar apiece
+for a chance to go to hell in this fashion.
+
+I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling
+boys had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case;
+so I skipped a third of my program and quit. The newspapers are kind,
+but between you and me it was a defeat. There ain't going to be any more
+concerts at my lectures. I care nothing for this defeat, because it
+was not my fault. My first half hour showed that I had the house, and I
+could have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped.
+
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+P. S. Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey. Crammed the house and turned
+away a crowd. We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it
+had ever had in it before. I believe I don't care to have a talk go off
+better than that one did.
+
+
+     Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his
+     daughter Clara--Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at
+     Quarry Farm.  The tour was a financial success from the start.
+     By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand
+     dollars had been remitted to Mr. Rogers against that day of
+     settlement when the debts of Webster & Co. were to be paid.  Perhaps
+     it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged
+     on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his
+     wife consented to this as final.  They would pay in full.
+
+     They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895.  About the only letter
+     of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the
+     moment of departure.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rudyard Kipling, in England:
+
+                                                       August, 1895.
+
+DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India. This
+has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload
+from my conscience a debt long due to you. Years ago you came from India
+to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time. It has always been my
+purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day. I shall
+arrive next January and you must be ready. I shall come riding my ayah
+with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by
+a troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild
+bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I
+shall be thirsty.
+
+                         Affectionately,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters.
+     Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere
+     lavishly entertained.  He was beset by other carbuncles, but would
+     seem not to have been seriously delayed by them.  A letter to his
+     old friend Twichell carries the story.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL,
+                                             NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND,
+                                                  November 29, '95.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has just
+arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle. It is No. 3. Not a
+serious one this time. I lectured last night without inconvenience, but
+the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture. My second one
+kept me in bed a week in Melbourne.
+
+... We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights
+us all through.
+
+I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here
+at Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city. Here we
+have the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing
+between us and it but 20 yards of shingle--and hardly a suggestion of
+life in that space to mar it or make a noise. Away down here fifty-five
+degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar
+tongue--a foreign tongue--tongue bred among the ice-fields of the
+Antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast
+unvisited solitudes it has come from. It was very delicious and solacing
+to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there. I wish you were
+here--land, but it would be fine!
+
+Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better
+than one could have expected they would. They have tough experiences, in
+the way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with
+the worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment.
+
+No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday. A week later we shall
+reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia. We
+sailed for New Zealand October 30.
+
+Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and
+tomorrow will be mine. I shall be 60--no thanks for it.
+
+I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones.
+
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The article mentioned in the foregoing letter was one which Twichell
+     had been engaged by Harper's Magazine to write concerning the home
+     life and characteristics of Mark Twain.  By the time the Clemens
+     party had completed their tour of India--a splendid, triumphant
+     tour, too full of work and recreation for letter-writing--and had
+     reached South Africa, the article had appeared, a satisfactory one,
+     if we may judge by Mark Twain's next.
+
+     This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives
+     of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at
+     Pretoria.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC,
+                                        The Queen's Birthday, '96.
+                                                       (May 24)
+
+DEAR OLD JOE,--Harper for May was given to me yesterday in Johannesburg
+by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article on me while
+coming up in the train with her and an old friend and fellow-Missourian
+of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and spirited wife of
+the chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here under a 15-year
+sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1 and 5-year
+terms. Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away above my
+deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and as
+for Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be
+grateful to you to the bottom of her heart. Between you and Punch
+and Brander Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised
+sufficiently high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it
+is the study of their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere
+within bounds.
+
+I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on
+her to-day. She is well.
+
+Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond. A Boer
+guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only
+he barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court)
+and wouldn't let me cross a white mark that was on the ground--the
+“death-line” one of the prisoners called it. Not in earnest, though, I
+think. I found that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior
+and a guest of Gen. Franklin's. I also found that I had known Capt.
+Mein intimately 32 years ago. One of the English prisoners had heard me
+lecture in London 23 years ago. After being introduced in turn to all
+the prisoners, I was allowed to see some of the cells and examine their
+food, beds, etc. I was told in Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of
+$150,000 a year is not stopped, and that the salaries of some of the
+others are still continued. Hammond was looking very well indeed, and
+I can say the same of all the others. When the trouble first fell upon
+them it hit some of them very hard; several fell sick (Hammond among
+them), two or three had to be removed to the hospital, and one of the
+favorites lost his mind and killed himself, poor fellow, last week. His
+funeral, with a sorrowing following of 10,000, took the place of the
+public demonstration the Americans were getting up for me.
+
+These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are
+all educated men. They are well off; some of them are wealthy. They have
+a lot of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they
+will be able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for
+very long, I take it. I am told they have times of deadly brooding and
+depression. I made them a speech--sitting down. It just happened so. I
+don't prefer that attitude. Still, it has one advantage--it is only a
+talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech. I have tried it once before
+on this trip. However, if a body wants to make sure of having “liberty,”
+ and feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course. I advised them
+at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to
+it and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again
+somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to
+go and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their
+jail-terms.
+
+We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a
+little over, and we outsiders had to go. I went again to-day, but the
+Rev. Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer
+named Du Plessis--explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to
+admit saint and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday. Du
+Plessis--descended from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years
+ago--but he hasn't any French left in him now--all Dutch.
+
+It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara
+remain in Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip
+to Johannesburg. And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were
+so lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that
+I sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought. It is just the
+beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool.
+But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as
+lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with
+interest. I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next
+Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital,
+then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join
+us by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently
+to the Cape--and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and
+sail for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will
+write and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean
+study music and things in London.
+
+We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland,
+July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or
+land, notwithstanding the carbuncles and things. Even when I was laid
+up 10 days at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English
+friends. All over India the English well, you will never know how good
+and fine they are till you see them.
+
+Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture
+tonight.
+
+A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the
+     Jameson raid would not be out of place here.  Dr. Leander Starr
+     Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley.  President
+     Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of
+     his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief.  From Lobengula
+     concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South
+     African Company.  Jameson gave up his profession and went in for
+     conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.
+     In time he became administrator of Rhodesia.  By the end of 1894.
+     he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as
+     a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time.  Perhaps this turned
+     his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news
+     that “Dr. Jim,” as he was called, at the head of six hundred men,
+     had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an
+     uprising at Johannesburg.  The raid was a failure.  Jameson, and
+     those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of
+     “Oom Paul,” and some of them barely escaped execution.  The Boer
+     president handed them over to the English Government for punishment,
+     and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually
+     released.  Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African
+     politics, but there is no record of any further raids.
+
+                     .........................
+
+     The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896,
+     and on the last day of the month reached England.  They had not
+     planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near
+     London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his
+     travels.
+
+     The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive
+     August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying
+     that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail.  A cable inquiry was
+     immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory,
+     and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.
+     This was on August 15th.  Three days later, in the old home at
+     Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever.  She had been
+     visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice
+     had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a
+     few steps away.
+
+     Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the
+     hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family
+     happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.
+     There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried
+     long before his arrival.  He awaited in England the return of his
+     broken family.  They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea,
+     No. 23 Tedworth Square.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:
+
+                                        Permanent address:
+                                        % CHATTO & WINDUS
+                                        111 T.  MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON,
+                                                       Sept.  27, '96.
+
+Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you
+stood poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way
+down, twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring
+the peace and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor
+child, and again to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother. It
+was like you; like your good great heart, like your matchless and
+unmatchable self. It was no surprise to me to learn that you stayed by
+Susy long hours, careless of fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me
+to learn that you could still the storms that swept her spirit when no
+other could; for she loved you, revered you, trusted you, and “Uncle
+Joe” was no empty phrase upon her lips! I am grateful to you, Joe,
+grateful to the bottom of my heart, which has always been filled with
+love for you, and respect and admiration; and I would have chosen you
+out of all the world to take my place at Susy's side and Livy's in those
+black hours.
+
+Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in
+this generation. And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner
+and George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the
+Cheneys, and Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick
+Burton, and perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the
+same degree--for she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew
+that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and
+subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent.
+I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded
+the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was
+mine than I knew it when I had it. But I have this consolation: that
+dull as I was, I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or
+my work--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--and I took it as the
+accolade from the hand of genius. I see now--as Livy always saw--that
+she had greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of
+it.
+
+And now she is dead--and I can never tell her.
+
+God bless you Joe--and all of your house.
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:
+
+                                             LONDON, Sept.  28, '96.
+
+It is as you say, dear old friend, “the pathos of it” yes, it was a
+piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish. When we
+started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
+1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
+light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
+throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears. One year, one
+month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
+the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of
+the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a
+journey and was near at hand to meet them. She was waiting in the house
+she was born in, in her coffin.
+
+All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to
+rags rehearsing them. The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
+without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
+wanton details. The child was taken away when her mother was within
+three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.
+
+In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
+with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would
+have happened.
+
+                         With love
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
+     privacy.  Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
+     scarcely half a dozen knew his address.  He worked steadily on his
+     book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
+     beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers.  In one of these he
+     said, “I am appalled!  Here I am trying to load you up with work
+     again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
+     for a year.  It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it.”
+
+     But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that
+     was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
+     unique and world-wide distinction.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+For and in behalf of Helen Keller, stone blind and deaf, and formerly
+dumb.
+
+DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes
+to set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
+bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't
+convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.
+
+Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at
+Lawrence Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July,
+in Boston, when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for
+admission to Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition.
+She was allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other
+applicants, and this was shortened in her case by the fact that the
+question papers had to be read to her. Yet she scored an average of 90
+as against an average of 78 on the part of the other applicants.
+
+It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
+studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a
+fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines
+she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
+
+There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
+degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the
+teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember
+her.) Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
+case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it.
+I see nobody. Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding
+can enable me to write my long book in time.
+
+So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and
+get him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller
+and the other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe
+an annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and
+agree to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed
+her college course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no,
+they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as
+they please, they have my consent.
+
+Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
+shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of
+want. I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult
+and disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that
+miraculous girl?
+
+No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to
+plead with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him
+clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have
+spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think
+that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through
+their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer “Here!” when
+its name is called in this one. 638
+
+There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that
+I am making; I know you too well for that.
+
+Good-bye with love to all of you
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly--close by, and handy
+when wanted.
+
+
+     The plea was not made in vain.  Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested
+     themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly
+     no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever
+     had reason for disappointment.
+
+     In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens
+     also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in
+     the matter of his own difficulties.  This particular reference
+     concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen
+     between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house
+     in Franklin Square.
+
+
+                                             LONDON, Dec.  22, '96.
+
+DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to you
+both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that
+Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was
+sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone
+far and away beyond the sum I expected--may your lines fall in pleasant
+places here and Hereafter for it!
+
+The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for
+their sakes as well as for Helen's.
+
+I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old
+cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come
+to enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about
+it the elements of stability and permanency. However, at any time that
+he says sign, we're going to do it.
+
+                         Ever sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI. LETTERS 1897. LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA
+
+     Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and
+     managed to keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is
+     noticeable that 'Following the Equator' is more serious than
+     his other books of travel. He wrote few letters, and these
+     only to his three closest friends, Howells, Twichell, and
+     Rogers.  In the letter to Twichell, which follows, there is
+     mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to
+     resume.  One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically
+     begun, but perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it
+     through, for it never reached conclusion.  He had already
+     tried it in one or two forms and would begin it again
+     presently.  The identity of the other tale is uncertain.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 19, '97.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do. I do not want most
+people to write, but I do want you to do it. The others break my heart,
+but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not in
+other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you know
+the secret places of our hearts. You know our life--the outside of
+it--as the others do--and the inside of it--which they do not. You have
+seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and
+the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts;
+battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it
+is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all
+we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of
+that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded
+high--to come to this!
+
+I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go
+away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with
+her, yet leave our dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she was.
+To me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need
+to look at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not
+necessary; and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me
+it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my
+fortune is gone, I am a pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to
+have it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?
+
+Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes
+rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which
+they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad;
+and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen. This was happy
+fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If she had died
+in another house-well, I think I could not have borne that. To us, our
+house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to
+see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was
+of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the
+peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its
+face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could
+not enter it unmoved. And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should
+enter it unshod.
+
+I am trying to add to the “assets” which you estimate so generously.
+No, I am not. The thought is not in my mind. My purpose is other. I am
+working, but it is for the sake of the work--the “surcease of sorrow”
+ that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when
+I use that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now;
+but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my
+preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and
+the beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most.
+Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along--in fact
+have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each.
+The present one will contain 180,000 words--130,000 are done. I am well
+protected; but Livy! She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing
+but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me. She does not
+see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her. She
+sits solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all
+happened, and why. We others were always busy with our affairs, but
+Susy was her comrade--had to be driven from her loving
+persecutions--sometimes at 1 in the morning. To Livy the persecutions
+were welcome. It was heaven to her to be plagued like that. But it is
+ended now. Livy stands so in need of help; and none among us all could
+help her like you.
+
+Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk. I hope so. We could
+have such talks! We are all grateful to you and Harmony--how grateful
+it is not given to us to say in words. We pay as we can, in love; and in
+this coin practicing no economy.
+
+                         Good bye, dear old Joe!
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of
+     business, but in one of them he said: “I am going to write with all
+     my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can
+     in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that
+     is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the
+     promptest kind of a way and no fooling around.”  And in one he
+     wrote: “You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest.”
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York
+
+                                                  LONDON, Feb. 23, '97.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to
+thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.
+The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a
+life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don't mean that
+I am miserable; no--worse than that--indifferent. Indifferent to nearly
+everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do it
+without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.
+
+This mood will pass, some day--there is history for it. But it cannot
+pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence. She was always so
+quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are
+dead people who go through the motions of life. Indeed I am a mud image,
+and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has
+comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is a law of our
+nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the
+presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it
+and apparently of no kinship with it. I have finished my book, but I go
+on as if the end were indefinitely away--as indeed it is. There is no
+hurry--at any rate there is no limit.
+
+Jean's spirits are good; Clara's are rising. They have youth--the only
+thing that was worth giving to the race.
+
+These are sardonic times. Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle.
+But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on. If I were not
+a hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle
+over it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race. This has
+been a bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England
+humbled--that is, not too much. We are sprung from her loins, and it
+hurts me. I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in
+that. We can't count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland
+to count. Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted--and
+sincere, too, and nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that
+the wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her
+rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels.
+
+Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
+
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he
+     thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and
+     change.  The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the
+     middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: “A
+     successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out
+     of it.”  Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of
+     his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he
+     wrote, whimsically, “Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at
+     a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself.....  I
+     would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de
+     luxe editions of my books.  But Mrs. Clemens and the children object
+     to this, I do not know why.”  And, in a moment of depression: “You
+     see the lightning refuses to strike me--there is where the defect
+     is.  We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did.  But
+     nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy.”
+
+     They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on
+     Lake Lucerne--“The charmingest place we ever lived in,” he declared,
+     “for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery.”  It was here that
+     he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one
+     other manuscript.  From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn
+     something of his employments and economies.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Henry H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                         LUCERNE, August the something or other, 1897.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I am writing a novel, and am getting along very well
+with it.
+
+I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the
+loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory. We have a small house
+on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from
+the inn below on the lake shore. Six francs a day per head, house and
+food included. The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful. We have a row
+boat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors. Nobody knows we
+are here. And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.
+
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  LUCERNE, Aug. 22, '97.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day on
+one of her shopping trips--George Williamson Smith--did I tell you about
+it? We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual refreshment as
+we had not tasted in many a month.
+
+And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers--6. I had
+known one of them in London 24 years ago. Three of the 6 were born in
+slavery, the others were children of slaves. How charming they were--in
+spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing,
+matter, carriage, clothes--in every detail that goes to make the real
+lady and gentleman, and welcome guest. We went down to the village
+hotel and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd
+of German and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their
+beer mugs in front of them--self-contained and unimpressionable looking
+people, an indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience--and up
+at the far end of the room sat the Jubilees in a row. The Singers got up
+and stood--the talking and glass jingling went on. Then rose and swelled
+out above those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the
+secret of whose make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon
+that house. It was fine to see the faces light up with the pleased
+wonder and surprise of it. No one was indifferent any more; and when the
+singers finished, the camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded
+me of Launcelot riding in Sir Kay's armor and astonishing complacent
+Knights who thought they had struck a soft thing. The Jubilees sang a
+lot of pieces. Arduous and painstaking cultivation has not diminished
+or artificialized their music, but on the contrary--to my surprise--has
+mightily reinforced its eloquence and beauty. Away back in the
+beginning--to my mind--their music made all other vocal music cheap; and
+that early notion is emphasized now. It is utterly beautiful, to me; and
+it moves me infinitely more than any other music can. I think that in
+the Jubilees and their songs America has produced the perfectest flower
+of the ages; and I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would
+worship it and lavish money on it and go properly crazy over it.
+
+Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were
+native. It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and
+nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner.
+
+The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great
+enthusiasm--acquired technique etc, included.
+
+One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated
+by him after the war. The party came up to the house and we had a
+pleasant time.
+
+This is paradise, here--but of course we have got to leave it by and by.
+The 18th of August--[Anniversary of Susy Clemens's death.]--has come and
+gone, Joe--and we still seem to live.
+
+                         With love from us all.
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis “as
+     anywhere else in the geography,” but October found them in Vienna
+     for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole.  The Austrian capital was
+     just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted
+     in the following:
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 23, '97.
+
+DEAR JOE,--We are gradually getting settled down and wonted. Vienna
+is not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement
+which: has a distinctly economical aspect. The Vice Consul made the
+contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30
+and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month. I used to pay
+$1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford.
+
+Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the
+most important event which has happened to me in ten days--unless I
+count--in my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday,
+with the proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his
+case comes up.
+
+If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much
+politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the
+hang of it. It is Christian and Jew by the horns--the advantage with the
+superior man, as usual--the superior man being the Jew every time and
+in all countries. Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a
+country where there were 3 Jews to 10 Christians! Oh, not the shade of
+a shadow of a chance. The difference between the brain of the average
+Christian and that of the average Jew--certainly in Europe--is about the
+difference between a tadpole's and an Archbishop's. It's a marvelous,
+race--by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I
+suppose.
+
+And there's more politics--the clash between Czech and Austrian. I wish
+I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can't.
+
+With the abounding love of us all
+
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing
+     Mark Twain on his trip around the world.  It was a trick photograph
+     made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out
+     and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an
+     ox.  In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of
+     the disreputable cart.  His companions are two negroes.  To the
+     creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic
+     acknowledgment.
+
+
+*****
+
+To T. S. Frisbie
+
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 25, '97.
+
+MR. T. S. FRISBIE,--Dear Sir: The picture has reached me, and has
+moved me deeply. That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and
+although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe
+successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even
+in the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts. Princes and
+dukes and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could
+hardly keep from trying to buy it. The barouche does not look as fine,
+now, as it did earlier-but that was before the earthquake.
+
+The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and
+your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of
+India is accurate and full of tender feeling.
+
+I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much
+more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.
+
+                    Very truly yours
+                                   MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark
+     Twain's old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford.  The sale of it
+     was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but
+     also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark
+     Twain's brave struggle to pay his debts.  When the newspapers began
+     to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling
+     up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the
+     sympathy.  He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following
+     result:
+
+
+*****
+
+To Frank E. Bliss, in Hartford:
+
+                                             VIENNA, Nov. 4, 1897.
+
+DEAR BLISS,--Your cablegram informing me that a report is in circulation
+which purports to come from me and which says I have recently made
+$82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled
+back my regret to you that it is not true. I wrote a letter--a private
+letter--a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief that I should
+be out of debt within the next twelvemonth. If you make as much as usual
+for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a fact, and I
+shall be wholly out of debt. I am encoring you now.
+
+It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar
+mare's nest has developed. But why do you worry about the various
+reports? They do not worry me. They are not unfriendly, and I don't see
+how they can do any harm. Be patient; you have but a little while to
+wait; the possible reports are nearly all in. It has been reported that
+I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man;
+dead--the other man again. It has been reported that I have received a
+legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt--it was another man;
+and now comes this $82,000--still another man. It has been reported
+that I am writing books--for publication; I am not doing anything of
+the kind. It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be able to get
+another book ready for the press within the next three years. You can
+see, yourself, that there isn't anything more to be reported--invention
+is exhausted. Therefore, don't worry, Bliss--the long night is breaking.
+As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have
+become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And don't
+take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on our
+house in Hartford, and let it talk.
+
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+P. S. This is not a private letter. I am getting tired of private
+letters.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             VIENNA
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE, NOV. 19, '97.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter.
+You needn't send letters by London.
+
+I am very much obliged for Forrest's Austro-Hungarian articles. I have
+just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion
+and Vienna's are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me--the
+paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities. He and Vienna both
+say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the
+whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things
+quiet; can't afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas
+and stirring the public soul. I am assured that every time a man finds
+himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate
+him to a wholesome obscurity. It is curious and interesting.
+
+Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine
+(correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from
+the celebrities of the Empire. She spoke of this. Two or three bright
+Austrians were present. They said “There are none who are known all over
+the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their
+work and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names;
+Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12
+hour speech; two names-nothing more. Every other country in the world,
+perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen,
+but ours. We've got the material--have always had it--but we have to
+suppress it; we can't afford to let it develop; our political salvation
+depends upon tranquillity--always has.”
+
+Poor Livy! She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now.
+We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of
+days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
+
+Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and
+we all send love.
+
+                              MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna.
+     The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies
+     presently became violent.  Clemens found himself intensely
+     interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was
+     cleared by the police.  All sorts of stories were circulated as to
+     what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America.  A letter
+     to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Dec. 10, '97.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in
+it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled
+the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted 'Hoch die Deutschen!'
+and got hustled out. Oh dear, what a pity it is that one's adventures
+never happen! When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery
+and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to
+stay, by saying, “But this gentleman is a foreigner--you don't need to
+turn him out--he won't do any harm.”
+
+“Oh, I know him very well--I recognize him by his pictures; and I should
+be very glad to let him stay, but I haven't any choice, because of the
+strictness of the orders.”
+
+And so we all went out, and no one was hustled. Below, I ran across
+the London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the
+first gallery and I lost none of the show. The first gallery had not
+misbehaved, and was not disturbed.
+
+... We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the lovely
+people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and around
+here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time. Jean's
+woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
+
+Good-bye Joe--and we all love all of you.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best
+     things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations
+     of the Austro-Hungarian confusions.  It was published in Harper's
+     Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
+
+     Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid--at least,
+     none of importance.  The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's
+     hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy
+     burden.  He wrote asking for relief.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+Fragment of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us
+begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally
+unfits me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time
+I have begun twenty magazine articles and books--and flung every one of
+them aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit
+out of any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no
+time and spared no effort----
+
+Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts.
+Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote
+every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
+
+
+          Extracts from letters to H.  H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+... We all delighted with your plan. Only don't leave B--out. Apparently
+that claim has been inherited by some women--daughters, no doubt.
+We don't want to see them lose any thing. B----- is an ass, and
+disgruntled, but I don't care for that. I am responsible for the money
+and must do the best I can to pay it..... I am writing hard--writing for
+the creditors.
+
+
+                                                            Dec.  29.
+
+Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in
+my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling
+it in.
+
+
+                                                            Jan.  2.
+
+Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind
+again--no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again--it is not
+labor any longer.
+
+
+                                                            March 7.
+
+Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again
+and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really
+happy day she has had since Susy died.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII. LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL. LIFE IN VIENNA. PAYMENT
+OF THE DEBTS. ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS.
+
+The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts.
+Once more he stood free before the world--a world that sounded his
+praises. The latter fact rather amused him. “Honest men must be pretty
+scarce,” he said, “when they make so much fuss over even a defective
+specimen.” When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells
+in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                             VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it
+“Hartford, 1871.” There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now. And
+how much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
+meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the
+glorious days of that old time--and they were. It is my quarrel--that
+traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport,
+and then taken away.
+
+About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating
+disaster in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke
+is further away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been
+through all other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done
+as it ought to be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be
+written with the blood out of a man's heart. I couldn't know, then, how
+soon I was to be made competent. I have thought of it many a time since.
+If you were here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in
+your dream. For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now,
+with some of our passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in
+eclipse.
+
+I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the
+ears. Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days,
+Sundays included. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it
+fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of
+the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change
+lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining. I
+don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll
+write half a dozen that won't, anyway. Dear me, I didn't know there was
+such fun in it. I'll write twenty that won't play. I get into immense
+spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal of
+this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co.
+debts, I mean. (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every
+cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't
+cash. I have marked this “private” because it is for the friends who are
+attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want
+to and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and
+which I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are
+small. Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never
+get the like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3
+years ago. And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things
+that I reckon maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble,
+after all. Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the
+children have never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the
+beginning.
+
+We all send you and all of you our love.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells wrote: “I wish you could understand how unshaken you are,
+     you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep
+     that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the
+     same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare.”
+
+     The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social
+     clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like
+     an embassy than the home of a mere literary man.  Celebrities in
+     every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for
+     the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other
+     home in Vienna.  Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a
+     central figure.  Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit,
+     and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal
+     family.  It was following one such event that the next letter was
+     written.
+
+
+(Private)
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98.
+
+DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago--you see how
+it is: can't get time to finish anything. I pile up lots of work,
+nevertheless. There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of
+them. I say “Private” up there because I've got an adventure to tell,
+and you mustn't let a breath of it get out. First I thought I would
+lay it up along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same
+purpose--to talk to you about, but--those others have vanished out of my
+memory; and that must not happen with this.
+
+The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of
+it Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir
+apparent of the imperial throne--a beautiful lady, with a beautiful
+spirit, and very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me
+for writing them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the
+hand--just the kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it
+the prettiest tale there is.
+
+Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies,
+the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your
+respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors'
+Book kept in the office of the establishment. That is the end of it, and
+everything is squared up and ship-shape.
+
+So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by
+the sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for
+the book and said we wished to write our names in it. And he called
+a servant in livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal
+Highness was out but would soon be in. Of course Livy said “No--no--we
+only want the book;” but he was firm, and said, “You are Americans?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then you are expected, please go up stairs.”
+
+“But indeed we are not expected--please let us have the book and--”
+
+“Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while--she commanded
+me to tell you so--and you must wait.”
+
+Well, the soldiers were there close by--there was no use trying to
+resist--so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us
+into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in. And she
+wouldn't stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at
+any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for
+anything. So we went down stairs again--to my unspeakable regret. For it
+was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the princess
+would come, and catch us up there, and that those other Americans who
+were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by the portier,
+and shot by the sentinels--and then it would all go into the papers, and
+be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be perfectly
+lovely. And by that time the princess would discover that we were not
+the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out, and
+the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another
+prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and--well, Joe, I was in
+a state of perfect bliss. But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier
+wouldn't let us out--he was sorry, but he must obey orders--we must
+go back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy--I couldn't help but enjoy her
+distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain,
+if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We
+went up stairs again--laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one
+drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed
+upon us.
+
+Livy was in a state of mind! She said it was too theatrically
+ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that
+I would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers--and she
+tried to make me promise--“Promise what?” I said--“to be quiet about
+this? Indeed I won't--it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll
+tell it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make
+it perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders myself--it takes all
+three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like
+to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his
+futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging
+in here and wanting to know.” But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a
+time to be trying to be funny--we were in a most miserable and shameful
+situation, and if--
+
+Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little
+princes flowed in! Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie
+Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses
+present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)--and we shook hands all
+around and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an
+hour--and by and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had
+been sent for by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the
+hotel. We were invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an
+hour and a half.
+
+Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were
+the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones
+come, and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody
+suspecting us for impostors.
+
+We send lots and lots of love.
+
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark
+     Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right--how he
+     wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one
+     large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the
+     Paige type-setter.  It seems incredible that, after that experience
+     and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again.  But
+     scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he
+     was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions,
+     perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern
+     machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius.  That
+     Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic
+     line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers.
+     Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel
+     Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                                       March 24, '98.
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--(I feel like Col. Sellers).
+
+Mr. Kleinberg [agent for Sczezepanik] came according to appointment,
+at 8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary. I asked
+questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call “No. 2 “) and
+got as good an idea of it as I could. It is a machine. It automatically
+punches the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical
+accuracy. It will do for $1 what now costs $3. So it has value, but “No.
+2” is the great thing (the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of $10
+and the jacquard looms must have it.
+
+Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this:
+
+“You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy,
+etc. I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off
+two or three months. They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious
+then--just the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them.
+
+“So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the
+grip of a single corporation. This is a good time to begin.
+
+“We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot
+get hold of just the statistics we want. Still, we have some good
+statistics--and I will use those for a test.
+
+“You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the
+jacquard. Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000
+use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.
+
+“You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 30
+designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year--(a florin
+is 2 francs). Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).
+
+“Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American
+factories--with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that
+instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we
+allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories--a total of
+20,000 designers. Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000. Let us consider
+that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year. The saving
+is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in the
+jacquard business over there.
+
+“Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an
+aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories
+requiring No. 2.
+
+“The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its
+grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.
+Possibly more.
+
+“Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this
+planet. Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The
+business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial
+panics could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an
+investment as Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would
+be so powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands.
+Would you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard
+business of the world in the grip of a single Company? And don't you
+think that the business would grow-grow like a weed?”
+
+“Ach, America--it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath--then
+we will talk.”
+
+So then we talked--talked till pretty late. Would Germany and England
+join the combination? I said the Company would know how to persuade
+them.
+
+Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we
+parted.
+
+I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection
+with this matter. And we will now keep the invention itself out of print
+as well as we can. Descriptions of it have been granted to the “Dry
+Goods Economist” (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers. I
+have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he
+can do it.
+
+               With love,
+                              S. L. C.
+
+
+     If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came
+     from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the
+     letter which he inclosed--the brief and concise report from a
+     carpet-machine expert, who said: “I do not feel that it would be of
+     any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in
+     America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no
+     field for a company to develop the invention here.  A cursory
+     examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value
+     upon the invention, from a practical standpoint.”
+
+     With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem
+     to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations.
+     Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved
+     him a great sum in money and years of disappointment.  But perhaps
+     he would not have heeded it then.
+
+     The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War.  Clemens was
+     constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose
+     son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA,
+                                                       June 17, '98.
+
+DEAR JOE,--You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must
+be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension--enough to
+make it just schmeck, as the Germans say. Dave will come out with two or
+three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall
+all be glad it happened.
+
+We started with Bull Run, before. Dewey and Hobson have introduced an
+improvement on the game this time.
+
+I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history--as I am enjoying
+this one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as
+my knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it
+is another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I think this is
+the first time it has been done.
+
+Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of
+Lazarus. He would say, the will has been probated, the property
+distributed, it will be a world of trouble to settle the rows--better
+leave well enough alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going
+to break the soft smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.
+
+Company! (Sh! it happens every day--and we came out here to be quiet.)
+
+Love to you all.
+
+                         MARK.
+
+
+     They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village
+     near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet.  Many friends came
+     out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans.  Clemens,
+     however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we
+     gather from the next to Howells.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN,
+                                                       Aug. 16, '98.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter came yesterday. It then occurred to me that I
+might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of
+weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to
+me I was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing
+itself while I was at work at my other literature during the day. But
+next day my other literature was still urgent--and so on and so on; so
+my letter didn't get put into ink at all. But I see now, that you were
+writing, about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come
+across the Atlantic per mental telegraph. In 1876 or '75 I wrote
+40,000 words of a story called “Simon Wheeler” wherein the nub was
+the preventing of an execution through testimony furnished by mental
+telegraph from the other side of the globe. I had a lot of people
+scattered about the globe who carried in their pockets something like
+the old mesmerizer-button, made of different metals, and when they
+wanted to call up each other and have a talk, they “pressed the button”
+ or did something, I don't remember what, and communication was at once
+opened. I didn't finish the story, though I re-began it in several new
+ways, and spent altogether 70,000 words on it, then gave it up and threw
+it aside.
+
+This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able
+to call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental
+telegraph--and not merely by impression, the impression will be
+articulated into words. It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be,
+because in the upper civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was
+going to say sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people
+along with the already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is
+called who doesn't wish to talk he will be like those visitors you
+mention: “not chosen”--and will be frankly damned and shut off.
+
+Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and
+again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only
+think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the
+pen--the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for
+men whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've
+had no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us
+hope so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13
+mag. articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500
+words altogether, succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of
+diligently-wrought MS., the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort.
+I could make all of those things go if I would take the trouble to
+re-begin each one half a dozen times on a new plan. But none of them was
+important enough except one: the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out
+in Paris three or four years ago and told you about in New York under
+seal of confidence--no other person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the
+story to be called “Which was the Dream?”
+
+A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was
+a totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself,
+and straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
+confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already
+put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
+satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the
+first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but
+by the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would
+have been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can carry the
+reader a long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap. In
+the present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy;
+but I shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you should see
+a little short story in a magazine in the autumn called “My Platonic
+Sweetheart” written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may have been
+a suggester, though.
+
+I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not
+to let on that they don't.
+
+We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
+baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
+rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a
+chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell. But you do it--therefore
+why should you think I can't?
+
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+
+
+     The dream story was never completed.  It was the same that he had
+     worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland.  It would be
+     tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to
+     accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it
+     eventually went to waste.  The short story mentioned, “My Platonic
+     Sweetheart,” a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark
+     Twain's lifetime.  Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's
+     Magazine.
+
+     The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the
+     startling event of that summer.  In a letter to Twichell Clemens
+     presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs.  Later he treated it
+     at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of
+     personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld
+     from print.  It has since been included in a volume of essays, What
+     Is Man, etc.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep.  13, '98.
+
+DEAR JOE,--You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines.
+No--Harper, Century and McClure do; an example I should like to
+recommend to other publishers. And so I thank you very much for
+sending me Brander's article. When you say “I like Brander Matthews; he
+impresses me as a man of parts and power,” I back you, right up to
+the hub--I feel the same way--. And when you say he has earned your
+gratitude for cuffing me for my crimes against the Leather stockings and
+the Vicar, I ain't making any objection. Dern your gratitude!
+
+His article is as sound as a nut. Brander knows literature, and loves
+it; he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so
+lucidly and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him,
+even when you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such
+merits as a book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered
+through an acre of mud. And so he has a right to be a critic.
+
+To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me. I
+haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I
+hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden
+me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I
+have to stop every time I begin.
+
+That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I
+am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's jubilee last
+year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder,
+which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years
+from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in
+at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken
+with tears, “My God the Empress is murdered,” and fly toward her home
+before we can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to
+you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your
+neighbor Antony should come flying and say “Caesar is butchered--the
+head of the world is fallen!”
+
+Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
+genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
+draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday,
+when the funeral cortege marches. We are invited to occupy a room in the
+sumptuous new hotel (the “Krantz” where we are to live during the Fall
+and Winter) and view it, and we shall go.
+
+Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom
+they retail similar slanders. She said in French--she is weak in
+French--that she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of
+the “demimonde.” Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land,
+that mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy. But these
+Malaproperies are always inventions--they don't happen.
+
+Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids. Had a
+noble good one with Parker and Dunham--land, but we were grateful for
+that visit!
+
+               Yours with all our loves.
+                                        MARK.
+
+                      [Inclosed with the foregoing.]
+
+Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
+concede high rank to the German Emperor's. He justly describes it as
+a “deed unparalleled for ruthlessness,” and then adds that it was
+“ordained from above.”
+
+I think this verdict will not be popular “above.” A man is either a
+free agent or he isn't. If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is
+responsible for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if
+the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making
+this prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the German court
+cannot condemn him without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is
+logic; and by disregarding its laws even Emperors as capable and acute
+as William II can be beguiled into making charges which should not be
+ventured upon except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
+
+                                                       MARK.
+
+
+     The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
+     luxurious, circumstances.  The hard work and good fortune which had
+     enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
+     provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
+     characteristic and interesting.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L.  NEVER MARKT 6
+                                                       Dec.  30, '98.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though
+I shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
+passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another
+leisure moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how
+indestructible the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a
+hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, “Here is a bunch of your
+letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any
+in--the years, anyway.” That remark diseased me with a habit which has
+cost me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts
+and buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get
+rid of a virtue.....
+
+I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much
+care to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children
+in difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now
+having peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as
+anyone. Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has
+come with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she
+keeps the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the
+clouds were lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept
+me going till another figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured
+up for her own satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and
+furniture in Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an
+income which represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000
+cash in the bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I
+was smoking 4 1/2 centers before.
+
+At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the
+Mouse-Trap played and well played. I thought the house would kill
+itself with laughter. By George they played with life! and it was most
+devastatingly funny. And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses
+in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted
+them. The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts
+were taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls. Then there was a
+nigger-minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too,
+for the nigger-show was always a passion of mine. This one was created
+and managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was
+the middle man. There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a
+Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young
+fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be
+one or the other.
+
+It's quite true--I don't read you “as much as I ought,” nor anywhere
+near half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.
+I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete,
+but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the
+papers. I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey
+begins, and that will not happen again. The last chance at a bound book
+of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your
+short things, by the Harpers. I read the whole book twice through and
+some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far
+as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he
+is admiring it yet. Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know
+where they get them.
+
+Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford
+to live in New York. We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and
+expenses. But perhaps nothing will come of it. We do afford to live
+in the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a
+drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't
+get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).
+
+
+Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about
+us of
+
+               “The days when we went gipsying
+               A long time ago.”
+
+Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us
+others and will not look our way. We saw the “Master of Palmyra” last
+night. How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human
+grand-folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!
+
+With love from all of us to all of you.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII. LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. VIENNA. LONDON. A SUMMER
+IN SWEDEN.
+
+The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna,
+occupying handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz. Their rooms, so often
+thronged with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called
+the “Second Embassy.” Clemens himself was the central figure of these
+assemblies. Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he
+was the most notable. Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of
+listeners--his sayings and opinions were widely quoted.
+
+A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would
+naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review
+of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a
+brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment.
+The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this
+incident an added interest.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
+
+No. 1.
+
+                                                       VIENNA, Jan.  9.
+
+DEAR MR. STEAD,--The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.
+Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.
+
+                                        MARK TWAIN.
+
+*****
+
+To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
+
+No. 2.
+
+DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than the
+other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should
+not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first,
+and history seems to show that that cannot be done. Can't we reduce
+the armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the
+powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength
+10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of
+course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at
+one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all of them
+to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must withdraw
+my influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward
+signs of sanity. Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed
+together. They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be
+against nature and not operative. A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per
+cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that
+if three other powers will join. I feel sure that the armaments are now
+many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either
+peace or war. Take wartime for instance. Suppose circumstances made it
+necessary for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it
+did before--settle a large question and bring peace. I will guess that
+400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).
+In five hours they disabled 50,000 men. It took them that tedious, long
+time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.
+But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower
+guns, raining 600 balls a minute. Four men to a gun--is that the number?
+A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man. Thus a modern soldier is 149
+Waterloo soldiers in one. Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of
+each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just
+as effectively as we did eighty-five years ago. We should do the same
+beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then. The
+allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then
+whip him.
+
+But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,
+taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field. Each
+man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
+Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are
+not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.
+Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could
+arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million
+men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,
+they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their
+populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents
+which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop
+drinking and sit down and cipher a little.
+
+Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we
+can gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to
+where it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed. Then we can have all
+the peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford
+it.
+
+
+                                                  VIENNA, January 9.
+
+P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--“350 million” ought
+to be 450 million; “349,982,000” ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark
+about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on
+the planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a
+half the existing males.
+
+
+     Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to
+     him across the years.  He always welcomed such letters--they came as
+     from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness.  He
+     sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an
+     undercurrent of affection.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Major “Jack” Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
+
+                              HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,
+                                                  Feb.  26, 1899.
+
+DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed. He was to teach
+me the river for a certain specified sum. I have forgotten what it was,
+but I paid it. I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A.
+T. Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one
+trip), and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
+
+The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect. Bixby is not 67: he is
+97. I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk
+when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for
+57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger
+than he really was. At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a
+Potomac commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal
+friend of his before the Revolution. He has piloted every important
+river in America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport
+in Russia. I have never revealed these facts before. I notice, too, that
+you are deceiving the people concerning your age. The printed portrait
+which you have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me
+when I was 19. I remember very well when it was common for people
+to mistake Bixby for your grandson. Is it spreading, I wonder--this
+disposition of pilots to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck
+Jolly and Joe Bryan--they probably go to Sunday school now--but it will
+not deceive.
+
+Yes, it is as you say. All of the procession but a fraction has passed.
+It is time for us all to fall in.
+
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I.  NEUER MARKT 6
+                                                  April 2, '99.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due
+now; waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary
+man, with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work
+in the same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and
+perfect way. I don't know how you can--but I suspect. I suspect that to
+you there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a
+poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my Bible,
+(last year)--[“What Is Man.”]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders
+over, and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any
+part of it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was
+before; and so I have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor
+praisefully about him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go
+on writing, for that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much (for
+I don't wish to be scalped, any more than another.)
+
+April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party,
+and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the
+swine with the toothpick and the other manners--[“Their Silver Wedding
+Journey.”]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
+
+Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting
+glimpses which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age;
+indifference to sights and things once brisk with interest;
+tasteless stale stuff which used to be champagne; the boredom
+of travel: the secret sigh behind the public smile, the private
+What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
+
+But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
+detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well
+done, perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book--[Following the
+Equator.]--in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an
+excursion through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying
+cheerfulness fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How
+I did loathe that journey around the world!--except the sea-part and
+India.
+
+Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier--and I bragged
+to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a fine
+profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth
+$60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been spending
+$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming
+extravagance.
+
+Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture,
+and to make a speech at a banquet. Just as I was leaving here I got a
+telegram from London asking for the speech for a New York paper. I (this
+is strictly private) sent it. And then I didn't make that speech, but
+another of a quite different character--a speech born of something which
+the introducer said. If that said speech got cabled and printed, you
+needn't let on that it was never uttered.
+
+That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people. We
+were there a week and had a great time. At the banquet I heard their
+chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious
+speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not
+understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian. But the art of
+it!--it was superlative.
+
+They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture
+audience--all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the
+effects. The English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150
+young English women who earn their living teaching their language; and
+that there are others besides these.
+
+For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;
+gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign
+languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and
+at night the concerts and operas. Of course even the clerks and
+seamstresses and bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
+
+(Correction. Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)
+
+I am renewing my youth. I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last
+Saturday night. And I've been to a lot of football matches.
+
+Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals
+(“Literature,” March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should
+find me at the top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition
+she has suffered disappointment for the third time--and will never fare
+any better, I hope, for you are where you belong, by every right. She
+wanted to know who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to
+tell her. Nor when the election will be completed and decided.
+
+Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every
+morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and
+basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and
+cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of
+the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not
+despair.
+
+(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea ['sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!
+Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one,
+a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency
+of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking
+out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it,
+for she said nothing that was funny. “Spose so many 've told y' how they
+'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle
+Kehe! say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n saw
+Tolstoi; he said--” It made me shudder.
+
+April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining
+that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated
+members; and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand
+it. But I have explained to her that you are right there on the ground,
+inside the pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large
+difference in these things.
+
+13th. I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office
+of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and
+that and the other damned breed of priests.
+
+                                   Yrs ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not
+     with the frequency of former years.  Perhaps neither of them was
+     bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly
+     less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,
+     there was always the discouragement of distance.  Once Howells
+     wrote: “I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn
+     round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can
+     begin it.”  And in another letter: “It ought to be as pleasant to
+     sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it
+     isn't.....  The only reason why I write is that I want another
+     letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.
+     I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than
+     lunch.  I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that
+     brings unbearable leisure.  I hope you will be in New York another
+     winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of
+     eternity.”
+
+     Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal
+     to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a
+     close.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                                       May 12, 1899.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p. m. Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving
+for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human
+race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary
+of Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an
+Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who
+wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and
+wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and
+several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,
+the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans. It made just a
+comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through
+the folding doors. I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.
+Clemens, but this was a pleasant one. I had only one accident. The
+old Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for
+we violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on
+others--for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious
+beliefs and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is
+a democrat and so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is
+laborers' rights and approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me.
+And so on. After she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began
+to talk sharply against her for contributing money, time, labor, and
+public expression of favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day)
+in the silk factories of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and
+betrayed me into over-warm argument. I am sorry: for she didn't know
+anything about the subject, and I did; and one should be gentle with the
+ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.
+
+(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place. The Sec. of Legation
+is a good man, but out of place. The Attache is a good man, but out of
+place. Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship;
+and her possible is 17,200 tons.)
+
+May 13, 4 p. m. A beautiful English girl and her handsome English
+husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird.
+English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk
+English till she was 8 or 10. She came up clothed like the sunset, and
+was a delight to look at. (Roumanian costume.).....
+
+Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and
+to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and
+his wife have gone to chaperon them. They gave me a chance to go, but
+there are no snow mountains that I want to look at. Three hours out,
+three hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance;
+yelling conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new
+acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and
+if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see
+the foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on. The
+terms seemed too severe. Snow mountains are too dear at the price....
+
+For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as
+soon as I could afford it. At last I can afford it, and have put the
+pot-boiler pen away. What I have been wanting is a chance to write a
+book without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's
+feelings, and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions,
+delusions; a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the
+plainest language and without a limitation of any sort. I judged that
+that would be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.
+
+It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I
+didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found
+it out. But I am sure it is started right this time. It is in tale-form.
+I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he is
+constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how
+mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities
+and his place among the animals.
+
+So far, I think I am succeeding. I let the madam into the secret day
+before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
+chapters. She said--
+
+“It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!”
+
+“Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think.”
+
+I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
+out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to
+dump into it.
+
+                         Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
+     give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger.  It was not
+     finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
+     after his death.  Six years later (1916) it was published serially
+     in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.
+
+     The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
+     received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
+     earlier years.  Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
+     midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
+     incident of one of their entertainments.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                                  LONDON, July 3, '99
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no
+use--I can't get time for anything these days. I must break off and
+write a postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed. This
+afternoon he left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and
+carried off my hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.)
+When the rest of us came out there was but one hat that would go on my
+head--it fitted exactly, too. So wore it away. It had no name in it, but
+the Canon was the only man who was absent. I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.;
+saying that for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did
+not belong to me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and
+my family were getting alarmed. Could he explain my trouble? And now
+at 8.30 p.m. comes a note from him to say that all the afternoon he
+has been exhibiting a wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace
+of expression, etc., etc., and have I missed a hat? Our letters have
+crossed.
+
+                              Yours ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll.  Clemens had been always
+     one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend.  To
+     Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York:
+
+                                   30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE.
+
+DEAR MISS FARRELL,--Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any
+death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit,
+he was a man--all man from his crown to his foot soles. My reverence for
+him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it
+with usury.
+
+                    Sincerely Yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna,
+     in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised
+     by Heinrick Kellgren.  Kellgren's method, known as the “Swedish
+     movements,” seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments,
+     and he heralded the discovery far and wide.  He wrote to friends far
+     and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might
+     happen to have.  Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to
+     close with some mention of the new panacea.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe:
+
+                                             SANNA, Sept. 6, '99.
+
+DEAR JOE,--I've no business in here--I ought to be outside. I shall
+never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven. Venice?
+land, what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I have seen
+about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away
+beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and
+marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety. America? Italy? The
+tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be. And this
+one--this unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest. It brings the
+tears, it is so unutterably beautiful.
+
+If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here. The
+people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists
+pretend to do. You wish to advise with a physician about it? Certainly.
+There is no objection. He knows next to something about his own trade,
+but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one. I
+respect your superstitions--we all have them. It would be quite natural
+for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct him as to
+the value of the new religious specialty which the Western missionary
+is trying to put on the market, before investing in it. (He would get a
+verdict.)
+
+                         Love to you all!
+                                   Always Yours
+                                                  MARK.
+
+     Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of
+     course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to
+     give.  Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock,
+     without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual
+     practice which few would be likely to imitate.  Nevertheless, what
+     he says is interesting.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                        SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you. I learned a
+trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago. I
+meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized
+the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences,
+then remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory
+introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously
+using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to
+carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that
+I was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch
+presently. It was a beautiful success. I knew the substance of the
+sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest
+of it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the
+snap and go and freshness of an impromptu. I was to read several pieces,
+and I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience
+thought I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and
+was going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so
+I always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it
+had begun. I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time
+over again. It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented.
+Try it. You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment. Their
+attention is fixed, and never wavers. And that is not the case where one
+reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly
+exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he
+is not improvising, but reciting from memory. And in the heat of
+telling a thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the
+happiest suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then! Try it. Such a
+phrase has a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could
+not exhibit if prepared beforehand, and it “fetches” an audience in
+such an enthusing and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase
+breeds another one, sure.
+
+Your September instalment--[“Their Silver Wedding journey.”]--was
+delicious--every word of it. You haven't lost any of your splendid art.
+Callers have arrived.
+
+                              With love
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     “Yes,” wrote Howells, “if I were a great histrionic artist like you
+     I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what
+     I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise
+     their deadness frankly and read them.”
+
+     From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned
+     by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science.  It
+     was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic
+     appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check
+     in payment for it.  This brought prompt acknowledgment.
+
+
+*****
+
+To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.:
+
+                                             LONDON, Oct. 19, '99
+
+DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man
+feel proud and good! To say a compliment well is a high art--and few
+possess it. You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity
+with a handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher
+go. I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say
+so, recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you
+approve an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised
+peanuts and you kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article
+is worth.
+
+You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.
+
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now
+     seemed to be coming his way.  The Joan of Arc introduction was the
+     same that today appears in his collected works under the title of
+     Saint Joan of Arc.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                             LONDON, Oct.  19, '99.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains
+but it pours. I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the
+English translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials
+and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes. I wrote
+the introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from
+a tale I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of
+note-making--a fearful job for a man not used to it. This morning
+brought a note from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who
+edits the translation, saying, “Never mind the notes--we'll make the
+translators do them.” That was comfort and joy.
+
+The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to
+talk Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M.
+P.'s--(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I
+couldn't have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and
+explain--and lose an hour. Just then came Murray and said “Leave that
+to me--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you
+write a note and tell him I am coming.”
+
+(Which I did, later.) Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party
+last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat
+this time. In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk,
+now--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: “You mustn't think it is
+because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure
+you upon honor it isn't. I should bring my old one.”
+
+I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to
+write introductory monographs for the book.
+
+Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.
+
+The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she
+performed before her judges.
+
+Lord Roberts, her military genius.
+
+Kipling, her patriotism.
+
+And so on. When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X;
+that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they
+could do monographs worthy of the book. He hadn't run the others to
+cover yet, but was on their track. Very good news. It is a grand book,
+and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people. As for me, I
+took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a
+performance.
+
+Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter,
+and was lifted higher than ever. Next came letters from America properly
+glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one
+roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing
+$200 additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I
+didn't mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second
+time he has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and
+no one else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust
+them.
+
+And last of all came a letter from M-. How I do wish that man was in
+hell. Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.
+
+But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M----in hell it
+would have been perfect. But that will happen, and I can wait.
+
+Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on
+paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said
+it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime
+subject. I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the
+stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over
+again and have a good time with it.
+
+Oh, I know how you feel! I've been in hell myself. You are there
+tonight. By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not
+eating it. Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming. I have
+declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland. I wanted the money,
+but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance.
+
+                         With love to all of you
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX. LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER
+TROUBLES. THE RETURN TO AMERICA.
+
+The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in
+osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense
+of other healing methods.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan.  8, 1900.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another. Mental Telegraphy will
+be greatly respected a century hence.
+
+By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the
+remarkable cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I
+brought upon myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that
+she had been taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an
+American invention.
+
+Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas,
+in a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after
+Kellgren began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in
+Germany. Dr. Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded
+that Kellgren moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across
+six hours of longitude, without need of a wire. By the time Still began
+to experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the
+principles of his system and established himself in a good practice in
+London--1874--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas,
+Mental Telegraphically.
+
+Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in
+arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name
+of Osteopathy. Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has
+got itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the
+physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges;
+that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a
+school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100
+students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,)
+and that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear
+me, there are not 30 in Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions
+and prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to
+do anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as
+witness the telegraph, dentistry, &c.
+
+Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon
+make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and
+then, 25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and
+tell all about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B-----as in the case of
+the telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she
+heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.
+
+I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay
+and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along
+and gives it a first rate trial. Many an ass in America, is getting
+a deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old
+healing principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let
+it boom along! I have no objection. Let them call it by what name
+they choose, so long as it does helpful work among the class which is
+numerically vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e. the fools,
+the idiots, the pudd'nheads.
+
+We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads. We
+know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the
+race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque
+system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's
+stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach
+at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage
+to some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the
+drug either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in
+spite of the nostrums. The doctor's insane system has not only been
+permitted to continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by
+the State and made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against
+a free-man's proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method
+of defending his body against disease and death.
+
+And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the
+State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the
+patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous
+business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
+experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
+Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
+the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.
+
+I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list
+I count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there isn't one
+which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.
+
+Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
+surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
+revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect
+for the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am
+convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
+the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken
+the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face
+without laughing.
+
+See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us:
+two weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and
+by consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple
+attack--influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the
+gravity of the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought
+she ought to send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I
+should want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no--not that
+I was indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of
+a dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is
+unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor,
+and it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me
+to send for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around--cured. It is safe to
+say that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet,
+and booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition
+and afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.
+
+It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
+Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a time he gave most
+of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with
+little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically
+expressed. War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer
+troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China. It was a
+disturbing, exciting year.
+
+
+*****
+
+To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
+                                                  Jan. 25, 1900.
+
+DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content
+and praise God--it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he didn't
+go with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn. He is good company,
+cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle. Your doing a lecture tour
+was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be
+proud of yourself. No mount of applause or money or both could save it
+from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even to
+me, who am made of coarser stuff.
+
+I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that
+one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it
+failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.
+
+Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way
+shameful and excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine
+articles about it, but I have to stop with that. For England must
+not fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political
+degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of
+Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.
+Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld. He is an enemy of
+the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human race
+created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of
+it. God had his opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no,
+He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a
+regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects. For a
+giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this
+war. I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man
+introduces the topic. Then I say “My head is with the Briton, but my
+heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will
+talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice.” And so we discuss, and have
+no trouble.
+
+                                                       Jan.  26.
+
+It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human
+race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the
+purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess
+a conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the “Times”
+ various samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date,
+and expose it as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom
+a telegram in a paper which fails to show up one or more members and
+beneficiaries of our Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with
+the rest of his regalia in the wash.
+
+I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
+smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
+contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval
+of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.
+
+I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
+itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
+thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.
+
+               With great love to you all
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
+     human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
+     by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
+     preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men.  But his opinion
+     of the race could hardly have been worse than it was.  And nothing
+     that human beings could do would have surprised him.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and
+give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang
+the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so, the
+war out there has no interest for me.
+
+I have just been examining chapter LXX of “Following the Equator,” to
+see if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads
+curiously as if it had been written about the present war.
+
+I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
+conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
+Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
+ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and
+limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of
+disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise
+and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful
+life void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form
+of civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where
+to look for it. I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of
+artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it
+isn't complete. We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the
+great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of
+the two. My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor
+thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and
+hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys
+a lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it
+belongs.
+
+Provided we could get something better in the place of it. But that is
+not possible, perhaps. Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,
+therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it. And
+so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days, nor
+fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and
+fall would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race....
+Naturally, then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong,
+Joe, and no (instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my
+belief.
+
+Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists.
+I wanted to know how the men impress you. As to their Art, I know fairly
+well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a
+physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his
+ignorance. Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are
+not very precious.
+
+Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.
+
+               Love to you all
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The next letter affords a pleasant variation.  Without doubt it was
+     written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him
+     into indiscretion.  This was always happening to him, and letters
+     like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Mr. Ann, in London:
+
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.
+
+DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw
+that letter. Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for
+I didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a
+stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward
+the investor, and I am not willing to do that. I have another objection,
+a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise
+scored a success or a failure would damage me. I can't afford that;
+even the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more
+character to spare than I have. (Ah, a happy thought! If he would sign
+the letter with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing,
+of course. I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme
+that he would sign. As he does not know me, it follows that he would
+sign anything that I would sign. This is unassailable logic--but really
+that is all that can be said for it.)
+
+No, I withdraw the letter. This virgin is pure up to date, and is going
+to remain so.
+
+                         Ys sincerely,
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  WELLINGTON COURT,
+                                             KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.
+
+DEAR JOE,--Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes
+very deep. I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for
+me. Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of
+the billiard-party in our house. When we come home, how shall we have
+billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson? I
+believe I could not endure that. We must find another use for that
+room. Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry
+Robinson. The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such
+warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery.
+But not in any repellent sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life
+made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with
+us always, and there will be no parting.
+
+It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate,
+youth! Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and
+got his great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams
+and entered the Sahara of fact. The deep consciousness of Susy's good
+fortune is a constant comfort to me.
+
+London is happy-hearted at last. The British victories have swept the
+clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the
+private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of
+Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley
+and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish
+lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings,
+every one. Night before last it was all Irish--24. One would have to
+travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle
+and absence of shyness and self-consciousness.
+
+It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is
+Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord
+Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and
+a disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch
+breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of
+the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is
+usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of
+the battle. An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are
+idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep
+bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull
+and without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but
+losing his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with
+the Kelt. Sir Wm. Butler said “the Kelt is the spear-head of the British
+lance.”
+
+                         Love to you all.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.
+     Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate
+     friend of the Clemens household.  “Lecky” was W. E. H. Lecky, the
+     Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many
+     years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:
+
+     In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington
+     Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,
+     at Dollis Hill.  To-day the place has been given to the public under
+     the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an
+     earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there.  It was a
+     beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks.  In a
+     letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: “It is
+     simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are
+     beyond everything.  I believe nowhere in the world do you find such
+     trees as in England.”  Clemens wrote to Twichell:  “From the house
+     you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green
+     turf.....  Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in
+     three minutes on a horse.  By rail we can be in the heart of London,
+     in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five.”
+
+     Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.
+
+
+*****
+
+To the Editor of the Times, in London:
+
+SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was
+swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim
+was justified. But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind. I live
+eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at
+4 o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon,
+thus making the trip in thirteen hours.
+
+It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.
+
+                              C.
+
+DOLLIS HILL, N. W.
+
+
+*****
+
+To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W.
+                                             LONDON, Aug.  12, '00.
+
+DEAR JOE,--The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here
+to tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them. We
+furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather--and they used it
+all up, in their extravagant American way. Since then we have sat by
+coal fires, evenings.
+
+We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York
+where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of
+putting this family in proper condition.
+
+Livy and I dined with the Chief Justice a month ago and he was as
+well-conditioned as an athlete.
+
+It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese. They have
+been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I
+hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good.
+I only wish it; of course I don't really expect it.
+
+Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you
+Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the
+connection. This is thoroughly exasperating. Aren't we ever going to
+meet again?
+
+                    With no end of love from all of us,
+                                        MARK.
+
+P. S. Aug. 18.
+
+DEAR JOE,--It is 7.30 a. m. I have been waking very early, lately. If it
+occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it.
+
+This is our day of mourning. It is four years since Susy died; it is
+five years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing
+kisses at us from the railway platform when we started West around the
+world.
+
+Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday.
+
+                    With love
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence
+     was drawing to an end.  More than nine years had passed since the
+     closing of the Hartford house--eventful years that had seen failure,
+     bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes.  All the
+     family were anxious to get home--Mark Twain most anxious of all.
+
+     They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up
+     for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which
+     follows.
+
+
+*****
+
+To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London:
+
+                                                            Sep.  1900.
+
+MY DEAR MACALISTER,--We do really start next Saturday. I meant to sail
+earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family
+Hotels. They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist
+elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time
+of the Heptarchy. Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them.
+The once spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much
+discomfort as can be had anywhere out of jail for any money. All the
+modern inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete
+for a century. The prices are astonishingly high for what you get. The
+bedrooms are hospitals for incurable furniture. I find it so in this
+one. They exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like
+inn of fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it. Some
+quite respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit
+and arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and
+superstition. The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but
+older I think. Older and dearer. The lift was a gift of William the
+Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric. They represent geological
+periods. Mine is the oldest. It is formed in strata of Old Red
+Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende,
+superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of
+prehistoric man. It is in No. 149. Thousands of scientists come to see
+it. They consider it holy. They want to blast out the prints but cannot.
+Dynamite rebounds from it.
+
+Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha.
+
+                    Yours ever affectionately,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week
+     later America gave them a royal welcome.  The press, far and wide,
+     sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were
+     offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him.
+
+     The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of
+     house-hunting.  They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but
+     after a brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote:
+
+
+*****
+
+To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston:
+
+                                             NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900.
+
+DEAR MR. BAXTER,--It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days
+with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and the
+house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to
+live, our hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be strong
+enough to endure that strain.
+
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but
+     the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive.  Through
+     Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street,
+     a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for
+     the winter.  “We were lucky to get this big house furnished,” he
+     wrote MacAlister in London.  “There was not another one in town
+     procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right--space
+     enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned,
+     great size.”
+
+     The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely
+     forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
+
+
+*****
+
+To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:
+
+                                                       Nov. 30.
+
+DEAR MADAM,--I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am
+weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly
+approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that
+ring door-bells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding
+conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I
+think the boys enjoy it.
+
+My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the
+front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises. But I am
+very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting
+spongy.
+
+                    Very truly yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 4,
+1886-1900, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAIN LETTERS, VOL. 4 ***
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Mark Twain's Letters 1886-1900, by Mark Twain
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 4,
+1886-1900, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 4, 1886-1900
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #3196]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAIN LETTERS, VOL. 4 ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <h1>
+      MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1886-1900
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      VOLUME IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Mark Twain
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      ARRANGED WITH COMMENT<br /> BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>XXVI.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1886-87. JANE
+            CLEMENS'S ROMANCE. UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>XXVII.</b><br /> MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS
+            OF 1887. LITERARY ARTICLES. PEACEFUL DAYS AT THE FARM. FAVORITE
+            READING. APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <b>XXVIII.</b><br /> LETTERS,1888. A YALE
+            DEGREE. WORK ON &ldquo;THE YANKEE.&rdquo; ON INTERVIEWING, ETC. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> <b>XXIX.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1889. THE
+            MACHINE. DEATH OF MR. CRANE. CONCLUSION OF THE YANKEE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> <b>XXX.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO
+            JOS. T. GOODMAN. THE GREAT MACHINE ENTERPRISE </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> <b>XXXI.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1891, TO
+            HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS. RETURN TO LITERATURE. AMERICAN
+            CLAIMANT. LEAVING HARTFORD. EUROPE. DOWN THE RHINE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> <b>XXXII.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY
+            TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE. IN BERLIN, MENTONE, BAD-NAUHEIM,
+            FLORENCE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> <b>XXXIII.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1893, TO MR.
+            HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE. BUSINESS TROUBLES.
+            &ldquo;PUDD'NHEAD WILSON.&rdquo; &ldquo;JOAN OF ARC.&rdquo; AT THE PLAYERS, NEW </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> <b>XXXIV.</b><br /> LETTERS 1894. A WINTER
+            IN NEW YORK. BUSINESS FAILURE. END OF THE MACHINE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> <b>XXXV.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H.
+            H. ROGERS AND OTHERS. FINISHING &ldquo;JOAN OF ARC.&rdquo; THE TRIP AROUND THE
+            WORLD. DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> <b>XXXVI.</b><br /> LETTERS 1897. LONDON,
+            SWITZERLAND, VIENNA </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> <b>XXXVII.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1898, TO
+            HOWELLS AND TWICHELL. LIFE IN VIENNA. PAYMENT OF THE DEBTS.
+            ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> <b>XXXVIII.</b><br /> LETTERS, 1899, TO
+            HOWELLS AND OTHERS. VIENNA. LONDON. A SUMMER IN SWEDEN. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> <b>XXXIX.</b><br /> LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY
+            TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER TROUBLES. THE RETURN TO AMERICA.
+            </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      XXVI. LETTERS, 1886-87. JANE CLEMENS'S ROMANCE. UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     When Clemens had been platforming with Cable and returned to
+     Hartford for his Christmas vacation, the Warner and Clemens families
+     had joined in preparing for him a surprise performance of The Prince
+     and the Pauper.  The Clemens household was always given to
+     theatricals, and it was about this time that scenery and a stage
+     were prepared&mdash;mainly by the sculptor Gerhardt&mdash;for these home
+     performances, after which productions of The Prince and the Pauper
+     were given with considerable regularity to audiences consisting of
+     parents and invited friends.  The subject is a fascinating one, but
+     it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.&mdash;[In Mark Twain: A on***n,
+     chaps.  cliii and clx.]&mdash;We get a glimpse of one of these occasions
+     as well as of Mark Twain's financial progress in the next brief
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells; in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             Jan.  3, '86.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;The date set for the Prince and Pauper play is ten
+      days hence&mdash;Jan. 13. I hope you and Pilla can take a train that
+      arrives here during the day; the one that leaves Boston toward the end of
+      the afternoon would be a trifle late; the performance would have already
+      begun when you reached the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I'm out of the woods. On the last day of the year I had paid out $182,000
+      on the Grant book and it was totally free from debt.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                              Yrs ever
+
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mark Twain's mother was a woman of sturdy character and with a keen
+     sense of humor and tender sympathies.  Her husband, John Marshall
+     Clemens, had been a man of high moral character, honored by all who
+     knew him, respected and apparently loved by his wife.  No one would
+     ever have supposed that during all her years of marriage, and almost
+     to her death, she carried a secret romance that would only be told
+     at last in the weary disappointment of old age.  It is a curious
+     story, and it came to light in this curious way:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        HARTFORD, May 19, '86.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;..... Here's a secret. A most curious and pathetic
+      romance, which has just come to light. Read these things, but don't
+      mention them. Last fall, my old mother&mdash;then 82&mdash;took a notion
+      to attend a convention of old settlers of the Mississippi Valley in an
+      Iowa town. My brother's wife was astonished; and represented to her the
+      hardships and fatigues of such a trip, and said my mother might possibly
+      not even survive them; and said there could be no possible interest for
+      her in such a meeting and such a crowd. But my mother insisted, and
+      persisted; and finally gained her point. They started; and all the way my
+      mother was young again with excitement, interest, eagerness, anticipation.
+      They reached the town and the hotel. My mother strode with the same
+      eagerness in her eye and her step, to the counter, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Dr. Barrett of St. Louis, here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. He was here, but he returned to St. Louis this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he come again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother turned away, the fire all gone from her, and said, &ldquo;Let us go
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went straight back to Keokuk. My mother sat silent and thinking for
+      many days&mdash;a thing which had never happened before. Then one day she
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you a secret. When I was eighteen, a young medical student
+      named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; and he used to
+      ride over to see me. This continued for some time. I loved him with my
+      whole heart, and I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no words
+      had been spoken. He was too bashful to speak&mdash;he could not do it.
+      Everybody supposed we were engaged&mdash;took it for granted we were&mdash;but
+      we were not. By and by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, and
+      he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, and asking him to drive me
+      over in his buggy and let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might
+      have that opportunity to propose. My uncle should have done as he was
+      asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the
+      letter; and then, of course, I could not go&mdash;and did not. He
+      (Barrett) left the country presently, and I, to stop the clacking tongues,
+      and to show him that I did not care, married, in a pet. In all these
+      sixty-four years I have not seen him since. I saw in a paper that he was
+      going to attend that Old Settlers' Convention. Only three hours before we
+      reached that hotel, he had been standing there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes
+      letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders why
+      they neglect her and do not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four
+      years, and no human being ever suspecting it!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Yrs ever,
+
+                                        MARK.
+
+     We do not get the idea from this letter that those two long
+     ago sweethearts quarreled, but Mark Twain once spoke of
+     their having done so, and there may have been a
+     disagreement, assuming that there was a subsequent meeting.
+     It does not matter, now.  In speaking of it, Mark Twain once
+     said: &ldquo;It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed
+     the field of my personal experience in a long lifetime.&rdquo;&mdash;
+     [When Mark Twain: A Biography was written this letter had
+     not come to light, and the matter was stated there in
+     accordance with Mark Twain's latest memory of it.]
+
+     Howells wrote: &ldquo;After all, how poor and hackneyed all the
+     inventions are compared with the simple and stately facts.
+     Who could have imagined such a heart-break as that?  Yet it
+     went along with the fulfillment of everyday duty and made no
+     more noise than a grave under foot.  I doubt if fiction will
+     ever get the knack of such things.&rdquo;
+
+     Jane Clemens now lived with her son Orion and his wife, in
+     Keokuk, where she was more contented than elsewhere.  In
+     these later days her memory had become erratic, her
+     realization of events about her uncertain, but there were
+     times when she was quite her former self, remembering
+     clearly and talking with her old-time gaiety of spirit.
+     Mark Twain frequently sent her playful letters to amuse her,
+     letters full of such boyish gaiety as had amused her long
+     years before.  The one that follows is a fair example.  It
+     was written after a visit which Clemens and his family had
+     paid to Keokuk.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 7, '86.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MA,&mdash;I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but
+      I see by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well. When
+      we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather was
+      pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs. McElroy's and cried about
+      it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled down, now,
+      so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin off. Well it
+      did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my shirt, there, with
+      some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told me they never used a
+      stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped table in the
+      drawing-room, just with the natural heat. If anybody else had told me, I
+      would not have believed it. I was told by the Bishop of Keokuk that he did
+      not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the furniture. If Miss
+      Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it. This reminds me that
+      you speak of Dr. Jenkins and his family as if they were strangers to me.
+      Indeed they are not. Don't you suppose I remember gratefully how tender
+      the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm, and how quickly he got the
+      pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it was going to last at least an
+      hour? No, I don't forget some things as easily as I do others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, it was pretty hot weather. Now here, when a person is going to die,
+      he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of
+      course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything. It has set
+      me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson. By and by, when my health fails,
+      I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my friends
+      here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk and
+      prepare for death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are all well in this family, and we all send love.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Affly Your Son
+                                                  SAM.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The ways of city officials and corporations are often past
+     understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write
+     picturesque letters of protest.  The following to a Hartford
+     lighting company is a fair example of these documents.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GENTLEMEN,&mdash;There are but two places in our whole street where lights
+      could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and
+      appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places
+      in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness. When I
+      noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I
+      could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it was
+      a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be corrected
+      as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out. My judgment
+      was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned. For fifteen years,
+      in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly
+      half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find either of them after
+      dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger
+      signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I
+      suppose your present idea is, to leave us a little more in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't mind us&mdash;out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no
+      rights which you are in any way bound to respect. Please take your
+      electric light and go to&mdash;but never mind, it is not for me to
+      suggest; you will probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably
+      count on divine assistance if you lose your bearings.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <div class="mynote">
+      <p>
+        [Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
+        Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not include
+        in these volumes:<br /><br /> &ldquo;Gentleman:&mdash;Someday you are going to
+        move me almost to the point of irritation with your God-damned chuckle
+        headed fashion of turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice
+        to your God-damned parishioners&mdash;and you did it again last night&mdash;&rdquo;
+         D.W.]
+      </p>
+      <br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
+     written.  Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
+     sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
+     relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
+     wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all.  A few such
+     letters here follow.
+
+     Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
+     wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
+     tobacco, and what not.  They were generally persistent people,
+     unable to accept a polite or kindly denial.  Once he set down some
+     remarks on this particular phase of correspondence.  He wrote:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an
+      electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal. And no
+      doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity
+      whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of
+      solicitation. Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure
+      silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
+      the loan of somebody else's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case. He sees
+      that his invention or his painting or his book is&mdash;apparently&mdash;a
+      trifle better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be
+      willing to put your hall-mark on it? You will be giving the purchaser his
+      full money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm? Besides, are
+      you not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to
+      do that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
+      other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon a
+      thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be. How
+      simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred who can,
+      be made to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is an
+      indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp
+      answer. He blames nobody but that other person. That person is a very base
+      being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it would
+      not occur to him that you would do such a thing. But all the same, that
+      application has done its work, and taken you down in your own estimation.
+      You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion of you as you have
+      of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an interval during which you
+      are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird as you were before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter, but
+      leave it lying a day. That saves you. For by that time you have begun to
+      reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations&mdash;and
+      exaggerations are lies. You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
+      made them unmistakably so. But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a
+      man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious
+      side of things. You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless
+      extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good time
+      you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at your word
+      and believed you. And presently they find out that you were not in
+      earnest. They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue&mdash;and
+      there is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver. If you will
+      deceive in one way, why shouldn't you in another? So they apply for the
+      use of your trade-mark. You are amazed and affronted. You retort that you
+      are not that kind of person. Then they are amazed and affronted; and
+      wonder &ldquo;since when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time you have got your bearings. You realize that perhaps there is
+      a little blame on both sides. You are in the right frame, now. So you
+      write a letter void of offense, declining. You mail this one; you
+      pigeon-hole the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career, you
+      don't: you mail the first one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An enthusiast who had a new system of musical notation, wrote to me and
+      suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities of
+      the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to make
+      a &ldquo;rousing hit.&rdquo; He shouted and shouted over the marvels wrought by his
+      system, and quoted the handsome compliments which had been paid it by
+      famous musical people; but he forgot to tell me what his notation was
+      like, or what its simplicities consisted in. So I could not have written
+      the article if I had wanted to&mdash;which I didn't; because I hate
+      strangers with axes to grind. I wrote him a courteous note explaining how
+      busy I was&mdash;I always explain how busy I am&mdash;and casually drooped
+      this remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I judge the X-X notation to be a rational mode of representing music, in
+      place of the prevailing fashion, which was the invention of an idiot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next mail he asked permission to print that meaningless remark. I
+      answered, no&mdash;courteously, but still, no; explaining that I could not
+      afford to be placed in the attitude of trying to influence people with a
+      mere worthless guess. What a scorcher I got, next mail! Such irony! such
+      sarcasm, such caustic praise of my superhonorable loyalty to the public!
+      And withal, such compassion for my stupidity, too, in not being able to
+      understand my own language. I cannot remember the words of this letter
+      broadside, but there was about a page used up in turning this idea round
+      and round and exposing it in different lights.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;What is the trouble with you? If it is your viscera, you
+      cannot have them taken out and reorganized a moment too soon. I mean, if
+      they are inside. But if you are composed of them, that is another matter.
+      Is it your brain? But it could not be your brain. Possibly it is your
+      skull: you want to look out for that. Some people, when they get an idea,
+      it pries the structure apart. Your system of notation has got in there,
+      and couldn't find room, without a doubt that is what the trouble is. Your
+      skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to throw potatoes at.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours Truly.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Mailed Answer:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;Come, come&mdash;take a walk; you disturb the children.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours Truly.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There was a day, now happily nearly over, when certain newspapers made a
+      practice of inviting men distinguished in any walk of life to give their
+      time and effort without charge to express themselves on some subject of
+      the day, or perhaps they were asked to send their favorite passages in
+      prose or verse, with the reasons why. Such symposiums were &ldquo;features&rdquo; that
+      cost the newspapers only the writing of a number of letters, stationery,
+      and postage. To one such invitation Mark Twain wrote two replies. They
+      follow herewith:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;I have received your proposition&mdash;which you have
+      imitated from a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the
+      idea of this sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism,
+      where it originated as a variation of the inexpensive &ldquo;interview.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches? To make your paper the more
+      salable, you answer. But why don't you try to beg them? Why do you
+      discriminate? I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you? Why don't
+      you ask me for a shirt? What is the difference between asking me for the
+      worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself? Perhaps you didn't
+      know you were begging. I would not use that argument&mdash;it makes the
+      user a fool. The passage of poetry&mdash;or prose, if you will&mdash;which
+      has taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and
+      dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this: That the proper place for
+      journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner with
+      their hats in their hands.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Mailed Answer:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by
+      press of work to decline.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had
+     taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the
+     use of the author's name&mdash;the idea being to convey to the public
+     that it was a Mark Twain play.  In return for this slight favor the
+     manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play
+     &mdash;to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the
+     manager's) expense.  He added that if the play should be a go in the
+     cities there might be some &ldquo;arrangement&rdquo; of profits.  Apparently
+     these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain.  The long unmailed
+     reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that
+     follows it was quite as effective.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also
+      have &ldquo;taken the liberty.&rdquo; You are No. 1365. When 1364 sweeter and better
+      people, including the author, have &ldquo;tried&rdquo; to dramatize Tom Sawyer and did
+      not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand? That is a book,
+      dear sir, which cannot be dramatized. One might as well try to dramatize
+      any other hymn. Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose form to give
+      it a worldly air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
+      of your third sentence? Have no fears. Your piece will be a Go. It will go
+      out the back door on the first night. They've all done it&mdash;the 1364.
+      So will 1365. Not one of us ever thought of the simple device of
+      half-soling himself with a stove-lid. Ah, what suffering a little
+      hindsight would have saved us. Treasure this hint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How kind of you to invite me to the funeral. Go to; I have attended a
+      thousand of them. I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
+      kinds of dramatic shrouds there are. You cannot start anything fresh. Are
+      you serious when you propose to pay my expence&mdash;if that is the
+      Susquehannian way of spelling it? And can you be aware that I charge a
+      hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure? Do you realize that it
+      is 432 miles to Susquehanna? Would it be handy for you to send me the
+      $43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
+      railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
+      sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
+      recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put me
+      in the bills as father of this shady offspring. Sir, do you know that this
+      kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now? Listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are
+      still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human
+      activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even inanimate
+      things stopped to look&mdash;like locomotives, and district messenger boys
+      and so-on. In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was often mistaken for
+      fair weather. Upon one occasion I was traveling in the Sonora region, and
+      stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my horse and myself. All the town
+      came out to look. The tribes of Indians gathered to look. A Piute squaw
+      named her baby for me,&mdash;a voluntary compliment which pleased me
+      greatly. Other attentions were paid me. Last of all arrived the president
+      and faculty of Sonora University and offered me the post of Professor of
+      Moral Culture and the Dogmatic Humanities; which I accepted gratefully,
+      and entered at once upon my duties. But my name had pleased the Indians,
+      and in the deadly kindness of their hearts they went on naming their
+      babies after me. I tried to stop it, but the Indians could not understand
+      why I should object to so manifest a compliment. The thing grew and grew
+      and spread and spread and became exceedingly embarrassing. The University
+      stood it a couple of years; but then for the sake of the college they felt
+      obliged to call a halt, although I had the sympathy of the whole faculty.
+      The president himself said to me, &ldquo;I am as sorry as I can be for you, and
+      would still hold out if there were any hope ahead; but you see how it is:
+      there are a hundred and thirty-two of them already, and fourteen precincts
+      to hear from. The circumstance has brought your name into most wide and
+      unfortunate renown. It causes much comment&mdash;I believe that that is
+      not an over-statement. Some of this comment is palliative, but some of it&mdash;by
+      patrons at a distance, who only know the statistics without the
+      explanation,&mdash;is offensive, and in some cases even violent. Nine
+      students have been called home. The trustees of the college have been
+      growing more and more uneasy all these last months&mdash;steadily along
+      with the implacable increase in your census&mdash;and I will not conceal
+      from you that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a
+      change in the Professorship of Moral Culture. The coarsely sarcastic
+      editorial in yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest&mdash;has
+      brought things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of
+      receiving your resignation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly
+      mistake. Please do not name your Injun for me. Truly Yours.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Mailed Answer:
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        NEW YORK, Sept. 8.  1887.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;Necessarily I cannot assent to so strange a proposition.
+      And I think it but fair to warn you that if you put the piece on the
+      stage, you must take the legal consequences.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours respectfully,
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Before the days of international copyright no American author's
+     books were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of
+     Mark Twain.  It was always a sore point with him that these books,
+     cheaply printed, found their way into the United States, and were
+     sold in competition with his better editions.  The law on the
+     subject seemed to be rather hazy, and its various interpretations
+     exasperating.  In the next unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves
+     himself to a misguided official.  The letter is worth reading today,
+     if for no other reason, to show the absurdity of copyright
+     conditions which prevailed at that time.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government
+      is this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds in
+      his hands&mdash;bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance&mdash;the
+      procedure in his case shall be as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police offices
+      along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the bonds, the
+      government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits, and then let
+      them go ahead and circulate in this country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C. may pay the
+      duty and take the counterfeits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of
+      the swag. It is delicious. The biggest and proudest government on earth
+      turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing
+      them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with
+      foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the
+      foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing
+      the infant all alone by itself! Dear sir, this is not any more respectable
+      than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution of his own
+      daughter; in fact it is the same thing. Upon these terms, what is a U. S.
+      custom house but a &ldquo;fence?&rdquo; That is all it is: a legalized trader in
+      stolen goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself a
+      &ldquo;regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!&rdquo; Can sarcasm go
+      further than that? In what way does it protect them? Inspiration itself
+      could not furnish a rational answer to that question. Whom does it
+      protect, then? Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign thief&mdash;sometimes&mdash;and
+      his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the time. What could the
+      Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after it had bought them of
+      the star spangled banner Master-thief? Sell them at a dollar apiece and
+      fetch down the market for the genuine hundred-dollar bond? What could I do
+      with that 20-cent copy of &ldquo;Roughing It&rdquo; which the United States has
+      collared on the border and is waiting to release to me for cash in case I
+      am willing to come down to its moral level and help rob myself? Sell it at
+      ten or fifteen cents&mdash;duty added&mdash;and destroy the market for the
+      original $3,50 book? Who ever did invent that law? I would like to know
+      the name of that immortal jackass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the
+      desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it. But I have
+      no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay
+      duty on in either to get it or suppress it. No doubt there are ways in
+      which I might consent to go into partnership with thieves and fences, but
+      this is not one of them. This one revolts the remains of my self-respect;
+      turns my stomach. I think I could companion with a highwayman who carried
+      a shot-gun and took many risks; yes, I think I should like that if I were
+      younger; but to go in with a big rich government that robs paupers, and
+      the widows and orphans of paupers and takes no risk&mdash;why the thought
+      just gags me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, no, I shall never pay any duties on pirated books of mine. I am much
+      too respectable for that&mdash;yet awhile. But here&mdash;one thing that
+      grovels me is this: as far as I can discover&mdash;while freely granting
+      that the U. S. copyright laws are far and away the most idiotic that exist
+      anywhere on the face of the earth&mdash;they don't authorize the
+      government to admit pirated books into this country, toll or no toll. And
+      so I think that that regulation is the invention of one of those people&mdash;as
+      a rule, early stricken of God, intellectually&mdash;the departmental
+      interpreters of the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to
+      take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.
+      They can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it
+      inoperative&mdash;yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for
+      laughter and derision. Take some of the decisions of the Post-office
+      Department, for instance&mdash;though I do not mean to suggest that that
+      asylum is any worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of
+      incredible lunatics&mdash;I merely instance it because it happens to be
+      the first to come into my mind. Take that case of a few years ago where
+      the P. M. General suddenly issued an edict requiring you to add the name
+      of the State after Boston, New York, Chicago, &amp;c, in your
+      superscriptions, on pain of having your letter stopped and forwarded to
+      the dead-letter office; yes, and I believe he required the county, too. He
+      made one little concession in favor of New York: you could say &ldquo;New York
+      City,&rdquo; and stop there; but if you left off the &ldquo;city,&rdquo; you must add &ldquo;N.
+      Y.&rdquo; to your &ldquo;New York.&rdquo; Why, it threw the business of the whole country
+      into chaos and brought commerce almost to a stand-still. Now think of
+      that! When that man goes to&mdash;to&mdash;well, wherever he is going to&mdash;we
+      shan't want the microscopic details of his address. I guess we can find
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, as I was saying, I believe that this whole paltry and ridiculous
+      swindle is a pure creation of one of those cabbages that used to be at the
+      head of one of those Retreats down there&mdash;Departments, you know&mdash;and
+      that you will find it so, if you will look into it. And moreover&mdash;but
+      land, I reckon we are both tired by this time.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Truly Yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVII. MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF 1887. LITERARY ARTICLES. PEACEFUL DAYS AT
+      THE FARM. FAVORITE READING. APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We have seen in the preceding chapter how unknown aspirants in one field
+      or another were always seeking to benefit by Mark Twain's reputation. Once
+      he remarked, &ldquo;The symbol of the human race ought to be an ax; every human
+      being has one concealed about him somewhere.&rdquo; He declared when a stranger
+      called on him, or wrote to him, in nine cases out of ten he could
+      distinguish the gleam of the ax almost immediately. The following letter
+      is closely related to those of the foregoing chapter, only that this one
+      was mailed&mdash;not once, but many times, in some form adapted to the
+      specific applicant. It does not matter to whom it was originally written,
+      the name would not be recognized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. T. Concerning unearned credentials, etc.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  HARTFORD, 1887.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR MADAM,&mdash;It is an idea which many people have had, but it is
+      of no value. I have seen it tried out many and many a time. I have seen a
+      lady lecturer urged and urged upon the public in a lavishly complimentary
+      document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and some others of supreme
+      celebrity, but&mdash;there was nothing in her and she failed. If there had
+      been any great merit in her she never would have needed those men's help
+      and (at her rather mature age,) would never have consented to ask for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must bow
+      to that law, she must submit to its requirements. In brief this law is:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1.  No occupation without an apprenticeship.
+
+     2.  No pay to the apprentice.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a
+      General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in
+      everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served his
+      apprenticeship and proved himself. Your sister's course is perfectly
+      plain. Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to
+      lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to be
+      annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not annullable
+      by her at all. The second year, he to have her services, if he wants them,
+      at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to
+      remuneration&mdash;but she can not learn it in any less time than that,
+      unless she is a human miracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Try it, and do not be afraid. It is the fair and right thing. If she wins,
+      she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the
+     Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands.  Howells had been paid
+     twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience
+     hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used.  In
+     this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in
+     which Clemens had invested&mdash;a method of casting brass dies for
+     stamping book-covers and wall-paper.  Howells's purpose was to
+     introduce something of the matter into his next story.  Mark Twain's
+     reply gives us a light on this particular invention.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned
+      the Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence. I
+      have written him your proposition to-day. (The Library is part of the
+      property of the C. L. W. &amp; Co. firm.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will find
+      it in any Cyclopedia under the head of &ldquo;Brass.&rdquo; The thing I best remember
+      is, that the self-styled &ldquo;inventor&rdquo; had a very ingenious way of keeping me
+      from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment was spoiled by
+      his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be done, the night
+      before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his own shop the night
+      before. He unquestionably did both of these things. He really had no
+      invention; the whole project was a blackmailing swindle, and cost me
+      several thousand dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The slip you sent me from the May &ldquo;Study&rdquo; has delighted Mrs. Clemens and
+      me to the marrow. To think that thing might be possible to many; but to be
+      brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly believe. The
+      longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how unapproachable,
+      a compliment one pays when he says of a man &ldquo;he has the courage (to utter)
+      his convictions.&rdquo; Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps to you, and then
+      print potato hills?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've always
+      done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it. I've always
+      said to myself, &ldquo;Everybody reads it and that's something&mdash;it surely
+      isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty tired of
+      it.&rdquo; And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't high and fine,
+      through the remark &ldquo;High and fine literature is wine&rdquo; I retorted
+      (confidentially, to myself,) &ldquo;yes, high and fine literature is wine, and
+      mine is only water; but everybody likes water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into my
+      private scrap-book. None will see it there. With a thousand thanks.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Ys Ever
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with
+     the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different
+     sort.  Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's
+     valued friends.  In the comment which he made, when it was shown to
+     him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter
+     was not sent.  The name, &ldquo;Rest-and-be-Thankful,&rdquo; was the official
+     title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often
+     known as &ldquo;Quarry.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed):
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  HARTFORD, May 14, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR MISS GILDER,&mdash;We shall spend the summer at the same old
+      place-the remote farm called &ldquo;Rest-and-be-Thankful,&rdquo; on top of the hills
+      three miles from Elmira, N. Y. Your other question is harder to answer. It
+      is my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the
+      time, and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of
+      them; but I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be.
+      It takes seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a
+      good method: gives the public a rest. I have been accused of &ldquo;rushing into
+      print&rdquo; prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth I
+      have never done that. Do you care for trifles of information? (Well, then,
+      &ldquo;Tom Sawyer&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Prince and the Pauper&rdquo; were each on the stocks two
+      or three years, and &ldquo;Old Times on the Mississippi&rdquo; eight.) One of my
+      unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years; another seventeen.
+      This latter book could have been finished in a day, at any time during the
+      past five years. But as in the first of these two narratives all the
+      action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other the action takes
+      place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I have not hurried.
+      Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do not need to be rushed
+      to publication lest they get stale by waiting. In twenty-one years, with
+      all my time at my free disposal I have written and completed only eleven
+      books, whereas with half the labor that a journalist does I could have
+      written sixty in that time. I do not greatly mind being accused of a
+      proclivity for rushing into print, but at the same time I don't believe
+      that the charge is really well founded. Suppose I did write eleven books,
+      have you nothing to be grateful for? Go to&mdash;-remember the forty-nine
+      which I didn't write.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Truly Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  Notes (added twenty-two years later):
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Stormfield, April 30, 1909. It seems the letter was not sent. I probably
+      feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so without
+      running a risk of hurting her. No one would hurt Jeannette Gilder
+      purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it
+      unintentionally. She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must ask
+      her about this ancient letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent
+      answer. I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around
+      years and years, waiting. I have four or five novels on hand at present in
+      a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I have
+      looked at any of them. I have no intention of finishing them. I could
+      complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should come
+      powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that impulse
+      once, (&ldquo;Following the Equator&rdquo;), but mere desire for money has never
+      furnished it, so far as I remember. Not even money-necessity was able to
+      overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to have allowed
+      it to succeed. While I was a bankrupt and in debt two offers were made me
+      for weekly literary contributions to continue during a year, and they
+      would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined them, with my wife's
+      full approval, for I had known of no instance where a man had pumped
+      himself out once a week and failed to run &ldquo;emptyings&rdquo; before the year was
+      finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to that &ldquo;Noah's Ark&rdquo; book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;&mdash;[This
+      is not quite correct. The &ldquo;Noah's Ark&rdquo; book was begun in Buffalo in 1870.]
+      I don't know where the manuscript is now. It was a Diary, which professed
+      to be the work of Shem, but wasn't. I began it again several months ago,
+      but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying it to a finish&mdash;or
+      even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the book whose action &ldquo;takes place in Heaven.&rdquo; That was a small
+      thing, (&ldquo;Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.&rdquo;) It lay in my pigeon-holes
+      40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's Monthly last year.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of
+      &ldquo;Rest-and-be-Thankful.&rdquo; These were Mark Twain's balmy days. The financial
+      drain of the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting, and the
+      prospect of vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter each day. His
+      publishing business, though less profitable, was still prosperous, his
+      family life was ideal. How gratefully, then, he could enter into the peace
+      of that &ldquo;perfect day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MOLLIE,&mdash;This is a superb Sunday for weather&mdash;very cloudy,
+      and the thermometer as low as 65. The city in the valley is purple with
+      shade, as seen from up here at the study. The Cranes are reading and
+      loafing in the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher
+      (the highest) point; the cats are loafing over at &ldquo;Ellerslie&rdquo; which is the
+      children's estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by deed
+      from Susie Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and
+      young oaks and willows. Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and
+      bring her up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks&mdash;whence
+      a great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable. The
+      children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods. It
+      is a perfect day indeed.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With love to you all.
+                                                  SAM.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the
+      beginning of business trouble&mdash;that is to say, of the failing health
+      of Charles L. Webster. Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust. He
+      had overworked and was paying the penalty. His trouble was neurasthenia,
+      and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the business. The
+      &ldquo;Sam and Mary&rdquo; mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N. Y.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 12, '87
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR SISTER,&mdash;I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious. I
+      knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size of
+      the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just been writing to a friend in Hartford' who treated what I
+      imagine was a similar case surgically last fall, and produced a permanent
+      cure. If this is a like case, Charley must go to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If relief fails there, he must take the required rest, whether the
+      business can stand it or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is most pleasant to hear such prosperous accounts of Sam and Mary, I do
+      not see how Sam could well be more advantageously fixed. He can grow up
+      with that paper, and achieve a successful life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not all holiday here with Susie and Clara this time. They have to
+      put in some little time every day on their studies. Jean thinks she is
+      studying too, but I don't know what it is unless it is the horses; she
+      spends the day under their heels in the stables&mdash;and that is but a
+      continuation of her Hartford system of culture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With love from us all to you all.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Affectionately
+                                             SAM.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Mark Twain had a few books that he read regularly every year or two. Among
+      these were 'Pepys's Diary', Suetonius's 'Lives of the Twelve Caesars', and
+      Thomas Carlyle's 'French Revolution'. He had a passion for history,
+      biography, and personal memoirs of any sort. In his early life he had
+      cared very little for poetry, but along in the middle eighties he somehow
+      acquired a taste for Browning and became absorbed in it. A Browning club
+      assembled as often as once a week at the Clemens home in Hartford to
+      listen to his readings of the master. He was an impressive reader, and he
+      carefully prepared himself for these occasions, indicating by graduated
+      underscorings, the exact values he wished to give to words and phrases.
+      Those were memorable gatherings, and they must have continued through at
+      least two winters. It is one of the puzzling phases of Mark Twain's
+      character that, notwithstanding his passion for direct and lucid
+      expression, he should have found pleasure in the poems of Robert Browning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  22, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;How stunning are the changes which age makes in a
+      man while he sleeps. When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871,
+      I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it
+      differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and
+      environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once
+      more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!&mdash;And not a pale,
+      characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Carlyle teaches no such gospel so
+      the change is in me&mdash;in my vision of the evidences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at
+      all former milestones in their journey. I wonder how they can lie so. It
+      comes of practice, no doubt. They would not say that of Dickens's or
+      Scott's books. Nothing remains the same. When a man goes back to look at
+      the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance of
+      such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination call
+      for. Shrunk how? Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't altered;
+      this is the first time it has been in focus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, that's loss. To have house and Bible shrink so, under the
+      disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment. But there are
+      compensations. You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets and
+      corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the field.
+      Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi. I haven't got him in focus
+      yet, but I've got Browning....
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to
+     absentmindedness.  He was always forgetting engagements, or getting
+     them wrong.  Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the
+     mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably
+     for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all.  It was only
+     when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place
+     the week before.  It was always dangerous for him to make
+     engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience.
+     We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov.  6, 1887.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR MADAM,&mdash;I do not know how it is in the White House, but in
+      this house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to
+      run itself without the help of the major half it gets aground. Last night
+      when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open the
+      Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate women,
+      I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my chance.
+      I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of my mind. If I
+      had only laid the matter before the major half of the administration on
+      the spot, there would have been no blunder; but I never thought of that.
+      So when I did lay it before her, later, I realized once more that it will
+      not do for the literary fraction of a combination to try to manage affairs
+      which properly belong in the office of the business bulk of it. I suppose
+      the President often acts just like that: goes and makes an impossible
+      promise, and you never find it out until it is next to impossible to break
+      it up and set things straight again. Well, that is just our way,
+      exactly-one half of the administration always busy getting the family into
+      trouble, and the other half busy getting it out again. And so we do seem
+      to be all pretty much alike, after all. The fact is, I had forgotten that
+      we were to have a dinner party on that Bridgeport date&mdash;I thought it
+      was the next day: which is a good deal of an improvement for me, because I
+      am more used to being behind a day or two than ahead. But that is just the
+      difference between one end of this kind of an administration and the other
+      end of it, as you have noticed, yourself&mdash;the other end does not
+      forget these things. Just so with a funeral; if it is the man's funeral,
+      he is most always there, of course&mdash;but that is no credit to him, he
+      wouldn't be there if you depended on him to remember about it; whereas, if
+      on the other hand&mdash;but I seem to have got off from my line of
+      argument somehow; never mind about the funeral. Of course I am not meaning
+      to say anything against funerals&mdash;that is, as occasions&mdash;mere
+      occasions&mdash;for as diversions I don't think they amount to much But as
+      I was saying&mdash;if you are not busy I will look back and see what it
+      was I was saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever
+      anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was no help
+      for it. And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely ashamed of
+      having made an engagement to go without first making sure that I could
+      keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my heedless breach
+      of good manners.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With the sincerest respect,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book
+     in England before the enactment of the international copyright law.
+     As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'Roughing It' in England, and
+     piratical publishers there respected his rights.  Finally, in 1887,
+     the inland revenue office assessed him with income tax, which he
+     very willingly paid, instructing his London publishers, Chatto &amp;
+     Windus, to pay on the full amount he had received from them.  But
+     when the receipt for his taxes came it was nearly a yard square with
+     due postage of considerable amount.  Then he wrote:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Chatto, of Chatto &amp; Windus, in London:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 5, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR CHATTO,&mdash;Look here, I don't mind paying the tax, but don't
+      you let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for
+      the postage is something perfectly demoralizing. If they feel obliged to
+      print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don't they hire a ship and send it
+      over at their own expense?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wasn't it good that they caught me out with an old book instead of a new
+      one? The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body. It was my purpose to go
+      to England next May and stay the rest of the year, but I've found that tax
+      office out just in time. My new book would issue in March, and they would
+      tax the sale in both countries. Come, we must get up a compromise somehow.
+      You go and work in on the good side of those revenue people and get them
+      to take the profits and give me the tax. Then I will come over and we will
+      divide the swag and have a good time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish you to thank Mr. Christmas for me; but we won't resist. The country
+      that allows me copyright has a right to tax me.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Another English tax assessment came that year, based on the report
+     that it was understood that he was going to become an English
+     resident, and had leased Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year.
+     Clemens wrote his publishers: &ldquo;I will explain that all that about
+     Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake.  I was not in
+     England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall,
+     anyway, but at Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to find
+     out the reason why.&rdquo;  Clemens made literature out of this tax
+     experience.  He wrote an open letter to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
+     Such a letter has no place in this collection.  It was published in
+     the &ldquo;Drawer&rdquo; of Harper's Magazine, December, 1887, and is now
+     included in the uniform edition of his works under the title of,
+     &ldquo;A Petition to the Queen of England.&rdquo;
+
+     From the following letter, written at the end of the year, we gather
+     that the type-setter costs were beginning to make a difference in
+     the Clemens economies.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR PAMELA,&mdash;will you take this $15 and buy some candy or some other
+      trifle for yourself and Sam and his wife to remember that we remember you,
+      by?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we weren't a little crowded this year by the typesetter, I'd send a
+      check large enough to buy a family Bible or some other useful thing like
+      that. However we go on and on, but the type-setter goes on forever&mdash;at
+      $3,000 a month; which is much more satisfactory than was the case the
+      first seventeen months, when the bill only averaged $2,000, and promised
+      to take a thousand years. We'll be through, now, in 3 or 4 months, I
+      reckon, and then the strain will let up and we can breathe freely once
+      more, whether success ensues or failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even with a type-setter on hand we ought not to be in the least scrimped&mdash;but
+      it would take a long letter to explain why and who is to blame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the family send love to all of you and best Christmas wishes for your
+      prosperity.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Affectionately,
+                                        SAM.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVIII. LETTERS,1888. A YALE DEGREE. WORK ON &ldquo;THE YANKEE.&rdquo; ON
+      INTERVIEWING, ETC.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master
+     of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888.  Editor of the Courant, Charles H.
+     Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title.  Clarke was an
+     old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Charles H. Clarke, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 2, '88.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR CHARLES,&mdash;Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation
+      intentions. I shall be ready for you. I feel mighty proud of that degree;
+      in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain of it. And
+      why shouldn't I be?&mdash;I am the only literary animal of my particular
+      subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in any age of
+      the world, as far as I know.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Sincerely Yours
+                                             S. L. Clemens M. A.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR FRIEND, You are &ldquo;the only literary animal of your particular
+      subspecies&rdquo; in existence and you've no cause for humility in the fact.
+      Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and
+      &ldquo;Don't you forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              C. H. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882.  Mark
+     Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting.
+     Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old
+     times and for old river comrades.  Major &ldquo;Jack&rdquo; Downing had been a
+     Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the
+     river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town.  Clemens had
+     not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the
+     following answer.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Major &ldquo;Jack&rdquo; Downing, in Middleport Ohio:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y.[no month] 1888.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MAJOR,&mdash;And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak?
+      For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your
+      name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how young you've grown! I was a mere boy when I knew you on the river,
+      where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a year and
+      a half older than I am! I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and get 30 or
+      40 years knocked off my age. It's manifestly the place that Ponce de Leon
+      was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in
+      November. I propose to go down the river and &ldquo;note the changes&rdquo; once more
+      before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there. Will you?
+      I want to see all the boys that are left alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet? A mighty good fellow, and
+      smart too. When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers, which
+      was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting such a
+      thing. I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I resigned in
+      Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration. We should
+      all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority. I always had
+      good judgement, more judgement than talent, in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way. Capt. Sellers used the
+      signature, &ldquo;Mark Twain,&rdquo; himself, when he used to write up the antiquities
+      in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans Picayune. He hated
+      me for burlesquing them in an article in the True Delta; so four years
+      later when he died, I robbed the corpse&mdash;that is I confiscated the
+      nom de plume. I have published this vital fact 3,000 times now. But no
+      matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact that I can tell the
+      same way every time. Very glad, indeed, to hear from you Major, and shall
+      be gladder still to see you in November.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Truly yours,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year.
+     He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but
+     one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.
+
+     Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and
+     no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings,
+     more generously considerate of the senders.  Louis Pendleton was a
+     young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his
+     story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost
+     precious time, thought, and effort.  It must have rejoiced the young
+     man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young
+     authors held supreme.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR SIR,&mdash;I found your letter an hour ago among some others which
+      had lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to
+      read Ariadne. Stole is the right word, for the summer &ldquo;Vacation&rdquo; is the
+      only chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is
+      borrowed, it is stolen. But this time I do not repent. As a rule, people
+      don't send me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing&mdash;which
+      looks uncourteous. But I thank you. Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying
+      story; and true, too&mdash;which is the best part of a story; or indeed of
+      any other thing. Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent
+      liars; I mean in their private [the word conscientious written but erased]
+      intervals. (I struck that word out because a man's private thought can
+      never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always; what he
+      speaks&mdash;but these be platitudes.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you want me to pick some flaws&mdash;very well&mdash;but I do it
+      unwillingly. I notice one thing&mdash;which one may notice also in my
+      books, and in all books whether written by man or God: trifling
+      carelessness of statement or Expression. If I think that you meant that
+      she took the lizard from the water which she had drawn from the well, it
+      is evidence&mdash;it is almost proof&mdash;that your words were not as
+      clear as they should have been. True, it is only a trifling thing; but so
+      is mist on a mirror. I would have hung the pail on Ariadne's arm. You did
+      not deceive me when you said that she carried it under her arm, for I knew
+      she didn't; still it was not your right to mar my enjoyment of the
+      graceful picture. If the pail had been a portfolio, I wouldn't be making
+      these remarks. The engraver of a fine picture revises, and revises, and
+      revises&mdash;and then revises, and revises, and revises; and then
+      repeats. And always the charm of that picture grows, under his hand. It
+      was good enough before&mdash;told its story, and was beautiful. True: and
+      a lovely girl is lovely, with freckles; but she isn't at her level best
+      with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much concerning exactness of statement. In that other not-small matter&mdash;selection
+      of the exact single word&mdash;you are hard to catch. Still, I should hold
+      that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no occasion for concealment;
+      that &ldquo;motive&rdquo; implied a deeper mental search than she expended on the
+      matter; that it doesn't reflect the attitude of her mind with precision.
+      Is this hypercriticism? I shan't dispute it. I only say, that if Mrs.
+      Walker didn't go so far as to have a motive, I had to suggest that when a
+      word is so near the right one that a body can't quite tell whether it is
+      or isn't, it's good politics to strike it out and go for the Thesaurus.
+      That's all. Motive may stand; but you have allowed a snake to scream, and
+      I will not concede that that was the best word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the
+      speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can. They
+      would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to
+      you, said once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I save the other stories for my real vacation&mdash;which is nine months
+      long, to my sorrow. I thank you again.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Truly Yours
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine,
+     the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and
+     holding out false hopes of relief and golden return.  The program
+     here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet,
+     with the end always in sight, but never quite attained.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       Oct. 3, '88.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Private.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days' work
+      to do on the machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can use 4 men, but not constantly. If they could work constantly it
+      would complete the machine in 21 days, of course. They will all be on hand
+      and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is opportunity
+      for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the 21 days,
+      nobody can tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-day I pay Pratt &amp; Whitney $10,000. This squares back indebtedness
+      and everything to date. They began about May or April or March 1886&mdash;along
+      there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen
+      master-hands on the machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak and
+      caulk it. Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love to you both. All well here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        SAM.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on 'The Yankee at
+     King Arthur's Court', a book which he had begun two years before.
+     He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company
+     was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction.  Also
+     it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set
+     to work to finish the Yankee story.  He had worked pretty steadily
+     that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found
+     a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell's,
+     where carpenter work was in progress.  He seems to have worked there
+     successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that
+     numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult
+     to say.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Theodore W. Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N. Y.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  Friday, Oct.,5, '88.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR THEO,&mdash;I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of
+      the children and an army of carpenters to help. Of course they don't help,
+      but neither do they hinder. It's like a boiler-factory for racket, and in
+      nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles my
+      feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never am
+      conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of relief
+      without knowing when I do it. I began here Monday morning, and have done
+      eighty pages since. I was so tired last night that I thought I would lie
+      abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn't resist. I mean to try to knock off
+      tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do. I want to finish the day the machine
+      finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that indicated Oct.
+      22&mdash;but experience teaches me that their calculations will miss fire,
+      as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to
+      furnish the money&mdash;a dollar and a half. Jean discouraged the idea.
+      She said: &ldquo;We haven't got any money. Children, if you would think, you
+      would remember the machine isn't done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It's billiards to-night. I wish you were here.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With love to you both
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She wanted
+      a box of blacking, for the children's shoes. Jean reproved her&mdash;and
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now. The machine isn't done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one
+     who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal.  There is today
+     no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written,
+     but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief
+     value.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR WILL,&mdash;I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was
+      starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately
+      busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff and
+      laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves, examine
+      themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings&mdash;unaffected,
+      that is understood, by the surroundings, but not uninfluenced by them.
+      Here was the near presence of the two supreme events of life: marriage,
+      which is the beginning of life, and death which is the end of it. I found
+      myself seeking chances to shirk into corners where I might think,
+      undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought, was this: both marriage
+      and death ought to be welcome: the one promises happiness, doubtless the
+      other assures it. A long procession of people filed through my mind&mdash;people
+      whom you and I knew so many years ago&mdash;so many centuries ago, it
+      seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the soft marriage music of a
+      band concealed in some remote room of the house; and the contented music
+      and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord with each other, and
+      fitting. Nobody else knew that a procession of the dead was passing though
+      this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was, and to me there was
+      nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome faces to me. I would have
+      liked to bring up every creature we knew in those days&mdash;even the dumb
+      animals&mdash;it would be bathing in the fabled Fountain of Youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might,
+      but your words deny us that privilege. To die one's self is a thing that
+      must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self&mdash;well,
+      we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that disaster,
+      received that wound which cannot heal.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Sincerely your friend
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     His next is of quite a different nature.  Evidently the typesetting
+     conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies
+     with a view of retrenchment.  Orion was always reducing economy to
+     science.  Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured
+     his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but
+     inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the
+     sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted.  Orion was a trial,
+     certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse.
+     Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds.  Mark Twain's rages
+     always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more
+     than Orion himself would appreciate.  He preserved this letter,
+     quietly noting on the envelope, &ldquo;Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
+
+                                                       NOV. 29, '88.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jesus Christ!&mdash;It is perilous to write such a man. You can go crazy
+      on less material than anybody that ever lived. What in hell has produced
+      all these maniacal imaginings? You told me you had hired an attendant for
+      ma. Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie and
+      yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves. Hire the attendant, and
+      tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster &amp; Co. to add it every
+      month to what they already send. Don't fool away any more time about this.
+      And don't write me any more damned rot about &ldquo;storms,&rdquo; and inability to
+      pay trivial sums of money and&mdash;and&mdash;hell and damnation! You see
+      I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read the rest for
+      a million dollars.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Yr
+                                         SAM.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear. I swear
+      all day, but I do not lose my temper. And don't imagine that I am on my
+      way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am not; or
+      that I am uncomfortable or unhappy&mdash;for I never am. I don't know what
+      it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn how, at
+      this late day.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   SAM.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never
+     welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them.  &ldquo;What I
+     say in an interview loses it character in print,&rdquo; he often remarked,
+     &ldquo;all its life and personality.  The reporter realizes this himself,
+     and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn't help matters any.&rdquo;
+
+     Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal,
+     was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of &ldquo;Bok's
+     Literary Leaves.&rdquo;  It usually consisted of news and gossip of
+     writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional
+     interviews with distinguished authors.  He went up to Hartford one
+     day to interview Mark Twain.  The result seemed satisfactory to Bok,
+     but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens,
+     he sent him a copy for approval.  The interview was not returned;
+     in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as
+     the reader may believe.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Edward W. Bok, in New York:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR MR. BOK,&mdash;No, no. It is like most interviews, pure twaddle
+      and valueless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several quite plain and simple reasons, an &ldquo;interview&rdquo; must, as a
+      rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason&mdash;It is an attempt
+      to use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken
+      speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is the proper
+      vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former. The moment &ldquo;talk&rdquo; is
+      put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when you heard it;
+      you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from it. That is
+      its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your hands. Color,
+      play of feature, the varying modulations of the voice, the laugh, the
+      smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that body warmth,
+      grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to your affections&mdash;or,
+      at least, to your tolerance&mdash;is gone and nothing is left but a
+      pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is &ldquo;talk&rdquo; almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an
+      &ldquo;interview&rdquo;. The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was
+      said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there. When one writes
+      for print his methods are very different. He follows forms which have but
+      little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader understand
+      what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is making a story
+      and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his characters
+      observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and difficult
+      thing. &ldquo;If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,&rdquo; said Alfred,
+      &ldquo;taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance upon the
+      company, blood would have flowed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,&rdquo; said Hawkwood, with
+      that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty assemblage
+      to quake, &ldquo;blood would have flowed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,&rdquo; said the paltry
+      blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, &ldquo;blood would
+      have flowed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no
+      meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his
+      characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud confession
+      that print is a poor vehicle for &ldquo;talk&rdquo;; it is a recognition that
+      uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader, not
+      instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have
+      set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word
+      of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated.
+      Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I
+      was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether.
+      Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can convey many meanings
+      to the reader, but never the right one. To add interpretations which would
+      convey the right meaning is a something which would require&mdash;what? An
+      art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it would ever be
+      allowed to waste it on interviews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is
+      rubbish. I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some value,
+      for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in
+      interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Very sincerely yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIX. LETTERS, 1889. THE MACHINE. DEATH OF MR. CRANE. CONCLUSION OF THE
+      YANKEE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of waiting,
+      fruition had come in the matter of the type machine. Paige, the inventor,
+      seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches. The mechanical
+      marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a fortune in money,
+      stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch&mdash;the latest,
+      and one of the greatest, wonders of the world. To George Standring, a
+      London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: &ldquo;The machine is finished!&rdquo;
+       and added, &ldquo;This is by far the most marvelous invention ever contrived by
+      man. And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made of massive
+      steel, and will last a century.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in
+      operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters. They were more or less
+      duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and more
+      intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR ORION,&mdash;At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was
+      spaced and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of
+      the world! And I was there to see. It was done automatically&mdash;instantly&mdash;perfectly.
+      This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever was perfectly
+      spaced and perfectly justified on this earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the last function that remained to be tested&mdash;and so by long
+      odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain
+      of man stands completed and perfect. Livy is down stairs celebrating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!&mdash;and knows more than any
+      man that ever lived. You shall see. We made the test in this way. We set
+      up a lot of random letters in a stick&mdash;three-fourths of a line; then
+      filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be
+      35/1000 of an inch thick. Then we threw aside the quads and put the
+      letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words, leaving
+      the words separated by two-inch vacancies. Then we started up the machine
+      slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting pins. The
+      first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came traveling
+      along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third block
+      projected its second pin!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hell! stop the machine&mdash;something wrong&mdash;it's going to set
+      a 30/1000 space!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      General consternation. &ldquo;A foreign substance has got into the spacing
+      plates.&rdquo; This from the head mathematician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is the trouble,&rdquo; assented the foreman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paige examined. &ldquo;No&mdash;look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
+      the kind.&rdquo; Further examination. &ldquo;Now I know what it is&mdash;what it must
+      be: one of those plates projects and binds. It's too bad&mdash;the first
+      test is a failure.&rdquo; A pause. &ldquo;Well, boys, no use to cry. Get to work&mdash;take
+      the machine down.&mdash;No&mdash;Hold on! don't touch a thing! Go right
+      ahead! We are fools, the machine isn't. The machine knows what it's about.
+      There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine is putting
+      in a thinner space to allow for it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was just it. The machine went right ahead, spaced the line, justified
+      it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and perfect! We took
+      it out and examined it with a glass. You could not tell by your eye that
+      the third space was thinner than the others, but the glass and the
+      calipers showed the difference. Paige had always said that the machine
+      would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for them, but even he
+      had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth&mdash;the
+      first justification of a line of movable type by machinery&mdash;and also
+      set down the hour and the minute. Nobody had drank anything, and yet
+      everybody seemed drunk. Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly
+      into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
+      Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines, Babbage
+      calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's frames&mdash;all
+      mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone and far in the
+      lead of human inventions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
+      have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
+      shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Return me this letter when you have read it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   SAM.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
+     Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford&mdash;for a
+     time.
+
+     Then further delays.  Before the machine got &ldquo;the stiffness out of
+     her joints&rdquo; that &ldquo;cunning devil&rdquo; manifested a tendency to break the
+     types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling
+     things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart
+     again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.
+
+     There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring.  Theodore Crane,
+     who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse.  In
+     February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in
+     operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious.
+     Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him
+     cheering and amusing incidents.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Theodore Crane. in Elmira, N. Y.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, May 28, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore. You know how
+      absent-minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in that
+      frame. At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the street and
+      is not aware of the meeting at all. Twice in a week, our Clara had this
+      latter experience with him within the past month. But the second instance
+      was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks, with a reproach.
+      She said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into the
+      grave, when you meet a person on the street?&rdquo;&mdash;and then went on to
+      reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such occasions.
+      Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would swim the
+      Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth. As soon as he sights her, no
+      matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he makes a bound into
+      the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of frantic gestures of
+      delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and pirouetting for her like a
+      drunken Indian entering heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The reference in the next to the &ldquo;closing sentence&rdquo; in a letter
+     written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a
+     heart-broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter
+     Winnie, who had died some time before.  She had been a gentle
+     talented girl, but never of robust health.  Her death had followed
+     a long period of gradual decline.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a
+      house of mourning. Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two whole
+      days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had always
+      hoped for a swift death. Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the children were
+      in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen years ago, when
+      Mr. Langdon died. It is heart-breaking to see Mrs. Crane. Many a time, in
+      the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded me, with a pang, of the
+      desolation which uttered itself in the closing sentence of your last
+      letter to me. I do see that there is an argument against suicide: the
+      grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful famine in their hearts,
+      these are too costly terms for the release.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the
+      servants. Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me? Can't you come and stay with
+      me? The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be interrupted; we
+      will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do the same; you can
+      have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find the Children's
+      schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection of a retired and
+      silent den for work. There isn't a fly or a mosquito on the estate. Come&mdash;say
+      you will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Yours Ever
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Howells was more hopeful. He wrote: &ldquo;I read something in a strange book,
+      The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we
+      see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer
+      the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel.&rdquo; And a few
+      days later, he wrote: &ldquo;I would rather see and talk with you than any other
+      man in the world outside my own blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that
+      year and given to the artist and printer. Dan Beard was selected for the
+      drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster &amp; Co.:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Charles L. Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired from
+      the firm.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 20, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;Upon reflection&mdash;thus: tell Beard to obey his
+      own inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture
+      on paper, be it humorous or be it serious. I want his genius to be wholly
+      unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result. They will be better
+      pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Send this note and he'll understand.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Yr
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the
+     illustrations.  He was well qualified for the work, and being of a
+     socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it.  When the
+     drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: &ldquo;Hold me under permanent
+     obligations.  What luck it was to find you!  There are hundreds of
+     artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was
+     only one who could illustrate this one.  Yes, it was a fortunate
+     hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor.
+     Live forever!&rdquo;
+
+     Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and
+     Mrs. Clemens particularly so.  Her eyes were giving her trouble that
+     summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had
+     grave doubts as to some of its chapters.  It may be said here that
+     the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able
+     to read it.  Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary
+     subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps
+     somewhat blinded to its literary defects.  However, this is
+     premature.  Howells did not at once see the story.  He had promised
+     to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his
+     visit impossible.  From the next letter we get the situation at this
+     time.  The &ldquo;Mr. Church&rdquo; mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the
+     well-known artist.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ELMIRA, July 24, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and
+      desperately disappointed. I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off
+      to New York lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with
+      it. Not that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would;
+      but not on a holiday that's not the time. I see how you were situated&mdash;another
+      familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion&mdash;and of course
+      we could not help ourselves. Well, just think of it: a while ago, while
+      Providence's attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as
+      to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown
+      dam got loose. I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh.
+      Well, I'm not going to despair; we'll manage a meet yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have to
+      come back here and fetch the family. And, along there in August, some
+      time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I am
+      going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we
+      will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time. I have noticed
+      that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should
+     see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of
+     his more violent fulminations and wild fancies.  However this may
+     be, further postponement was soon at an end.  Mrs. Clemens's eyes
+     troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that
+     the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells
+     and Edmund Clarence Stedman.  Howells wrote that even if he hadn't
+     wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake,
+     he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's.  Whereupon the
+     proofs were started in his direction.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  24, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;If you should be moved to speak of my book in the
+      Study, I shall be glad and proud&mdash;and the sooner it gets in, the
+      better for the book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than
+      the November number&mdash;why, no, you can't get it in till a month later
+      than that. Well, anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy&mdash;except
+      perhaps to Stedman. I'm not writing for those parties who miscall
+      themselves critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all.
+      It's my swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish
+      to pass to the cemetery unclodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had
+      some (though not revises,) this morning. I'm sure I'm going to be charmed
+      with Beard's pictures. Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age
+      art-dinner-table scene.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Ys sincerely
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant
+     shouts, one after reading each batch of proof.  First he wrote:
+     &ldquo;It's charming, original, wonderful! good in fancy and sound to the
+     core in morals.&rdquo;  And again, &ldquo;It's a mighty great book, and it makes
+     my heart burn with wrath.  It seems God did not forget to put a soul
+     into you.  He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely.&rdquo;
+      Then, a few days later: &ldquo;The book is glorious&mdash;simply noble; what
+     masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!&rdquo; and, finally,
+     &ldquo;Last night I read your last chapter.  As Stedman says of the whole
+     book, it's titanic.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept.  22, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;It is immensely good of you to grind through that
+      stuff for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as
+      grateful to you as a body can be. I am glad you approve of what I say
+      about the French Revolution. Few people will. It is odd that even to this
+      day Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and
+      other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that they
+      didn't get at second-hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the
+      holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth. And
+      its gracious work is not done yet&mdash;not anywhere in the remote
+      neighborhood of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your
+      corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest. We issue the book Dec. 10;
+      consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism. When that
+      happens&mdash;as please God it must&mdash;consider that if you lived three
+      centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a
+      humaner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by
+      the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your
+      approval, and as valuable. I do not know what the secret of it is, unless
+      it is your attitude&mdash;man courteously reasoning with man and brother,
+      in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this long time&mdash;superior
+      being lecturing a boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, my book is written&mdash;let it go. But if it were only to write
+      over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and
+      they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
+      And besides, they would require a library&mdash;and a pen warmed up in
+      hell.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
+     Clemens believed it perfected by this time.  Paige had got it
+     together again and it was running steadily&mdash;or approximately so
+     &mdash;setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy.  In
+     time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight
+     thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good
+     compositor could set and distribute by hand.  Those who saw it were
+     convinced&mdash;most of them&mdash;that the type-setting problem was solved by
+     this great mechanical miracle.  If there were any who doubted, it
+     was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only
+     admired.  Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required
+     absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great
+     inventor&mdash;&ldquo;the poet in steel,&rdquo; as Clemens once called him&mdash;was no
+     longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
+     But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the
+     machine as reliable as a constellation.
+
+     But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the
+     wonder.  Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator
+     Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe
+     Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence.  He
+     wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition
+     of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889.  We note in
+     this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine
+     three years and seven months, but this was only the period during
+     which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand
+     dollars.  His interest in the invention had begun as far back as
+     1880.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Joseph T. Goodman, in Nevada:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Private.  HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday, and
+      in answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider a
+      secret except to you and John McComb,&mdash;[This is Col. McComb, of the
+      Alta-California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City excursion]&mdash;as
+      I am not ready yet to get into the newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it
+      wasn't ripe, and I waited. It is ripe, now. It is a type-setting machine
+      which I undertook to build for the inventor (for a consideration). I have
+      been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a cost of
+      $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known nothing
+      about it. Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter. I have
+      reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the N. Y. Sun,
+      Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also to the
+      proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. Three years ago I
+      asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to load up their
+      offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and wait for mine
+      and then choose between the two. They have waited&mdash;with no very gaudy
+      patience&mdash;but still they have waited; and I could prove to them
+      to-day that they have not lost anything by it. But I reserve the proof for
+      the present&mdash;except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an
+      invitation there the other day&mdash;a courtesy due a paper which ordered
+      $240,000 worth of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude
+      condition. The Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next
+      Thursday; but that is the only invitation which will go out for some time
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever
+      since in the machine shop. It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of
+      Pratt &amp; Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and
+      as accurate as a watch. In construction it is as elaborate and complex as
+      that machine which it ranks next to, by every right&mdash;Man&mdash;and in
+      performance it is as simple and sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anybody can set type on it who can read&mdash;and can do it after only 15
+      minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at the
+      keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but strike
+      the keys and set type&mdash;merely one function; the spacing, justifying,
+      emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is all done by
+      the machine without anybody's help&mdash;four functions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising. Day before yesterday I
+      saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150 ems of
+      solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the same hour&mdash;and
+      six hours previously he had never seen the machine or its keyboard. It was
+      a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other type-setting machines
+      to do. We have 3 cubs. The dean of the trio is a school youth of 18.
+      Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the machine 16 working days
+      (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he could do in an hour. In
+      the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and the machine perfectly
+      spaced and justified it, and of course distributed the like amount in the
+      same hour. Considering that a good fair compositor sets 700 and
+      distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did the work of about 8 x a
+      compositors in that hour. This fact sends all other type-setting machines
+      a thousand miles to the rear, and the best of them will never be heard of
+      again after we publicly exhibit in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall put on 3 more cubs. We have one school boy and two compositors,
+      now,&mdash;and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and
+      perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are
+      required with this machine. We shall train these beginners two or three
+      months&mdash;or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour&mdash;then
+      we will show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in
+      the week, for several months&mdash;to prove that this is a machine which
+      will never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an
+      anvil can stand. You know there is no other typesetting machine that can
+      run two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its
+      incurable caprices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We own the whole field&mdash;every inch of it&mdash;and nothing can
+      dislodge us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose
+      of it. I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and
+      satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and
+      sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten
+      per cent in cash or the &ldquo;property&rdquo; for your trouble&mdash;the latter, if
+      you are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I call &ldquo;property&rdquo; is this. A small part of my ownership consists of a
+      royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents. My
+      selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every
+      American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid.
+      We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years&mdash;a return
+      of fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand. A royalty is better than
+      stock, in one way&mdash;it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine;
+      it is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared. By and by,
+      when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock
+      if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a
+      penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished and
+      proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be&mdash;perfect,
+      permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all kindred machines,
+      which the City of Paris occupies as regards the canvas-backs of the
+      mercantile marine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the above
+      price during the next two months and keep the other $300.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for not
+      writing the message herself&mdash;which would be a pathetically-welcome
+      spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since
+      her eyes failed her. Yours as always
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to
+     astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different,
+     but equally characteristic sort.  We may assume that Mark Twain's
+     sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making
+     a visit in Keokuk.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR PAMELA,&mdash;An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a
+      realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine: to
+      send your trunk after you. Land! it was idiotic. None but a lunatic would,
+      separate himself from his baggage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating
+      my insane inspiration. I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
+      him again. I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
+      Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York today.
+      I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope soiled, and
+      asked Livy to put on a clean one. That is why I am going to the banquet;
+      also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going to punch
+      billiards with, upstairs to-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck. And I am the
+      other.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Your Brother
+                                             SAM.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
+     already in the reviewers' hands.  Just at this moment the Brazilian
+     monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
+     of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
+     prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
+     suspected.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
+      satisfaction. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
+      see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I
+      should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
+      swindles ever invented by man-monarchy. It is enough to make a graven
+      image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
+      wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
+      reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
+      kingship and so-called &ldquo;nobility.&rdquo; It is enough to make the monarchs and
+      nobles themselves laugh&mdash;and in private they do; there can be no
+      question about that. I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is
+      the spectacle of these bastard Americans&mdash;these Hamersleys and
+      Huntingtons and such&mdash;offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for
+      rotten carcases and stolen titles. When our great brethren the disenslaved
+      Brazilians frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will
+      insert this missing link: &ldquo;We hold these truths to be self-evident: that
+      all monarchs are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason
+      that no throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely
+      exercised, of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up&mdash;the
+      numerical mass of the nation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands.
+      If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state
+      paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of
+      King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English Republic. Compare it with
+      the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian monarchy and
+      proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and stand by to
+      defend the Yankee from plagiarism. There is merely a resemblance of ideas,
+      nothing more. The Yankee's proclamation was already in print a week ago.
+      This is merely one of those odd coincidences which are always turning up.
+      Come, protect the Yank from that cheapest and easiest of all charges&mdash;plagiarism.
+      Otherwise, you see, he will have to protect himself by charging
+      approximate and indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our
+      majestic twin down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar
+      annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
+      that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive? Also, that the head
+      slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
+      order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half time
+      now? Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added stench
+      the other day&mdash;and had to ship it to India and the continent because
+      there wasn't any more room for it at home? Things are working. By and by
+      there is going to be an emigration, may be. Of course we shall make no
+      preparation; we never do. In a few years from now we shall have nothing
+      but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the horse-cars,
+      and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the avenues of
+      unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late, that we had
+      taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at Castle Garden.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
+     there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
+     Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
+     schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
+     concerned.  When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
+     telegrams.  In one of the letters Goodman is promised &ldquo;five hundred
+     thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
+     ourselves.&rdquo;  One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
+     has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
+     perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
+     perfections were not permanent.  A letter at the end of November
+     seems worth preserving here.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Joseph T. Goodman, in California:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every
+      day. Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising of
+      capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for the
+      capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me. I don't want to dicker
+      with anybody but Jones. I know him; that is to say, I want to dicker with
+      you, and through you with Jones. Try to see if you can't be here by the
+      15th of January.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other
+      day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her to
+      be perfecter than a watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can,
+      for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York. You know the
+      machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any man
+      I know. At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,) we
+      shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent&mdash;17 years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the family send love to you&mdash;and they mean it, or they wouldn't
+      say it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in
+     the &ldquo;Editor's Study&rdquo; in Harper's Magazine.  He had given it his
+     highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not
+     change with time.  &ldquo;Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me
+     most,&rdquo; he in one place declared, and again referred to it as
+     &ldquo;a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale.&rdquo;
+
+     In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come
+     East without delay.  &ldquo;Take the train, Joe, and come along,&rdquo; he wrote
+     early in December.  And we judge from the following that Joe had
+     decided to come.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is
+      just great. The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious if
+      the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it does,
+      though of course I can't realize it and believe it. But I am your grateful
+      servant, anyway and always.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11. I go from here to
+      New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th. Can't you go with me? It's
+      great fun. I'm going to read the passages in the &ldquo;Yankee&rdquo; in which the
+      Yankee's West Point cadets figure&mdash;and shall covertly work in a
+      lecture on aristocracy to those boys. I am to be the guest of the
+      Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to the
+      hotel. He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take that
+      liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January? For
+      two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we want
+      to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking about it
+      and hankering for it. And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again by that
+      time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly. It's well worth it. I
+      am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I can get a
+      chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is, too.
+      You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect and
+      complete. All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs. Clemens, whereas
+      I was expecting nothing but praises. I made a party call the day after the
+      party&mdash;and called the lady down from breakfast to receive it. I then
+      left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her
+      dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon. The
+      error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the afternoon,
+      and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another part of the
+      town. However, as I meant well, none of these disasters distressed me.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yrs ever
+                                   MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England.  English
+     readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or
+     American strictures on their institutions.  Mark Twain's publishers
+     had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for
+     the English edition.  Clemens, however, would not listen to any
+     suggestions of the sort.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Messrs. Chatto &amp; Windus, in London, Eng.:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GENTLEMEN,&mdash;Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story
+      twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund
+      Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several passages
+      that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others.
+      Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen
+      were present and have profited by their suggestions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a
+      Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props, and
+      yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it comes to
+      you, without altering a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people. It is you who
+      are thin-skinned. An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness
+      about any man or institution among us and we republish him without
+      dreaming of altering a line or a word. But England cannot stand that kind
+      of a book written about herself. It is England that is thin-skinned. It
+      causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my language which
+      have been made in my English editions to fit them for the sensitive
+      English palate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of
+      offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands. I
+      am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can. I want you to
+      read it carefully. If you can publish it without altering a single word,
+      go ahead. Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for him to
+      have it published at my expense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for
+      America; it was written for England. So many Englishmen have done their
+      sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems to
+      me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good
+      intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of
+      manhood in turn.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Very truly yours,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish to
+      be &ldquo;pried up to a higher level of manhood&rdquo; by a Connecticut Yankee. The
+      papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a vulgar
+      travesty. Some of the critics concluded that England, after all, had made
+      a mistake in admiring Mark Twain. Clemens stood this for a time and then
+      seems to have decided that something should be done. One of the foremost
+      of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state the case to
+      him fully and invite his assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Andrew Lang, in London:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [First page missing.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                            1889
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      They vote but do not print. The head tells you pretty promptly whether the
+      food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the whole man
+      has spoken. It is a delusion. Only his taste and his smell have been heard
+      from&mdash;important, both, in a way, but these do not build up the man;
+      and preserve his life and fortify it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little child is permitted to label its drawings &ldquo;This is a cow this is
+      a horse,&rdquo; and so on. This protects the child. It saves it from the sorrow
+      and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as kangaroos and
+      work benches. A man who is white-washing a fence is doing a useful thing,
+      so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house with costly
+      frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these performances by
+      standards proper to each. Now, then, to be fair, an author ought to be
+      allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line: &ldquo;This is written for the
+      Head;&rdquo; &ldquo;This is written for the Belly and the Members.&rdquo; And the critic
+      ought to hold himself in honor bound to put away from him his ancient
+      habit of judging all books by one standard, and thenceforth follow a
+      fairer course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the
+      cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable. Let us apply his law all
+      around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures,
+      and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps
+      which lead up to culture and make culture possible. It condemns the
+      spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture; it
+      condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the child's
+      primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the university; it
+      condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap terra cotta
+      groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and the
+      Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he can
+      sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will grant its
+      sanction to nothing below the &ldquo;classic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Is this an extravagant statement? No, it is a mere statement of fact. It
+      is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque. And what is the
+      result? This&mdash;and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually
+      imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is more
+      valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the
+      august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and
+      Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in all mouths
+      today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and the Latin
+      classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards than
+      the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the plaster-cast peddler;
+      the superstition, in a word, that the vast and awful comet that trails its
+      cold lustre through the remote abysses of space once a century and
+      interests and instructs a cultivated handful of astronomers is worth more
+      to the world than the sun which warms and cheers all the nations every day
+      and makes the crops to grow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to
+      convert angels: and they wouldn't need it. The thin top crust of humanity&mdash;the
+      cultivated&mdash;are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth coddling,
+      worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies, it is true;
+      but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified or valuable
+      occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the over-fed, and there
+      must be small satisfaction in that. It is not that little minority who are
+      already saved that are best worth trying to uplift, I should think, but
+      the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are underneath. That mass will
+      never see the Old Masters&mdash;that sight is for the few; but the chromo
+      maker can lift them all one step upward toward appreciation of art; they
+      cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and the singing class lift them
+      a little way toward that far light; they will never know Homer, but the
+      passing rhymester of their day leaves them higher than he found them; they
+      may never even hear of the Latin classics, but they will strike step with
+      Kipling's drum-beat, and they will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help
+      they would die in their slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of
+      them up to pure air and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus
+      is not even a name to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of
+      civilization by the ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were
+      before it took its place upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their
+      unexacting eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first. I have never tried in
+      even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was
+      not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training. And I never had
+      any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game&mdash;the
+      masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but have done
+      my best to entertain them. To simply amuse them would have satisfied my
+      dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction elsewhere,
+      and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for amusement is a
+      good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue after it. My
+      audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot know whether I
+      have won its approbation or only got its censure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but
+      have been served like the others&mdash;criticized from the
+      culture-standard&mdash;to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never
+      cared what became of the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre
+      and the opera&mdash;they had no use for me and the melodeon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
+      supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing the
+      Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for them
+      shall be judged. Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than yours
+      in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on &ldquo;The
+     Art of Mark Twain.&rdquo;  Lang had no admiration to express for the
+     Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
+     glorified Huck Finn to the highest.  &ldquo;I can never forget, nor be
+     ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
+     Finn for the first time, years ago,&rdquo; he wrote; &ldquo;I read it again last
+     night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck.  I never laid it down till I
+     had finished it.&rdquo;
+
+     Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
+     &ldquo;great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
+     watched to see this new planet swim into their ken.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXX. LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN. THE GREAT MACHINE
+      ENTERPRISE
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873
+     as &ldquo;Jock,&rdquo; sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by
+     E.  T.  McLaren.  It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. BROWN,&mdash;Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading
+      the one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of &ldquo;Rab and his
+      Friends.&rdquo; It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary workmanship.
+      It says in every line, &ldquo;Don't look at me, look at him&rdquo;&mdash;and one tries
+      to be good and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong that one
+      can't keep his entire attention on the developing portrait, but must steal
+      side-glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of her felicitous
+      brush. In this book the doctor lives and moves just as he was. He was the
+      most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the kindest; and yet he died
+      without setting one of his bondmen free. We all send our very, very
+      kindest regards.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine
+     he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers
+     play, which he had written with Howells seven years before.  The
+     play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York,
+     with A. P. Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as
+     financial backers.  But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay
+     any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road.
+     Now, however, James A.  Herne, a well-known actor and playwright,
+     became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with
+     Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under
+     Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful.
+
+     But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine,
+     and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture.  His
+     next letter to Goodman is illuminating&mdash;the urgency of his need for
+     funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most
+     positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual.  The Mr. Arnot of
+     this letter was an Elmira capitalist.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Jos. T. Goodman, in California:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, March 31, '90.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;If you were here, I should say, &ldquo;Get you to Washington and
+      beg Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or &ldquo;&mdash;no,
+      I wouldn't. The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from me
+      if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and mine
+      and without other evidence. It is too much of a responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the last
+      month's machine-expenses, and the purse empty. I notified Mr. Arnot a
+      month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last
+      night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the 9th
+      of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and that
+      before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and
+      approved, or done the other thing. If Jones should arrive here a week or
+      ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve, and
+      shouldn't buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be symmetrically
+      square, and then how could I refund? The surest way was to return his
+      check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have talked with the madam, and here is the result. I will go down to
+      the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet
+      the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April and
+      return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found financial
+      relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a
+      bird to go! I think she's going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the
+      hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year's practice. I may be in
+      error, but I most solidly believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There's an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I
+      watched it two whole afternoons.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With the love of us all,
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand
+     dollars in this moment of need.  Clemens was probably as sorely
+     tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his
+     life, but his resolution field firm.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N. Y.:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MR. M. H. ARNOT
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;No&mdash;no, I could not think of taking it, with you
+      unsatisfied; and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made
+      personal examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of
+      disinterested people, besides. My own perfect knowledge of what is
+      required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that this
+      is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it difficult for
+      me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted men; and so I
+      would have taken your money without thinking, and thus would have done a
+      great wrong to you and a great one to myself. And now that I go back over
+      the ground, I remember that where I said I could get along 3 months
+      without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit from you to the
+      machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its character and
+      prospects. I had forgotten all that. But I remember it now; and the fact
+      that it was not &ldquo;so nominated in the bond&rdquo; does not alter the case or
+      justify me in making my call so prematurely. I do not know that you
+      regarded all that as a part of the bargain&mdash;for you were thoroughly
+      and magnanimously unexacting&mdash;but I so regarded it, notwithstanding I
+      have so easily managed to forget all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me in
+      a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but my
+      honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap a
+      money advantage from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             S L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed to
+      say the main thing in exact enough language&mdash;which is, that the
+      transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall have
+      convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are
+      satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we have
+      since been waiting for Mr. Jones. When he was ready, we were not; and now
+      we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in Washington
+      by the Silver bill. He said the other day that to venture out of the
+      Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him if the bill
+      came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the bill, which
+      would pass anyway. Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or three days'
+      notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they would follow as
+      soon as I should return word that their coming would not inconvenience us.
+      I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting for Mr. Jones, but it
+      would not be wise to go there without money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bill is still pending.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in
+     the middle stages of experimental development.  It was a slower
+     machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room.
+     There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so
+     delicate, not so human.  These were immense advantages.
+
+     But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter
+     would reap the harvest of millions.  It was only sure that at least
+     one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade
+     stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial
+     success for both, whichever won.  Clemens, with a faith that never
+     faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him
+     millions.
+
+     Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had
+     been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich
+     Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the
+     machine's manufacture.  Goodman was spending a large part of his
+     time traveling back and forth between California and Washington,
+     trying to keep business going at both ends.  Paige spent most of his
+     time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate
+     attachments which complicated its construction more and more.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Joe T. Goodman, in Washington:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, June 22, '90.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this
+      afternoon, and my admiration of it towers higher than ever. There is no
+      sort of mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza. In the 2 hours, the time
+      lost by type-breakage was 3 minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This machine is totally without a rival. Rivalry with it is impossible.
+      Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship on
+      the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and the
+      type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad
+      and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything
+      about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within the
+      life of the patents. Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the wealthiest
+      grandees in America&mdash;one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact&mdash;and
+      yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask
+      you to take my note instead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman and
+      refresh yourself with a draught of the same.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Ys ever
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt
+     Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force
+     from doing so.  He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking
+     the machine apart or setting it up again.  Finally, he was allowed
+     to go at it&mdash;a disasterous permission, for it was just then that
+     Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch
+     the type-setter in operation.  Paige already had it in parts when
+     this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off.
+     His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day.  In July,
+     Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat
+     diffident in the matter of huge capitalization.  He thought it
+     partly due, at least, to &ldquo;the fatal delays that have sicklied over
+     the bloom of original enthusiasm.&rdquo;  Clemens himself went down to
+     Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least,
+     Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a
+     qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and
+     capitalist.  How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but
+     certainly more than one.  Jones would seem to have suggested forms
+     of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no
+     evidence of it to-day.
+
+     Any one who has read Mark Twain's, &ldquo;A Connecticut Yankee in King
+     Arthur's Court,&rdquo; has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in
+     general, and tyrants in particular.  Rule by &ldquo;divine right,&rdquo; however
+     liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it
+     stirred him to violence.  In his article, &ldquo;The Czar's Soliloquy,&rdquo; he
+     gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master
+     of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890,
+     he offered a hint as to remedies.  The letter was written by
+     editorial request, but was never mailed.  Perhaps it seemed too
+     openly revolutionary at the moment.
+
+     Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it
+     &ldquo;timely.&rdquo;  Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the
+     Catskills when it was written.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An unpublished letter on the Czar.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  ONTEORA, 1890.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,&mdash;I thank you for the compliment of your
+      invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on
+      your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of the
+      objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite know how
+      to proceed. Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for a
+      noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting to
+      a dire fate they cannot escape. Besides, foreigners could not see so
+      clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the
+      grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the moral
+      wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated Russia.
+      But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are there in
+      all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no excuse, no
+      doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity against Russian
+      tyranny. And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident in its apparently
+      unassailable position, instead of taking warning from the first rebukes,
+      seems to mock this humanitarian age by the aggravation of brutalities. Not
+      satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and with burying the flower
+      of our young generation in the Siberian desserts, the Government of
+      Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by deliberately submitting
+      them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and degradation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's revelations,
+      and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly figures fail
+      to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend into hell to
+      find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement of the objects
+      of the several liberation-parties&mdash;and is disappointed. Apparently
+      none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell entirely, they
+      merely want the temperature cooled down a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of
+      the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech.
+      Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it
+      differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it
+      somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and
+      fine, when properly &ldquo;modified,&rdquo; something entitling it to protection from
+      the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole. It seems a
+      most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition that man
+      is a reasoning being. If a house is afire, we reason confidently that it
+      is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out in any way he can&mdash;drown
+      it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use any and all means to stop the
+      spread of the fire and save the rest of the city. What is the Czar of
+      Russia but a house afire in the midst of a city of eighty millions of
+      inhabitants? Yet instead of extinguishing him, together with his nest and
+      system, the liberation-parties are all anxious to merely cool him down a
+      little and keep him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me that this is illogical&mdash;idiotic, in fact. Suppose you
+      had this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your
+      house, chasing the helpless women and little children&mdash;your own. What
+      would you do with him, supposing you had a shotgun? Well, he is loose in
+      your house-Russia. And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to
+      think up ways to &ldquo;modify&rdquo; him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project which
+      has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and has
+      never in one single instance been successful&mdash;the &ldquo;modification&rdquo; of a
+      despotism by other means than bloodshed? They seem to think they can. My
+      privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was bought
+      for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands, but I
+      possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come to me as
+      a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any kindred
+      method of procedure. When we consider that not even the most responsible
+      English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right until it was
+      wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to suppose that
+      gentler methods can win privileges in Russia?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne
+      would be by revolution. But it is not possible to get up a revolution
+      there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne
+      vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with thanks.
+      Then organize the Republic. And on the whole this method has some large
+      advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives which cannot well
+      be spared, the dynamite way doesn't. Consider this: the conspirators
+      against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of life, from the low to
+      the high. And consider: if so many take an active part, where the peril is
+      so dire, is this not evidence that the sympathizers who keep still and do
+      not show their hands, are countless for multitudes? Can you break the
+      hearts of thousands of families with the awful Siberian exodus every year
+      for generations and not eventually cover all Russia from limit to limit
+      with bereaved fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters who secretly
+      hate the perpetrator of this prodigious crime and hunger and thirst for
+      his life? Do you not believe that if your wife or your child or your
+      father was exiled to the mines of Siberia for some trivial utterances
+      wrung from a smarting spirit by the Czar's intolerable tyranny, and you
+      got a chance to kill him and did not do it, that you would always be
+      ashamed to be in your own society the rest of your life? Suppose that that
+      refined and lovely Russian lady who was lately stripped bare before a
+      brutal soldiery and whipped to death by the Czar's hand in the person of
+      the Czar's creature had been your wife, or your daughter or your sister,
+      and to-day the Czar should pass within reach of your hand, how would you
+      feel&mdash;and what would you do? Consider, that all over vast Russia,
+      from boundary to boundary, a myriad of eyes filled with tears when that
+      piteous news came, and through those tears that myriad of eyes saw, not
+      that poor lady, but lost darlings of their own whose fate her fate brought
+      back with new access of grief out of a black and bitter past never to be
+      forgotten or forgiven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I am a Swinburnian&mdash;and clear to the marrow I am&mdash;I hold
+      human nature in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute
+      Russians that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that
+      isn't.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Type-setter matters were going badly.  Clemens still had faith in
+     Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine.  The money
+     situation, however, was troublesome.  With an expensive
+     establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on
+     the machine, his income would not reach.  Perhaps Goodman had
+     already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from
+     California after the next letter was written&mdash;a colorless letter
+     &mdash;in which we feel a note of resignation.  The last few lines are
+     sufficient.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Joe T. Goodman, in California:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two
+      or three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money
+      before long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I guess we've got a perfect machine at last. We never break a type, now,
+      and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters and
+      justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With love to you both,
+                                                  MARK
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The year closed gloomily enough.  The type-setter seemed to be
+     perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.
+     The publishing business of Charles L. Webster &amp; Co. was returning
+     little or no profit.  Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end
+     of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later.  Mark
+     Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager,
+     Fred J. Ball, closed it: &ldquo;Merry Xmas to you!&mdash;and I wish to God I
+     could have one myself before I die.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXI. LETTERS, 1891, TO HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS. RETURN TO
+      LITERATURE. AMERICAN CLAIMANT. LEAVING HARTFORD. EUROPE. DOWN THE RHINE.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the
+     beginning of the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer
+     active, and it presently became a moribund.  Jones, on about
+     the middle of February, backed out altogether, laying the
+     blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he said, had
+     decided not to invest.  Jones &ldquo;let his victim down easy&rdquo;
+      with friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at
+     least, of machine financiering.
+
+     It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital.  His publishing
+     business was not good.  It was already in debt and needing
+     more money.  There was just one thing for him to do and he
+     did it at once, not stopping to cry over spilt milk, but
+     with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never failed
+     him, he returned to the trade of authorship.  He dug out
+     half-finished articles and stories, finished them and sold
+     them, and within a week after the Jones collapse he was at
+     work on a novel based an the old Sellers idea, which eight
+     years before he and Howells had worked into a play.  The
+     brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells bears
+     no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his
+     fifty-sixth year; he was by no means well, and his financial
+     prospects were anything but golden.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks,
+      but is up and around the room now, and gaining. I don't know whether she
+      has written Mrs. Howells or not&mdash;I only know she was going to&mdash;and
+      will yet, if she hasn't. We are promising ourselves a whole world of
+      pleasure in the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does this item stir an interest in you? Began a novel four days ago, and
+      this moment finished chapter four. Title of the book:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                       &ldquo;Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
+                           American Claimant
+                                 Of the
+                       Great Earldom of Rossmore'
+                                 in the
+                       Peerage of Great Britain.&rdquo;
+
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly. He had
+      always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than ever
+      for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned. There exists a
+      fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in which he
+      recites his qualifications. It bears evidence of having been written just
+      at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fragment of Letter to &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-, 1891:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      .... I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when pretending to
+      portray life. But I confined myself to the boy-life out on the Mississippi
+      because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because I was not
+      familiar with other phases of life. I was a soldier two weeks once in the
+      beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole time. Familiar?
+      My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more burnt-in, hard-baked, and
+      unforgetable familiarity with that
+      death-on-the-pale-horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw
+      soldier's first fortnight in the field&mdash;and which, without any doubt,
+      is the most tremendous fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of
+      weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction.
+      And I've done &ldquo;pocket-mining&rdquo; during three months in the one little patch
+      of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in pockets&mdash;or
+      did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted, obliterated,
+      annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in. There are not
+      thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on the
+      broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find it, or have even
+      the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the possible 20
+      or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand on that
+      hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find it&mdash;just
+      with a touch of the tongue. And I've been a silver miner and know how to
+      dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast. And so I know the mines and
+      the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them exteriorly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the inside
+      of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions and the
+      same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally three
+      sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the
+      cowardliest hearts that God makes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the
+      different kinds of steam-boatmen&mdash;a race apart, and not like other
+      folk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I was for some years a traveling &ldquo;jour&rdquo; printer, and wandered from
+      city to city&mdash;and so I know that sect familiarly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was a
+      responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets&mdash;and so I
+      know a great many secrets about audiences&mdash;secrets not to be got out
+      of books, but only acquirable by experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune on
+      it, and failed to make it go&mdash;and the history of that would make a
+      large book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror; and
+      they would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this fellow
+      has been there&mdash;and after would cast dust upon their heads, cursing
+      and blaspheming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General Grant's)
+      the largest copyright checks this world has seen&mdash;aggregating more
+      than L80,000 in the first year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in
+      the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped
+      for that trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of
+      it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             [No signature.]
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his
+     shoulder.  The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated
+     his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled.  The phonograph
+     for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
+     Twain was always ready for any innovation.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        HARTFORD, Feb.  28, '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New
+      England Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary
+      conversation-voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it)
+      can take the words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to
+      you. If the experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a
+      message which you don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out
+      without difficulty) won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent
+      me a phonograph for 3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry
+      75,000 words. 175 cylinders, ain't it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want to erase any of them. My right arm is nearly disabled by
+      rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of
+      it&mdash;no, I mean a million&mdash;next fall) I feel sure I can dictate
+      the book into a phonograph if I don't have to yell. I write 2,000 words a
+      day; I think I can dictate twice as many.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you&mdash;go ahead
+      and do it, all the same.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Ys ever
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
+     few days later reported results.  He wrote: &ldquo;I talked your letter
+     into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech.  Then
+     the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
+     Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
+     put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out.  I send you the
+     result.  There is a mistake of one word.  I think that if you have
+     the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
+     perfectly easy.  It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
+     did.&rdquo;
+
+     Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
+     not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily.  His
+     early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing
+      to acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
+      so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere
+      letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write
+      literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift for
+      elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of
+      expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as
+      grave and unsmiling as the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have
+      said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better. Then I
+      resigned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer&mdash;and
+      some time I will experiment in that line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me. But it flies
+      too high for me. Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to me, and
+      when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as embarrassed
+      as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly. I'm going to try to
+      mail it back to you to-day&mdash;I mean I am going to charge my memory.
+      Charging my memory is one of my chief industries....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to
+      the proprieties.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Yrs ever
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S.&mdash;I'm sending that ancient &ldquo;Mental Telegraphy&rdquo; article to
+      Harper's&mdash;with a modest postscript. Probably read it to you years
+      ago.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The &ldquo;little book&rdquo; mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an
+     author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.
+     &ldquo;Mental Telegraphy&rdquo; appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now
+     included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books.  It was
+     written in 1878.
+
+     Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear
+     that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington.  On receipt
+     of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word.
+     Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance,
+     and possibly hold him in some measure to blame.  But it was
+     generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage;
+     the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.
+
+     The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following
+     letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence
+     Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Joe T. Goodman:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  April [?] 1891.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway. Diplomacy couldn't have saved it&mdash;diplomacy
+      of mine&mdash;at that late day. I hadn't any diplomacy in stock, anyway.
+      In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender the old contract
+      (a contract which made me boss of the situation and gave me the whip-hand
+      of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and put in its place. I was
+      running an immense risk, but it was justified by Jones's promises&mdash;promises
+      made to me not merely once but every time I tallied with him. When
+      February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty plain reading. Signs which
+      meant that Paige was hoping and praying that Jones would go back on me&mdash;which
+      would leave Paige boss, and me robbed and out in the cold. His prayers
+      were answered, and I am out in the cold. If I ever get back my
+      nine-twentieths interest, it will be by law-suit&mdash;which will be
+      instituted in the indefinite future, when the time comes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am at work again&mdash;on a book. Not with a great deal of spirit, but
+      with enough&mdash;yes, plenty. And I am pushing my publishing house. It
+      has turned the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive
+      years, and piling every cent of it into one book&mdash;Library of American
+      Literature&mdash;and from next January onward it will resume dividends.
+      But I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then&mdash;which I
+      will do if I keep my health. This additional capital is needed for that
+      same book, because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is dreadful to think of you in ill health&mdash;I can't realize it; you
+      are always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless
+      health, and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us.
+      Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has
+      lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With love to you both from us all.
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close.
+     Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain.  They
+     believed that some of the European baths would help them.
+     Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his
+     Hartford home.  In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper.
+     He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters,
+     by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun.  This would
+     at least give him a start on the other side.  The family began
+     immediately their sad arrangements for departure.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster &amp; Co.), N. Y.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;Privately&mdash;keep it to yourself&mdash;as you, are
+      already aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay. We
+      shall sell the horses and shut up the house. We wish to provide a place
+      for our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,
+      diligent, and unusually bright and capable. You spoke of hiring a colored
+      man as engineer and helper in the packing room. Patrick would soon learn
+      that trade and be very valuable. We will cease to need him by the middle
+      or end of June. Have you made irrevocable arrangements with the colored
+      man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he would like to
+      try?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have not said anything to him about it yet.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful
+     establishment.  Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of
+     their household help had been like members of the family.  We may
+     guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain
+     cheerful.
+
+     Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to
+     be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it
+     from the papers, and wrote for information.  Likely enough Clemens
+     had not until then had the courage to confess.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        HARTFORD, May 20, '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths
+      somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe. The
+      water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and little-visited
+      nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you get to it by
+      Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach. Come, get &ldquo;sick or sorry
+      enough&rdquo; and join us. We shall be a little while at that bath, and the rest
+      of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute Savoie, 22
+      miles from Geneva. Spend the winters in Berlin. I don't know how long we
+      shall be in Europe&mdash;I have a vote, but I don't cast it. I'm going to
+      do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind, without
+      prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any charm for me.
+      I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except heaven and
+      hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of those.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found I couldn't use the play&mdash;I had departed too far from its
+      lines when I came to look at it. I thought I might get a great deal of
+      dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages&mdash;they
+      saved me half a days work. It was the cursing phonograph. There was
+      abundance of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new
+      conditions of the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, look here&mdash;I did to-day what I have several times in past years
+      thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich
+      newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my
+      time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was
+      harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was
+      going to be proportionately higher. I wish I had thought of this the other
+      day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me and I
+      couldn't think of any rational excuse.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial
+     rights to the McClure syndicate.  The house in Hartford was closed
+     early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie
+     Leary, sailed on the Gascogne.  Two weeks later they had begun a
+     residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.
+
+     It was not easy to get to work in Europe.  Clemens's arm remained
+     lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering.  The Century
+     Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he
+     had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan.  In
+     August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the
+     baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,
+     and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a
+     time.  He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters
+     when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.
+     He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some
+     fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.
+
+     The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the
+     family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.
+     He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged
+     Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European
+     trip, to accompany him.  The courier went over to Bourget and bought
+     for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their
+     pilot.  It was the morning of September 20, when they began their
+     floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through
+     the loveliest and most romantic region of France.  He wrote daily to
+     Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy
+     experience better than the notes made with a view to publication.
+     Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the
+     morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an
+     old castle of the same name.  Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone
+     by a small canal.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             Sept. 20, 1891.
+
+                                             Sunday, 11 a.m.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      On the lake Bourget&mdash;just started. The castle of Chatillon high
+      overhead showing above the trees. It was a wonderfully still place to
+      sleep in. Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog. A
+      Pope was born in the room I slept in. No, he became a Pope later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lake is smooth as glass&mdash;a brilliant sun is shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11.20 We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal. Shall presently
+      be in the Rhone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noon. Nearly down to the Rhone. Passing the village of Chanaz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3.15 p. m. Sunday. We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is unimaginably
+      still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy. No rowing or work of any
+      kind to do&mdash;we merely float with the current&mdash;we glide noiseless
+      and swift&mdash;as fast as a London cab-horse rips along&mdash;8 miles an
+      hour&mdash;the swiftest current I've ever boated in. We have the entire
+      river to ourselves&mdash;nowhere a boat of any kind.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Good bye Sweetheart
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m.
+
+                                             [Sept. 21, 1891]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Name of the village which we left five minutes ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went ashore at 5 p. m. yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile
+      to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had a
+      good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the
+      Guiers till 7.30.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and
+      newspapers till midnight. Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay till
+      noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the day
+      was still dark and lowering. But at noon the sun broke through and in 15
+      minutes we were tramping toward the river. Got afloat at 1 p. m. but at
+      2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above village.
+      Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn, the rain let
+      go and came down in great style. We lost an hour and a half there, but we
+      are off again, now, with bright sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-day, and love to all of you.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS,
+
+                                                  Tuesday noon.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Good morning, sweetheart. Night caught us yesterday where we had to take
+      quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot
+      of cows and calves&mdash;also several rabbits.&mdash;[His word for fleas.]&mdash;The
+      latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly
+      and didn't bite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their
+      best to make us comfortable. This morning I breakfasted on the shore in
+      the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat. Clean cloth, napkin and
+      table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good bread,
+      first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught. Wonderful that
+      so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally dirty house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and
+      dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm. It
+      was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management I
+      ever saw. Our admiral knew his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained heretofore,
+      but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a water-proof
+      sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although we had many
+      heavy showers this morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a word of love to you all and particularly you,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I salute you, my darling. Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night and
+      was very pleasant news indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't
+      sail from Lyons till 10.30&mdash;an hour and a half lost. And we've lost
+      another hour&mdash;two of them, I guess&mdash;since, by an error. We came
+      in sight of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I
+      proposed to walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and
+      I got out and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and
+      by came out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we
+      followed that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that
+      slough. Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George
+      it had a distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know when I have
+      felt so much like a donkey. On an island! I wanted to drown somebody, but
+      I hadn't anybody I could spare. However, after another long tramp we found
+      a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were on the mainland&mdash;yes,
+      and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we were when we started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notes&mdash;I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you.
+      If you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon. I may
+      not need it but I fear I shall.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close
+      fit, I reckon.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are now
+      approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make Valence,
+      a City Of 25,000 people. It's too delicious, floating with the swift
+      current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace and
+      quietness. Some of these curious old historical towns strangely persuade
+      me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them from the
+      outside and sail on. We get abundance of grapes and peaches for next to
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph is perfect. He is at his very best&mdash;and never was better in
+      his life. I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way
+      when he is lying around&mdash;but here he is perfection, and brim full of
+      useful alacrities and helps and ingenuities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said &ldquo;I seem to
+      have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed mighty
+      early; I wonder what time I did go to bed.&rdquo; And I got up and lit a candle
+      and looked at my watch to see.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       AFLOAT
+
+                                        2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL.
+
+                                        Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday. We left La Voulte in a driving
+      storm of cold rain&mdash;couldn't write in it&mdash;and at 1 p. m. when we
+      were not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a
+      high hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it;
+      so we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the
+      boat ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those
+      cloudy heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle
+      built by two crusaders 650 years ago. The work of these asses was full of
+      interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and scrutinizing
+      it. All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and precipices,
+      and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and broken towers.
+      The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced the Romans, the
+      Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians displaced the Saracens,
+      and it was these pious animals who built these strange lairs and cut each
+      other's throats in the name and for the glory of God, and robbed and
+      burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper and the slave built
+      churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop who racked the money out
+      of them. These are pathetic shores, and they make one despise the human
+      race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till
+      this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office to go
+      to the circus. I went, too. It was all one family&mdash;parents and 5
+      children&mdash;performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted
+      villagers, who contributed coppers when called on. It was a most gay and
+      strange and pathetic show. I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor
+      devils cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon
+      before 4 o'clock. I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St.
+      Andeol.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               With a power of love, Sweetheart,
+                                                  SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,
+
+                                             Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an
+      hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart. It's like hearing
+      from home after a long absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage;
+      and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning. If I ever take such a trip
+      again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to sea
+      as soon after as possible. The early dawn on the water-nothing can be
+      finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience. I did so long for you and
+      Sue yesterday morning&mdash;the most superb sunrise!&mdash;the most
+      marvelous sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of
+      the coming dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory. But
+      it had interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the
+      world; for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a
+      silhouette mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous
+      afternoon, a most noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out
+      stretched, which I had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire&mdash;and
+      now, this prodigious face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep,
+      tranquil, reposeful, lay against that giant conflagration of ruddy and
+      golden splendors all rayed like a wheel with the upstreaming and
+      far-reaching lances of the sun. It made one want to cry for delight, it
+      was so supreme in its unimaginable majesty and beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had a curious experience today. A little after I had sealed and
+      directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before
+      4, we got lost. We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in
+      our &ldquo;particularizes&rdquo; and detailed Guide of the Rhone&mdash;went drifting
+      along by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river!
+      Confound it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat
+      and search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had
+      happened. And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers and
+      fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon&mdash;yet
+      we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we saw what the trouble was&mdash;at some time or other we had
+      drifted down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of
+      the Rhone not frequented in modern times. We lost an hour and a half by it
+      and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden
+      masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the
+      letters and found the hotel&mdash;so I went to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving
+      about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.
+      Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday
+      morning&mdash;then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the
+      hotel at 11 at night if the train isn't late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin. But I
+      shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you,
+               sweetheart,
+                         SAML.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the
+     beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode.  Mark
+     Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it&mdash;the
+     giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.
+     In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to
+     be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile.  But then he
+     characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the
+     incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the
+     village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;
+     also, that he had made a record of the place.
+
+     But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery
+     was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great
+     natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls.  Theodore Stanton was
+     visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to
+     France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost
+     Napoleon, as he now called it.  But Clemens remembered the wonder as
+     being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a
+     hundred miles above the last-named town.  Stanton naturally failed
+     to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring
+     up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the
+     first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first
+     consul of France, &ldquo;dreaming of Universal Empire.&rdquo;  The re-discovery
+     was not difficult&mdash;with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide&mdash;and it
+     was worth while.  Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a
+     natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,
+     and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will
+     long hold the traveler's attention.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR OLD BEN,&mdash;The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient
+      papal palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a
+      mile up the river behind me&mdash;for we are already on our way to Arles.
+      It is a perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot&mdash;outside;
+      but I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive
+      by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday midnight. I am
+      glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do during
+      the next two or three days and get there earlier. I could put in the time
+      till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without telegraphic
+      instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1, care Hotel
+      Manivet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then.
+      They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it. Yesterday
+      when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in charge of
+      some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were allowed to go
+      through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon below which
+      tried to make this old scow stand on its head. Of course I lost my temper
+      and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the tossing waters.
+      I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in deference to my
+      opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment told him to take
+      the one nearest the other side of the river. I could have poisoned him I
+      was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip. A boatman in command should
+      obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield to nobody's suggestions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much.
+      With greatest love and kisses,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   PAPA.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight
+      seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening.
+      We had ten great days in her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We reached here after dark. We were due about 4.30, counting by distance,
+      but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we found.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               I love you, sweetheart.
+                                        SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend
+     Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days
+     thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and
+     Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi
+     Pass.  He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft,
+      from Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has
+      been. You ought to have been along&mdash;I could have made room for you
+      easily&mdash;and you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe
+      doesn't begin with a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and
+      intimate contact with the unvisited native of the back settlements, and
+      extinction from the world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of
+      coma, and lazy comfort, and solid happiness. In fact there's nothing
+      that's so lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it's all over. I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am loafing
+      along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where the tribe
+      are staying.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Love to you all
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse,
+     and later at the Hotel Royal.  There had been no permanent
+     improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.
+     Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still
+     unfinished.
+
+     Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to
+     keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his
+     years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could.  We may
+     believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who
+     found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;That kind of a statement is valuable. It came this
+      morning. This is the first time since the business began that I have had a
+      report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really
+      enlightening and satisfactory. Keep it up. Don't let it fall into
+      desuetude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that I feel
+      a great let-up from depression. The rewards of your long and patient
+      industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port, presently,
+      seems assured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to
+      250 Americans. But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was a
+      sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and hadn't
+      a gray hair in it. And now that my arm is better, I have stolen a couple
+      of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have been lying a
+      long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday&mdash;registered. Lookout for
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the &ldquo;Jungfrau&rdquo;) next
+      Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have
+      arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied Berlin
+      sufficiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's
+      Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;This is my birthday and your letter this morning was
+      a happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table. I thought of
+      going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came, but
+      concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Sincerely yours
+                                             O. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The German Chicago&rdquo; was the last of the six McClure letters and was
+     finished that winter in Berlin.  It is now included in the Uniform
+     Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive
+     articles of the German capital ever written.  He made no use of the
+     Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form.
+     They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant
+     publication.  A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December,
+     we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract
+     comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                 Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and are
+      written on rather stiff pale green paper. If you will have those
+      type-writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per mail,
+      not two.) I'll see if I can use them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything are
+      very slender&mdash;I seem to be disabled for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drop McClure a line and tell him the same. I can't dare to make an
+      engagement now for even a single letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study. I
+      shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to hold
+      my nose down to the grind-stone much longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 30 days&mdash;then the annual
+      statement will arrive and I shall know how we feel! Merry Xmas to you from
+      us all.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely,
+                                   S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German
+      tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say
+      about the past year's business got knocked out of me. After writing this
+      present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and
+      overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them with
+      the splendid Oct.-Nov. business, and went to bed feeling refreshed and
+      fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year. Now rush me along the
+      Annual Report and let's see how we feel!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXII. LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE. IN BERLIN,
+      MENTONE, BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the
+      center of every great gathering. He was entertained by the Kaiser, and
+      shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank. His books were as
+      well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and embassies
+      he was always a chief center of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on
+      him. Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he
+      contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and a
+      few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia. It was not a severe
+      attack, but it was long continued. He could write some letters and even
+      work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many weeks, a
+      condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever enjoyed the
+      loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more than Mark Twain.
+      In a memorandum of that time he wrote: &ldquo;I am having a booming time all to
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the
+      publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits. He
+      wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most part are
+      purely of a business nature and of little interest to the general reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;Daly wants to get the stage rights of the &ldquo;American
+      Claimant.&rdquo; The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the
+      same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years. That play
+      cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought me
+      any. I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give me back his
+      rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and utilize this
+      chance to even myself up. Burbank is a lovely fellow, and if he objects I
+      can't urge him. But you run in at the Lotos and see him; and if he
+      relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the business with
+      Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under your supervision
+      if you prefer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to
+      start by the end of this month.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             [No signature.]
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so
+     long to place their &ldquo;Sellers&rdquo; Play, that now, when the story
+     appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth
+     dramatizing.  Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem
+     that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was
+     going the rounds.  But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in
+     the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers.  The
+     matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should
+     have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in
+     it seems interesting.
+
+     Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as
+     soon as he was able to travel.  This was not until the first of
+     March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the
+     children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Susy Clemens, in Berlin:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MENTONE, Mch 22, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      SUSY DEAR,&mdash;I have been delighted to note your easy facility with
+      your pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind
+      and another&mdash;clearness of statement, directness, felicity of
+      expression, photographic ability in setting forth an incident&mdash;style&mdash;good
+      style&mdash;no barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words
+      (the Shipman scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her
+      best gait and straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day,
+      long or short&mdash;and so ought I, but I don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan comes
+      back mended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We couldn't go to Nice to-day&mdash;had to give it up, on various accounts&mdash;and
+      this was the last chance. I am sorry for Mamma&mdash;I wish she could have
+      gone. She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty stiff and lame
+      this morning, but is working it off trunk packing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking&mdash;and to get the
+      pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she
+      didn't take the plug out, as a rule. When she did, she took nine pictures
+      on top of each other&mdash;composites.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              With lots of love.
+                                                  PAPA.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence,
+     where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage
+     a villa for the next winter.  Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they
+     discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace
+     beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a
+     wonderful view of the ancient city.  Clemens felt that he could work
+     there, and time proved that he was right.
+
+     For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at
+     Bad-Nauheim.  Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to
+     give some personal attention to business matters.  For one thing,
+     his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to
+     be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been
+     persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter.
+     It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would
+     make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92.
+
+                                                       Saturday.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I
+      am leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the &ldquo;Havel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away from
+      the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other
+      lodgings where they can't find me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself
+      somewhere till I can come to the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours sincerely S. L. C.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Nothing of importance happened in America.  The new Paige company
+     had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty
+     machines as a beginning.  They claimed to have capital, or to be
+     able to command it, and as the main control had passed from
+     Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and
+     hope for the best.  As for the business, about all that he could do
+     was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional
+     capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would
+     concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way
+     of new enterprise.  Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down
+     to literature.  This was the middle of July, and he must have worked
+     pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to
+     offer.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       Aug. 10, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because
+      I saw a more effective way of using the main episode&mdash;to wit: by
+      telling it through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and
+      Tom Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim
+      around the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere
+      after the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and
+      then nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe
+      circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the
+      same time apparently unintentional) way. I have written 12,000 words of
+      this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures
+      and surprises&mdash;so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to
+      100,000 words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy
+      between 8 years and 80.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,
+      wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000
+      words long. I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my mind,
+      then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so
+      that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any
+      man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine&mdash;it
+      is proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate. I
+      don't swear it, but I think so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Proposed title of the story, &ldquo;New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             [No signature.]
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The &ldquo;novel&rdquo; mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,
+     a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later.  It was
+     a wildly extravagant farce&mdash;just the sort of thing that now and then
+     Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself
+     out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.
+     Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was
+     completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.
+
+     The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.
+     The next letter records a pleasant incident.  The Prince of Wales of
+     that day later became King Edward VII.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Private.  BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,&mdash;(&ldquo;Private&rdquo; because no newspaper-man or other
+      gossip must get hold of it)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer
+      here will cure her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with
+      them. Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort, Saturday,
+      to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in the
+      promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and he
+      introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually
+      comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with&mdash;quick to see
+      the obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and
+      catching. Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day
+      after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will
+      smash the talk and spoil everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if this
+      hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler. I take Clara to Berlin for
+      the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added. Thus far, Jean is
+      our only glib French scholar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   SAM
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.
+     In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with
+     them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.
+     Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means
+     recovered her health.  We get a general report of conditions from
+     the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,
+     where the party rested for several days.  The &ldquo;Phelps&rdquo; mentioned in
+     this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to
+     Germany.  The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated
+     in Berlin.  &ldquo;Mason&rdquo; was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,
+     and in later years at Paris.  &ldquo;Charlie and Ida&rdquo; were Charles and
+     Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N. Y.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR AUNT SUE,&mdash;Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone
+      off without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me! I found it
+      out yesterday. Livy advised me to write you about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been driving this pen hard. I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called &ldquo;Tom
+      Sawyer Abroad,&rdquo; then took up the &ldquo;Twins&rdquo; again, destroyed the last half of
+      the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to continue
+      it and finish it in Florence. &ldquo;Tom Sawyer&rdquo; seems rather pale to the family
+      after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it after they
+      got used to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We remained in Nauheim a little too long. If we had left there four or
+      five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time
+      we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be
+      erysipelas&mdash;greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches.
+      We lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring. We started Thursday and made
+      Bale. Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired every
+      seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour. It took us 3
+      1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20. We reached here
+      Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. The rest has
+      made the headaches better. We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow if
+      possible. Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make Bologna, 5
+      hours. Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V. Next year we will walk, for
+      these excursions have got to be made over again. I've got seven trunks,
+      and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express them to Florence
+      direct, but we were a couple of days too late. All continental roads had
+      issued a peremptory order that no baggage should travel a mile except in
+      the company of the owner. (All over Europe people are howling; they are
+      separated from their baggage and can't get it forwarded to them) I have to
+      re-ship my trunks every day. It is very amusing&mdash;uncommonly so. There
+      seemed grave doubts about our being able to get these trunks over the
+      Italian frontier, but I've got a very handsome note from the Frankfort
+      Italian Consul General addressed to all Italian Customs Officers, and we
+      shall get through if anybody does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times&mdash;dinner at
+      his hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn&mdash;Livy not in it. She was
+      merely allowed a glimpse, no more. Of course, Phelps said she was merely
+      pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children are all right. They paddle around a little, and drive-so do
+      we all. Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists. The Fleulen boat went
+      out crowded yesterday morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its
+      correspondents with cholera. A man said yesterday he wished to God they
+      would inoculate all of them. Yes, the interest is quite general and
+      strong, and much hope is felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves to
+      you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up. Which I do&mdash;and
+      shut up.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find
+     Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.
+     Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.
+     Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be
+     out of place.  Of the villa he wrote: &ldquo;It is a plain, square
+     building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green
+     window-shutters.  It stands in a commanding position on the
+     artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around
+     with masonry.  From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the
+     estate slant away toward the valley....  Roses overflow the
+     retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the
+     gate-post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the
+     drop-curtains in the theaters.  The house is a very fortress for
+     strength.&rdquo;
+
+     The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
+     Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters.  The Ross castle
+     was but a little distance away.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
+
+                                                  Sept.  30, 1892
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SUE,&mdash;We have been in the house several days, and certainly it
+      is a beautiful place,&mdash;particularly at this moment, when the skies
+      are a deep leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain,
+      and occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
+      black sky about Galileo's Tower. It is a charming panorama, and the most
+      conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
+      looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this hillock
+      five and six hundred years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
+      cheery and cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a
+      little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go&mdash;but
+      it won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the
+      Italian tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman
+      understand only that. It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but
+      Jean and the others will master it. Livy's German Nauheim girl is the
+      worst off of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among
+      the help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
+      not unhomelike. At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs&mdash;Susy
+      had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle. This sounds kind of
+      frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or pile
+      of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress. There
+      isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a
+      conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are
+      excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains
+      washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put
+      together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain
+      stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't
+      quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observe our address above&mdash;the post delivers letters daily at the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved&mdash;and
+      the best is yet to come. There is going to be absolute seclusion here&mdash;a
+      hermit life, in fact. We (the rest of us) shall run over to the Ross's
+      frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy&mdash;that
+      is all. Mr. Fiske is away&mdash;nobody knows where&mdash;and the work on
+      his house has been stopped and his servants discharged. Therefore we shall
+      merely go Rossing&mdash;as far as society is concerned&mdash;shan't
+      circulate in Florence until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This present house is modern. It is not much more than two centuries old;
+      but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity. The fine
+      beautiful family portraits&mdash;the great carved ones in the large ovals
+      over the doors of the big hall&mdash;carry one well back into the past.
+      One of them is dated 1305&mdash;he could have known Dante, you see.
+      Another is dated 1343&mdash;he could have known Boccaccio and spent his
+      afternoons in Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales. Another is dated
+      1463&mdash;he could have met Columbus.....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening. The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in
+      floods. For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such a
+      sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe
+      tumbles together in wreck and ruin. I have never seen anything more
+      spectacular and impressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway. Jean prefers it to all
+      Europe, save Venice. Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,
+      now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she
+      learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am the head French duffer of the family. Most of the talk goes over my
+      head at the table. I catch only words, not phrases. When Italian comes to
+      be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, &ldquo;Man hat
+      mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe&rdquo;&mdash;unconsciously
+      dropping in a couple of Italian words, you see. So she is going to join
+      the polyglots, too, it appears. They say it is good entertainment to hear
+      her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out
+      and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along. Five
+      languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked
+      of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to have
+      an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germania! That was the most
+      satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in the
+      raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the
+      spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again....
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens got well settled down to work presently.  He found the
+     situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary
+     production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at
+     any other time since his arrival in Europe.  From letters to Mrs.
+     Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his
+     satisfaction.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  VILLA VIVIANI
+
+                              SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.  Oct. 22, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SUE,&mdash;We are getting wonted. The open fires have driven away the
+      cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place. Livy and
+      the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of times,
+      lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the sunset for
+      company. I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun gets down to
+      the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to wonder and
+      exclaim. There is always some new miracle in the view, a new and exquisite
+      variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15 minutes between
+      dawn and night. Once early in the morning, a multitude of white villas not
+      before perceived, revealed themselves on the far hills; then we recognized
+      that all those great hills are snowed thick with them, clear to the
+      summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not
+      to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am acquainted
+      with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm,
+      exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change. It
+      keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time. Sometimes Florence ceases
+      to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes and
+      towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a puff
+      of his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy is progressing admirably. This is just the place for her.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  Dec.  12, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;November check received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club
+      Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives
+      too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of
+      ours until the Author book had had its run. That is for him to decide&mdash;and
+      I don't want him hampered at all in his decision. I, for my part, prefer
+      the &ldquo;$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories&rdquo; by Mark Twain as a title, but
+      above my judgment I prefer yours. I mean this&mdash;it is not taffy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the
+      Californian's Story. Tell him this is because I am going to use that in
+      the book I am now writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I finished &ldquo;Those Extraordinary Twins&rdquo; night before last makes 60 or
+      80,000 words&mdash;haven't counted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last third of it suits me to a dot. I begin, to-day, to entirely
+      recast and re-write the first two-thirds&mdash;new plan, with two minor
+      characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the
+      Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
+      story after him&mdash;&ldquo;Puddn'head Wilson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIII. LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS. CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
+      BUSINESS TROUBLES. &ldquo;PUDD'NHEAD WILSON.&rdquo; &ldquo;JOAN OF ARC.&rdquo; AT THE PLAYERS, NEW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      YORK.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
+      his troubles. He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
+      Charles L. Webster &amp; Co., as well as its general manager. The business
+      had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
+      publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the
+      typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
+      commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large volumes
+      constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster had
+      undertaken to place in a million American homes. There was plenty of sale
+      for it&mdash;indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
+      payments&mdash;small monthly payments&mdash;while the cost of manufacture
+      and the liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require
+      a considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a
+      tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense. A sale of
+      twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital could
+      be raised from some other source to make and market those books through a
+      period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant bankruptcy in
+      reality. It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to keep their ship
+      afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters. It was also Hall's
+      affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself, and to show
+      how they were steadily getting rich because orders were pouring in, though
+      a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a little higher upon the
+      horizon. If Hall had not been young and an optimist, he would have been
+      frightened out of his boots early in the game. As it was, he made a brave
+      steady fight, kept as cheerful and stiff an upper lip as possible, always
+      hoping that something would happen&mdash;some grand sale of his other
+      books, some unexpected inflow from the type-setter interests&mdash;anything
+      that would sustain his ship until the L. A. L. tide should turn and float
+      it into safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him. He never found fault with
+      him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value. He
+      lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed
+      for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to
+      put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined. The letters to Hall of
+      that year are frequent and carry along the story. To any who had formed
+      the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they
+      will perhaps be a revelation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is
+      deeply distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault
+      with you about something. But most surely that cannot be. I tell her that
+      although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other people,
+      I am not a bit likely to write such things to you. I can't believe I have
+      done anything so ungrateful. If I have, pile coals of fire on my head, for
+      I deserve it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have to
+      deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an
+      encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak. I
+      have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought
+      you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I drew
+      upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my
+      monthly check pass over a couple of months. I could have stood that by
+      drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would have
+      done it cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will write Whitmore to send you the &ldquo;Century&rdquo; check for $1,000, and you
+      can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I
+      think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need
+      that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the
+      Company's note for a year. If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr.
+      Halsey and let him invest it for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong&mdash;but tell
+      me if I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per
+      cent I pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent? Now don't
+      laugh if that is stupid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L. for
+      $200,000. I judged he would. I hoped he would offer $100,000, but he
+      didn't. If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we can't
+      borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise $100,000. I
+      wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour
+      ago, and I believe I am all right again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York
+      last summer! I would have tried my best to raise it. It would make us able
+      to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L. per month, but not any more, I guess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the money
+      somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Sincerely Yours
+
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whitmore,&rdquo; in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's
+      financial agent. The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom Sawyer
+      Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas. Mr. Halsey was a
+      down-town broker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had
+      conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it for
+      enough cash to finance its manufacture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest for
+      the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars. But in the next letter we
+      discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you
+      think of it. We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a
+      valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and
+      well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a
+      money-breeding species. Now then I think that the association with us of
+      some one of great name and with capital would give our business a
+      prodigious impetus&mdash;that phrase is not too strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all,
+      the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying
+      venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a
+      business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been great
+      enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man. It is a
+      pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners. Now you
+      see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in the several
+      lines I speak of. Do you know him? You do by correspondence or purely
+      business talks about his books&mdash;but personally, I mean? so that it
+      would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of
+      mine&mdash;for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to
+      interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable
+      suggestions from him. I'll enclose a note of introduction&mdash;you
+      needn't use it if you don't need to.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Yours S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec. $1,000 and the
+      Jan. $500&mdash;and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no
+      hiatus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover
+      the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my
+      intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000
+      ourselves. I mean, wait for nothing. To make my suggestion available I
+      should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can
+      mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My book is type-written and ready for print&mdash;&ldquo;Pudd'nhead Wilson-a
+      Tale.&rdquo; (Or, &ldquo;Those Extraordinary Twins,&rdquo; if preferable.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It makes 82,500 words&mdash;12,000 more than Huck Finn. But I don't know
+      what to do with it. Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am.
+      Pub. Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription
+      machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as
+      money-profit goes. I am in a quandary. Give me a lift out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is
+      good or if it is bad. I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant bad,
+      when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am destitute
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done and
+      will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were gotten up
+      in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high enough price
+      maybe the L. A. L. canvassers would take it and run it with that book.
+      Would they? It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10, according to
+      how it was gotten up, I suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want it to go into a magazine.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I am having several short things type-&ldquo;writered.&rdquo; I will send them to you
+      presently. I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that I have
+      any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good rates. I
+      suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be only
+      superstition. What do you think?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The companion to The Prince and the Pauper,&rdquo; mentioned in this
+     letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of
+     Mark Twain's literary productions.  His interest in Joan had been
+     first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had
+     found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story
+     of her life.  That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,
+     insulted and mistreated by ruffians.  It had aroused all the
+     sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had
+     awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.
+
+     His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until
+     in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story.  As far back
+     as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had
+     begun to make the notes.  One thing and another had interfered, and
+     he had found no opportunity for such a story.  Now, however, in
+     Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking
+     across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the
+     Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of
+     France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, &ldquo;The noble child,
+     the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have
+     produced.&rdquo;  His surroundings and background would seem to have been
+     perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have
+     completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six
+     weeks.
+
+     Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing
+     seems to have come of the idea.  Once, at a later time, Mask Twain
+     himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that
+     it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket,
+     meaning into iron.  But Carnegie answered, &ldquo;That's a mistake; put
+     all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket.&rdquo;
+
+     It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was
+     demanded in America.  He must see if anything could be realized from
+     the type-setter or L. A. L.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       March 13, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the
+      Kaiser Wilhelm II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I send herewith 2 magazine articles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Diary&rdquo; contains 3,800 words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each would make about 4 pages of the Century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for
+      both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead of
+      breaking into your treasury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the Century,
+      without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I will call
+      and abuse them when I come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I signed and mailed the notes yesterday.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to
+     Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair
+     and be laid up with a severe cold.  The machine situation had not
+     progressed.  The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything
+     to a standstill.  The New York bank would advance Webster &amp; Co. no
+     more money.  So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was
+     everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid
+     unrealities.  A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this:
+
+     &ldquo;I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi
+     and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker
+     City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at
+     Florence&mdash;and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real
+     that I almost believe it is real.  I wonder if it is?  But there is
+     no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the
+     dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit.  I wish I knew
+     whether it is a dream or real.&rdquo;
+
+     He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New
+     York, but he had little time for visiting.  On May 13th he sailed
+     again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  On the night before
+     sailing he sent Howells a good-by word.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893.
+
+                                                            Midnight.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS&mdash;I am so sorry I missed you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you
+      ever so much for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I wasn't
+      going to have a chance to see him at all. I forgot to tell you how
+      thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office, and how
+      true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its details. But
+      Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me, and I am glad,
+      for I wanted to speak of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought a
+      couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me two
+      bottles of whisky and a box of cigars&mdash;I go to sea nobly equipped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours&mdash;and upon you all
+      I leave my benediction.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to
+     Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families.
+     There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in
+     the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary
+     of Agriculture.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.: Editorial Department
+      Century Magazine, Union Square,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             NEW YORK, April 6, 1893.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,&mdash;Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark
+      Twain, a poor farmer of Connecticut&mdash;indeed, the poorest one there,
+      in the opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize),
+      and in return will zealously support the Administration in all ways
+      honorable and otherwise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an English
+      lady. She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a great
+      garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had the right
+      ammunition. I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise, both on
+      patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which I got
+      made from a wax impression. It is not very good soil, still I think she
+      can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select the table.
+      If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and Gilder thinks you
+      are,) please find the signature and address of your petitioner below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Respectfully and truly yours.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              MARK TWAIN,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      67 Fifth Avenue, New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      P. S.&mdash;A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would
+      pleasantly add to that lady's employments and give my table a
+      corresponding lift.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time
+     he had returned to Florence.  He was not hopeless yet, but he was
+     clearly a good deal disheartened&mdash;anxious for freedom.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  FLORENCE May 30, '93
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;You were to cable me if you sold any machine
+      royalties&mdash;so I judge you have not succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This has depressed me. I have been looking over the past year's letters
+      and statements and am depressed still more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am terribly tired of business. I am by nature and disposition unfitted
+      for it and I want to get out of it. I am standing on the Mount Morris
+      volcano with help from the machine a long way off&mdash;doubtless a long
+      way further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now here is my idea for getting out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me&mdash;I do not know quite how much, but
+      it is about $170,000 or $175,000, I suppose (I make this guess from the
+      documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover the
+      entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over. Is that it? In addition we have
+      the L. A. L. plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000&mdash;is that
+      correct?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above indebtedness,
+      I suppose&mdash;or, by one of your estimates, $300,000? The greater part
+      of the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent. The rest (the old
+      $70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those
+      debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm? (The firm of course taking
+      the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me
+      clear of all responsibility.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want much money. I only want first class notes&mdash;$200,000
+      worth of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;&mdash;yearly notes,
+      renewable annually for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at
+      the beginning and middle of each year. After that, the notes renewable
+      annually and (perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable
+      semi-annually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above
+      scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not
+      able to learn a single detail of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash
+      capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity. Then your one-third
+      would be a fortune&mdash;and I hope to see that day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any
+      royalties. But if you can't make this deal don't make any. Wait a little
+      and see if you can't make the deal. Do make the deal if you possibly can.
+      And if any presence shall be necessary in order to complete it I will come
+      over, though I hope it can be done without that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Get me out of business!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I will be yours forever gratefully,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for
+      thirty or forty thousand dollars. Is that it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      P. S. S. The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a 10
+      percent royalty.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                    S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE)
+
+                                                       June 9, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in
+      tolerable condition&mdash;nothing left but weakness, cough all gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet
+      Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading his
+      account of the adventures of his youth in the far East. In a footnote he
+      has something to say about a sailor which I thought might interest you&mdash;viz:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia
+      for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The
+      windy and watery elements raged. Tears and prayers was had recourse to,
+      but was of no manner of use. So we hauled up the anchor and got round the
+      point.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There&mdash;it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               With love,
+                         MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month
+     arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the
+     German baths.  The next letter is written by her and shows her deep
+     sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle.  There have been few
+     more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's
+     wife.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  June 27th 1893
+
+                                                  MUNICH.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just
+      reached here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you
+      just a line in answer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter
+      should reach you or he would not have sent it just then. I hope you will
+      not worry any more than you can help. Do not let our interests weigh on
+      you too heavily. We both know you will, as you always have, look in every
+      way to the best interests of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of
+      business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the very
+      farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your
+      interests in order to save his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would
+      simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be
+      released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not
+      endanger your interest or the safety of the business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens' should
+      have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible pressure. I
+      hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy. He would not have written
+      you about the money if he had known that it was an inconvenience for you
+      to send it. He thought the book-keeper whose duty it is to forward it had
+      forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are a
+      little easier with you. As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say &ldquo;do not send
+      us any more money at present&rdquo; if we were not afraid to do so. I will say,
+      however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are not able to
+      send the usual amount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in
+      any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some
+      helpful light on the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit of
+      your long and hard labor.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Believe me
+                    Very Cordially yours
+                              OLIVIA L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business. He
+      realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the
+      public, if his distinguished partner should retire. He wrote, therefore,
+      proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set
+      that was swamping them. It was a good plan&mdash;if it would work&mdash;and
+      we find Clemens entering into it heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MUNICH, July 3, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted
+      dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible,
+      whereas the other is perhaps not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free&mdash;and not only free but has
+      large money owing to it. A proposition to sell that by itself to a big
+      house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we cannot
+      spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge scale
+      necessary to make it an opulent success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be selling a good thing&mdash;for somebody; and it will be getting
+      rid of a load which we are clearly not able to carry. Whoever buys will
+      have a noble good opening&mdash;a complete equipment, a well organized
+      business, a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not
+      experimental but under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per cent
+      a year on every dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it&mdash;I
+      mean in making and selling the books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the over-supply
+      which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so troubled,
+      myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper and deeper
+      in debt and the L. A. L. getting to be a heavier and heavier burden all
+      the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you&mdash;for
+      that I am not going to do. But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it
+      will put you in better shape.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Sincerely Yours
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  July 8, '92.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L. I
+      am glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will be
+      out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again. With nothing
+      but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value for us,
+      rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many
+      agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for
+      some country resort in a few days now.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+                                                            July 8
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment before
+      discharging your L. A. L. agents&mdash;in fact I didn't mean that. I judge
+      your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once, since it
+      is their commissions that threaten to swamp us. It is they who have eaten
+      up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I feel panicky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than
+      later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. No monthly report for many months.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall
+     it as a black financial season.  Banks were denying credit,
+     businesses were forced to the wall.  It was a poor time to float any
+     costly enterprise.  The Chicago company who was trying to build the
+     machines made little progress.  The book business everywhere was
+     bad.  In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote
+     Hall:
+
+     &ldquo;It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the
+     machine is finished.  We are afraid you are having miserable days
+     and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but
+     it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say
+     or do.&rdquo;
+
+     He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben
+     Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: &ldquo;It is my ingenious
+     scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more
+     year&mdash;and after that&mdash;well, goodness knows!  I have never felt so
+     desperate in my life&mdash;and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to
+     my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep
+     us two months.&rdquo;
+
+     It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project
+     an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning
+     success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions
+     and the steps necessary to achievement.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       July 26, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;..... I hope the machine will be finished this month;
+      but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other machine
+      after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like a
+      house-afire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder what they call &ldquo;finished.&rdquo; After it is absolutely perfect it
+      can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running
+      night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may be able to run over about mid-October. Then if I find you relieved
+      of L. A. L. we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely
+      unique sort. Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it. Arthur could do
+      all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first number should pay&mdash;and all subsequent ones&mdash;25 cents a
+      number. Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000. Give most of them
+      away, sell the rest. Advertising and other expenses&mdash;cost unknown.
+      Send one to all newspapers&mdash;it would get a notice&mdash;favorable,
+      too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way. With our
+      hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where is the Shelley article? If you have it on hand, keep it and I will
+      presently tell you what to do with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't forget to tell me.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                   S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the &ldquo;Defense of
+     Harriet Sheller,&rdquo; one of the very best of his essays.  How he could
+     have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction
+     passes comprehension.  Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised,
+     indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  July 30, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;This time &ldquo;Pudd'nhead Wilson&rdquo; is a success! Even Mrs.
+      Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without reserves
+      or qualifications. Formerly she would not consent that it be published
+      either before or after my death. I have pulled the twins apart and made
+      two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they are mere
+      flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has disappeared
+      from the book. Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving not a trace
+      behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have almost disappeared&mdash;they
+      scarcely walk across the stage. The whole story is centered on the murder
+      and the trial; from the first chapter the movement is straight ahead
+      without divergence or side-play to the murder and the trial; everything
+      that is done or said or that happens is a preparation for those events.
+      Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from beginning to end, and only 3&mdash;Pudd'nhead,
+      &ldquo;Tom&rdquo; Driscoll, and his nigger mother, Roxana; none of the others are
+      important, or get in the way of the story or require the reader's
+      attention. Consequently, the scenes and episodes which were the strength
+      of the book formerly are stronger than ever, now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words,
+      now it contains only 58,000. I have knocked out everything that delayed
+      the march of the story&mdash;even the description of a Mississippi
+      steamboat. There's no weather in, and no scenery&mdash;the story is
+      stripped for flight!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, then what is she worth? The amount of matter is but 3,000 words short
+      of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500. There was
+      nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one is virgin
+      ground&mdash;absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting to
+      everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't want any more syndicating&mdash;nothing short of $20,000, anyway,
+      and that I can't get&mdash;but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan
+      will stand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the
+      poor-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just
+      received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring. Everything does look so
+      blue, so dismally blue!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not now&mdash;we
+      are going to be moving around too much. I have torn up some of it, but
+      still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that I like. I
+      may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know I can write
+      it to suit me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a
+      friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools.
+      I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his childish
+      and ignorant impressions and opinions for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days. When you get it cable
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Mark Twain
+                         Care Brownship, London
+                                        Received.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I mean to ship &ldquo;Pudd'nhead Wilson&rdquo; to you-say, tomorrow. It'll furnish me
+      hash for awhile I reckon. I am almost sorry it is finished; it was good
+      entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans
+      again. I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end of
+      September, then go to Paris and take a rest.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is deeply
+      distressed. She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have reproached
+      you. She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship afloat in this
+      storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from what she learns
+      of the American business-situation from her home letters you have
+      accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot bear to
+      have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and the
+      heartiest appreciation&mdash;and not the shadow of a reproach will she
+      allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing. And I
+      said I would break open my letter and say so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or two&mdash;so
+      that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power. All right&mdash;I'm
+      willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would send along his
+      little yearly contribution. I dropped him a line about another matter a
+      week ago&mdash;asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for me&mdash;you
+      see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up time&mdash;but
+      doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I don't hear
+      from him and don't get any Daily News either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             Aug.  6, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;I am very sorry&mdash;it was thoughtless in me. Let
+      the reports go. Send me once a month two items, and two only:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cash liabilities&mdash;(so much) Cash assets&mdash;(so much)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that
+      will be sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
+      anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have
+      been buffeting your way through&mdash;only the man who is in it can do
+      that&mdash;but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly. I
+      have been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a
+      thing that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his
+      resources melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure
+      daylight beyond. The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook&mdash;and
+      will still offer nothing much better for a long time to come; for when
+      Davis's &ldquo;three weeks&rdquo; is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I
+      guess. That is unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the
+      toughest one on prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has ever
+      seen the light. Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with any
+      considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down to
+      actual work in a printing office.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                             [No signature.]
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:
+
+     &ldquo;Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me!  I never knew the
+     almanac to drag so.  At least since I was finishing that other
+     machine.
+
+     &ldquo;I watch for your letters hungrily&mdash;just as I used to watch for the
+     cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week
+     certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old
+     familiar tune I used to hear so much.  Ward don't know what
+     sick-heartedness is&mdash;but he is in a way to find out.&rdquo;
+
+     Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.
+     We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and
+     smoking&mdash;always smoking&mdash;trying to find a way out.  It was not the
+     kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;
+     not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       Aug. 14, '93
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. HALL,&mdash;I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able
+      to see any daylight ahead. To me none is visible. I strongly advise that
+      every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts. I may be
+      in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course open.
+      We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders&mdash;none to the
+      Clemenses. In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and
+      copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up
+      and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present
+      condition of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties. If they come into
+      danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save
+      them, for if they go I am a beggar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and help
+      them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors. I may be
+      able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can never resurrect the L. A. L. I would not spend any more money on
+      that book. You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a
+      preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that, I
+      think. It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Yours Sincerely
+
+                              S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Aug. 16. I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any
+      very definite place. Of course you will not have an instant's safety until
+      the bank debts are paid. There is nothing to be thought of but to hand
+      over every penny as fast as it comes in&mdash;and that will be slow
+      enough! Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and settled.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Two weeks following this letter he could endure the suspense no
+     longer, and on August 29th sailed once more for America.  In New
+     York, Clemens settled down at the Players Club, where he could live
+     cheaply, and undertook some literary work while he was casting about
+     for ways and means to relieve the financial situation.  Nothing
+     promising occurred, until one night at the Murray Hill Hotel he was
+     introduced by Dr. Clarence C. Rice to Henry H. Rogers, of the
+     Standard Oil group of financiers.  Rogers had a keen sense of humor
+     and had always been a great admirer of Mark Twain's work.  It was a
+     mirthful evening, and certainly an eventful one in Mark Twain's
+     life.  A day or two later Doctor Rice asked the millionaire to
+     interest himself a little in Clemens's business affairs, which he
+     thought a good deal confused.  Just what happened is not remembered
+     now, but from the date of the next letter we realize that a
+     discussion of the matter by Clemens and Rogers must have followed
+     pretty promptly.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Europe:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  Oct. 18, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR, DEAR SWEETHEART,&mdash;I don't seem to get even half a chance to
+      write you, these last two days, and yet there's lots to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently everything is at last settled as to the giveaway of L. A. L.,
+      and the papers will be signed and the transfer made to-morrow morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil
+      group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the
+      type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching
+      into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, &ldquo;I find the
+      machine to be all you represented it&mdash;I have here exhaustive reports
+      from my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its immense
+      value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its inventor's
+      character. I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co. are both
+      stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and in
+      a hopeless boggle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: &ldquo;If I can arrange
+      with these people on this basis&mdash;it will take several weeks to find
+      out&mdash;I will see to it that they get the money they need. Then the
+      thing will move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste
+      paper. I will post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds. In the
+      meantime, you stop walking the floor. Go off to the country and try to be
+      gay. You may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you
+      my scheme has failed.&rdquo; And he added: &ldquo;Keep me posted always as to where
+      you are&mdash;for if I need you and can use you&mdash;I want to know where
+      to put my hand on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely talking
+      remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my royalties up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       SAML.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders of
+      H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward the
+      stars. He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and found
+      pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed mainly
+      mockery. We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to John
+      Mackay's, and elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       Dec. 2, '93.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      LIVY DARLING,&mdash;Last night at John Mackay's the dinner consisted of
+      soup, raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, and something like a custard.
+      I ate without fear or stint, and yet have escaped all suggestion of
+      indigestion. The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew
+      when I and they were young and not gray. The talk was of the days when we
+      went gypsying a long time ago&mdash;thirty years. Indeed it was a talk of
+      the dead. Mainly that. And of how they looked, and the harum-scarum things
+      they did and said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches and
+      pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the night) to
+      work off one's surplus vigor and energy. Of the mid-night highway robbery
+      joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the windswept and
+      desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the victim. All the
+      friendly robbers are gone. These old fools last night laughed till they
+      cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Mackay has no family here but a pet monkey&mdash;a most affectionate
+      and winning little devil. But he makes trouble for the servants, for he is
+      full of curiosity and likes to take everything out of the drawers and
+      examine it minutely; and he puts nothing back. The examinations of
+      yesterday count for nothing to-day&mdash;he makes a new examination every
+      day. But he injures nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went with Laffan to the Racquet Club the other night and played,
+      billiards two hours without starting up any rheumatism. I suppose it was
+      all really taken out of me in Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Richard Harding Davis spoke yesterday of Clara's impersonations at Mrs.
+      Van Rensselaer's here and said they were a wonderful piece of work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy dear, I do hope you are comfortable, as to quarters and food at the
+      Hotel Brighton. But if you're not don't stay there. Make one more effort&mdash;don't
+      give it up. Dear heart, this is from one who loves you&mdash;which is
+      Saml.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It was decided that Rogers and Clemens should make a trip to Chicago
+     to investigate personally the type-setter situation there.  Clemens
+     reports the details of the excursion to Mrs. Clemens in a long
+     subdivided letter, most of which has no general interest and is here
+     omitted.  The trip, as a whole, would seem to have been
+     satisfactory.  The personal portions of the long Christmas letter
+     may properly be preserved.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             THE PLAYERS, Xmas, 1893.
+
+                                  No. 1.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Merry Xmas, my darling, and all my darlings! I arrived from Chicago close
+      upon midnight last night, and wrote and sent down my Christmas cablegram
+      before undressing: &ldquo;Merry Xmas! Promising progress made in Chicago.&rdquo; It
+      would get to the telegraph office toward 8 this morning and reach you at
+      luncheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was vaguely hoping, all the past week, that my Xmas cablegram would be
+      definite, and make you all jump with jubilation; but the thought always
+      intruded itself, &ldquo;You are not going out there to negotiate with a man, but
+      with a louse. This makes results uncertain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was asleep as Christmas struck upon the clock at mid night, and didn't
+      wake again till two hours ago. It is now half past 10 Xmas morning; I have
+      had my coffee and bread, and shan't get out of bed till it is time to
+      dress for Mrs. Laflan's Christmas dinner this evening&mdash;where I shall
+      meet Bram Stoker and must make sure about that photo with Irving's
+      autograph. I will get the picture and he will attend to the rest. In order
+      to remember and not forget&mdash;well, I will go there with my dress coat
+      wrong side out; it will cause remark and then I shall remember.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                               No. 2 and 3.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I tell you it was interesting! The Chicago campaign, I mean. On the way
+      out Mr. Rogers would plan out the campaign while I walked the floor and
+      smoked and assented. Then he would close it up with a snap and drop it and
+      we would totally change the subject and take up the scenery, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Here follows the long detailed report of the Chicago conference, of
+      interest only to the parties directly concerned.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                  No. 4.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      We had nice tripe, going and coming. Mr. Rogers had telegraphed the
+      Pennsylvania Railroad for a couple of sections for us in the fast train
+      leaving at 2 p. m. the 22nd. The Vice President telegraphed back that
+      every berth was engaged (which was not true&mdash;it goes without saying)
+      but that he was sending his own car for us. It was mighty nice and
+      comfortable. In its parlor it had two sofas, which could become beds at
+      night. It had four comfortably-cushioned cane arm-chairs. It had a very
+      nice bedroom with a wide bed in it; which I said I would take because I
+      believed I was a little wider than Mr. Rogers&mdash;which turned out to be
+      true; so I took it. It had a darling back-porch&mdash;railed, roofed and
+      roomy; and there we sat, most of the time, and viewed the scenery and
+      talked, for the weather was May weather, and the soft dream-pictures of
+      hill and river and mountain and sky were clear and away beyond anything I
+      have ever seen for exquisiteness and daintiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colored waiter knew his business, and the colored cook was a finished
+      artist. Breakfasts: coffee with real cream; beefsteaks, sausage, bacon,
+      chops, eggs in various ways, potatoes in various&mdash;yes, and quite
+      wonderful baked potatoes, and hot as fire. Dinners&mdash;all manner of
+      things, including canvas-back duck, apollinaris, claret, champagne, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat up chatting till midnight, going and coming; seldom read a line,
+      day or night, though we were well fixed with magazines, etc.; then I
+      finished off with a hot Scotch and we went to bed and slept till 9.30 a.m.
+      I honestly tried to pay my share of hotel bills, fees, etc., but I was not
+      allowed&mdash;and I knew the reason why, and respected the motive. I will
+      explain when I see you, and then you will understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were 25 hours going to Chicago; we were there 24 hours; we were 30
+      hours returning. Brisk work, but all of it enjoyable. We insisted on
+      leaving the car at Philadelphia so that our waiter and cook (to whom Mr.
+      R. gave $10 apiece,) could have their Christmas-eve at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rogers's carriage was waiting for us in Jersey City and deposited me
+      at the Players. There&mdash;that's all. This letter is to make up for the
+      three letterless days. I love you, dear heart, I love you all.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                                 SAML.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIV. LETTERS 1894. A WINTER IN NEW YORK. BUSINESS FAILURE. END OF THE
+      MACHINE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The beginning of the new year found Mark Twain sailing buoyantly on a tide
+      of optimism. He believed that with H. H. Rogers as his financial pilot he
+      could weather safely any storm or stress. He could divert himself, or
+      rest, or work, and consider his business affairs with interest and
+      amusement, instead of with haggard anxiety. He ran over to Hartford to see
+      an amateur play; to Boston to give a charity reading; to Fair Haven to
+      open the library which Mr. Rogers had established there; he attended gay
+      dinners, receptions, and late studio parties, acquiring the name of the
+      &ldquo;Belle of New York.&rdquo; In the letters that follow we get the echo of some of
+      these things. The Mrs. Rice mentioned in the next brief letter was the
+      wife of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, who had introduced H. H. Rogers to Mark
+      Twain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             Jan. 12, '94
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy darling, I came down from Hartford yesterday with Kipling, and he and
+      Hutton and I had the small smoking compartment to ourselves and found him
+      at last at his ease, and not shy. He was very pleasant company indeed. He
+      is to be in the city a week, and I wish I could invite him to dinner, but
+      it won't do. I should be interrupted by business, of course. The
+      construction of a contract that will suit Paige's lawyer (not Paige) turns
+      out to be very difficult. He is embarrassed by earlier advice to Paige,
+      and hates to retire from it and stultify himself. The negotiations are
+      being conducted, by means of tedious long telegrams and by talks over the
+      long-distance telephone. We keep the wires loaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear me, dinner is ready. So Mrs. Rice says.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With worlds of love,
+
+                                             SAML.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Clemens and Oliver Wendell Holmes had met and become friends soon after
+      the publication of Innocents Abroad, in 1869. Now, twenty-five years
+      later, we find a record of what without doubt was their last meeting. It
+      occurred at the home of Mrs. James T. Field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             BOSTON, Jan. 25, '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy darling, I am caught out worse this time than ever before, in the
+      matter of letters. Tuesday morning I was smart enough to finish and mail
+      my long letter to you before breakfast&mdash;for I was suspecting that I
+      would not have another spare moment during the day. It turned out just so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a thoughtless moment I agreed to come up here and read for the poor. I
+      did not reflect that it would cost me three days. I could not get
+      released. Yesterday I had myself called at 8 and ran out to Mr. Rogers's
+      house at 9, and talked business until half past 10; then caught 11 o'clock
+      train and arrived here at 6; was shaven and dressed by 7 and ready for
+      dinner here in Mrs. Field's charming house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out now (he is in his 84th year,) but
+      he came out this time&mdash;said he wanted to &ldquo;have a time&rdquo; once more with
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come and went away crying because she
+      wouldn't let him. She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett and
+      sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, he was just delightful! He did as brilliant and beautiful talking
+      (and listening) as ever he did in his life, I guess. Fields and Jewett
+      said he hadn't been in such splendid form in years. He had ordered his
+      carriage for 9.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coachman sent in for him at 9; but he said, &ldquo;Oh, nonsense!&mdash;leave
+      glories and grandeurs like these? Tell him to go away and come in an
+      hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At 10 he was called for again, and Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but
+      he wouldn't go&mdash;and so we rattled ahead the same as ever. Twice more
+      Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go&mdash;and he didn't go till half past
+      10&mdash;an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days. He was
+      prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, and is having
+      Pudd'nhead read to him. I told him you and I used the Autocrat as a
+      courting book and marked it all through, and that you keep it in the
+      sacred green box with the love letters, and it pleased him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-bye, my dear darling, it is 15 minutes to dinner and I'm not dressed
+      yet. I have a reception to-night and will be out very late at that place
+      and at Irving's Theatre where I have a complimentary box. I wish you were
+      all here.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In the next letter we meet James J. Corbett&mdash;&ldquo;Gentleman Jim,&rdquo; as he
+     was sometimes called&mdash;the champion pugilist of that day.
+
+     The Howells incident so amusingly dramatized will perhaps be more
+     appreciated if the reader remembers that Mark Twain himself had at
+     intervals been a mind-healing enthusiast.  Indeed, in spite of his
+     strictures on Mrs. Eddy, his interest in the subject of mind-cure
+     continued to the end of his life.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  Sunday, 9.30 a. m.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy dear, when we got out to the house last night, Mrs. Rogers, who is up
+      and around, now, didn't want to go down stairs to dinner, but Mr. R.
+      persuaded her and we had a very good time indeed. By 8 o'clock we were
+      down again and bought a fifteen-dollar box in the Madison Square Garden
+      (Rogers bought it, not I,) then he went and fetched Dr. Rice while I
+      (went) to the Players and picked up two artists&mdash;Reid and Simmons&mdash;and
+      thus we filled 5 of the 6 seats. There was a vast multitude of people in
+      the brilliant place. Stanford White came along presently and invited me to
+      go to the World-Champion's dressing room, which I was very glad to do.
+      Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being the
+      most perfectly and beautifully constructed human animal in the world. I
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have whipped Mitchell, and maybe you will whip Jackson in June&mdash;but
+      you are not done, then. You will have to tackle me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in earnest:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I am not going to meet you in the ring. It is not fair or right
+      to require it. You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own,
+      but by a purely accidental blow; and then my reputation would be gone and
+      you would have a double one. You have got fame enough and you ought not to
+      want to take mine away from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank in San Francisco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were lots of little boxing matches, to entertain the crowd: then at
+      last Corbett appeared in the ring and the 8,000 people present went mad
+      with enthusiasm. My two artists went mad about his form. They said they
+      had never seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its perfection
+      except Greek statues, and they didn't surpass it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion&mdash;oh,
+      beautiful to see!&mdash;then the show was over and we struggled out
+      through a perfect wash of humanity. When we reached the street I found I
+      had left my arctics in the box. I had to have them, so Simmons said he
+      would go back and get them, and I didn't dissuade him. I couldn't see how
+      he was going to make his way a single yard into that solid oncoming wave
+      of people&mdash;yet he must plow through it full 50 yards. He was back
+      with the shoes in 3 minutes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle? By saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Way, gentlemen, please&mdash;coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, and Simmons walked
+      comfortably through and back, dry shod. Simmons (this was revealed to me
+      under seal of secrecy by Reid) is the hero of &ldquo;Gwen,&rdquo; and he and Gwen's
+      author were once engaged to marry. This is &ldquo;fire-escape&rdquo; Simmons, the
+      inveterate talker, you know: &ldquo;Exit&mdash;in case of Simmons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to the Players for
+      10.30; I was there by 10.45. Thirty cultivated and very musical ladies and
+      gentlemen present&mdash;all of them acquaintances and many of them
+      personal friends of mine. That wonderful Hungarian Band was there (they
+      charge $500 for an evening.) Conversation and Band until midnight; then a
+      bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me and I
+      told about Dr. B. E. Martin and the etchings, and followed it with the
+      Scotch-Irish Christening. My, but the Martin is a darling story! Next, the
+      head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the
+      company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch
+      accompanying on the piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just a little pause&mdash;then the Band burst out into an explosion of
+      weird and tremendous dance music, a Hungarian celebrity and his wife took
+      the floor&mdash;I followed; I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one
+      by one, and it was Onteora over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By half past 4 I had danced all those people down&mdash;and yet was not
+      tired; merely breathless. I was in bed at 5, and asleep in ten minutes. Up
+      at 9 and presently at work on this letter to you. I think I wrote until 2
+      or half past. Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called 3
+      miles but it is short of it) arriving at 3.30, but he was out&mdash;to
+      return at 5.30&mdash;(and a person was in, whom I don't particularly like)&mdash;so
+      I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with the Howellses until 6.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, Howells and I had a chat together. I asked about Mrs. H. He said
+      she was fine, still steadily improving, and nearly back to her old best
+      health. I asked (as if I didn't know):
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you attribute this strange miracle to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind-cure&mdash;simply mind-cure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, what a conversion! You were a scoffer three months ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? I wasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were. You made elaborate fun of me in this very room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not, Clemens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a lie, Howells, you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I detailed to him the conversation of that time&mdash;with the stately
+      argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually been
+      killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when the
+      mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a &ldquo;regular&rdquo; at last
+      because the former can't procure you a burial permit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he gave in&mdash;he said he remembered that talk, but had now been
+      a mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever
+      been anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she
+      used to be, so many years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. H. said: &ldquo;People may call it what they like, but it is just
+      hypnotism, and that's all it is&mdash;hypnotism pure and simple.
+      Mind-cure!&mdash;the idea! Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any
+      mind. She's a good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now Eleanor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what I'm talking about!&mdash;don't I go there twice a week? And
+      Mr. Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she
+      snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that to
+      me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and a
+      superstition&mdash;oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw! A-n-d-when
+      she tilts up her nose-well, it's&mdash;it's&mdash;Well it's that kind of a
+      nose that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now Eleanor!&mdash;the woman is not responsible for her nose&mdash;&rdquo; and
+      so-on and so-on. It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having
+      this feast and you not there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She convinced me before she got through, that she and William James are
+      right&mdash;hypnotism and mind-cure are the same thing; no difference
+      between them. Very well; the very source, the very center of hypnotism is
+      Paris. Dr. Charcot's pupils and disciples are right there and ready to
+      your hand without fetching poor dear old Susy across the stormy sea. Let
+      Mrs. Mackay (to whom I send my best respects), tell you whom to go to to
+      learn all you need to learn and how to proceed. Do, do it, honey. Don't
+      lose a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      .... At 11 o'clock last night Mr. Rogers said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am able to feel physical fatigue&mdash;and I feel it now. You never
+      show any, either in your eyes or your movements; do you ever feel any?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was able to say that I had forgotten what that feeling was like. Don't
+      you remember how almost impossible it was for me to tire myself at the
+      Villa? Well, it is just so in New York. I go to bed unfatigued at 3, I get
+      up fresh and fine six hours later. I believe I have taken only one
+      daylight nap since I have been here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the anchor is down, then I shall say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell&mdash;a long farewell&mdash;to business! I will never touch it
+      again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it, I will swim
+      in ink! Joan of Arc&mdash;but all this is premature; the anchor is not
+      down yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To-morrow (Tuesday) I will add a P. S. if I've any to add; but, whether or
+      no, I must mail this to morrow, for the mail steamer goes next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5.30 p. m. Great Scott, this is Tuesday! I must rush this letter into the
+      mail instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tell that sassy Ben I've got her welcome letter, and I'll write her as
+      soon as I get a daylight chance. I've most time at night, but I'd druther
+      write daytimes.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Reid and Simmons mentioned in the foregoing were Robert Reid and
+     Edward Simmons, distinguished painter&mdash;the latter a brilliant,
+     fluent, and industrious talker.  The title; &ldquo;Fire-escape Simmons,&rdquo;
+      which Clemens gives him, originated when Oliver Herford, whose
+     quaint wit has so long delighted New-Yorkers, one day pinned up by
+     the back door of the Players the notice: &ldquo;Exit in case of Simmons.&rdquo;
+      Gwen, a popular novel of that day, was written by Blanche Willis
+     Howard.
+
+     &ldquo;Jamie&rdquo; Dodge, in the next letter, was the son of Mrs. Mary Mapes
+     Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Clara Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   MR. ROGERS'S OFFICE, Feb.  5, '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dear Benny&mdash;I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am
+      away down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for
+      good-fellowship. I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading and
+      will ask them to sign them. I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night, and if
+      Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, and meantime I hope
+      to get a good picture of her to sign. She was of the breakfast company
+      yesterday, but the picture of herself which she signed and gave me does
+      not do her majestic beauty justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have to
+      live up to the name which Jamie Dodge has given me&mdash;the &ldquo;Belle of New
+      York&rdquo;&mdash;and it just keeps me rushing. Yesterday I had engagements to
+      breakfast at noon, dine at 3, and dine again at 7. I got away from the
+      long breakfast at 2 p. m., went and excused myself from the 3 o'clock
+      dinner, then lunched with Mrs. Dodge in 58th street, returned to the
+      Players and dressed, dined out at 9, and was back at Mrs. Dodge's at 10 p.
+      m. where we had magic-lantern views of a superb sort, and a lot of yarns
+      until an hour after midnight, and got to bed at 2 this morning&mdash;a
+      good deal of a gain on my recent hours. But I don't get tired; I sleep as
+      sound as a dead person, and always wake up fresh and strong&mdash;usually
+      at exactly 9.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was at breakfast lately where people of seven separate nationalities sat
+      and the seven languages were going all the time. At my side sat a charming
+      gentleman who was a delightful and active talker, and interesting. He
+      talked glibly to those folks in all those seven languages and still had a
+      language to spare! I wanted to kill him, for very envy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               I greet you with love and kisses.
+
+                                                  PAPA.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                   Feb.&mdash;.
+	</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy dear, last night I played billiards with Mr. Rogers until 11, then
+      went to Robert Reid's studio and had a most delightful time until 4 this
+      morning. No ladies were invited this time. Among the people present were&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Coquelin;
+   Richard Harding Davis;
+   Harrison, the great out-door painter;
+   Wm. H. Chase, the artist;
+   Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph.
+   Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about
+   him in Jan. or Feb. Century.
+   John Drew, actor;
+   James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!
+   Smedley the artist;
+   Zorn the artist;
+   Zogbaum the artist;
+   Reinhart the artist;
+   Metcalf the artist;
+   Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Oh, a great lot of others. Everybody there had done something and was in
+      his way famous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech; John Drew did
+      the like for me in English, and then the fun began. Coquelin did some
+      excellent French monologues&mdash;one of them an ungrammatical Englishman
+      telling a colorless historiette in French. It nearly killed the fifteen or
+      twenty people who understood it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling
+      imitations, Harding Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was of
+      course good, but he followed it with that most fascinating (for what
+      reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, &ldquo;On the Road to Mandalay,&rdquo;
+       sang it tenderly, and it searched me deeper and charmed me more than the
+      Deever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance music and we all danced
+      about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was.
+      Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what
+      the sense of fatigue is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coquelin talks quite good English now. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a brother who has the fine mind&mdash;ah, a charming and delicate
+      fancy, and he knows your writings so well, and loves them&mdash;and that
+      is the same with me. It will stir him so when I write and tell him I have
+      seen you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wasn't that nice? We talked a good deal together. He is as winning as his
+      own face. But he wouldn't sign that photograph for Clara. &ldquo;That? No! She
+      shall have a better one. I will send it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He is much driven, and will forget it, but Reid has promised to get the
+      picture for me, and I will try and keep him reminded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, dear, my time is all used up and your letters are not answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mama, dear, I don't go everywhere&mdash;I decline most things. But there
+      are plenty that I can't well get out of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will remember what you say and not make my yarning too common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am so glad Susy has gone on that trip and that you are trying the
+      electric. May you both prosper. For you are mighty dear to me and in my
+      thoughts always.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The affairs of the Webster Publishing Company were by this time
+     getting into a very serious condition indeed.  The effects of the
+     panic of the year before could not be overcome.  Creditors were
+     pressing their claims and profits were negligible.  In the following
+     letter we get a Mark Twain estimate of the great financier who so
+     cheerfully was willing to undertake the solving of Mark Twain's
+     financial problems.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              THE PLAYERS, Feb. 15, '94.  11.30 p. m.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Livy darling, Yesterday I talked all my various matters over with Mr.
+      Rogers and we decided that it would be safe for me to leave here the 7th
+      of March, in the New York. So his private secretary, Miss Harrison, wrote
+      and ordered a berth for me and then I lost no time in cabling you that I
+      should reach Southampton March 14, and Paris the 15th. Land, but it made
+      my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again!... One thing at a
+      time. I never fully laid Webster's disastrous condition before Mr. Rogers
+      until to-night after billiards. I did hate to burden his good heart and
+      over-worked head with it, but he took hold with avidity and said it was no
+      burden to work for his friends, but a pleasure. We discussed it from
+      various standpoints, and found it a sufficiently difficult problem to
+      solve; but he thinks that after he has slept upon it and thought it over
+      he will know what to suggest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must not think I am ever rude with Mr. Rogers, I am not. He is not
+      common clay, but fine&mdash;fine and delicate&mdash;and that sort do not
+      call out the coarsenesses that are in my sort. I am never afraid of
+      wounding him; I do not need to watch myself in that matter. The sight of
+      him is peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wants to go to Japan&mdash;it is his dream; wants to go with me&mdash;which
+      means, the two families&mdash;and hear no more about business for awhile,
+      and have a rest. And he needs it. But it is like all the dreams of all
+      busy men&mdash;fated to remain dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You perceive that he is a pleasant text for me. It is easy to write about
+      him. When I arrived in September, lord how black the prospect was&mdash;how
+      desperate, how incurably desperate! Webster and Co. had to have a small
+      sum of money or go under at once. I flew to Hartford&mdash;to my friends&mdash;but
+      they were not moved, not strongly interested, and I was ashamed that I
+      went. It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the money and was by
+      it saved. And then&mdash;while still a stranger&mdash;he set himself the
+      task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in his native
+      delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity, a benevolence&mdash;and
+      he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at a cost of three months
+      of wearing and difficult labor. He gave that time to me&mdash;time which
+      could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand dollars a month&mdash;no,
+      nor for three times the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, in the midst of that great fight, that long and admirable fight,
+      George Warner came to me and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a splendid chance open to you. I know a man&mdash;a prominent
+      man&mdash;who has written a book that will go like wildfire; a book that
+      arraigns the Standard Oil fiends, and gives them unmitigated hell,
+      individual by individual. It is the very book for you to publish; there is
+      a fortune in it, and I can put you in communication with the author.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wanted to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only man I care for in the world; the only man I would give a damn
+      for; the only man who is lavishing his sweat and blood to save me and mine
+      from starvation and shame, is a Standard Oil fiend. If you know me, you
+      know whether I want the book or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I didn't say that. I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get out
+      of the publishing business and out of all business, and was here for that
+      purpose and would accomplish it if I could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there's enough. I shall be asleep by 3, and I don't need much sleep,
+      because I am never drowsy or tired these days. Dear, dear Susy my strength
+      reproaches me when I think of her and you, my darling.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     But even so able a man as Henry Rogers could not accomplish the
+     impossible.  The affairs of the Webster Company were hopeless, the
+     business was not worth saving.  By Mr. Rogers's advice an assignment
+     was made April, 18, 1894.  After its early spectacular success less
+     than ten years had brought the business to failure.  The publication
+     of the Grant memoirs had been its only great achievement.
+
+     Clemens would seem to have believed that the business would resume,
+     and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but
+     we cannot believe that it long survived.  Young Hall, who had made
+     such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must
+     presently have seen the futility of any effort in that direction.
+
+     Of course the failure of Mark Twain's firm made a great stir in the
+     country, and it is easy to understand that loyal friends would rally
+     in his behalf.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       April 22, '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dear old darling, we all think the creditors are going to allow us to
+      resume business; and if they do we shall pull through and pay the debts. I
+      am prodigiously glad we made an assignment. And also glad that we did not
+      make it sooner. Earlier we should have made a poor showing; but now we
+      shall make a good one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I meet flocks of people, and they all shake me cordially by the hand and
+      say &ldquo;I was so sorry to hear of the assignment, but so glad you did it. It
+      was around, this long time, that the concern was tottering, and all your
+      friends were afraid you would delay the assignment too long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Mackay called yesterday, and said, &ldquo;Don't let it disturb you, Sam&mdash;we
+      all have to do it, at one time or another; it's nothing to be ashamed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One stranger out in New York State sent me a dollar bill and thought he
+      would like to get up a dollar-subscription for me. And Poultney Bigelow's
+      note came promptly, with his check for $1,000. I had been meeting him
+      every day at the Club and liking him better and better all the time. I
+      couldn't take his money, of course, but I thanked him cordially for his
+      good will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles with me
+      and says &ldquo;Cheer up&mdash;don't be downhearted,&rdquo; and some other friend
+      says, &ldquo;I am glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are and how bravely
+      you stand it&rdquo;&mdash;and none of them suspect what a burden has been lifted
+      from me and how blithe I am inside. Except when I think of you, dear heart&mdash;then
+      I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and ashamed, and dreading
+      to look people in the face. For in the thick of the fight there is cheer,
+      but you are far away and cannot hear the drums nor see the wheeling
+      squadrons. You only seem to see rout, retreat, and dishonored colors
+      dragging in the dirt&mdash;whereas none of these things exist. There is
+      temporary defeat, but no dishonor&mdash;and we will march again. Charley
+      Warner said to-day, &ldquo;Sho, Livy isn't worrying. So long as she's got you
+      and the children she doesn't care what happens. She knows it isn't her
+      affair.&rdquo; Which didn't convince me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good bye my darling, I love you and all of the kids&mdash;and you can tell
+      Clara I am not a spitting gray kitten.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             SAML.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens sailed for Europe as soon as his affairs would permit him
+     to go.  He must get settled where he could work comfortably.
+     Type-setter prospects seemed promising, but meantime there was
+     need of funds.
+
+     He began writing on the ship, as was his habit, and had completed
+     his article on Fenimore Cooper by the time he reached London.  In
+     August we find him writing to Mr. Rogers from Etretat, a little
+     Norman watering-place.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             ETRETAT, (NORMANDIE)
+
+                                                  CHALET DES ABRIS
+
+                                                       Aug.  25, '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;I find the Madam ever so much better in health and
+      strength. The air is superb and soothing and wholesome, and the Chalet is
+      remote from noise and people, and just the place to write in. I shall
+      begin work this afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Clemens is in great spirits on, account of the benefit which she has
+      received from the electrical treatment in Paris and is bound to take it up
+      again and continue it all the winter, and of course I am perfectly
+      willing. She requires me to drop the lecture platform out of my mind and
+      go straight ahead with Joan until the book is finished. If I should have
+      to go home for even a week she means to go with me&mdash;won't consent to
+      be separated again&mdash;but she hopes I won't need to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tell her all right, &ldquo;I won't go unless you send, and then I must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She keeps the accounts; and as she ciphers it we can't get crowded for
+      money for eight months yet. I didn't know that. But I don't know much
+      anyway.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The reader may remember that Clemens had written the first half of
+     his Joan of Arc book at the Villa Viviani, in Florence, nearly two
+     years before.  He had closed the manuscript then with the taking of
+     Orleans, and was by no means sure that he would continue the story
+     beyond that point.  Now, however, he was determined to reach the
+     tale's tragic conclusion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       ETRETAT,
+                                                  Sunday, Sept. 9, '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS, I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down&mdash;in my
+      head. It has now been three days since I laid up. When I wrote you a week
+      ago I had added 10,000 words or thereabout to Joan. Next day I added 1,500
+      which was a proper enough day's work though not a full one; but during
+      Tuesday and Wednesday I stacked up an aggregate of 6,000 words&mdash;and
+      that was a very large mistake. My head hasn't been worth a cent since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, there's a compensation; for in those two days I reached and
+      passed&mdash;successfully&mdash;a point which I was solicitous about
+      before I ever began the book: viz., the battle of Patay. Because that
+      would naturally be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of
+      either two books or one. In the one case one goes right along from that
+      point (as I shall do now); in the other he would add a wind-up chapter and
+      make the book consist of Joan's childhood and military career alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an
+      intemperate' rate. My head is pretty cobwebby yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am hoping that along about this time I shall hear that the machine is
+      beginning its test in the Herald office. I shall be very glad indeed to
+      know the result of it. I wish I could be there.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Sincerely yours
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Rouen, where Joan met her martyrdom, was only a short distance away,
+     and they halted there en route to Paris, where they had arranged to
+     spend the winter.  The health of Susy Clemens was not good, and they
+     lingered in Rouen while Clemens explored the old city and
+     incidentally did some writing of another sort.  In a note to Mr.
+     Rogers he said: &ldquo;To put in my odd time I am writing some articles
+     about Paul Bourget and his Outre-Mer chapters&mdash;laughing at them and
+     at some of our oracular owls who find them important.  What the hell
+     makes them important, I should like to know!&rdquo;
+
+     He was still at Rouen two weeks later and had received encouraging
+     news from Rogers concerning the type-setter, which had been placed
+     for trial in the office of the Chicago Herald.  Clemens wrote: &ldquo;I
+     can hardly keep from sending a hurrah by cable.  I would certainly
+     do it if I wasn't superstitious.&rdquo;  His restraint, though wise, was
+     wasted the end was near.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Dec. 22; '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, and
+      also prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know
+      ourselves and how easily we can deceive ourselves. It hit me like a
+      thunder-clap. It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went
+      flying here and there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only
+      one clearly defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of the
+      crazy storm-drift that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril, and
+      out of the 60,000 or 90,000 projects for its rescue that came floating
+      through my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me to examine
+      it and size it up. Have you ever been like that? Not so much so, I reckon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another clearly defined idea&mdash;I must be there and see it
+      die. That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we might hatch up
+      some next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed and take a walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling and walked over to
+      the rue Scribe&mdash;4 P. M.&mdash;and asked a question or two and was
+      told I should be running a big risk if I took the 9 P. M. train for London
+      and Southampton; &ldquo;better come right along at 6.52 per Havre special and
+      step aboard the New York all easy and comfortable.&rdquo; Very! and I about two
+      miles from home, with no packing done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation-notions that were
+      whirl-winding through my head could be examined or made available unless
+      at least a month's time could be secured. So I cabled you, and said to
+      myself that I would take the French steamer tomorrow (which will be
+      Sunday).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational and
+      contented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long. So I went on
+      thinking&mdash;mixing it with a smoke in the dressing room once an hour&mdash;until
+      dawn this morning. Result&mdash;a sane resolution; no matter what your
+      answer to my cable might be, I would hold still and not sail until I
+      should get an answer to this present letter which I am now writing, or a
+      cable answer from you saying &ldquo;Come&rdquo; or &ldquo;Remain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sediment of my
+      70,000 projects to be of this character:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Several pages of suggestions for reconstructing the machine follow.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't say I'm wild. For really I'm sane again this morning.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                       ......................
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I am going right along with Joan, now, and wait untroubled till I hear
+      from you. If you think I can be of the least use, cable me &ldquo;Come.&rdquo; I can
+      write Joan on board ship and lose no time. Also I could discuss my plan
+      with the publisher for a deluxe Joan, time being an object, for some of
+      the pictures could be made over here cheaply and quickly, but would cost
+      much time and money in America.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                       ......................
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If the meeting should decide to quit business Jan. 4, I'd like to have
+      Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison doesn't
+      mind that disagreeable job. And I'll have to write them, too, of course.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With love,
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The &ldquo;Stoker&rdquo; of this letter was Bram Stoker, long associated with
+     Sir Henry Irving.  Irving himself had also taken stock in the
+     machine.  The address, 169 Rue de l'Universite, whence these letters
+     are written, was the beautiful studio home of the artist Pomroy
+     which they had taken for the winter.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                        PARIS, Dec. 27, '94.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;Notwithstanding your heart is &ldquo;old and hard,&rdquo; you
+      make a body choke up. I know you &ldquo;mean every word you say&rdquo; and I do take
+      it &ldquo;in the same spirit in which you tender it.&rdquo; I shall keep your regard
+      while we two live&mdash;that I know; for I shall always remember what you
+      have done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything that
+      could forfeit it or impair it. I am 59 years old; yet I never had a friend
+      before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he found me in
+      deep waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing day,
+      and then through a night without sleep; then settled down next day into my
+      right mind (or thereabouts,) and wrote you. I put in the rest of that day
+      till 7 P. M. plenty comfortably enough writing a long chapter of my book;
+      then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking Clara along;
+      and we had a good time. I have lost no day since and suffered no
+      discomfort to speak of, but drove my troubles out of my mind and had good
+      success in keeping them out&mdash;through watchfulness. I have done a good
+      week's work and put the book a good way ahead in the Great Trial, which is
+      the difficult part which requires the most thought and carefulness. I
+      cannot see the end of the Trial yet, but I am on the road. I am creeping
+      surely toward it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not leave them all to me.&rdquo; My business bothers? I take you by the
+      hand! I jump at the chance!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed&mdash;and yet
+      I do jump at the chance in spite of it. I don't want to write Irving and I
+      don't want to write Stoker. It doesn't seem as if I could. But I can
+      suggest something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am
+      unwise, you can write them something quite different. Now this is my idea:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1.  To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock.
+
+     2.  And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will make good to
+     him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay him of his $500.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Madam says No, I must face the music. So I enclose my effort to be
+      used if you approve, but not otherwise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There! Now if you will alter it to suit your judgment and bang away, I
+      shall be eternally obliged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter,
+      for it costs heavily to live in. We can never live in it again; though it
+      would break the family's hearts if they could believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her&mdash;which
+      is the reason I haven't drowned myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of yours and
+      a Happy New Year!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Enclosure:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR STOKER,&mdash;I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed
+      at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my
+      machine-enterprise&mdash;a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself
+      the aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque
+      for the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me&mdash;I
+      can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except
+      to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage
+      presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a
+      dab at a time I will make up to him the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home. Please
+      remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker. I gave up that London lecture-project
+      entirely. Had to&mdash;there's never been a chance since to find the time.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXV. LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS. FINISHING &ldquo;JOAN OF
+      ARC.&rdquo; THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD. DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       [No date.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the
+      circular to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit&mdash;there
+      doesn't seem to be any other wise course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that
+      my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it reveries my
+      horoscope. The proverb says, &ldquo;Born lucky, always lucky,&rdquo; and I am very
+      superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for
+      one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in
+      Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before
+      I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise. When the
+      &ldquo;Pennsylvania&rdquo; blew up and the telegraph reported my brother as fatally
+      injured (with 60 others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said to my
+      mother &ldquo;It means that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that boat a
+      year and a half&mdash;he was born lucky.&rdquo; Yes, I was somewhere else. I am
+      so superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business dealings
+      with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were unlucky
+      people. All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large size, and
+      whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity and
+      carelessness. And so I have felt entirely certain that that machine would
+      turn up trumps eventually. It disappointed me lots of times, but I
+      couldn't shake off the confidence of a life-time in my luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck&mdash;the
+      good luck of getting you into the scheme&mdash;for, but for that, there
+      wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish you had been in at the beginning. Then we should have had the good
+      luck to step promptly ashore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account, and
+      I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
+      prediction sure to be fulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I've got a first rate subject for a book. It kept me awake all night, and
+      I began it and completed it in my mind. The minute I finish Joan I will
+      take it up.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Love and Happy New Year to you all.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
+     was concerned.  Paige succeeded in getting some new people
+     interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
+     affected Mark Twain.  Characteristically he put the whole matter
+     behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
+     a burden of debts with a stout heart.  The beginning of the new year
+     found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
+     but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged&mdash;at least, not
+     permanently&mdash;and never more industrious or capable.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought
+      I would make a holiday of the rest of the day&mdash;the second deliberate
+      holiday since I had the gout. On the first holiday I wrote a tale of about
+      6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did 8,000
+      before midnight. I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
+      recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and some
+      revision; but this time I fared better&mdash;I finished the Huck Finn tale
+      that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000 words
+      (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank the
+      check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took that
+      other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't and
+      shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one which
+      I finished on my second holiday&mdash;&ldquo;Tom Sawyer, Detective.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks, though
+      I expect young folk to read it, too. It transfers to the banks of the
+      Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in
+      Sweden in old times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss Harrison.&mdash;[Secretary
+      to Mr. Rogers.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             Apr. 29, '95.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th
+      arrived three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me. That is
+      Brusnahan's money. If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago
+      enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money paid
+      back to him. I will give him as many months to decide in as he pleases&mdash;let
+      him name 6 or 10 or 12&mdash;and we will let the money stay where it is in
+      your hands till the time is up. Will Miss Harrison tell him so? I mean if
+      you approve. I would like him to have a good investment, but would
+      meantime prefer to protect him against loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the
+      stake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today, but
+      it will be gone tomorrow. I judged that this end of the book would be hard
+      work, and it turned out so. I have never done any work before that cost so
+      much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and cramming, or so
+      much cautious and painstaking execution. For I wanted the whole Rouen
+      trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the reader's interest
+      would not flag&mdash;in fact I wanted the reader's interest to increase;
+      and so I stuck to it with that determination in view&mdash;with the result
+      that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions. Although it is
+      mere history&mdash;history pure and simple&mdash;history stripped naked of
+      flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention&mdash;the
+      family agree that I have succeeded. It was a perilous thing to try in a
+      tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one&mdash;provided I stuck
+      strictly to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and
+      skimp the work. The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only
+      needed to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference
+      only one French history and one English one&mdash;and shoveled in as much
+      fancy work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I
+      pleased. But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources
+      and five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of
+      them has escaped me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing&mdash;it was written
+      for love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There&mdash;I'm called to see company. The family seldom require this of
+      me, but they know I am not working today.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Brusnahan,&rdquo; of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New
+     York Herald, superintendent of the press-room&mdash;who had invested some
+     of his savings in the type-setter.
+
+     In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters
+     connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a
+     reading-tour around the world.  He was nearly sixty years old, and
+     time had not lessened his loathing for the platform.  More than
+     once, however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a
+     debt-payer, and never yet had his burden been so great as now.  He
+     concluded arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the
+     Pacific Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of
+     the tour.  In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing
+     to bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London,
+     where he had visited Stanley the explorer&mdash;an old friend.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                                  Sunday, Apr.7,'95.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in
+      a grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing
+      Street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and
+      fame there to meet me&mdash;thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and
+      more than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight.
+      There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
+      Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
+      equipped with rank and brains. I told some yarns and made some speeches. I
+      promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and show
+      them the wife and the daughters. If I were younger and very strong I would
+      dearly love to spend a season in London&mdash;provided I had no work on
+      hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing. I think I will lecture
+      there a month or two when I return from Australia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many delightful ladies in that company. One was the wife of His
+      Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian Station,
+      and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me in that
+      part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me and my
+      party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have a great
+      time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we would find
+      him ready. I have a letter from her this morning enclosing a letter of
+      introduction to the Admiral. I already know the Admiral commanding in the
+      China Seas and have promised to look in on him out there. He sleeps with
+      my books under his pillow. P'raps it is the only way he can sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans&mdash;subject to modification,
+      of course&mdash;we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York,
+      spend June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then
+      lecture in San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for
+      Australia before the middle of October and open the show there about the
+      middle of November. We don't take the girls along; it would be too
+      expensive and they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
+      doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
+      finances a little easier.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With a power of love to you all,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
+     he wrote: &ldquo;I am tired to death all the time:&rdquo;  To a man of less
+     vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
+     under such circumstances this condition would have remained
+     permanent.  But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on
+     things in general that was his chief life-saver.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Apr. 29, '95.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;I have been hidden an hour or two, reading proof of
+      Joan and now I think I am a lost child. I can't find anybody on the place.
+      The baggage has all disappeared, including the family. I reckon that in
+      the hurry and bustle of moving to the hotel they forgot me. But it is no
+      matter. It is peacefuller now than I have known it for days and days and
+      days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these Joan proofs which I have been reading for the September Harper I
+      find a couple of tip-top platform readings&mdash;and I mean to read them
+      on our trip. If the authorship is known by then; and if it isn't, I will
+      reveal it. The fact is, there is more good platform-stuff in Joan than in
+      any previous book of mine, by a long sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, every danged member of the tribe has gone to the hotel and left me
+      lost. I wonder how they can be so careless with property. I have got to
+      try to get there by myself now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the trunks are going over as luggage; then I've got to find somebody
+      on the dock who will agree to ship 6 of them to the Hartford Customhouse.
+      If it is difficult I will dump them into the river. It is very careless of
+      Mrs. Clemens to trust trunks and things to me.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     By the latter part of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens,
+     laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour.
+     The outlook was not a pleasant one.  To Mr. Rogers he wrote: &ldquo;I
+     sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west.  I
+     sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to
+     appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation.  Nothing in
+     this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting
+     performance.  I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house,
+     and how in the nation am I going to sit?  Land of Goshen, it's this
+     night week!  Pray for me.&rdquo;
+
+     The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of
+     a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed
+     amusing to him later.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       (Forenoon)
+                                             CLEVELAND, July 16, '95.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory
+      Sunday night. But here, last night, I suffered defeat&mdash;There were a
+      couple of hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of
+      benches which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house. And
+      there was nobody to watch them or keep them quiet. Why, with their
+      scufflings and horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie. Besides, a
+      concert of amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,)
+      and their families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept
+      encoring them and they always responded. So it was 20 minutes to 9 before
+      I got the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar
+      apiece for a chance to go to hell in this fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling boys
+      had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case; so I
+      skipped a third of my program and quit. The newspapers are kind, but
+      between you and me it was a defeat. There ain't going to be any more
+      concerts at my lectures. I care nothing for this defeat, because it was
+      not my fault. My first half hour showed that I had the house, and I could
+      have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey. Crammed the house and turned
+      away a crowd. We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it had
+      ever had in it before. I believe I don't care to have a talk go off better
+      than that one did.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his
+     daughter Clara&mdash;Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at
+     Quarry Farm.  The tour was a financial success from the start.
+     By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand
+     dollars had been remitted to Mr. Rogers against that day of
+     settlement when the debts of Webster &amp; Co. were to be paid.  Perhaps
+     it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged
+     on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his
+     wife consented to this as final.  They would pay in full.
+
+     They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895.  About the only letter
+     of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the
+     moment of departure.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rudyard Kipling, in England:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       August, 1895.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR KIPLING,&mdash;It is reported that you are about to visit India. This
+      has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload
+      from my conscience a debt long due to you. Years ago you came from India
+      to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time. It has always been my
+      purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day. I shall
+      arrive next January and you must be ready. I shall come riding my ayah
+      with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a
+      troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild
+      bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I shall
+      be thirsty.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Affectionately,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters.
+     Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere
+     lavishly entertained.  He was beset by other carbuncles, but would
+     seem not to have been seriously delayed by them.  A letter to his
+     old friend Twichell carries the story.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL,
+                                             NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND,
+                                                  November 29, '95.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has
+      just arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle. It is No. 3. Not
+      a serious one this time. I lectured last night without inconvenience, but
+      the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture. My second one kept
+      me in bed a week in Melbourne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights us
+      all through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at
+      Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city. Here we have
+      the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing between
+      us and it but 20 yards of shingle&mdash;and hardly a suggestion of life in
+      that space to mar it or make a noise. Away down here fifty-five degrees
+      south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar tongue&mdash;a
+      foreign tongue&mdash;tongue bred among the ice-fields of the Antarctic&mdash;a
+      murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast unvisited
+      solitudes it has come from. It was very delicious and solacing to wake in
+      the night and find it still pulsing there. I wish you were here&mdash;land,
+      but it would be fine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better than
+      one could have expected they would. They have tough experiences, in the
+      way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with the
+      worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday. A week later we shall
+      reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia. We
+      sailed for New Zealand October 30.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and tomorrow
+      will be mine. I shall be 60&mdash;no thanks for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The article mentioned in the foregoing letter was one which Twichell
+     had been engaged by Harper's Magazine to write concerning the home
+     life and characteristics of Mark Twain.  By the time the Clemens
+     party had completed their tour of India&mdash;a splendid, triumphant
+     tour, too full of work and recreation for letter-writing&mdash;and had
+     reached South Africa, the article had appeared, a satisfactory one,
+     if we may judge by Mark Twain's next.
+
+     This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives
+     of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at
+     Pretoria.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC,
+                                        The Queen's Birthday, '96.
+                                                       (May 24)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR OLD JOE,&mdash;Harper for May was given to me yesterday in
+      Johannesburg by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article
+      on me while coming up in the train with her and an old friend and
+      fellow-Missourian of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and
+      spirited wife of the chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here
+      under a 15-year sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1
+      and 5-year terms. Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away
+      above my deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and
+      as for Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be
+      grateful to you to the bottom of her heart. Between you and Punch and
+      Brander Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised
+      sufficiently high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it is
+      the study of their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere
+      within bounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on her
+      to-day. She is well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond. A Boer
+      guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only he
+      barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) and wouldn't
+      let me cross a white mark that was on the ground&mdash;the &ldquo;death-line&rdquo;
+       one of the prisoners called it. Not in earnest, though, I think. I found
+      that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior and a guest of Gen.
+      Franklin's. I also found that I had known Capt. Mein intimately 32 years
+      ago. One of the English prisoners had heard me lecture in London 23 years
+      ago. After being introduced in turn to all the prisoners, I was allowed to
+      see some of the cells and examine their food, beds, etc. I was told in
+      Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of $150,000 a year is not stopped, and
+      that the salaries of some of the others are still continued. Hammond was
+      looking very well indeed, and I can say the same of all the others. When
+      the trouble first fell upon them it hit some of them very hard; several
+      fell sick (Hammond among them), two or three had to be removed to the
+      hospital, and one of the favorites lost his mind and killed himself, poor
+      fellow, last week. His funeral, with a sorrowing following of 10,000, took
+      the place of the public demonstration the Americans were getting up for
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are all
+      educated men. They are well off; some of them are wealthy. They have a lot
+      of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they will be
+      able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for very long, I
+      take it. I am told they have times of deadly brooding and depression. I
+      made them a speech&mdash;sitting down. It just happened so. I don't prefer
+      that attitude. Still, it has one advantage&mdash;it is only a talk, it
+      doesn't take the form of a speech. I have tried it once before on this
+      trip. However, if a body wants to make sure of having &ldquo;liberty,&rdquo; and
+      feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course. I advised them at
+      considerable length to stay where they were&mdash;they would get used to
+      it and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again
+      somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to go
+      and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their
+      jail-terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a
+      little over, and we outsiders had to go. I went again to-day, but the Rev.
+      Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer named Du
+      Plessis&mdash;explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to admit saint
+      and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday. Du Plessis&mdash;descended
+      from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years ago&mdash;but he hasn't
+      any French left in him now&mdash;all Dutch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara remain in
+      Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip to
+      Johannesburg. And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were so
+      lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that I
+      sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought. It is just the
+      beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool.
+      But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as
+      lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with
+      interest. I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next
+      Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital,
+      then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join us
+      by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently to
+      the Cape&mdash;and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and
+      sail for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will
+      write and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean study
+      music and things in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland,
+      July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or land,
+      notwithstanding the carbuncles and things. Even when I was laid up 10 days
+      at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English friends. All
+      over India the English well, you will never know how good and fine they
+      are till you see them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture tonight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the
+     Jameson raid would not be out of place here.  Dr. Leander Starr
+     Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley.  President
+     Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of
+     his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief.  From Lobengula
+     concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South
+     African Company.  Jameson gave up his profession and went in for
+     conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.
+     In time he became administrator of Rhodesia.  By the end of 1894.
+     he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as
+     a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time.  Perhaps this turned
+     his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news
+     that &ldquo;Dr. Jim,&rdquo; as he was called, at the head of six hundred men,
+     had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an
+     uprising at Johannesburg.  The raid was a failure.  Jameson, and
+     those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of
+     &ldquo;Oom Paul,&rdquo; and some of them barely escaped execution.  The Boer
+     president handed them over to the English Government for punishment,
+     and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually
+     released.  Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African
+     politics, but there is no record of any further raids.
+
+                     .........................
+
+     The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896,
+     and on the last day of the month reached England.  They had not
+     planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near
+     London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his
+     travels.
+
+     The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive
+     August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying
+     that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail.  A cable inquiry was
+     immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory,
+     and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.
+     This was on August 15th.  Three days later, in the old home at
+     Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever.  She had been
+     visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice
+     had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a
+     few steps away.
+
+     Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the
+     hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family
+     happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.
+     There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried
+     long before his arrival.  He awaited in England the return of his
+     broken family.  They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea,
+     No. 23 Tedworth Square.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        Permanent address:
+                                        % CHATTO &amp; WINDUS
+                                        111 T.  MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON,
+                                                       Sept.  27, '96.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood
+      poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way down,
+      twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the peace
+      and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child, and again
+      to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother. It was like you; like
+      your good great heart, like your matchless and unmatchable self. It was no
+      surprise to me to learn that you stayed by Susy long hours, careless of
+      fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me to learn that you could still
+      the storms that swept her spirit when no other could; for she loved you,
+      revered you, trusted you, and &ldquo;Uncle Joe&rdquo; was no empty phrase upon her
+      lips! I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful to the bottom of my heart, which
+      has always been filled with love for you, and respect and admiration; and
+      I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my place at Susy's
+      side and Livy's in those black hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in
+      this generation. And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner and
+      George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the Cheneys, and
+      Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick Burton, and
+      perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the same degree&mdash;for
+      she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew that she was my
+      superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and subtlety of her
+      intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent. I know her better
+      now; for I have read her private writings and sounded the deeps of her
+      mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine than I knew it
+      when I had it. But I have this consolation: that dull as I was, I always
+      knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my work&mdash;as proud as
+      if Livy had done it herself&mdash;and I took it as the accolade from the
+      hand of genius. I see now&mdash;as Livy always saw&mdash;that she had
+      greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now she is dead&mdash;and I can never tell her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      God bless you Joe&mdash;and all of your house.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Sept.  28, '96.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is as you say, dear old friend, &ldquo;the pathos of it&rdquo; yes, it was a
+      piteous thing&mdash;as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish. When
+      we started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
+      1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
+      light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
+      throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears. One year, one
+      month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
+      the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of the
+      night, in the same train and the same car&mdash;and again Susy had come a
+      journey and was near at hand to meet them. She was waiting in the house
+      she was born in, in her coffin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the circumstances of this death were pathetic&mdash;my brain is worn
+      to rags rehearsing them. The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
+      without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
+      wanton details. The child was taken away when her mother was within three
+      days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
+      with her. But there is no use in that. Since it was to happen it would
+      have happened.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With love
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
+     privacy.  Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
+     scarcely half a dozen knew his address.  He worked steadily on his
+     book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
+     beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers.  In one of these he
+     said, &ldquo;I am appalled!  Here I am trying to load you up with work
+     again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
+     for a year.  It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it.&rdquo;
+
+     But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort&mdash;one that
+     was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
+     unique and world-wide distinction.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mrs. H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For and in behalf of Helen Keller, stone blind and deaf, and formerly
+      dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MRS. ROGERS,&mdash;Experience has convinced me that when one wishes
+      to set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
+      bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife. If she can't
+      convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence
+      Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old. Last July, in Boston, when
+      she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to
+      Radcliffe College. She passed without a single condition. She was allowed
+      the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and this was
+      shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had to be read
+      to her. Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average of 78 on the
+      part of the other applicants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
+      studies because of poverty. If she can go on with them she will make a
+      fame that will endure in history for centuries. Along her special lines
+      she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
+      degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the teacher
+      who has been with her from the start&mdash;Mr. Rogers will remember her.)
+      Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her case, and
+      I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it. I see nobody.
+      Nobody knows my address. Nothing but the strictest hiding can enable me to
+      write my long book in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get
+      him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the
+      other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe an annual
+      aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars&mdash;and agree to
+      continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her college
+      course. I'm not trying to limit their generosity&mdash;indeed no, they may
+      pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as they please,
+      they have my consent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
+      shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want.
+      I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and
+      disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous
+      girl?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead
+      with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him clothed
+      with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs&mdash;they have spent
+      mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think that the
+      same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through their hearts
+      into their pockets in those cases will answer &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; when its name is
+      called in this one. 638
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There&mdash;I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal
+      that I am making; I know you too well for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-bye with love to all of you
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly&mdash;close by, and
+      handy when wanted.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The plea was not made in vain.  Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested
+     themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly
+     no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever
+     had reason for disappointment.
+
+     In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens
+     also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in
+     the matter of his own difficulties.  This particular reference
+     concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen
+     between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house
+     in Franklin Square.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Dec.  22, '96.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MRS. ROGERS,&mdash;It is superb! And I am beyond measure grateful to
+      you both. I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that
+      Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was
+      sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far
+      and away beyond the sum I expected&mdash;may your lines fall in pleasant
+      places here and Hereafter for it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for
+      their sakes as well as for Helen's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old
+      cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to
+      enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it the
+      elements of stability and permanency. However, at any time that he says
+      sign, we're going to do it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Ever sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVI. LETTERS 1897. LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and
+     managed to keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is
+     noticeable that 'Following the Equator' is more serious than
+     his other books of travel. He wrote few letters, and these
+     only to his three closest friends, Howells, Twichell, and
+     Rogers.  In the letter to Twichell, which follows, there is
+     mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to
+     resume.  One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically
+     begun, but perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it
+     through, for it never reached conclusion.  He had already
+     tried it in one or two forms and would begin it again
+     presently.  The identity of the other tale is uncertain.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 19, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Do I want you to write to me? Indeed I do. I do not want
+      most people to write, but I do want you to do it. The others break my
+      heart, but you will not. You have a something divine in you that is not in
+      other men. You have the touch that heals, not lacerates. And you know the
+      secret places of our hearts. You know our life&mdash;the outside of it&mdash;as
+      the others do&mdash;and the inside of it&mdash;which they do not. You have
+      seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail&mdash;and
+      the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift&mdash;derelicts;
+      battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it
+      is gone. And there is nothing in its place. The vanity of life was all we
+      had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of that
+      we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high&mdash;to
+      come to this!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go
+      away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her,
+      yet leave our dull bodies behind. And I did not know what she was. To me
+      she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look at it
+      daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary; and now
+      that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there, has
+      vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a
+      pauper. How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am I robbed,
+      and who is benefited?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, well, Susy died at home. She had that privilege. Her dying eyes rested
+      upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which they had
+      known and loved always and which had made her young years glad; and she
+      had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen. This was happy fortune&mdash;I
+      am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her. If she had died in another
+      house-well, I think I could not have borne that. To us, our house was not
+      unsentient matter&mdash;it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us
+      with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was of us,
+      and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of
+      its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not
+      light up and speak out its eloquent welcome&mdash;and we could not enter
+      it unmoved. And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should enter it
+      unshod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am trying to add to the &ldquo;assets&rdquo; which you estimate so generously. No, I
+      am not. The thought is not in my mind. My purpose is other. I am working,
+      but it is for the sake of the work&mdash;the &ldquo;surcease of sorrow&rdquo; that is
+      found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when I use
+      that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now; but that
+      is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my preservation;
+      the interval between the finishing of this one and the beginning of the
+      next will not be more than an hour, at most. Continuances, I mean; for two
+      of them are already well along&mdash;in fact have reached exactly the same
+      stage in their journey: 19,000 words each. The present one will contain
+      180,000 words&mdash;130,000 are done. I am well protected; but Livy! She
+      has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing but housekeeping, and doing
+      things for the children and me. She does not see people, and cannot; books
+      have lost their interest for her. She sits solitary; and all the day, and
+      all the days, wonders how it all happened, and why. We others were always
+      busy with our affairs, but Susy was her comrade&mdash;had to be driven
+      from her loving persecutions&mdash;sometimes at 1 in the morning. To Livy
+      the persecutions were welcome. It was heaven to her to be plagued like
+      that. But it is ended now. Livy stands so in need of help; and none among
+      us all could help her like you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk. I hope so. We could
+      have such talks! We are all grateful to you and Harmony&mdash;how grateful
+      it is not given to us to say in words. We pay as we can, in love; and in
+      this coin practicing no economy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Good bye, dear old Joe!
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of
+     business, but in one of them he said: &ldquo;I am going to write with all
+     my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can
+     in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that
+     is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the
+     promptest kind of a way and no fooling around.&rdquo;  And in one he
+     wrote: &ldquo;You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  LONDON, Feb. 23, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want
+      to thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.
+      The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a life
+      which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan. I don't mean that I am
+      miserable; no&mdash;worse than that&mdash;indifferent. Indifferent to
+      nearly everything but work. I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it. I do
+      it without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This mood will pass, some day&mdash;there is history for it. But it cannot
+      pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence. She was always so
+      quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are
+      dead people who go through the motions of life. Indeed I am a mud image,
+      and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has
+      comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them. It is a law of our
+      nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the
+      presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it
+      and apparently of no kinship with it. I have finished my book, but I go on
+      as if the end were indefinitely away&mdash;as indeed it is. There is no
+      hurry&mdash;at any rate there is no limit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean's spirits are good; Clara's are rising. They have youth&mdash;the
+      only thing that was worth giving to the race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are sardonic times. Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle.
+      But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on. If I were not a
+      hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle over
+      it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race. This has been a
+      bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England humbled&mdash;that
+      is, not too much. We are sprung from her loins, and it hurts me. I am for
+      republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in that. We can't count
+      France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland to count. Beneath the
+      governing crust England is sound-hearted&mdash;and sincere, too, and
+      nearly straight. But I am appalled to notice that the wide extension of
+      the surface has damaged her manners, and made her rather Americanly
+      uncourteous on the lower levels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he
+     thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and
+     change.  The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the
+     middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: &ldquo;A
+     successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out
+     of it.&rdquo;  Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of
+     his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he
+     wrote, whimsically, &ldquo;Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at
+     a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself.....  I
+     would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de
+     luxe editions of my books.  But Mrs. Clemens and the children object
+     to this, I do not know why.&rdquo;  And, in a moment of depression: &ldquo;You
+     see the lightning refuses to strike me&mdash;there is where the defect
+     is.  We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did.  But
+     nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy.&rdquo;
+
+     They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on
+     Lake Lucerne&mdash;&ldquo;The charmingest place we ever lived in,&rdquo; he declared,
+     &ldquo;for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery.&rdquo;  It was here that
+     he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one
+     other manuscript.  From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn
+     something of his employments and economies.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Henry H. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         LUCERNE, August the something or other, 1897.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;I am writing a novel, and am getting along very
+      well with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the
+      loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory. We have a small house
+      on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from the
+      inn below on the lake shore. Six francs a day per head, house and food
+      included. The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful. We have a row boat
+      and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors. Nobody knows we are
+      here. And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  LUCERNE, Aug. 22, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day
+      on one of her shopping trips&mdash;George Williamson Smith&mdash;did I
+      tell you about it? We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual
+      refreshment as we had not tasted in many a month.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers&mdash;6. I
+      had known one of them in London 24 years ago. Three of the 6 were born in
+      slavery, the others were children of slaves. How charming they were&mdash;in
+      spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing,
+      matter, carriage, clothes&mdash;in every detail that goes to make the real
+      lady and gentleman, and welcome guest. We went down to the village hotel
+      and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German
+      and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their beer mugs
+      in front of them&mdash;self-contained and unimpressionable looking people,
+      an indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience&mdash;and up at the
+      far end of the room sat the Jubilees in a row. The Singers got up and
+      stood&mdash;the talking and glass jingling went on. Then rose and swelled
+      out above those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret
+      of whose make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house.
+      It was fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise
+      of it. No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the
+      camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Launcelot riding in
+      Sir Kay's armor and astonishing complacent Knights who thought they had
+      struck a soft thing. The Jubilees sang a lot of pieces. Arduous and
+      painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music,
+      but on the contrary&mdash;to my surprise&mdash;has mightily reinforced its
+      eloquence and beauty. Away back in the beginning&mdash;to my mind&mdash;their
+      music made all other vocal music cheap; and that early notion is
+      emphasized now. It is utterly beautiful, to me; and it moves me infinitely
+      more than any other music can. I think that in the Jubilees and their
+      songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages; and I wish
+      it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it and lavish money
+      on it and go properly crazy over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were
+      native. It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and
+      nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great
+      enthusiasm&mdash;acquired technique etc, included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated
+      by him after the war. The party came up to the house and we had a pleasant
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is paradise, here&mdash;but of course we have got to leave it by and
+      by. The 18th of August&mdash;[Anniversary of Susy Clemens's death.]&mdash;has
+      come and gone, Joe&mdash;and we still seem to live.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With love from us all.
+                                                  MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis &ldquo;as
+     anywhere else in the geography,&rdquo; but October found them in Vienna
+     for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole.  The Austrian capital was
+     just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted
+     in the following:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 23, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;We are gradually getting settled down and wonted. Vienna
+      is not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement
+      which: has a distinctly economical aspect. The Vice Consul made the
+      contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30
+      and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month. I used to pay
+      $1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the most
+      important event which has happened to me in ten days&mdash;unless I count&mdash;in
+      my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday, with the
+      proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his case comes
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much
+      politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang
+      of it. It is Christian and Jew by the horns&mdash;the advantage with the
+      superior man, as usual&mdash;the superior man being the Jew every time and
+      in all countries. Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a
+      country where there were 3 Jews to 10 Christians! Oh, not the shade of a
+      shadow of a chance. The difference between the brain of the average
+      Christian and that of the average Jew&mdash;certainly in Europe&mdash;is
+      about the difference between a tadpole's and an Archbishop's. It's a
+      marvelous, race&mdash;by long odds the most marvelous that the world has
+      produced, I suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there's more politics&mdash;the clash between Czech and Austrian. I
+      wish I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the abounding love of us all
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing
+     Mark Twain on his trip around the world.  It was a trick photograph
+     made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out
+     and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an
+     ox.  In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of
+     the disreputable cart.  His companions are two negroes.  To the
+     creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic
+     acknowledgment.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To T. S. Frisbie
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 25, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MR. T. S. FRISBIE,&mdash;Dear Sir: The picture has reached me, and has
+      moved me deeply. That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and
+      although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe
+      successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even in
+      the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts. Princes and dukes
+      and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could hardly
+      keep from trying to buy it. The barouche does not look as fine, now, as it
+      did earlier-but that was before the earthquake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and
+      your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of
+      India is accurate and full of tender feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much
+      more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Very truly yours
+                                   MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark
+     Twain's old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford.  The sale of it
+     was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but
+     also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark
+     Twain's brave struggle to pay his debts.  When the newspapers began
+     to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling
+     up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the
+     sympathy.  He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following
+     result:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Frank E. Bliss, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             VIENNA, Nov. 4, 1897.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR BLISS,&mdash;Your cablegram informing me that a report is in
+      circulation which purports to come from me and which says I have recently
+      made $82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled
+      back my regret to you that it is not true. I wrote a letter&mdash;a
+      private letter&mdash;a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief
+      that I should be out of debt within the next twelvemonth. If you make as
+      much as usual for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a
+      fact, and I shall be wholly out of debt. I am encoring you now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar
+      mare's nest has developed. But why do you worry about the various reports?
+      They do not worry me. They are not unfriendly, and I don't see how they
+      can do any harm. Be patient; you have but a little while to wait; the
+      possible reports are nearly all in. It has been reported that I was
+      seriously ill&mdash;it was another man; dying&mdash;it was another man;
+      dead&mdash;the other man again. It has been reported that I have received
+      a legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt&mdash;it was another
+      man; and now comes this $82,000&mdash;still another man. It has been
+      reported that I am writing books&mdash;for publication; I am not doing
+      anything of the kind. It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be
+      able to get another book ready for the press within the next three years.
+      You can see, yourself, that there isn't anything more to be reported&mdash;invention
+      is exhausted. Therefore, don't worry, Bliss&mdash;the long night is
+      breaking. As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that
+      I have become a foreigner. When you hear it, don't you believe it. And
+      don't take the trouble to deny it. Merely just raise the American flag on
+      our house in Hartford, and let it talk.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. This is not a private letter. I am getting tired of private letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             VIENNA
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE, NOV. 19, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Above is our private (and permanent) address for the
+      winter. You needn't send letters by London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am very much obliged for Forrest's Austro-Hungarian articles. I have
+      just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion and
+      Vienna's are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me&mdash;the
+      paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities. He and Vienna both say
+      the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the whole
+      safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things quiet;
+      can't afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas and
+      stirring the public soul. I am assured that every time a man finds himself
+      blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate him to a
+      wholesome obscurity. It is curious and interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine
+      (correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from the
+      celebrities of the Empire. She spoke of this. Two or three bright
+      Austrians were present. They said &ldquo;There are none who are known all over
+      the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work
+      and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names; Kossuth
+      (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour speech;
+      two names-nothing more. Every other country in the world, perhaps, has a
+      giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but ours. We've got
+      the material&mdash;have always had it&mdash;but we have to suppress it; we
+      can't afford to let it develop; our political salvation depends upon
+      tranquillity&mdash;always has.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Livy! She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now.
+      We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of
+      days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and
+      we all send love.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna.
+     The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies
+     presently became violent.  Clemens found himself intensely
+     interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was
+     cleared by the police.  All sorts of stories were circulated as to
+     what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America.  A letter
+     to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Dec. 10, '97.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here
+      in it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled
+      the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted 'Hoch die Deutschen!'
+      and got hustled out. Oh dear, what a pity it is that one's adventures
+      never happen! When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery
+      and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to
+      stay, by saying, &ldquo;But this gentleman is a foreigner&mdash;you don't need
+      to turn him out&mdash;he won't do any harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know him very well&mdash;I recognize him by his pictures; and I
+      should be very glad to let him stay, but I haven't any choice, because of
+      the strictness of the orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so we all went out, and no one was hustled. Below, I ran across the
+      London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first
+      gallery and I lost none of the show. The first gallery had not misbehaved,
+      and was not disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the lovely
+      people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and around
+      here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time. Jean's
+      woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-bye Joe&mdash;and we all love all of you.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best
+     things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations
+     of the Austro-Hungarian confusions.  It was published in Harper's
+     Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
+
+     Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid&mdash;at least,
+     none of importance.  The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's
+     hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy
+     burden.  He wrote asking for relief.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fragment of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;I throw up the sponge. I pull down the flag. Let us
+      begin on the debts. I cannot bear the weight any longer. It totally unfits
+      me for work. I have lost three entire months now. In that time I have
+      begun twenty magazine articles and books&mdash;and flung every one of them
+      aside in turn. The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit out of
+      any work. And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no time and
+      spared no effort&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts.
+      Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote
+      every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          Extracts from letters to H.  H.  Rogers, in New York:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ... We all delighted with your plan. Only don't leave B&mdash;out.
+      Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women&mdash;daughters, no
+      doubt. We don't want to see them lose any thing. B&mdash;&mdash;- is an
+      ass, and disgruntled, but I don't care for that. I am responsible for the
+      money and must do the best I can to pay it..... I am writing hard&mdash;writing
+      for the creditors.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                            Dec.  29.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing. For the first time in my
+      life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling it
+      in.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                            Jan.  2.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind
+      again&mdash;no sense of burden. Work is become a pleasure again&mdash;it
+      is not labor any longer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                            March 7.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again
+      and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really
+      happy day she has had since Susy died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVII. LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL. LIFE IN VIENNA. PAYMENT OF
+      THE DEBTS. ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts. Once
+      more he stood free before the world&mdash;a world that sounded his
+      praises. The latter fact rather amused him. &ldquo;Honest men must be pretty
+      scarce,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when they make so much fuss over even a defective
+      specimen.&rdquo; When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells in
+      a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                             VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;Look at those ghastly figures. I used to write it
+      &ldquo;Hartford, 1871.&rdquo; There was no Susy then&mdash;there is no Susy now. And
+      how much lies between&mdash;one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
+      meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara! You speak of the
+      glorious days of that old time&mdash;and they were. It is my quarrel&mdash;that
+      traps like that are set. Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport, and
+      then taken away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating disaster
+      in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke is further
+      away)&mdash;a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been through
+      all other possible misfortunes&mdash;and I said it couldn't be done as it
+      ought to be done except by a man who had lived it&mdash;it must be written
+      with the blood out of a man's heart. I couldn't know, then, how soon I was
+      to be made competent. I have thought of it many a time since. If you were
+      here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in your dream. For
+      we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our
+      passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in eclipse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I couldn't get along without work now. I bury myself in it up to the ears.
+      Long hours&mdash;8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes. And all the days,
+      Sundays included. It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it
+      fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year. It was because of
+      the deadness which invaded me when Susy died. But I have made a change
+      lately&mdash;into dramatic work&mdash;and I find it absorbingly
+      entertaining. I don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no
+      matter, I'll write half a dozen that won't, anyway. Dear me, I didn't know
+      there was such fun in it. I'll write twenty that won't play. I get into
+      immense spirits as soon as my day is fairly started. Of course a good deal
+      of this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land&mdash;on the Webster
+      &amp; Co. debts, I mean. (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and
+      saved every cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we
+      can't cash. I have marked this &ldquo;private&rdquo; because it is for the friends who
+      are attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want
+      to and if they want to. There are only two claims which I dispute and
+      which I mean to look into personally before I pay them. But they are
+      small. Both together they amount to only $12,500. I hope you will never
+      get the like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years
+      ago. And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things that I
+      reckon maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble, after
+      all. Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the children
+      have never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We all send you and all of you our love.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Howells wrote: &ldquo;I wish you could understand how unshaken you are,
+     you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep
+     that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the
+     same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare.&rdquo;
+
+     The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social
+     clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like
+     an embassy than the home of a mere literary man.  Celebrities in
+     every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for
+     the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other
+     home in Vienna.  Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a
+     central figure.  Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit,
+     and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal
+     family.  It was following one such event that the next letter was
+     written.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (Private)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago&mdash;you see how
+      it is: can't get time to finish anything. I pile up lots of work,
+      nevertheless. There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of
+      them. I say &ldquo;Private&rdquo; up there because I've got an adventure to tell, and
+      you mustn't let a breath of it get out. First I thought I would lay it up
+      along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same purpose&mdash;to
+      talk to you about, but&mdash;those others have vanished out of my memory;
+      and that must not happen with this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of it Livy
+      and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir apparent of
+      the imperial throne&mdash;a beautiful lady, with a beautiful spirit, and
+      very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me for writing them;
+      and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the hand&mdash;just the
+      kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it the prettiest tale
+      there is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies, the
+      correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your respects
+      in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors' Book kept
+      in the office of the establishment. That is the end of it, and everything
+      is squared up and ship-shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by the
+      sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for the book
+      and said we wished to write our names in it. And he called a servant in
+      livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal Highness was out
+      but would soon be in. Of course Livy said &ldquo;No&mdash;no&mdash;we only want
+      the book;&rdquo; but he was firm, and said, &ldquo;You are Americans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are expected, please go up stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But indeed we are not expected&mdash;please let us have the book and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while&mdash;she
+      commanded me to tell you so&mdash;and you must wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the soldiers were there close by&mdash;there was no use trying to
+      resist&mdash;so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile
+      us into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in. And she
+      wouldn't stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at any
+      moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for
+      anything. So we went down stairs again&mdash;to my unspeakable regret. For
+      it was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the
+      princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other Americans
+      who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by the portier,
+      and shot by the sentinels&mdash;and then it would all go into the papers,
+      and be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be
+      perfectly lovely. And by that time the princess would discover that we
+      were not the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out, and
+      the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another
+      prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and&mdash;well, Joe, I was
+      in a state of perfect bliss. But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier
+      wouldn't let us out&mdash;he was sorry, but he must obey orders&mdash;we
+      must go back up stairs and wait. Poor Livy&mdash;I couldn't help but enjoy
+      her distress. She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain,
+      if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came? We went
+      up stairs again&mdash;laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one
+      drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed
+      upon us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy was in a state of mind! She said it was too theatrically ridiculous;
+      and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I would be sure
+      to let it out and it would get into the papers&mdash;and she tried to make
+      me promise&mdash;&ldquo;Promise what?&rdquo; I said&mdash;&ldquo;to be quiet about this?
+      Indeed I won't&mdash;it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll tell it,
+      and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make it perfect; I
+      can't make all the rightful blunders myself&mdash;it takes all three of us
+      to do justice to an opportunity like this. I would just like to see
+      Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his futile and
+      inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging in here and
+      wanting to know.&rdquo; But Livy could not hear fun&mdash;it was not a time to
+      be trying to be funny&mdash;we were in a most miserable and shameful
+      situation, and if&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little
+      princes flowed in! Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie
+      Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses
+      present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)&mdash;and we shook hands all
+      around and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an hour&mdash;and
+      by and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had been sent for
+      by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel. We were
+      invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour and a half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were
+      the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come,
+      and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody suspecting
+      us for impostors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We send lots and lots of love.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark
+     Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right&mdash;how he
+     wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one
+     large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the
+     Paige type-setter.  It seems incredible that, after that experience
+     and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again.  But
+     scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he
+     was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions,
+     perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern
+     machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius.  That
+     Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic
+     line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers.
+     Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel
+     Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Rogers, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       March 24, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ROGERS,&mdash;(I feel like Col. Sellers).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Kleinberg [agent for Sczezepanik] came according to appointment, at
+      8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary. I asked
+      questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call &ldquo;No. 2 &ldquo;) and got as
+      good an idea of it as I could. It is a machine. It automatically punches
+      the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical accuracy.
+      It will do for $1 what now costs $3. So it has value, but &ldquo;No. 2&rdquo; is the
+      great thing (the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of $10 and the
+      jacquard looms must have it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy, etc.
+      I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off two or
+      three months. They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious then&mdash;just
+      the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the
+      grip of a single corporation. This is a good time to begin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold
+      of just the statistics we want. Still, we have some good statistics&mdash;and
+      I will use those for a test.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the
+      jacquard. Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000
+      use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 30
+      designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year&mdash;(a
+      florin is 2 francs). Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American
+      factories&mdash;with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that
+      instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we
+      allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories&mdash;a total
+      of 20,000 designers. Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000. Let us
+      consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year. The
+      saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in
+      the jacquard business over there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an
+      aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring
+      No. 2.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year. The Company holding in its
+      grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.
+      Possibly more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet.
+      Price-cutting would end. Fluctuations in values would cease. The business
+      would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics could not
+      seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment as
+      Government bonds. When the patents died the Company would be so powerful
+      that it could still keep the whole business in its hands. Would you like
+      to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business of the
+      world in the grip of a single Company? And don't you think that the
+      business would grow-grow like a weed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ach, America&mdash;it is the country of the big! Let me get my breath&mdash;then
+      we will talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So then we talked&mdash;talked till pretty late. Would Germany and England
+      join the combination? I said the Company would know how to persuade them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we
+      parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection
+      with this matter. And we will now keep the invention itself out of print
+      as well as we can. Descriptions of it have been granted to the &ldquo;Dry Goods
+      Economist&rdquo; (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers. I have asked
+      Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he can do it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               With love,
+                              S. L. C.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came
+     from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the
+     letter which he inclosed&mdash;the brief and concise report from a
+     carpet-machine expert, who said: &ldquo;I do not feel that it would be of
+     any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in
+     America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no
+     field for a company to develop the invention here.  A cursory
+     examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value
+     upon the invention, from a practical standpoint.&rdquo;
+
+     With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem
+     to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations.
+     Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved
+     him a great sum in money and years of disappointment.  But perhaps
+     he would not have heeded it then.
+
+     The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War.  Clemens was
+     constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose
+     son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA,
+                                                       June 17, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it
+      must be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension&mdash;enough
+      to make it just schmeck, as the Germans say. Dave will come out with two
+      or three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall
+      all be glad it happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We started with Bull Run, before. Dewey and Hobson have introduced an
+      improvement on the game this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history&mdash;as I am enjoying
+      this one. For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my
+      knowledge goes. It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is
+      another sight finer to fight for another man's. And I think this is the
+      first time it has been done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus.
+      He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it
+      will be a world of trouble to settle the rows&mdash;better leave well
+      enough alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going to break the
+      soft smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Company! (Sh! it happens every day&mdash;and we came out here to be
+      quiet.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love to you all.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village
+     near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet.  Many friends came
+     out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans.  Clemens,
+     however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we
+     gather from the next to Howells.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN,
+                                                       Aug. 16, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;Your letter came yesterday. It then occurred to me
+      that I might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a
+      couple of weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome
+      reference to me I was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on
+      writing itself while I was at work at my other literature during the day.
+      But next day my other literature was still urgent&mdash;and so on and so
+      on; so my letter didn't get put into ink at all. But I see now, that you
+      were writing, about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come
+      across the Atlantic per mental telegraph. In 1876 or '75 I wrote 40,000
+      words of a story called &ldquo;Simon Wheeler&rdquo; wherein the nub was the preventing
+      of an execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the
+      other side of the globe. I had a lot of people scattered about the globe
+      who carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button,
+      made of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and
+      have a talk, they &ldquo;pressed the button&rdquo; or did something, I don't remember
+      what, and communication was at once opened. I didn't finish the story,
+      though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000
+      words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able to
+      call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental telegraph&mdash;and
+      not merely by impression, the impression will be articulated into words.
+      It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be, because in the upper
+      civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was going to say
+      sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people along with the
+      already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is called who doesn't
+      wish to talk he will be like those visitors you mention: &ldquo;not chosen&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      will be frankly damned and shut off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and
+      again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only think
+      it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen&mdash;the
+      one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men whose
+      line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had no end
+      of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one&mdash;let us hope so.)
+      Last summer I started 16 things wrong&mdash;3 books and 13 mag. articles&mdash;and
+      could only make 2 little wee things, 1500 words altogether, succeed:&mdash;only
+      that out of piles and stacks of diligently-wrought MS., the labor of 6
+      weeks' unremitting effort. I could make all of those things go if I would
+      take the trouble to re-begin each one half a dozen times on a new plan.
+      But none of them was important enough except one: the story I (in the
+      wrong form) mapped out in Paris three or four years ago and told you about
+      in New York under seal of confidence&mdash;no other person knows of it but
+      Mrs. Clemens&mdash;the story to be called &ldquo;Which was the Dream?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week ago I examined the MS&mdash;10,000 words&mdash;and saw that the
+      plan was a totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself,
+      and straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
+      confidence. I think I've struck the right one this time. I have already
+      put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
+      satisfied with it-a hard critic to content. I feel sure that all of the
+      first half of the story&mdash;and I hope three-fourths&mdash;will be
+      comedy; but by the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3
+      chapters) would have been tragedy and unendurable, almost. I think I can
+      carry the reader a long way before he suspects that I am laying a
+      tragedy-trap. In the present form I could spin 16 books out of it with
+      comfort and joy; but I shall deny myself and restrict it to one. (If you
+      should see a little short story in a magazine in the autumn called &ldquo;My
+      Platonic Sweetheart&rdquo; written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one. It may
+      have been a suggester, though.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not to
+      let on that they don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
+      baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
+      rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping. I hope I can get a
+      chance to work a little in spots&mdash;I can't tell. But you do it&mdash;therefore
+      why should you think I can't?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The dream story was never completed.  It was the same that he had
+     worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland.  It would be
+     tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to
+     accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it
+     eventually went to waste.  The short story mentioned, &ldquo;My Platonic
+     Sweetheart,&rdquo; a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark
+     Twain's lifetime.  Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's
+     Magazine.
+
+     The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the
+     startling event of that summer.  In a letter to Twichell Clemens
+     presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs.  Later he treated it
+     at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of
+     personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld
+     from print.  It has since been included in a volume of essays, What
+     Is Man, etc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep.  13, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines. No&mdash;Harper,
+      Century and McClure do; an example I should like to recommend to other
+      publishers. And so I thank you very much for sending me Brander's article.
+      When you say &ldquo;I like Brander Matthews; he impresses me as a man of parts
+      and power,&rdquo; I back you, right up to the hub&mdash;I feel the same way&mdash;.
+      And when you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for my crimes
+      against the Leather stockings and the Vicar, I ain't making any objection.
+      Dern your gratitude!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His article is as sound as a nut. Brander knows literature, and loves it;
+      he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so lucidly
+      and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him, even when
+      you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such merits as a
+      book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered through an
+      acre of mud. And so he has a right to be a critic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me. I
+      haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate
+      them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so
+      that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to
+      stop every time I begin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I
+      am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's jubilee last
+      year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder,
+      which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years
+      from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in at
+      the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken with
+      tears, &ldquo;My God the Empress is murdered,&rdquo; and fly toward her home before we
+      can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to you, makes you
+      a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your neighbor Antony
+      should come flying and say &ldquo;Caesar is butchered&mdash;the head of the
+      world is fallen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
+      genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
+      draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday,
+      when the funeral cortege marches. We are invited to occupy a room in the
+      sumptuous new hotel (the &ldquo;Krantz&rdquo; where we are to live during the Fall and
+      Winter) and view it, and we shall go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom they
+      retail similar slanders. She said in French&mdash;she is weak in French&mdash;that
+      she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of the
+      &ldquo;demimonde.&rdquo; Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land, that
+      mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy. But these
+      Malaproperies are always inventions&mdash;they don't happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids. Had a
+      noble good one with Parker and Dunham&mdash;land, but we were grateful for
+      that visit!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Yours with all our loves.
+                                        MARK.
+
+                      [Inclosed with the foregoing.]
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
+      concede high rank to the German Emperor's. He justly describes it as a
+      &ldquo;deed unparalleled for ruthlessness,&rdquo; and then adds that it was &ldquo;ordained
+      from above.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think this verdict will not be popular &ldquo;above.&rdquo; A man is either a free
+      agent or he isn't. If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is responsible
+      for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if the deed was
+      ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even
+      partially responsible for it, and the German court cannot condemn him
+      without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic; and by disregarding
+      its laws even Emperors as capable and acute as William II can be beguiled
+      into making charges which should not be ventured upon except in the
+      shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
+     luxurious, circumstances.  The hard work and good fortune which had
+     enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
+     provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
+     characteristic and interesting.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L.  NEVER MARKT 6
+                                                       Dec.  30, '98.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I begin with a date&mdash;including all the details&mdash;though
+      I shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
+      passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure
+      moment. Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how indestructible
+      the habit is, afterward! In your house in Cambridge a hundred years ago,
+      Mrs. Howells said to me, &ldquo;Here is a bunch of your letters, and the dates
+      are of no value, because you don't put any in&mdash;the years, anyway.&rdquo;
+       That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost me worlds of time and
+      torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and buckets of tears to
+      break it, and here it is yet&mdash;I could easier get rid of a virtue.....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care to
+      know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in difficult
+      circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having peace from
+      that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone. Every little
+      while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has come with pencil and
+      paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps the accounts and
+      the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were lifting, and so
+      has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till another
+      figuring-up was necessary. Last night she figured up for her own
+      satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in
+      Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which
+      represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the
+      bank. I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking 4
+      1/2 centers before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the Mouse-Trap
+      played and well played. I thought the house would kill itself with
+      laughter. By George they played with life! and it was most devastatingly
+      funny. And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses in the front
+      seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted them. The head
+      young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were taken by English,
+      Irish and Scotch girls. Then there was a nigger-minstrel show, of the
+      genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too, for the nigger-show was always
+      a passion of mine. This one was created and managed by a Quaker doctor
+      from Philada., (23 years old) and he was the middle man. There were 9
+      others&mdash;5 Americans from 5 States and a Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and
+      an Irishman&mdash;all post-graduate-medical young fellows, of course&mdash;or,
+      it could be music; but it would be bound to be one or the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It's quite true&mdash;I don't read you &ldquo;as much as I ought,&rdquo; nor anywhere
+      near half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to. I
+      saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete, but
+      before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the
+      papers. I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey
+      begins, and that will not happen again. The last chance at a bound book of
+      yours was in London nearly two years ago&mdash;the last volume of your
+      short things, by the Harpers. I read the whole book twice through and some
+      of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far as I
+      got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is
+      admiring it yet. Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know where
+      they get them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to
+      live in New York. We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and
+      expenses. But perhaps nothing will come of it. We do afford to live in the
+      finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4 bedrooms, a dining-room, a
+      drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't
+      get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us
+      of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               &ldquo;The days when we went gipsying
+               A long time ago.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us others
+      and will not look our way. We saw the &ldquo;Master of Palmyra&rdquo; last night. How
+      Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human grand-folk around
+      him seem little and trivial and silly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With love from all of us to all of you.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVIII. LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS. VIENNA. LONDON. A SUMMER IN
+      SWEDEN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying
+      handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz. Their rooms, so often thronged
+      with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the &ldquo;Second
+      Embassy.&rdquo; Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies. Of
+      all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most notable.
+      Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners&mdash;his sayings and
+      opinions were widely quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would
+      naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review of
+      Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a brief
+      word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment. The great
+      war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident an added
+      interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No. 1.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       VIENNA, Jan.  9.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. STEAD,&mdash;The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.
+      Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No. 2.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. STEAD,&mdash;Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than
+      the other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should
+      not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and
+      history seems to show that that cannot be done. Can't we reduce the
+      armaments little by little&mdash;on a pro rata basis&mdash;by concert of
+      the powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their
+      strength 10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise?
+      For, of course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right
+      minds at one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all
+      of them to go into the scheme peaceably, are we? In that case I must
+      withdraw my influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the
+      outward signs of sanity. Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed
+      together. They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be
+      against nature and not operative. A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per
+      cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if
+      three other powers will join. I feel sure that the armaments are now many
+      times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or war.
+      Take wartime for instance. Suppose circumstances made it necessary for us
+      to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did before&mdash;settle
+      a large question and bring peace. I will guess that 400,000 men were on
+      hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures). In five hours they
+      disabled 50,000 men. It took them that tedious, long time because the
+      firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute. But we would do the
+      work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower guns, raining 600 balls a
+      minute. Four men to a gun&mdash;is that the number? A hundred and fifty
+      shots a minute per man. Thus a modern soldier is 149 Waterloo soldiers in
+      one. Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of each 150 in service,
+      disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as effectively as we did
+      eighty-five years ago. We should do the same beneficent job with 2,800 men
+      now that we did with 400,000 then. The allies could take 1,400 of the men,
+      and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But instead what do we see? In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,
+      taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field. Each
+      man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
+      Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are
+      not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet. Thus
+      we have this insane fact&mdash;that whereas those three countries could
+      arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million
+      men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,
+      they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their
+      populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents
+      which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking
+      and sit down and cipher a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can
+      gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where
+      it ought to be&mdash;20,000 men, properly armed. Then we can have all the
+      peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  VIENNA, January 9.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S.&mdash;In the article I sent the figures are wrong&mdash;&ldquo;350
+      million&rdquo; ought to be 450 million; &ldquo;349,982,000&rdquo; ought to be 449,982,000,
+      and the remark about the sum being a little more than the present number
+      of males on the planet&mdash;that is wrong, of course; it represents
+      really one and a half the existing males.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to
+     him across the years.  He always welcomed such letters&mdash;they came as
+     from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness.  He
+     sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an
+     undercurrent of affection.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Major &ldquo;Jack&rdquo; Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,
+                                                  Feb.  26, 1899.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MAJOR,&mdash;No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed. He was to
+      teach me the river for a certain specified sum. I have forgotten what it
+      was, but I paid it. I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A.
+      T. Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one
+      trip), and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect. Bixby is not 67: he is 97.
+      I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk when
+      I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for 57 and
+      successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than he
+      really was. At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac
+      commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of
+      his before the Revolution. He has piloted every important river in
+      America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.
+      I have never revealed these facts before. I notice, too, that you are
+      deceiving the people concerning your age. The printed portrait which you
+      have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was
+      19. I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby
+      for your grandson. Is it spreading, I wonder&mdash;this disposition of
+      pilots to renew their youth by doubtful methods? Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan&mdash;they
+      probably go to Sunday school now&mdash;but it will not deceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, it is as you say. All of the procession but a fraction has passed. It
+      is time for us all to fall in.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I.  NEUER MARKT 6
+                                                  April 2, '99.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due
+      now; waiting, and strongly interested. You are old enough to be a weary
+      man, with paling interests, but you do not show it. You do your work in
+      the same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect
+      way. I don't know how you can&mdash;but I suspect. I suspect that to you
+      there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke&mdash;a
+      poor joke&mdash;the poorest that was ever contrived. Since I wrote my
+      Bible, (last year)&mdash;[&ldquo;What Is Man.&rdquo;]&mdash;which Mrs. Clemens
+      loathes, and shudders over, and will not listen to the last half nor allow
+      me to print any part of it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he
+      was before; and so I have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor
+      praisefully about him any more. And I don't intend to try. I mean to go on
+      writing, for that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much (for I
+      don't wish to be scalped, any more than another.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      April 5. The Harper has come. I have been in Leipzig with your party, and
+      then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the swine
+      with the toothpick and the other manners&mdash;[&ldquo;Their Silver Wedding
+      Journey.&rdquo;]&mdash;At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it imagination, or&mdash;Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting
+      glimpses which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age;
+      indifference to sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless
+      stale stuff which used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret
+      sigh behind the public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But maybe that is your art. Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
+      detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery. Then it is well done,
+      perfectly done. I wrote my last travel book&mdash;[Following the Equator.]&mdash;in
+      hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion through
+      heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness fools me,
+      then I shall believe it fooled the reader. How I did loathe that journey
+      around the world!&mdash;except the sea-part and India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening. My tail hangs low. I thought I was a financier&mdash;and I
+      bragged to you. I am not bragging, now. The stock which I sold at such a
+      fine profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now
+      worth $60,000 more than I sold it for. I feel just as if I had been
+      spending $20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and
+      unbecoming extravagance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to
+      make a speech at a banquet. Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram
+      from London asking for the speech for a New York paper. I (this is
+      strictly private) sent it. And then I didn't make that speech, but another
+      of a quite different character&mdash;a speech born of something which the
+      introducer said. If that said speech got cabled and printed, you needn't
+      let on that it was never uttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people. We were
+      there a week and had a great time. At the banquet I heard their chief
+      orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious speech&mdash;I
+      never heard one that enchanted me more&mdash;although I did not understand
+      a word of it, since it was in Hungarian. But the art of it!&mdash;it was
+      superlative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience&mdash;all
+      Hungarians&mdash;understood me perfectly&mdash;to judge by the effects.
+      The English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young
+      English women who earn their living teaching their language; and that
+      there are others besides these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;
+      gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign
+      languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night
+      the concerts and operas. Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and
+      bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Correction. Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am renewing my youth. I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last
+      Saturday night. And I've been to a lot of football matches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals (&ldquo;Literature,&rdquo;
+       March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the
+      top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered
+      disappointment for the third time&mdash;and will never fare any better, I
+      hope, for you are where you belong, by every right. She wanted to know who
+      it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her. Nor when the
+      election will be completed and decided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next Morning. I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning&mdash;well
+      knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and
+      hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put
+      in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I
+      cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea ('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe! Often
+      she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking. This one, a minute
+      ago&mdash;19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency of
+      God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking out
+      through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for she
+      said nothing that was funny. &ldquo;Spose so many 've told y' how they 'njoyed
+      y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle Kehe! say
+      anything 'bout it Ke-hehe! Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n saw Tolstoi; he
+      said&mdash;&rdquo; It made me shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      April 12. Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining
+      that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members;
+      and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand it. But I
+      have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the
+      pool-booth, keeping game&mdash;and that that makes a large difference in
+      these things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      13th. I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office of
+      art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and that
+      and the other damned breed of priests.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   Yrs ever
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not
+     with the frequency of former years.  Perhaps neither of them was
+     bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly
+     less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,
+     there was always the discouragement of distance.  Once Howells
+     wrote: &ldquo;I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn
+     round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can
+     begin it.&rdquo;  And in another letter: &ldquo;It ought to be as pleasant to
+     sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it
+     isn't.....  The only reason why I write is that I want another
+     letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.
+     I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than
+     lunch.  I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that
+     brings unbearable leisure.  I hope you will be in New York another
+     winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of
+     eternity.&rdquo;
+
+     Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal
+     to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a
+     close.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       May 12, 1899.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;7.15 p. m. Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are
+      leaving for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the
+      human race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the
+      Secretary of Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English
+      ladies; an Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian
+      baron who wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual
+      thing and wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians
+      and several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,
+      the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans. It made just a
+      comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through the
+      folding doors. I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.
+      Clemens, but this was a pleasant one. I had only one accident. The old
+      Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for we
+      violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on others&mdash;for
+      instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious beliefs and
+      feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is a democrat and so am
+      I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is laborers' rights and approves
+      trades unions and strikes, and that is me. And so on. After she was gone
+      an English lady whom I greatly like, began to talk sharply against her for
+      contributing money, time, labor, and public expression of favor to a
+      strike that is on (for an 11-hour day) in the silk factories of Bohemia&mdash;and
+      she caught me unprepared and betrayed me into over-warm argument. I am
+      sorry: for she didn't know anything about the subject, and I did; and one
+      should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (The new Minister is a good man, but out of place. The Sec. of Legation is
+      a good man, but out of place. The Attache is a good man, but out of place.
+      Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship; and her
+      possible is 17,200 tons.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      May 13, 4 p. m. A beautiful English girl and her handsome English husband
+      came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird. English
+      parents&mdash;she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk
+      English till she was 8 or 10. She came up clothed like the sunset, and was
+      a delight to look at. (Roumanian costume.).....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and
+      to-morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and
+      his wife have gone to chaperon them. They gave me a chance to go, but
+      there are no snow mountains that I want to look at. Three hours out, three
+      hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance; yelling
+      conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new
+      acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and
+      if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the
+      foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on. The terms
+      seemed too severe. Snow mountains are too dear at the price....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as soon
+      as I could afford it. At last I can afford it, and have put the pot-boiler
+      pen away. What I have been wanting is a chance to write a book without
+      reserves&mdash;a book which should take account of no one's feelings, and
+      no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions, delusions; a
+      book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the plainest
+      language and without a limitation of any sort. I judged that that would be
+      an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I
+      didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found
+      it out. But I am sure it is started right this time. It is in tale-form. I
+      believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he is constructed,
+      and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how mistaken he is in
+      his estimate of his character and powers and qualities and his place among
+      the animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far, I think I am succeeding. I let the madam into the secret day
+      before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
+      chapters. She said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is perfectly horrible&mdash;and perfectly beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
+      out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump
+      into it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
+     give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger.  It was not
+     finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
+     after his death.  Six years later (1916) it was published serially
+     in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.
+
+     The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
+     received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
+     earlier years.  Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
+     midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
+     incident of one of their entertainments.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  LONDON, July 3, '99
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no
+      use&mdash;I can't get time for anything these days. I must break off and
+      write a postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed. This afternoon
+      he left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and carried off
+      my hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.) When the rest
+      of us came out there was but one hat that would go on my head&mdash;it
+      fitted exactly, too. So wore it away. It had no name in it, but the Canon
+      was the only man who was absent. I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.; saying that
+      for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did not belong to
+      me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and my family were
+      getting alarmed. Could he explain my trouble? And now at 8.30 p.m. comes a
+      note from him to say that all the afternoon he has been exhibiting a
+      wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace of expression, etc., etc., and
+      have I missed a hat? Our letters have crossed.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              Yours ever
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll.  Clemens had been always
+     one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend.  To
+     Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MISS FARRELL,&mdash;Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any
+      death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit, he
+      was a man&mdash;all man from his crown to his foot soles. My reverence for
+      him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it
+      with usury.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Sincerely Yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna,
+     in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised
+     by Heinrick Kellgren.  Kellgren's method, known as the &ldquo;Swedish
+     movements,&rdquo; seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments,
+     and he heralded the discovery far and wide.  He wrote to friends far
+     and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might
+     happen to have.  Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to
+     close with some mention of the new panacea.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             SANNA, Sept. 6, '99.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;I've no business in here&mdash;I ought to be outside. I
+      shall never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven.
+      Venice? land, what a poor interest that is! This is the place to be. I
+      have seen about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away
+      beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and
+      marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety. America? Italy? The
+      tropics? They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be. And this one&mdash;this
+      unspeakable wonder! It discounts all the rest. It brings the tears, it is
+      so unutterably beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here. The
+      people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists
+      pretend to do. You wish to advise with a physician about it? Certainly.
+      There is no objection. He knows next to something about his own trade, but
+      that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one. I respect
+      your superstitions&mdash;we all have them. It would be quite natural for
+      the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct him as to the
+      value of the new religious specialty which the Western missionary is
+      trying to put on the market, before investing in it. (He would get a
+      verdict.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Love to you all!
+                                   Always Yours
+                                                  MARK.
+
+     Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of
+     course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to
+     give.  Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock,
+     without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual
+     practice which few would be likely to imitate.  Nevertheless, what
+     he says is interesting.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;Get your lecture by heart&mdash;it will pay you. I
+      learned a trick in Vienna&mdash;by accident&mdash;which I wish I had
+      learned years ago. I meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I
+      hadn't well memorized the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a
+      few sentences, then remembered that the sketch needed a few words of
+      explanatory introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then
+      unconsciously using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it
+      happened to carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on,
+      pretending that I was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to
+      the sketch presently. It was a beautiful success. I knew the substance of
+      the sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest
+      of it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the
+      snap and go and freshness of an impromptu. I was to read several pieces,
+      and I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience
+      thought I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and
+      was going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently&mdash;and
+      so I always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it
+      had begun. I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time
+      over again. It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented. Try
+      it. You'll never lose your audience&mdash;not even for a moment. Their
+      attention is fixed, and never wavers. And that is not the case where one
+      reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly
+      exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is
+      not improvising, but reciting from memory. And in the heat of telling a
+      thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest
+      suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then! Try it. Such a phrase has a
+      life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if
+      prepared beforehand, and it &ldquo;fetches&rdquo; an audience in such an enthusing and
+      inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another one,
+      sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your September instalment&mdash;[&ldquo;Their Silver Wedding journey.&rdquo;]&mdash;was
+      delicious&mdash;every word of it. You haven't lost any of your splendid
+      art. Callers have arrived.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              With love
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; wrote Howells, &ldquo;if I were a great histrionic artist like you
+     I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what
+     I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise
+     their deadness frankly and read them.&rdquo;
+
+     From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned
+     by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science.  It
+     was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic
+     appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check
+     in payment for it.  This brought prompt acknowledgment.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Oct. 19, '99
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. WALKER,&mdash;By gracious but you have a talent for making a man
+      feel proud and good! To say a compliment well is a high art&mdash;and few
+      possess it. You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity with
+      a handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher go. I
+      like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say so,
+      recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you approve
+      an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised peanuts and you
+      kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article is worth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now
+     seemed to be coming his way.  The Joan of Arc introduction was the
+     same that today appears in his collected works under the title of
+     Saint Joan of Arc.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Oct.  19, '99.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;My, it's a lucky day!&mdash;of the sort when it never
+      rains but it pours. I was to write an introduction to a nobler book&mdash;the
+      English translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials and
+      Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes. I wrote the
+      introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from a tale I
+      am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of note-making&mdash;a
+      fearful job for a man not used to it. This morning brought a note from my
+      excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who edits the translation,
+      saying, &ldquo;Never mind the notes&mdash;we'll make the translators do them.&rdquo;
+       That was comfort and joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to talk
+      Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M. P.'s&mdash;(which
+      would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I couldn't have
+      that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and explain&mdash;and
+      lose an hour. Just then came Murray and said &ldquo;Leave that to me&mdash;I'll
+      go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you write a note
+      and tell him I am coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (Which I did, later.) Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party
+      last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat
+      this time. In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk, now&mdash;Murray
+      would explain; and added a P. S.: &ldquo;You mustn't think it is because I am
+      afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure you upon honor it
+      isn't. I should bring my old one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to
+      write introductory monographs for the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she performed
+      before her judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Roberts, her military genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kipling, her patriotism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on. When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X; that
+      Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they could do
+      monographs worthy of the book. He hadn't run the others to cover yet, but
+      was on their track. Very good news. It is a grand book, and is entitled to
+      the best efforts of the best people. As for me, I took pains with my
+      Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter, and
+      was lifted higher than ever. Next came letters from America properly
+      glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one
+      roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing $200
+      additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I didn't
+      mention that&mdash;which wasn't right of me, for this is the second time
+      he has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and no one
+      else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder&mdash;I can trust
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And last of all came a letter from M-. How I do wish that man was in hell.
+      Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M&mdash;&mdash;in
+      hell it would have been perfect. But that will happen, and I can wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on
+      paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said
+      it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime
+      subject. I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the
+      stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over again
+      and have a good time with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, I know how you feel! I've been in hell myself. You are there tonight.
+      By difference in time you are at luncheon, now&mdash;and not eating it.
+      Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming. I have declined 45
+      lectures to-day-England and Scotland. I wanted the money, but not the
+      torture: Good luck to you!&mdash;and repentance.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         With love to all of you
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIX. LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL. THE BOER WAR. BOXER TROUBLES.
+      THE RETURN TO AMERICA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in
+      osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense
+      of other healing methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Jan.  8, 1900.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Mental Telepathy has scored another. Mental Telegraphy
+      will be greatly respected a century hence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the remarkable
+      cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I brought upon
+      myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that she had been
+      taking this very treatment in Buffalo&mdash;and that it was an American
+      invention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas, in
+      a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after Kellgren
+      began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in Germany. Dr.
+      Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded that Kellgren
+      moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across six hours of
+      longitude, without need of a wire. By the time Still began to experiment,
+      Kellgren had completed his development of the principles of his system and
+      established himself in a good practice in London&mdash;1874&mdash;and was
+      in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas, Mental Telegraphically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in
+      arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name of
+      Osteopathy. Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has got itself
+      legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the physicians; that
+      it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges; that among its
+      students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a school in Boston
+      and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100 students in the
+      parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and that there are
+      about 2,000 graduates practicing in America. Dear me, there are not 30 in
+      Europe. Europe is so sunk in superstitions and prejudices that it is an
+      almost impossible thing to get her to do anything but scoff at a new thing&mdash;unless
+      it come from abroad; as witness the telegraph, dentistry, &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon
+      make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and then,
+      25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and tell all
+      about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B&mdash;&mdash;-as in the case of the
+      telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she
+      heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay and
+      hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along and
+      gives it a first rate trial. Many an ass in America, is getting a deal of
+      benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old healing
+      principle&mdash;faith, combined with the patient's imagination&mdash;let
+      it boom along! I have no objection. Let them call it by what name they
+      choose, so long as it does helpful work among the class which is
+      numerically vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e. the fools, the
+      idiots, the pudd'nheads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads. We
+      know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the race
+      has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque system&mdash;the
+      emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's stomach to
+      remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach at all; in
+      many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage to some other
+      part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the drug either
+      retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of the
+      nostrums. The doctor's insane system has not only been permitted to
+      continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by the State and
+      made a close monopoly&mdash;an infamous thing, a crime against a
+      free-man's proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method of
+      defending his body against disease and death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the State
+      has allowed the man to choose his own assassin&mdash;in one detail&mdash;the
+      patent-medicine detail&mdash;making itself the protector of that perilous
+      business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
+      experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
+      Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
+      the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have by me a list of 52 human ailments&mdash;common ones&mdash;and in
+      this list I count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure. But there
+      isn't one which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes
+      early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
+      surgeon. But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
+      revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect for
+      the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,&mdash;I am
+      convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
+      the silliest. And they know they are shams and humbugs. They have taken
+      the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face without
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us: two weeks
+      ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and by consequence was
+      promptly stricken down with a heavy triple attack&mdash;influenza,
+      bronchitis, and a lung affected&mdash;she recognized the gravity of the
+      situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought she ought to send
+      for a doctor&mdash;Think of it&mdash;the last man in the world I should
+      want around at such a time. Of course I did not say no&mdash;not that I
+      was indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of a
+      dangerous responsibility being quite the other way&mdash;but because it is
+      unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor, and
+      it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me to send
+      for Kellgren. To-day she is up and around&mdash;cured. It is safe to say
+      that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet, and
+      booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition and
+      afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
+      Kellgren system was still an ardent one. Indeed, for a time he gave most
+      of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with
+      little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically
+      expressed. War, however, presently supplanted medicine&mdash;the Boer
+      troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China. It was a
+      disturbing, exciting year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
+                                                  Jan. 25, 1900.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR HOWELLS,&mdash;If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content
+      and praise God&mdash;it has not happened to another. But I am sorry he
+      didn't go with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn. He is good
+      company, cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle. Your doing a
+      lecture tour was heroic. It was the highest order of grit, and you have a
+      right to be proud of yourself. No mount of applause or money or both could
+      save it from being a hell to a man constituted as you are. It is that even
+      to me, who am made of coarser stuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you&mdash;that
+      one infallible sign of sincere approval. In all my life, wherever it
+      failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way
+      shameful and excuseless. Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine
+      articles about it, but I have to stop with that. For England must not
+      fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political
+      degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of
+      Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.
+      Even wrong&mdash;and she is wrong&mdash;England must be upheld. He is an
+      enemy of the human race who shall speak against her now. Why was the human
+      race created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place
+      of it. God had his opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no,
+      He must commit this grotesque folly&mdash;a lark which must have cost him
+      a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects. For a
+      giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this war.
+      I talk the war with both sides&mdash;always waiting until the other man
+      introduces the topic. Then I say &ldquo;My head is with the Briton, but my heart
+      and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer&mdash;now we will
+      talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice.&rdquo; And so we discuss, and have no
+      trouble.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       Jan.  26.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human race;
+      and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the purpose of
+      telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a conundrum,
+      but I can do better&mdash;for I can snip out of the &ldquo;Times&rdquo; various
+      samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it
+      as of yesterday. If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a paper
+      which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our
+      Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with the rest of his
+      regalia in the wash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
+      smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
+      contempt for the pieties of the Boer&mdash;confidently expecting the
+      approval of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
+      itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
+      thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               With great love to you all
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
+     human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
+     by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
+     preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men.  But his opinion
+     of the race could hardly have been worse than it was.  And nothing
+     that human beings could do would have surprised him.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free
+      and give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to
+      hang the priests and confiscate their property. If these things are so,
+      the war out there has no interest for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just been examining chapter LXX of &ldquo;Following the Equator,&rdquo; to see
+      if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out. It reads
+      curiously as if it had been written about the present war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
+      conceived. He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
+      Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
+      ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and limitless
+      courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of disaster,
+      patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise and brag in
+      time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful life void of
+      insane excitements&mdash;if there is a higher and better form of
+      civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where to look
+      for it. I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of artistic,
+      intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it isn't
+      complete. We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the great
+      bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of the
+      two. My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing and
+      full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and hypocrisies. As
+      for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a lie; and as for the
+      thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it belongs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Provided we could get something better in the place of it. But that is not
+      possible, perhaps. Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,
+      therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it. And
+      so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days, nor
+      fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and fall would
+      be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.... Naturally, then,
+      I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, and no
+      (instructed) Englishman doubts it. At least that is my belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists. I
+      wanted to know how the men impress you. As to their Art, I know fairly
+      well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a
+      physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his
+      ignorance. Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are not
+      very precious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Love to you all
+                                   MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The next letter affords a pleasant variation.  Without doubt it was
+     written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him
+     into indiscretion.  This was always happening to him, and letters
+     like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Ann, in London:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. ANN,&mdash;Upon sober second thought, it won't do!&mdash;I
+      withdraw that letter. Not because I said anything in it which is not true,
+      for I didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a
+      stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward
+      the investor, and I am not willing to do that. I have another objection, a
+      purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise scored a
+      success or a failure would damage me. I can't afford that; even the
+      Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more character to
+      spare than I have. (Ah, a happy thought! If he would sign the letter with
+      me that would change the whole complexion of the thing, of course. I do
+      not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme that he would sign.
+      As he does not know me, it follows that he would sign anything that I
+      would sign. This is unassailable logic&mdash;but really that is all that
+      can be said for it.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, I withdraw the letter. This virgin is pure up to date, and is going to
+      remain so.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Ys sincerely,
+                                        S. L. C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  WELLINGTON COURT,
+                                             KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes
+      very deep. I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for me.
+      Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of the
+      billiard-party in our house. When we come home, how shall we have
+      billiard-nights again&mdash;with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson? I
+      believe I could not endure that. We must find another use for that room.
+      Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry Robinson.
+      The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such warm blood and
+      such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery. But not in any
+      repellent sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life made it beautiful,
+      their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with us always, and there
+      will be no parting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney&mdash;that fortunate,
+      youth! Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and
+      got his great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams
+      and entered the Sahara of fact. The deep consciousness of Susy's good
+      fortune is a constant comfort to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      London is happy-hearted at last. The British victories have swept the
+      clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the
+      private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of
+      Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley
+      and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish
+      lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings, every
+      one. Night before last it was all Irish&mdash;24. One would have to travel
+      far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle and
+      absence of shyness and self-consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is
+      Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord
+      Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and a
+      disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch
+      breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of
+      the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is
+      usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of the
+      battle. An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are
+      idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep
+      bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull and
+      without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but losing
+      his head and going to pieces when his leader falls&mdash;not so with the
+      Kelt. Sir Wm. Butler said &ldquo;the Kelt is the spear-head of the British
+      lance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Love to you all.
+                                             MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.
+     Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate
+     friend of the Clemens household.  &ldquo;Lecky&rdquo; was W. E. H. Lecky, the
+     Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many
+     years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:
+
+     In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington
+     Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,
+     at Dollis Hill.  To-day the place has been given to the public under
+     the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an
+     earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there.  It was a
+     beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks.  In a
+     letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: &ldquo;It is
+     simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are
+     beyond everything.  I believe nowhere in the world do you find such
+     trees as in England.&rdquo;  Clemens wrote to Twichell:  &ldquo;From the house
+     you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green
+     turf.....  Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in
+     three minutes on a horse.  By rail we can be in the heart of London,
+     in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes&mdash;by a smart train in five.&rdquo;
+
+     Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the Editor of the Times, in London:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIR,&mdash;It has often been claimed that the London postal service was
+      swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim
+      was justified. But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind. I live eight
+      miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at 4 o'clock
+      in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon, thus making
+      the trip in thirteen hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              C.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DOLLIS HILL, N. W. <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                   DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W.
+                                             LONDON, Aug.  12, '00.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here
+      to tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them. We
+      furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather&mdash;and they used it
+      all up, in their extravagant American way. Since then we have sat by coal
+      fires, evenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York
+      where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of
+      putting this family in proper condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Livy and I dined with the Chief Justice a month ago and he was as
+      well-conditioned as an athlete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese. They have
+      been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I hope
+      they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good. I only
+      wish it; of course I don't really expect it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you
+      Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the
+      connection. This is thoroughly exasperating. Aren't we ever going to meet
+      again?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With no end of love from all of us,
+                                        MARK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      P. S. Aug. 18.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR JOE,&mdash;It is 7.30 a. m. I have been waking very early, lately. If
+      it occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is our day of mourning. It is four years since Susy died; it is five
+      years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing kisses
+      at us from the railway platform when we started West around the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    With love
+                                   MARK.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence
+     was drawing to an end.  More than nine years had passed since the
+     closing of the Hartford house&mdash;eventful years that had seen failure,
+     bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes.  All the
+     family were anxious to get home&mdash;Mark Twain most anxious of all.
+
+     They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up
+     for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which
+     follows.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To J. Y. M. MacAlister, in London:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                            Sep.  1900.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR MACALISTER,&mdash;We do really start next Saturday. I meant to
+      sail earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family
+      Hotels. They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist
+      elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time of
+      the Heptarchy. Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them. The once
+      spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much discomfort as
+      can be had anywhere out of jail for any money. All the modern
+      inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete for a
+      century. The prices are astonishingly high for what you get. The bedrooms
+      are hospitals for incurable furniture. I find it so in this one. They
+      exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like inn of
+      fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it. Some quite
+      respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit and
+      arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and
+      superstition. The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but
+      older I think. Older and dearer. The lift was a gift of William the
+      Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric. They represent geological
+      periods. Mine is the oldest. It is formed in strata of Old Red Sandstone,
+      volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende, superimposed
+      upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of prehistoric man. It is
+      in No. 149. Thousands of scientists come to see it. They consider it holy.
+      They want to blast out the prints but cannot. Dynamite rebounds from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Yours ever affectionately,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week
+     later America gave them a royal welcome.  The press, far and wide,
+     sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were
+     offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him.
+
+     The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of
+     house-hunting.  They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but
+     after a brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote:
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                             NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MR. BAXTER,&mdash;It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other
+      days with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and
+      the house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to
+      live, our hearts will break. I am not sure that we shall ever be strong
+      enough to endure that strain.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but
+     the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive.  Through
+     Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street,
+     a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for
+     the winter.  &ldquo;We were lucky to get this big house furnished,&rdquo; he
+     wrote MacAlister in London.  &ldquo;There was not another one in town
+     procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right&mdash;space
+     enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned,
+     great size.&rdquo;
+
+     The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely
+     forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                       Nov. 30.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MADAM,&mdash;I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I
+      am weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly
+      approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that
+      ring door-bells. My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding
+      conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I
+      think the boys enjoy it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the
+      front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises. But I am very
+      forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting spongy.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    Very truly yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters Of Mark Twain, Volume 4,
+1886-1900, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+Letters Vol. 4
+
+by Mark Twain
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME IV.
+MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS  1886-1900
+
+
+XXVI
+
+LETTERS, 1886-87.  JANE CLEMENS'S ROMANCE.  UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC.
+
+     When Clemens had been platforming with Cable and returned to
+     Hartford for his Christmas vacation, the Warner and Clemens families
+     had joined in preparing for him a surprise performance of The Prince
+     and the Pauper.  The Clemens household was always given to
+     theatricals, and it was about this time that scenery and a stage
+     were prepared--mainly by the sculptor Gerhardt--for these home
+     performances, after which productions of The Prince and the Pauper
+     were given with considerable regularity to audiences consisting of
+     parents and invited friends.  The subject is a fascinating one, but
+     it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.--[In Mark Twain: A Biography,
+     chaps.  cliff and clx.]-- We get a glimpse of one of these occasions
+     as well as of Mark Twain's financial progress in the next brief
+     note.
+
+                       To W. D. Howells; in Boston:
+
+                                                  Jan.  3, '86.
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,-- The date set for the Prince and Pauper play is ten
+days hence--Jan. 13.  I hope you and Pilla can take a train that arrives
+here during the day; the one that leaves Boston toward the end of the
+afternoon would be a trifle late; the performance would have already
+begun when you reached the house.
+
+I'm out of the woods.  On the last day of the year I had paid out
+$182,000 on the Grant book and it was totally free from debt.
+                                        Yrs ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Mark Twain's mother was a woman of sturdy character and with a keen
+     sense of humor and tender sympathies.  Her husband, John Marshall
+     Clemens, had been a man of high moral character, honored by all who
+     knew him, respected and apparently loved by his wife.  No one would
+     ever have supposed that during all her years of marriage, and almost
+     to her death, she carried a secret romance that would only be told
+     at last in the weary disappointment of old age.  It is a curious
+     story, and it came to light in this curious way:
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, May 19, '86.
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,-- ..... Here's a secret.  A most curious and pathetic
+romance, which has just come to light.  Read these things, but don't
+mention them.  Last fall, my old mother--then 82--took a notion to attend
+a convention of old settlers of the Mississippi Valley in an Iowa town.
+My brother's wife was astonished; and represented to her the hardships
+and fatigues of such a trip, and said my mother might possibly not even
+survive them; and said there could be no possible interest for her in
+such a meeting and such a crowd.  But my mother insisted, and persisted;
+and finally gained her point.  They started; and all the way my mother
+was young again with excitement, interest, eagerness, anticipation.  They
+reached the town and the hotel.  My mother strode with the same eagerness
+in her eye and her step, to the counter, and said:
+
+"Is Dr. Barrett of St. Louis, here?"
+
+"No.  He was here, but he returned to St. Louis this morning."
+
+"Will he come again?"
+
+"No."
+
+My mother turned away, the fire all gone from her, and said, " Let us go
+home."
+
+They went straight back to Keokuk.  My mother sat silent and thinking for
+many days--a thing which had never happened before.  Then one day she
+said:
+
+"I will tell you a secret.  When I was eighteen, a young medical student
+named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; and he used to
+ride over to see me.  This continued for some time.  I loved him with my
+whole heart, and I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no words
+had been spoken.  He was too bashful to speak--he could not do it.
+Everybody supposed we were engaged--took it for granted we were--but we
+were not.  By and by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, and
+he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, and asking him to drive me
+over in his buggy and let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might
+have that opportunity to propose.  My uncle should have done as he was
+asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the
+letter; and then, of course, I could not go--and did not.  He (Barrett)
+left the country presently, and I, to stop the clacking tongues, and to
+show him that I did not care, married, in a pet.  In all these sixty-four
+years I have not seen him since.  I saw in a paper that he was going to
+attend that Old Settlers' Convention.  Only three hours before we reached
+that hotel, he had been standing there!"
+
+Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes
+letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders
+why they neglect her and do not answer.
+
+Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four
+years, and no human being ever suspecting it!
+                              Yrs ever,
+                                        MARK.
+
+We do not get the idea from this letter that those two long ago
+sweethearts quarreled, but Mark Twain once spoke of their having done so,
+and there may have been a disagreement, assuming that there was a
+subsequent meeting.  It does not matter, now.  In speaking of it, Mark
+Twain once said: "It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the
+field of my personal experience in a long lifetime." --[When Mark Twain:
+A Biography was written this letter had not come to light, and the matter
+was stated there in accordance with Mark Twain's latest memory of it.]
+
+Howells wrote: "After all, how poor and hackneyed all the inventions are
+compared with the simple and stately facts.  Who could have imagined such
+a heart-break as that?  Yet it went along with the fulfillment of
+everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot.  I doubt if
+fiction will ever get the knack of such things."
+
+Jane Clemens now lived with her son Orion and his wife, in Keokuk, where
+she was more contented than elsewhere.  In these later days her memory
+had become erratic, her realization of events about her uncertain, but
+there were times when she was quite her former self, remembering clearly
+and talking with her old-time gaiety of spirit.  Mark Twain frequently
+sent her playful letters to amuse her, letters full of such boyish gaiety
+as had amused her long years before.  The one that follows is a fair
+example.  It was written after a visit which Clemens and his family had
+paid to Keokuk.
+
+
+                       To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 7, '86.
+DEAR MA,--I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but I
+see by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well.  When
+we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather was
+pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs. McElroy's and cried
+about it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled
+down, now, so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin
+off.  Well it did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my
+shirt, there, with some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told
+me they never used a stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped
+table in the drawing-room, just with the natural heat.  If anybody else
+had told me, I would not have believed it.  I was told by the Bishop of
+Keokuk that he did not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the
+furniture.  If Miss Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it.
+This reminds me that you speak of Dr. Jenkins and his family as if they
+were strangers to me.  Indeed they are not.  Don't you suppose I remember
+gratefully how tender the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm, and
+how quickly he got the pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it was
+going to last at least an hour?  No, I don't forget some things as easily
+as I do others.
+
+Yes, it was pretty hot weather.  Now here, when a person is going to die,
+he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of
+course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything.  It has
+set me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson.  By and by, when my health
+fails, I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my
+friends here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk
+and prepare for death.
+
+They are all well in this family, and we all send love.
+                                   Affly Your Son
+                                                  SAM.
+
+
+     The ways of city officials and corporations are often past
+     understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write
+     picturesque letters of protest.  The following to a Hartford
+     lighting company is a fair example of these documents.
+
+
+           To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford:
+
+GENTLEMEN,--There are but two places in our whole street where lights
+could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and
+appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places
+in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness.  When I
+noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I
+could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it
+was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be
+corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out.
+My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned.  For
+fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a
+gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find
+either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I
+had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running
+into it, nights.  Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a
+little more in the dark.
+
+Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no rights
+which you are in any way bound to respect.  Please take your electric
+light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you will
+probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on divine
+assistance if you lose your bearings.
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+     [Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
+     Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
+     include in these volumes:
+     "Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point
+     of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of
+     turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your
+     God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--"
+     D.W.]
+
+     Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
+     written.  Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
+     sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
+     relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
+     wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all.  A few such
+     letters here follow.
+
+     Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
+     wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
+     tobacco, and what not.  They were generally persistent people,
+     unable to accept a polite or kindly denial.  Once he set down some
+     remarks on this particular phase of correspondence.  He wrote:
+
+
+I
+
+No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an
+electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal.  And no
+doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity
+whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of
+solicitation.  Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure
+silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
+
+And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
+the loan of somebody else's.
+
+As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case.  He sees
+that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle
+better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing
+to put your hall-mark on it?  You will be giving the purchaser his full
+money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm?  Besides, are you
+not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do
+that?
+
+That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
+other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon
+a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
+How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred who
+can, be made to see it.
+
+When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is an
+indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp
+answer.  He blames nobody but that other person.  That person is a very
+base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it
+would not occur to him that you would do such a thing.  But all the same,
+that application has done its work, and taken you down in your own
+estimation.  You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion of
+you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an interval
+during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird as you
+were before.
+
+However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter,
+but leave it lying a day.  That saves you.  For by that time you have
+begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and
+exaggerations are lies.  You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
+made them unmistakably so.  But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a
+man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious
+side of things.  You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless
+extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good
+time you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at your
+word and believed you.  And presently they find out that you were not in
+earnest.  They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue--and there
+is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver.  If you will deceive in
+one way, why shouldn't you in another?  So they apply for the use of your
+trade-mark.  You are amazed and affronted.  You retort that you are not
+that kind of person.  Then they are amazed and affronted; and wonder
+"since when?"
+
+By this time you have got your bearings.  You realize that perhaps there
+is a little blame on both sides.  You are in the right frame, now.  So
+you write a letter void of offense, declining.  You mail this one; you
+pigeon-hole the other.
+
+That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career, you
+don't: you mail the first one.
+
+
+II
+
+An enthusiast who had a new system of musical notation, wrote to me and
+suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities of
+the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to
+make a "rousing hit."  He shouted and shouted over the marvels wrought by
+his system, and quoted the handsome compliments which had been paid it by
+famous musical people; but he forgot to tell me what his notation was
+like, or what its simplicities consisted in.  So I could not have written
+the article if I had wanted to--which I didn't; because I hate strangers
+with axes to grind.  I wrote him a courteous note explaining how busy I
+was--I always explain how busy I am--and casually drooped this remark:
+
+"I judge the X-X notation to be a rational mode of representing music, in
+place of the prevailing fashion, which was the invention of an idiot."
+
+Next mail he asked permission to print that meaningless remark.
+I answered, no--courteously, but still, no; explaining that I could not
+afford to be placed in the attitude of trying to influence people with a
+mere worthless guess.  What a scorcher I got, next mail!  Such irony!
+such sarcasm, such caustic praise of my superhonorable loyalty to the
+public!  And withal, such compassion for my stupidity, too, in not being
+able to understand my own language.  I cannot remember the words of this
+letter broadside, but there was about a page used up in turning this idea
+round and round and exposing it in different lights.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--What is the trouble with you?  If it is your viscera, you
+cannot have them taken out and reorganized a moment too soon.  I mean,
+if they are inside.  But if you are composed of them, that is another
+matter.  Is it your brain?  But it could not be your brain.  Possibly it
+is your skull: you want to look out for that.  Some people, when they get
+an idea, it pries the structure apart.  Your system of notation has got
+in there, and couldn't find room, without a doubt that is what the
+trouble is.  Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to
+throw potatoes at.
+                         Yours Truly.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--Come, come--take a walk; you disturb the children.
+                         Yours Truly.
+
+
+There was a day, now happily nearly over, when certain newspapers made a
+practice of inviting men distinguished in any walk of life to give their
+time and effort without charge to express themselves on some subject of
+the day, or perhaps they were asked to send their favorite passages in
+prose or verse, with the reasons why.  Such symposiums were "features"
+that cost the newspapers only the writing of a number of letters,
+stationery, and postage.  To one such invitation Mark Twain wrote two
+replies.  They follow herewith:
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have received your proposition--which you have imitated from
+a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the idea of this
+sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism, where it
+originated as a variation of the inexpensive "interview."
+
+Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches?  To make your paper the more
+salable, you answer.  But why don't you try to beg them?  Why do you
+discriminate?  I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you?  Why
+don't you ask me for a shirt?  What is the difference between asking me
+for the worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself?  Perhaps you
+didn't know you were begging.  I would not use that argument--it makes
+the user a fool.  The passage of poetry--or prose, if you will--which has
+taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and
+dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this:  That the proper place
+for journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner with
+their hats in their hands.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by
+press of work to decline.
+
+
+     The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had
+     taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the
+     use of the author's name--the idea being to convey to the public
+     that it was a Mark Twain play.  In return for this slight favor the
+     manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play--
+     to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the
+     manager's) expense.  He added that if the play should be a go in the
+     cities there might be some "arrangement" of profits.  Apparently
+     these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain.  The long unmailed
+     reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that
+     follows it was quite as effective.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87.
+DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have
+"taken the liberty."  You are No. 1365.  When 1364 sweeter and better
+people, including the author, have "tried" to dramatize Tom Sawyer and
+did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand?  That is a
+book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized.  One might as well try to
+dramatize any other hymn.  Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose
+form to give it a worldly air.
+
+Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
+of your third sentence?  Have no fears.  Your piece will be a Go.
+It will go out the back door on the first night.  They've all done it
+--the 1364.  So will 1365.  Not one of us ever thought of the simple
+device of half-soling himself with a stove-lid.  Ah, what suffering a
+little hindsight would have saved us.  Treasure this hint.
+
+How kind of you to invite me to the funeral.  Go to; I have attended a
+thousand of them.  I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
+kinds of dramatic shrouds there are.  You cannot start anything fresh.
+Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the
+Susquehannian way of spelling it?  And can you be aware that I charge a
+hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure?  Do you realize that
+it is 432 miles to Susquehanna?  Would it be handy for you to send me the
+$43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
+railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
+sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
+
+Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
+recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put me
+in the bills as father of this shady offspring.  Sir, do you know that
+this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now?  Listen.
+
+Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome.  The remains of it are
+still visible through the rifts of time.  I was so handsome that human
+activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even
+inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district
+messenger boys and so-on.  In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was
+often mistaken for fair weather.  Upon one occasion I was traveling in
+the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my horse
+and myself.  All the town came out to look.  The tribes of Indians
+gathered to look.  A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary
+compliment which pleased me greatly.  Other attentions were paid me.
+Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University and
+offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic
+Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my
+duties.  But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly kindness
+of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me.  I tried to
+stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should object to so
+manifest a compliment.  The thing grew and grew and spread and spread and
+became exceedingly embarrassing.  The University stood it a couple of
+years; but then for the sake of the college they felt obliged to call a
+halt, although I had the sympathy of the whole faculty.  The president
+himself said to me, "I am as sorry as I can be for you, and would still
+hold out if there were any hope ahead; but you see how it is: there are a
+hundred and thirty-two of them already, and fourteen precincts to hear
+from.  The circumstance has brought your name into most wide and
+unfortunate renown.  It causes much comment--I believe that that is not
+an over-statement.  Some of this comment is palliative, but some of it
+--by patrons at a distance, who only know the statistics without the
+explanation,--is offensive, and in some cases even violent.  Nine
+students have been called home.  The trustees of the college have been
+growing more and more uneasy all these last months--steadily along with
+the implacable increase in your census--and I will not conceal from you
+that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a change in
+the Professorship of Moral Culture.  The coarsely sarcastic editorial in
+yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest--has brought
+things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of
+receiving your resignation."
+
+I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly
+mistake.  Please do not name your Injun for me.  Truly Yours.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+                                        NEW YORK, Sept. 8.  1887.
+DEAR SIR,--Necessarily I cannot assent to so strange a proposition.  And
+I think it but fair to warn you that if you put the piece on the stage,
+you must take the legal consequences.
+                         Yours respectfully,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Before the days of international copyright no American author's
+     books were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of
+     Mark Twain.  It was always a sore point with him that these books,
+     cheaply printed, found their way into the United States, and were
+     sold in competition with his better editions.  The law on the
+     subject seemed to be rather hazy, and its various interpretations
+     exasperating.  In the next unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves
+     himself to a misguided official.  The letter is worth reading today,
+     if for no other reason, to show the absurdity of copyright
+     conditions which prevailed at that time.
+
+
+          Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR,-- As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government is
+this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds in his
+hands--bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance--the procedure in
+his case shall be as follows:
+
+1.  If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police
+offices along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the
+bonds, the government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits,
+and then let them go ahead and circulate in this country.
+
+2.  But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C.  may pay the
+duty and take the counterfeits.
+
+But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of
+the swag.  It is delicious.  The biggest and proudest government on earth
+turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing
+them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with
+foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the
+foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing
+the infant all alone by itself!  Dear sir, this is not any more
+respectable than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution
+of his own daughter; in fact it is the same thing.  Upon these terms,
+what is a U. S. custom house but a "fence?"  That is all it is: a
+legalized trader in stolen goods.
+
+And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself a
+"regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!"  Can sarcasm go
+further than that?  In what way does it protect them?  Inspiration itself
+could not furnish a rational answer to that question.  Whom does it
+protect, then?  Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign thief-
+sometimes--and his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the time.
+What could the Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after it had
+bought them of the star spangled banner Master-thief?  Sell them at a
+dollar apiece and fetch down the market for the genuine hundred-dollar
+bond?  What could I do with that 20-cent copy of "Roughing It" which the
+United States has collared on the border and is waiting to release to me
+for cash in case I am willing to come down to its moral level and help
+rob myself?  Sell it at ten or fifteen cents--duty added--and destroy the
+market for the original $3,50 book?  Who ever did invent that law?  I
+would like to know the name of that immortal jackass.
+
+Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the
+desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it.  But I have
+no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay
+duty on in either to get it or suppress it.  No doubt there are ways in
+which I might consent to go into partnership with thieves and fences,
+but this is not one of them.  This one revolts the remains of my self-
+respect; turns my stomach.  I think I could companion with a highwayman
+who carried a shot-gun and took many risks; yes, I think I should like
+that if I were younger; but to go in with a big rich government that robs
+paupers, and the widows and orphans of paupers and takes no risk--why the
+thought just gags me.
+
+Oh, no, I shall never pay any duties on pirated books of mine.  I am much
+too respectable for that--yet awhile.  But here--one thing that grovels
+me is this: as far as I can discover--while freely granting that the
+U. S. copyright laws are far and away the most idiotic that exist
+anywhere on the face of the earth--they don't authorize the government to
+admit pirated books into this country, toll or no toll.  And so I think
+that that regulation is the invention of one of those people--as a rule,
+early stricken of God, intellectually--the departmental interpreters of
+the laws, in Washington.  They can always be depended on to take any
+reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.  They
+can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it
+inoperative--yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter
+and derision.  Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department,
+for instance--though I do not mean to suggest that that asylum is any
+worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of incredible
+lunatics--I merely instance it because it happens to be the first to come
+into my mind.  Take that case of a few years ago where the P. M. General
+suddenly issued an edict requiring you to add the name of the State after
+Boston, New York, Chicago, &c, in your superscriptions, on pain of having
+your letter stopped and forwarded to the dead-letter office; yes, and I
+believe he required the county, too.  He made one little concession in
+favor of New York: you could say "New York City," and stop there; but if
+you left off the "city," you must add "N. Y."  to your "New York."  Why,
+it threw the business of the whole country into chaos and brought
+commerce almost to a stand-still.  Now think of that!  When that man goes
+to--to--well, wherever he is going to--we shan't want the microscopic
+details of his address.  I guess we can find him.
+
+Well, as I was saying, I believe that this whole paltry and ridiculous
+swindle is a pure creation of one of those cabbages that used to be at
+the head of one of those Retreats down there--Departments, you know--and
+that you will find it so, if you will look into it.  And moreover--but
+land, I reckon we are both tired by this time.
+                              Truly Yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF 1887.  LITERARY ARTICLES.  PEACEFUL DAYS AT THE
+FARM.  FAVORITE READING.  APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC.
+
+We have seen in the preceding chapter how unknown aspirants in one field
+or another were always seeking to benefit by Mark Twain's reputation.
+Once he remarked, "The symbol of the human race ought to be an ax; every
+human being has one concealed about him somewhere."  He declared when a
+stranger called on him, or wrote to him, in nine cases out of ten he
+could distinguish the gleam of the ax almost immediately.  The following
+letter is closely related to those of the foregoing chapter, only that
+this one was mailed--not once, but many times, in some form adapted to
+the specific applicant.  It does not matter to whom it was originally
+written, the name would not be recognized.
+
+
+            To Mrs. T.  Concerning unearned credentials, etc.
+
+                                                  HARTFORD, 1887.
+MY DEAR MADAM,--It is an idea which many people have had, but it is of no
+value.  I have seen it tried out many and many a time.  I have seen a
+lady lecturer urged and urged upon the public in a lavishly complimentary
+document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and some others of
+supreme celebrity, but--there was nothing in her and she failed.  If
+there had been any great merit in her she never would have needed those
+men's help and (at her rather mature age,) would never have consented to
+ask for it.
+
+There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must bow
+to that law, she must submit to its requirements.  In brief this law is:
+
+     1.  No occupation without an apprenticeship.
+
+     2.  No pay to the apprentice.
+
+This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a
+General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in
+everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served his
+apprenticeship and proved himself.  Your sister's course is perfectly
+plain.  Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to
+lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to be
+annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not annullable
+by her at all.  The second year, he to have her services, if he wants
+them, at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody else.
+
+She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to
+remuneration--but she can not learn it in any less time than that, unless
+she is a human miracle.
+
+Try it, and do not be afraid.  It is the fair and right thing.  If she
+wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the
+     Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands.  Howells had been paid
+     twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience
+     hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used.  In
+     this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in
+     which Clemens had invested--a method of casting brass dies for
+     stamping book-covers and wall-paper.  Howells's purpose was to
+     introduce something of the matter into his next story.  Mark Twain's
+     reply gives us a light on this particular invention.
+
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned the
+Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence.
+I have written him your proposition to-day.  (The Library is part of the
+property of the C. L. W. & Co.  firm.)
+
+I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will
+find it in any Cyclopedia under the head of "Brass."  The thing I best
+remember is, that the self-styled "inventor" had a very ingenious way of
+keeping me from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment was
+spoiled by his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be done,
+the night before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his own shop
+the night before.  He unquestionably did both of these things.  He really
+had no invention; the whole project was a blackmailing swindle, and cost
+me several thousand dollars.
+
+The slip you sent me from the May "Study" has delighted Mrs. Clemens and
+me to the marrow.  To think that thing might be possible to many; but to
+be brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly believe.
+The longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how
+unapproachable, a compliment one pays when he says of a man "he has the
+courage (to utter) his convictions."  Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps
+to you, and then print potato hills?
+
+I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've
+always done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it.
+I've always said to myself, "Everybody reads it and that's something--it
+surely isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty
+tired of it."  And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't high
+and fine, through the remark "High and fine literature is wine" I
+retorted (confidentially, to myself,) "yes, high and fine literature is
+wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water."
+
+You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into my
+private scrap-book.  None will see it there.  With a thousand thanks.
+                              Ys Ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with
+     the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different
+     sort.  Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's
+     valued friends.  In the comment which he made, when it was shown to
+     him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter
+     was not sent.  The name, "Rest-and-be-Thankful," was the official
+     title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often
+     known as "Quarry Farm."
+
+
+                    To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed):
+
+                                                  HARTFORD, May 14, '87.
+MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old place-the
+remote farm called "Rest-and-be-Thankful," on top of the hills three
+miles from Elmira, N. Y.  Your other question is harder to answer.  It is
+my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the time,
+and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of them; but
+I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be.  It takes
+seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a good
+method: gives the public a rest.  I have been accused of "rushing into
+print" prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth
+I have never done that.  Do you care for trifles of information?  (Well,
+then, "Tom Sawyer" and "The Prince and the Pauper" were each on the
+stocks two or three years, and "Old Times on the Mississippi" eight.
+One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years; another
+seventeen.  This latter book could have been finished in a day, at any
+time during the past five years.  But as in the first of these two
+narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other
+the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I
+have not hurried.  Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do not
+need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting.  In
+twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written and
+completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that a
+journalist does I could have written sixty in that time.  I do not
+greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but
+at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded.
+Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for?
+Go to--- remember the forty-nine which I didn't write.
+                              Truly Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                  Notes (added twenty-two years later):
+
+Stormfield, April 30, 1909.  It seems the letter was not sent.  I
+probably feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so
+without running a risk of hurting her.  No one would hurt Jeannette
+Gilder purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it
+unintentionally.  She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must
+ask her about this ancient letter.
+
+I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent
+answer.  I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around
+years and years, waiting.  I have four or five novels on hand at present
+in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I
+have looked at any of them.  I have no intention of finishing them.
+I could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should
+come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that
+impulse once, (" Following the Equator"), but mere desire for money has
+never furnished it, so far as I remember.  Not even money-necessity was
+able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to have
+allowed it to succeed.  While I was a bankrupt and in debt two offers
+were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during a year,
+and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined them, with
+my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where a man had
+pumped himself out once a week and failed to run "emptyings" before the
+year was finished.
+
+As to that "Noah's Ark" book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is
+not quite correct.  The "Noah's Ark" book was begun in Buffalo in 1870.]
+I don't know where the manuscript is now.  It was a Diary, which
+professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't.  I began it again several
+months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying
+it to a finish
+--or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
+
+As to the book whose action "takes place in Heaven."  That was a small
+thing, ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It lay in my pigeon-
+holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's Monthly
+last year.
+                         S. L. C.
+
+
+In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of "Rest-and-be-
+Thankful."  These were Mark Twain's balmy days.  The financial drain of
+the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting, and the prospect of
+vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter each day.  His publishing
+business, though less profitable, was still prosperous, his family life
+was ideal.  How gratefully, then, he could enter into the peace of that
+"perfect day."
+
+
+                  To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+
+                                   ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87.
+DEAR MOLLIE,--This is a superb Sunday for weather--very cloudy, and the
+thermometer as low as 65.  The city in the valley is purple with shade,
+as seen from up here at the study.  The Cranes are reading and loafing in
+the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the highest)
+point; the cats are loafing over at "Ellerslie" which is the children's
+estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie
+Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and young oaks
+and willows.  Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her
+up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks--whence a
+great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable.  The
+children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods.
+It is a perfect day indeed.
+                         With love to you all.
+                                                  SAM.
+
+
+Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the
+beginning of business trouble--that is to say, of the failing health of
+Charles L.  Webster.  Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust.
+He had overworked and was paying the penalty.  His trouble was
+neurasthenia, and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the
+business.  The "Sam and Mary" mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife.
+
+
+               To Mrs. Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N.  Y.
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 12, '87
+MY DEAR SISTER,--I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious.
+I knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size
+of the matter.
+
+I have just been writing to a friend in Hartford' who treated what I
+imagine was a similar case surgically last fall, and produced a permanent
+cure.  If this is a like case, Charley must go to him.
+
+If relief fails there, he must take the required rest, whether the
+business can stand it or not.
+
+It is most pleasant to hear such prosperous accounts of Sam and Mary,
+I do not see how Sam could well be more advantageously fixed.  He can
+grow up with that paper, and achieve a successful life.
+
+It is not all holiday here with Susie and Clara this time.  They have to
+put in some little time every day on their studies.  Jean thinks she is
+studying too, but I don't know what it is unless it is the horses; she
+spends the day under their heels in the stables--and that is but a
+continuation of her Hartford system of culture.
+
+With love from us all to you all.
+                              Affectionately
+                                             SAM.
+
+
+Mark Twain had a few books that he read regularly every year or two.
+Among these were 'Pepys's Diary', Suetonius's 'Lives of the Twelve
+Caesars', and Thomas Carlyle's 'French Revolution'.  He had a passion for
+history, biography, and personal memoirs of any sort.  In his early life
+he had cared very little for poetry, but along in the middle eighties he
+somehow acquired a taste for Browning and became absorbed in it.
+A Browning club assembled as often as once a week at the Clemens home in
+Hartford to listen to his readings of the master.  He was an impressive
+reader, and he carefully prepared himself for these occasions, indicating
+by graduated underscorings, the exact values he wished to give to words
+and phrases.  Those were memorable gatherings, and they must have
+continued through at least two winters.  It is one of the puzzling phases
+of Mark Twain's character that, notwithstanding his passion for direct
+and lucid expression, he should have found pleasure in the poems of
+Robert Browning.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  22, '87.
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man
+while he sleeps.  When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871,
+I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it
+differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and
+environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once
+more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale,
+characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat.  Carlyle teaches no such gospel
+so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.
+
+People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at
+all former milestones in their journey.  I wonder how they can lie so.
+It comes of practice, no doubt.  They would not say that of Dickens's or
+Scott's books.  Nothing remains the same.  When a man goes back to look
+at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance
+of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination
+call for.  Shrunk how?  Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't
+altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.
+
+Well, that's loss.  To have house and Bible shrink so, under the
+disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment.  But there are
+compensations.  You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets
+and corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the field.
+Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi.  I haven't got him in focus
+yet, but I've got Browning .  .  .  .
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to
+     absentmindedness.  He was always forgetting engagements, or getting
+     them wrong.  Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the
+     mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably
+     for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all.  It was only
+     when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place
+     the week before.  It was always dangerous for him to make
+     engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience.
+     We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies.
+
+
+                 To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov.  6, 1887.
+MY DEAR MADAM,--I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this
+house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run
+itself without the help of the major half it gets aground.  Last night
+when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open the
+Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate
+women, I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my
+chance.  I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of my
+mind.  If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the
+administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but I never
+thought of that.  So when I did lay it before her, later, I realized once
+more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a combination to
+try to manage affairs which properly belong in the office of the business
+bulk of it.  I suppose the President often acts just like that: goes and
+makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out until it is next
+to impossible to break it up and set things straight again.  Well, that
+is just our way, exactly-one half of the administration always busy
+getting the family into trouble, and the other half busy getting it out
+again.  And so we do seem to be all pretty much alike, after all.  The
+fact is, I had forgotten that we were to have a dinner party on that
+Bridgeport date--I thought it was the next day: which is a good deal of
+an improvement for me, because I am more used to being behind a day or
+two than ahead.  But that is just the difference between one end of this
+kind of an administration and the other end of it, as you have noticed,
+yourself--the other end does not forget these things.  Just so with a
+funeral; if it is the man's funeral, he is most always there, of course-
+but that is no credit to him, he wouldn't be there if you depended on
+hint to remember about it; whereas, if on the other hand--but I seem to
+have got off from my line of argument somehow; never mind about the
+funeral.  Of course I am not meaning to say anything against funerals--
+that is, as occasions--mere occasions--for as diversions I don't think
+they amount to much But as I was saying--if you are not busy I will look
+back and see what it was I was saying.
+
+I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever
+anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was no help
+for it.  And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely ashamed of
+having made an engagement to go without first making sure that I could
+keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my heedless breach
+of good manners.
+                    With the sincerest respect,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book
+     in England before the enactment of the international copyright law.
+     As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'Roughing It' in England, and
+     piratical publishers there respected his rights.  Finally, in 1887,
+     the inland revenue office assessed him with income tax, which he
+     very willingly paid, instructing his London publishers, Chatto &
+     Windus, to pay on the full amount he had received from them.  But
+     when the receipt for his taxes came it was nearly a yard square with
+     due postage of considerable amount.  Then he wrote:
+
+
+              To Mr. Chatto, of Chatto & Windus, in London:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 5, '87.
+MY DEAR CHATTO,--Look here, I don't mind paying the tax, but don't you
+let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for the
+postage is something perfectly demoralizing.  If they feel obliged to
+print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don't they hire a ship and send
+it over at their own expense?
+
+Wasn't it good that they caught me out with an old book instead of a new
+one?  The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body.  It was my purpose to
+go to England next May and stay the rest of the year, but I've found that
+tax office out just in time.  My new book would issue in March, and they
+would tax the sale in both countries.  Come, we must get up a compromise
+somehow.  You go and work in on the good side of those revenue people and
+get them to take the profits and give me the tax.  Then I will come over
+and we will divide the swag and have a good time.
+
+I wish you to thank Mr. Christmas for me; but we won't resist.  The
+country that allows me copyright has a right to tax me.
+                              Sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Another English tax assessment came that year, based on the report
+     that it was understood that he was going to become an English
+     resident, and had leased Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year.
+     Clemens wrote his publishers: "I will explain that all that about
+     Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake.  I was not in
+     England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall,
+     anyway, but at Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to find
+     out the reason why.  Clemens made literature out of this tax
+     experience.  He wrote an open letter to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
+     Such a letter has no place in this collection.  It was published in
+     the "Drawer" of Harper's Magazine, December, 1887, and is now
+     included in the uniform edition of his works under the title of, "A
+     Petition to the Queen of England."
+
+     From the following letter, written at the end of the year, we gather
+     that the type-setter costs were beginning to make a difference in
+     the Clemens economies.
+
+
+                      To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+DEAR PAMELA,-- will you take this $15 and buy some candy or some other
+trifle for yourself and Sam and his wife to remember that we remember
+you, by?
+
+If we weren't a little crowded this year by the typesetter, I'd send a
+check large enough to buy a family Bible or some other useful thing like
+that.  However we go on and on, but the type-setter goes on forever--at
+$3,000 a month; which is much more satisfactory than was the case the
+first seventeen months, when the bill only averaged $2,000,and promised
+to take a thousand years.  We'll be through, now, in 3 or 4 months, I
+reckon, and then the strain will let up and we can breathe freely once
+more, whether success ensues or failure.
+
+Even with a type-setter on hand we ought not to be in the least scrimped-
+but it would take a long letter to explain why and who is to blame.
+
+All the family send love to all of you and best Christmas wishes for your
+prosperity.
+                    Affectionately,
+                                        SAM.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+LETTERS,1888.  A YALE DEGREE.  WORK ON "THE YANKEE." ON INTERVIEWING,
+ETC.
+
+     Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master
+     of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888.  Editor of the Courant, Charles H.
+     Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title.  Clarke was an
+     old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly.
+
+
+                   To Charles H.  Clarke, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 2, '88.
+MY DEAR CHARLES,--Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation
+intentions.  I shall be ready for you.  I feel mighty proud of that
+degree; in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain
+of it.  And why shouldn't I be? --I am the only literary animal of my
+particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in
+any age of the world, as far as I know.
+                                   Sincerely Yours
+                                             S. L. Clemens M. A.
+
+
+                Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens:
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND, You are "the only literary animal of your particular
+subspecies" in existence and you've no cause for humility in the fact.
+Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and
+"Don't you forget it."
+                              C. H. C.
+
+
+     With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882.  Mark
+     Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting.
+     Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old
+     times and for old river comrades.  Major "Jack" Downing had been a
+     Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the
+     river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town.  Clemens had
+     not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the
+     following answer.
+
+
+               To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport Ohio:
+
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y.[no month] 1888.
+DEAR MAJOR,-- And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak?
+For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your
+name.
+
+And how young you've grown!  I was a mere boy when I knew you on the
+river, where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a
+year and a half older than I am!  I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and
+get 30 or 40 years knocked off my age.  It's manifestly the place that
+Ponce de Leon was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail.
+
+Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in
+November.  I propose to go down the river and "note the changes" once
+more before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there.
+Will you?  I want to see all the boys that are left alive.
+
+And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet?  A mighty good fellow, and
+smart too.  When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers,
+which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting
+such a thing.  I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I
+resigned in Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration.
+We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority.
+I always had good judgement, more judgement than talent, in fact.
+
+No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way.  Capt. Sellers used
+the signature, "Mark Twain," himself, when he used to write up the
+antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans
+Picayune.  He hated me for burlesquing them in an article in the True
+Delta; so four years later when he died, I robbed the corpse--that is I
+confiscated the nom de plume.  I have published this vital fact 3,000
+times now.  But no matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact
+that I can tell the same way every time.  Very glad, indeed, to hear from
+you Major, and shall be gladder still to see you in November.
+
+                              Truly yours,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year.
+     He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but
+     one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.
+
+     Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and
+     no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings,
+     more generously considerate of the senders.  Louis Pendleton was a
+     young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his
+     story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost
+     precious time, thought, and effort.  It must have rejoiced the young
+     man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young
+     authors held supreme.
+
+
+                     To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:
+
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88.
+MY DEAR SIR,--I found your letter an hour ago among some others which had
+lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to read
+Ariadne.  Stole is the right word, for the summer "Vacation" is the only
+chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is borrowed, it
+is stolen.  But this time I do not repent.  As a rule, people don't send
+me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing--which looks
+uncourteous.  But I thank you.  Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying
+story; and true, too--which is the best part of a story; or indeed of any
+other thing.  Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent
+liars; I mean in their private [the word conscientious written but
+erased] intervals.  (I struck that word out because a man's private
+thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always;
+what he speaks--but these be platitudes.)
+
+If you want me to pick some flaws--very well--but I do it unwillingly.
+I notice one thing--which one may notice also in my books, and in all
+books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement
+or Expression.  If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from
+the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence--it is almost
+proof--that your words were not as clear as they should have been.  True,
+it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror.  I would have
+hung the pail on Ariadne's arm.  You did not deceive me when you said
+that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn't; still it was
+not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture.  If the pail
+had been a portfolio, I wouldn't be making these remarks.  The engraver
+of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises -and then revises,
+and revises, and revises; and then repeats.  And always the charm of that
+picture grows, under his hand.  It was good enough before--told its
+story, and was beautiful.  True: and a lovely girl is lovely, with
+freckles; but she isn't at her level best with them.
+
+This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.
+
+So much concerning exactness of statement.  In that other not-small
+matter--selection of the exact single word--you are hard to catch.
+Still, I should hold that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no
+occasion for concealment; that "motive" implied a deeper mental search
+than she expended on the matter; that it doesn't reflect the attitude of
+her mind with precision.  Is this hypercriticism?  I shan't dispute it.
+I only say, that if Mrs. Walker didn't go so far as to have a motive, I
+had to suggest that when a word is so near the right one that a body
+can't quite tell whether it is or isn't, it's good politics to strike it
+out and go for the Thesaurus.  That's all.  Motive may stand; but you
+have allowed a snake to scream, and I will not concede that that was the
+best word.
+
+I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the
+speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can.  They
+would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to
+you, said once.
+
+I save the other stories for my real vacation--which is nine months long,
+to my sorrow.  I thank you again.
+                              Truly Yours
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine,
+     the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and
+     holding out false hopes of relief and golden return.  The program
+     here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet,
+     with the end always in sight, but never quite attained.
+
+
+                    To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+
+                                                       Oct. 3, '88.
+Private
+
+Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days' work
+to do on the machine.
+
+We can use 4 men, but not constantly.  If they could work constantly it
+would complete the machine in 21 days, of course.  They will all be on
+hand and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is
+opportunity for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the
+21 days, nobody can tell.
+
+To-day I pay Pratt & Whitney $10,000.  This squares back indebtedness and
+everything to date.  They began about May or April or March 1886--along
+there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen master-
+hands on the machine.
+
+That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak and
+caulk it.  Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a
+conclusion.
+
+Love to you both.  All well here.
+
+And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea.
+
+                                        SAM.
+
+
+     Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on 'The Yankee at
+     King Arthur's Court', a book which he had begun two years before.
+     He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company
+     was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction.  Also
+     it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set
+     to work to finish the Yankee story.  He had worked pretty steadily
+     that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found
+     a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell's,
+     where carpenter work was in progress.  He seems to have worked there
+     successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that
+     numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult
+     to say.
+
+
+          To Theodore W.  Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N.  Y.
+
+                                                  Friday, Oct.,5, '88.
+DEAR THEO,--I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of the
+children and an army of carpenters to help.  Of course they don't help,
+but neither do they hinder.  It's like a boiler-factory for racket, and
+in nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles
+my feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never
+am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of
+relief without knowing when I do it.  I began here Monday morning, and
+have done eighty pages since.  I was so tired last night that I thought I
+would lie abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn't resist.  I mean to try to
+knock off tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do.  I want to finish the day
+the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that
+indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that their calculations will
+miss fire, as usual.
+
+The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to
+furnish the money-a dollar and a half.  Jean discouraged the idea.  She
+said: "We haven't got any money.  Children, if you would think, you would
+remember the machine isn't done.
+
+It's billiards to-night.  I wish you were here.
+                    With love to you both
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  I got it all wrong.  It wasn't the children, it was Marie.  She
+wanted a box of blacking, for the children's shoes.  Jean reproved her-
+and said:
+
+"Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now.  The machine isn't done.
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one
+     who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal.  There is today
+     no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written,
+     but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief
+     value.
+
+
+                     To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88.
+DEAR WILL,-- I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was
+starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately
+busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff
+and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves,
+examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings
+--unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not
+uninfluenced by them.  Here was the near presence of the two supreme
+events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death which
+is the end of it.  I found myself seeking chances to shirk into corners
+where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought,
+was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises
+happiness, doubtless the other assures it.  A long procession of people
+filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years ago--so
+many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the
+soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of the house;
+and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord
+with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a procession of the
+dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was,
+and to me there was nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome
+faces to me.  I would have liked to bring up every creature we knew in
+those days--even the dumb animals--it would be bathing in the fabled
+Fountain of Youth.
+
+We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might,
+but your words deny us that privilege.  To die one's self is a thing that
+must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self
+--well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that
+disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
+                              Sincerely your friend
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     His next is of quite a different nature.  Evidently the typesetting
+     conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies
+     with a view of retrenchment.  Orion was always reducing economy to
+     science.  Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured
+     his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but
+     inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the
+     sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted.  Orion was a trial,
+     certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse.
+     Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds.  Mark Twain's rages
+     always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more
+     than Orion himself would appreciate.  He preserved this letter,
+     quietly noting on the envelope, "Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse."
+
+
+                Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
+
+                                                       NOV. 29, '88.
+Jesus Christ!--It is perilous to write such a man.  You can go crazy on
+less material than anybody that ever lived.  What in hell has produced
+all these maniacal imaginings?  You told me you had hired an attendant
+for ma.  Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie
+and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves.  Hire the
+attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co. to
+add it every month to what they already send.  Don't fool away any more
+time about this.  And don't write me any more damned rot about "storms,"
+and inability to pay trivial sums of money and--and--hell and damnation!
+You see I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read the
+rest for a million dollars.
+                                   Yr
+                                         SAM.
+
+P. S.  Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear.  I
+swear all day, but I do not lose my temper.  And don't imagine that I am
+on my way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am
+not; or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy--for I never am.  I don't know
+what it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn
+how, at this late day.
+                                   SAM.
+
+
+     Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never
+     welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them.  "What I
+     say in an interview loses it character in print," he often remarked,
+     "all its life and personality.  The reporter realizes this himself,
+     and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn't help matters any."
+
+     Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal,
+     was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of "Bok's
+     Literary Leaves."  It usually consisted of news and gossip of
+     writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional
+     interviews with distinguished authors.  He went up to Hartford one
+     day to interview Mark Twain.  The result seemed satisfactory to Bok,
+     but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens,
+     he sent him a copy for approval.  The interview was not returned;
+     in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as
+     the reader may believe.
+
+
+                     To Edward W.  Bok, in New York:
+
+MY DEAR MR. BOK,--No, no.  It is like most interviews, pure twaddle and
+valueless.
+
+For several quite plain and simple reasons, an "interview" must, as a
+rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason--It is an attempt to
+use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively.  Spoken
+speech is one thing, written speech is quite another.  Print is the
+proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former.  The moment
+"talk" is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when
+you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from
+it.  That is its soul.  You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your
+hands.  Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of the voice, the
+laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that
+body warmth, grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to your
+affections--or, at least, to your tolerance--is gone and nothing is left
+but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.
+
+Such is "talk" almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an
+"interview".  The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was
+said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there.  When one
+writes for print his methods are very different.  He follows forms which
+have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader
+understand what the writer is trying to convey.  And when the writer is
+making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his
+characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and
+difficult thing.  "If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,"
+said Alfred, "taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance
+upon the company, blood would have flowed."
+
+"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said Hawkwood, with
+that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty
+assemblage to quake, "blood would have flowed."
+
+"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said the paltry
+blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, "blood would
+have flowed."
+
+So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no
+meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his
+characters with explanations and interpretations.  It is a loud
+confession that print is a poor vehicle for "talk"; it is a recognition
+that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader,
+not instruction.
+
+Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have
+set down the sentences I uttered as I said them.  But you have not a word
+of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated.
+Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I
+was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether.
+Such a report of a conversation has no value.  It can convey many
+meanings to the reader, but never the right one.  To add interpretations
+which would convey the right meaning is a something which would require
+--what?  An art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it
+would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.
+
+No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is
+rubbish.  I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than
+that.
+
+If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some value,
+for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in
+interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.
+                         Very sincerely yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+LETTERS, 1889.  THE MACHINE.  DEATH OF MR. CRANE.
+CONCLUSION OF THE YANKEE
+
+In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of
+waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine.  Paige, the
+inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches.  The
+mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a
+fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch
+--the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world.  To George
+Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: "The machine is
+finished!" and added, "This is by far the most marvelous invention ever
+contrived by man.  And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made
+of massive steel, and will last a century.
+
+In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in
+operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters.  They were more or
+less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and
+more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation
+here.
+
+                       To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89.
+DEAR ORION,--At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was spaced
+and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of the
+world!  And I was there to see.  It was done automatically--instantly--
+perfectly.  This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever was
+perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on this earth.
+
+This was the last function that remained to be tested--and so by long
+odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain
+of man stands completed and perfect.  Livy is down stairs celebrating.
+
+But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!--and knows more than any man
+that ever lived.  You shall see.  We made the test in this way.  We set
+up a lot of random letters in a stick--three-fourths of a line; then
+filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be
+35/1000 of an inch thick.  Then we threw aside the quads and put the
+letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words,
+leaving the words separated by two-inch vacancies.  Then we started up
+the machine slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting
+pins.  The first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came
+traveling along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third
+block projected its second pin!
+
+"Oh, hell!  stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a
+30/1000 space!"
+
+General consternation.  "A foreign substance has got into the spacing
+plates."  This from the head mathematician.
+
+"Yes, that is the trouble," assented the foreman.
+
+Paige examined.  "No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
+the kind."  Further examination.  "Now I know what it is--what it must
+be: one of those plates projects and binds.  It's too bad--the first
+testis a failure."  A pause.  "Well, boys, no use to cry.  Get to work--
+take the machine down.--No--Hold on!  don't touch a thing!  Go right
+ahead!  We are fools, the machine isn't.  The machine knows what it's
+about.  There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine
+is putting in a thinner space to allow for it!"
+
+That was just it.  The machine went right ahead, spaced the line,
+justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and
+perfect!  We took it out and examined it with a glass.  You could not
+tell by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but
+the glass and the calipers showed the difference.  Paige had always said
+that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for
+them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
+
+All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth--
+the first justification of a line of movable type by machinery--and also
+set down the hour and the minute.  Nobody had drank anything, and yet
+everybody seemed drunk.  Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned.
+
+All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly
+into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
+Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
+Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwrigbt's
+frames--all mere toys, simplicities!  The Paige Compositor marches alone
+and far in the lead of human inventions.
+
+In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
+have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
+shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
+
+Return me this letter when you have read it.
+
+                                   SAM.
+
+
+     Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
+     Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a
+     time.
+
+     Then further delays.  Before the machine got "the stiffness out of
+     her joints" that "cunning devil" manifested a tendency to break the
+     types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling
+     things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart
+     again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.
+
+     There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring.  Theodore Crane,
+     who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse.  In
+     February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in
+     operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious.
+     Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him
+     cheering and amusing incidents.
+
+
+               To Mrs. Theodore Crane.  in Elmira, N.  Y.:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, May 28, '89.
+Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore.  You know how absent-
+minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in that
+frame.  At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the street and
+is not aware of the meeting at all.  Twice in a week, our Clara had this
+latter experience with him within the past month.  But the second
+instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks, with a
+reproach.  She said:
+
+"Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into
+the grave, when you meet a person on the street?"--and then went on to
+reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such
+occasions.  Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would
+swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth.  As soon as he
+sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he
+makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of
+frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and
+pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven.
+
+With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.
+
+                                                  S. L. C.
+
+
+     The reference in the next to the "closing sentence" in a letter
+     written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a heart-
+     broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter Winnie, who
+     had died some time before.  She had been a gentle talented girl, but
+     never of robust health.  Her death had followed a long period of
+     gradual decline.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a
+house of mourning.  Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two
+whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had
+always hoped for a swift death.  Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the
+children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen
+years ago, when Mr. Langdon died.  It is heart-breaking to see Mrs.
+Crane.  Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded
+me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing
+sentence of your last letter to me.  I do see that there is an argument
+against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful
+famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
+
+I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the
+servants.  Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me?  Can't you come and stay
+with me?  The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be
+interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do
+the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find
+the Children's schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection
+of a retired and silent den for work.  There isn't a fly or a mosquito on
+the estate.  Come--say you will.
+
+With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,
+                                   Yours Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+Howells was more hopeful.  He wrote: "I read something in a strange book,
+The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we
+see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer
+the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel."  And a
+few days later, he wrote: "I would rather see and talk with you than any
+other man in the world outside my own blood."
+
+A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that
+year and given to the artist and printer.  Dan Beard was selected for the
+drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.
+
+
+           To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster & Co.:
+
+[Charles L.  Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired
+from the firm.]
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 20, '89.
+DEAR MR. HALL,-- Upon reflection--thus: tell Beard to obey his own
+inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on
+paper, be it humorous or be it serious.  I want his genius to be wholly
+unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result.  They will be better
+pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own
+trade.
+
+Send this note and he'll understand.
+                                        Yr
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the
+     illustrations.  He was well qualified for the work, and being of a
+     socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it.  When the
+     drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: "Hold me under permanent
+     obligations.  What luck it was to find you!  There are hundreds of
+     artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was
+     only one who could illustrate this one.  Yes, it was a fortunate
+     hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor.
+     Live forever!"
+
+     Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and
+     Mrs. Clemens particularly so.  Her eyes were giving her trouble that
+     summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had
+     grave doubts as to some of its chapters.  It may be said here that
+     the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able
+     to read it.  Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary
+     subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps
+     somewhat blinded to its literary defects.  However, this is
+     premature.  Howells did not at once see the story.  He had promised
+     to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his
+     visit impossible.  From the next letter we get the situation at this
+     time.  The "Mr. Church" mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the well-
+     known artist.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, July 24, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately
+disappointed.  I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off to New York
+lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it.  Not
+that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would; but not
+on a holiday that's not the time.  I see how you were situated--another
+familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion--and of course we
+could not help ourselves.  Well, just think of it: a while ago, while
+Providence's attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as
+to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown
+dam got loose.  I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh.
+Well, I'm not going to despair; we'll manage a meet yet.
+
+I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have
+to come back here and fetch the family.  And, along there in August, some
+time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I
+am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we
+will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time.  I have noticed
+that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should
+     see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of
+     his more violent fulminations and wild fancies.  However this may
+     be, further postponement was soon at an end.  Mrs. Clemens's eyes
+     troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that
+     the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells
+     and Edmund Clarence Stedman.  Howells wrote that even if he hadn't
+     wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake,
+     he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's.  Whereupon the
+     proofs were started in his direction.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  24, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study,
+I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the
+book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November
+number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that.  Well,
+anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps
+to Stedman.  I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves
+critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all.  It's my
+swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass
+to the cemetery unclodded.
+
+I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had
+some (though not revises,) this morning.  I'm sure I'm going to be
+charmed with Beard's pictures.  Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age
+art-dinner-table scene.
+                              Ys sincerely
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant
+     shouts, one after reading each batch of proof.  First he wrote:
+     "It's charming, original, wonderful!  good in fancy and sound to the
+     core in morals."  And again, "It's a mighty great book, and it makes
+     my heart burn with wrath.  It seems God did not forget to put a soul
+     into you.  He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely."
+     Then, a few days later: "The book is glorious--simply noble; what
+     masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!" and, finally,
+     "Last night I read your last chapter.  As Stedman says of the whole
+     book, it's titanic."
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept.  22, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff
+for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful
+to you as a body can be.  I am glad you approve of what I say about the
+French Revolution.  Few people will.  It is odd that even to this day
+Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and
+other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that
+they didn't get at second-hand.
+
+Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the
+holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth.
+And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote
+neighborhood of it.
+
+Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your
+corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest.  We issue the book
+Dec. 10; consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good
+time.
+
+I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism.  When that
+happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three
+centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a
+humaner.
+
+As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by
+the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your
+approval, and as valuable.  I do not know what the secret of it is,
+unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and
+brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this
+long time--superior being lecturing a boy.
+
+Well, my book is written--let it go.  But if it were only to write over
+again there wouldn't be so many things left out.  They burn in me; and
+they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
+And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
+     Clemens believed it perfected by this time.  Paige had got it
+     together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so
+     --setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy.  In
+     time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight
+     thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good
+     compositor could set and distribute by hand.  Those who saw it were
+     convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by
+     this great mechanical miracle.  If there were any who doubted, it
+     was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only
+     admired.  Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required
+     absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great
+     inventor--"the poet in steel," as Clemens once called him--was no
+     longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
+     But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the
+     machine as reliable as a constellation.
+
+     But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the
+     wonder.  Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator
+     Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe
+     Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence.  He
+     wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition
+     of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889.  We note in
+     this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine
+     three years and seven months, but this was only the period during
+     which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand
+     dollars.  His interest in the invention had begun as far back as
+     1880.
+
+
+                    To Joseph T.  Goodman, in Nevada:
+
+                                        Private.  HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89.
+DEAR JOE,-I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday, and in
+answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider a secret
+except to you and John McComb,--[This is Col. McComb, of the Alta-
+California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City excursion]--as I
+am not ready yet to get into the newspapers.
+
+I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it
+wasn't ripe, and I waited.  It is ripe, now.  It is a type-setting
+machine which I undertook to build for the inventor(for a consideration).
+I have been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a
+cost of $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known
+nothing about it.  Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter.
+I have reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the
+N. Y. Sun, Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also
+to the proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe.  Three
+years ago I asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to
+load up their offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and
+wait for mine and then choose between the two.  They have waited--with no
+very gaudy patience--but still they have waited; and I could prove to
+them to-day that they have not lost anything by it.  But I reserve the
+proof for the present--except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an
+invitation there the other day--a courtesy due a paper which ordered
+$240,000 worth of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude
+condition.  The Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next
+Thursday; but that is the only invitation which will go out for some time
+yet.
+
+The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever
+since in the machine shop.  It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of
+Pratt & Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and as
+accurate as a watch.  In construction it is as elaborate and complex as
+that machine which it ranks next to, by every right--Man--and in
+performance it is as simple and sure.
+
+Anybody can set type on it who can read--and can do it after only 15
+minutes' instruction.  The operator does not need to leave his seat at
+the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but
+strike the keys and set type--merely one function; the spacing,
+justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is
+all done by the machine without anybody's help--four functions.
+
+The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising.  Day before yesterday
+I saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150 ems
+of solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the same
+hour--and six hours previously he had never seen the machine or its
+keyboard.  It was a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other
+type-setting machines to do.  We have 3 cubs.  The dean of the trio is a
+school youth of 18.  Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the
+machine 16 working days (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he
+could do in an hour.  In the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and
+the machine perfectly spaced and justified it, and of course distributed
+the like amount in the same hour.  Considering that a good fair
+compositor sets 700 and distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did the
+work of about 8 x a compositors in that hour.  This fact sends all other
+type-setting machines a thousand miles to the rear, and the best of them
+will never be heard of again after we publicly exhibit in New York.
+
+We shall put on 3 more cubs.  We have one school boy and two compositors,
+now,--and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and
+perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are
+required with this machine.  We shall train these beginners two or three
+months--or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour--then we will
+show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in the
+week, for several months--to prove that this is a machine which will
+never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an anvil
+can stand.  You know there is no other typesetting machine that can run
+two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its
+incurable caprices.
+
+We own the whole field--every inch of it--and nothing can dislodge us.
+
+Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose
+of it.  I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and
+satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and
+sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten
+per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble--the latter, if you
+are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value.
+
+What I call "property" is this.  A small part of my ownership consists of
+a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents.
+My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every
+American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid.
+We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years--a return of
+fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand.  A royalty is better than
+stock, in one way--it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine; it
+is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared.  By and by,
+when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock
+if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.
+
+I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a
+penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished and
+proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be--perfect,
+permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all kindred machines,
+which the City of Paris occupies as regards the canvas-backs of the
+mercantile marine.
+
+It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the above
+price during the next two months and keep the other $300.
+
+Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for not
+writing the message herself--which would be a pathetically-welcome
+spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since
+her eyes failed her.  Yours as always
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to
+     astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different,
+     but equally characteristic sort.  We may assume that Mark Twain's
+     sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making
+     a visit in Keokuk.
+
+
+                       To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89.
+DEAR PAMELA,--An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a
+realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine:
+to send your trunk after you.  Land! it was idiotic.  None but a lunatic
+would, separate himself from his baggage.
+
+Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating
+my insane inspiration.  I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
+him again.  I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.
+
+I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
+Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York today.
+I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope soiled,
+and asked Livy to put on a clean one.  That is why I am going to the
+banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going to
+punch billiards with, upstairs to-night.
+
+Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck.  And I am the
+other.
+                         Your Brother
+                                             SAM.
+
+
+     The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
+     already in the reviewers' hands.  Just at this moment the Brazilian
+     monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
+     of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
+     prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
+     suspected.
+
+
+DEAR MR.  BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
+satisfaction.  I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
+see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron.  I believe I
+should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
+swindles ever invented by man-monarchy.  It is enough to make a graven
+image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
+wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
+reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
+kingship and so-called "nobility."  It is enough to make the monarchs and
+nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no question
+about that.  I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the
+spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys and Huntingtons
+and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases
+and stolen titles.  When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians
+frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this
+missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all monarchs
+are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne
+was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only
+body possessing the legitimate right to set it up--the numerical mass of
+the nation."
+
+You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands.
+If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state
+paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of
+King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English Republic.  Compare it
+with the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian
+monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and
+stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism.  There is merely a
+resemblance of ideas, nothing more.  The Yankee's proclamation was
+already in print a week ago.  This is merely one of those odd
+coincidences which are always turning up.  Come, protect the Yank from
+that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism.  Otherwise, you
+see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and
+indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin
+down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar annoyance.
+
+Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
+that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive?  Also, that the head
+slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
+order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half time
+now?  Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added
+stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent
+because there wasn't any more room for it at home?  Things are working.
+By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be.  Of course we shall
+make no preparation; we never do.  In a few years from now we shall have
+nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the
+horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the
+avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late,
+that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at
+Castle Garden.
+
+
+     There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
+     there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
+     Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
+     schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
+     concerned.  When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
+     telegrams.  In one of the letters Goodman is promised "five hundred
+     thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
+     ourselves."  One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
+     has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
+     perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
+     perfections were not permanent.  A letter at the end of November
+     seems worth preserving here.
+
+
+                  To Joseph T.  Goodman, in California:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.
+DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every
+day.  Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising
+of capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for
+the capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me.  I don't want to
+dicker with anybody but Jones.  I know him; that is to say, I want to
+dicker with you, and through you with Jones.  Try to see if you can't be
+here by the 15th of January.
+
+The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other
+day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her
+to be perfecter than a watch.
+
+Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can,
+for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York.  You know the
+machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any
+man I know.  At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,)
+we shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent--17 years.
+
+All the family send love to you--and they mean it, or they wouldn't say
+it.
+                              Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in
+     the "Editor's Study" in Harper's Magazine.  He had given it his
+     highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not
+     change with time.  "Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me
+     most," he in one place declared, and again referred to it as
+     "a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale."
+
+     In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come
+     East without delay.  "Take the train, Joe, and come along," he wrote
+     early in December.  And we judge from the following that Joe had
+     decided to come.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is just
+great.  The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious if
+the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it does,
+though of course I can't realize it and believe it.  But I am your
+grateful servant, anyway and always.
+
+I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11.  I go from here
+to New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th.  Can't you go with me?
+It's great fun.  I'm going to read the passages in the "Yankee" in which
+the Yankee's West Point cadets figure--and shall covertly work in a
+lecture on aristocracy to those boys.  I am to be the guest of the
+Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to the
+hotel.  He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take that
+liberty.
+
+And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January?
+For two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we
+want to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking
+about it and hankering for it.  And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again
+by that time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly.  It's well
+worth it.  I am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I
+can get a chance.
+
+We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is,
+too.  You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect
+and complete.  All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs: Clemens,
+whereas I was expecting nothing but praises.  I made a party call the day
+after the party--and called the lady down from breakfast to receive it.
+I then left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her
+dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon.
+The error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the
+afternoon, and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another part
+of the town.  However, as I meant well, none of these disasters
+distressed me.
+                         Yrs ever
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England.  English
+     readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or
+     American strictures on their institutions.  Mark Twain's publishers
+     had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for
+     the English edition.  Clemens, however, would not listen to any
+     suggestions of the sort.
+
+
+              To Messrs.  Chatto & Windus, in London, Eng.:
+
+GENTLEMEN,--Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story
+twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund
+Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several
+passages that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others.
+Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen
+were present and have profited by their suggestions.
+
+Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a
+Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props,
+and yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it
+comes to you, without altering a word.
+
+We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people.  It is you who
+are thin-skinned.  An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness
+about any man or institution among us and we republish him without
+dreaming of altering a line or a word.  But England cannot stand that
+kind of a book written about herself.  It is England that is thin-
+skinned.  It causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my
+language which have been made in my English editions to fit them for the
+sensitive English palate.
+
+Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of
+offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands.
+I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can.  I want you
+to read it carefully.  If you can publish it without altering a single
+word, go ahead.  Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for
+him to have it published at my expense.
+
+This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for
+America; it was written for England.  So many Englishmen have done their
+sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems to
+me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good
+intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of
+manhood in turn.
+                    Very truly yours,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish
+to be "pried up to a higher level of manhood" by a Connecticut Yankee.
+The papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a
+vulgar travesty.  Some of the critics concluded that England, after all,
+had made a mistake in admiring Mark Twain.  Clemens stood this for a time
+and then seems to have decided that something should be done.  One of the
+foremost of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state
+the case to him fully and invite his assistance.
+
+
+                        To Andrew Lang, in London:
+
+[First page missing.]
+
+                                                            1889
+They vote but do not print.  The head tells you pretty promptly whether
+the food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the
+whole man has spoken.  It is a delusion.  Only his taste and his smell
+have been heard from--important, both, in a way, but these do not build
+up the man; and preserve his life and fortify it.
+
+The little child is permitted to label its drawings "This is a cow this
+is a horse," and so on.  This protects the child.  It saves it from the
+sorrow and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as
+kangaroos and work benches.  A man who is white-washing a fence is doing
+a useful thing, so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house
+with costly frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these
+performances by standards proper to each.  Now, then, to be fair, an
+author ought to be allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line:
+"This is written for the Head;  "This is written for the Belly and the
+Members."  And the critic ought to hold himself in honor bound to put
+away from him his ancient habit of judging all books by one standard, and
+thenceforth follow a fairer course.
+
+The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the
+cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable.  Let us apply his law all
+around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures,
+and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps
+which lead up to culture and make culture possible.  It condemns the
+spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture;
+it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the
+child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the
+university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap
+terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and
+the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he
+can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will
+grant its sanction to nothing below the "classic."
+
+Is this an extravagant statement?  No, it is a mere statement of fact.
+It is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque.  And what is the
+result?  This--and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually
+imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is
+more valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the
+august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and
+Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in all mouths
+today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and the Latin
+classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards
+than the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the plaster-cast
+peddler; the superstition, in a word, that the vast and awful comet that
+trails its cold lustre through the remote abysses of space once a century
+and interests and instructs a cultivated handful of astronomers is worth
+more to the world than the sun which warms and cheers all the nations
+every day and makes the crops to grow.
+
+If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to
+convert angels: and they wouldn't need it.  The thin top crust of
+humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth
+coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies,
+it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified
+or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the over-
+fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that.  It is not that little
+minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to uplift,
+I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are
+underneath.  That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for
+the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward
+appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and
+the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will
+never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them
+higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin
+classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they
+will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their
+slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air
+and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name
+to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the
+ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place
+upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.
+
+Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first.  I have never tried in
+even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes.
+I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training.  And I
+never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
+game--the masses.  I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them,
+but have done my best to entertain them.  To simply amuse them would have
+satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction
+elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for
+amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue
+after it.  My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot
+know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure.
+
+Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but
+have been served like the others--criticized from the culture-standard
+--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of
+the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera--they
+had no use for me and the melodeon.
+
+And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
+supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing
+the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for
+them shall be judged.  Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than
+yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
+
+
+     Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The
+     Art of Mark Twain."  Lang had no admiration to express for the
+     Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
+     glorified Huck Finn to the highest.  "I can never forget, nor be
+     ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
+     Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last
+     night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck.  I never laid it down till I
+     had finished it."
+
+     Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
+     "great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
+     watched to see this new planet swim into their ken."
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN.  THE GREAT MACHINE ENTERPRISE
+
+     Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873
+     as "Jock," sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by
+     E.  T.  McLaren.  It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.
+
+
+                To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.
+DEAR MR. BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading the
+one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of "Rab and his Friends."
+It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary workmanship.  It says
+in every line, "Don't look at me, look at him"--and one tries to be good
+and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong that one can't keep
+his entire attention on the developing portrait, but must steal side-
+glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of her felicitous
+brush.  In this book the doctor lives and moves just as he was.  He was
+the most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the kindest; and yet he
+died without setting one of his bondmen free.  We all send our very, very
+kindest regards.
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine
+     he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers
+     play, which he had written with Howells seven years before.  The
+     play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York,
+     with A. P. Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as
+     financial backers.  But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay
+     any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road.
+     Now, however, James A.  Herne, a well-known actor and playwright,
+     became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with
+     Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under
+     Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful.
+
+     But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine,
+     and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture.  His
+     next letter to Goodman is illuminating--the urgency of his need for
+     funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most
+     positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual.  The Mr. Arnot of
+     this letter was an Elmira capitalist.
+
+
+                    To Jos. T. Goodman, in California:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, March 31, '90.
+DEAR JOE,--If you were here, I should say, "Get you to Washington and beg
+Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or "--no, I
+wouldn't.  The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from me
+if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and mine
+and without other evidence.  It is too much of a responsibility.
+
+But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the
+last month's machine-expenses, and the purse empty.  I notified Mr. Arnot
+a month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last
+night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the 9th
+of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and that
+before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and
+approved, or done the other thing.  If Jones should arrive here a week or
+ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve, and
+shouldn't buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be
+symmetrically square, and then how could I refund?  The surest way was to
+return his check.
+
+I have talked with the madam, and here is the result.  I will go down to
+the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet
+the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April and
+return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found
+financial relief.
+
+It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a
+bird to go!  I think she's going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the
+hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year's practice.  I may be in
+error, but I most solidly believe it.
+
+There's an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I
+watched it two whole afternoons.
+                         With the love of us all,
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand
+     dollars in this moment of need.  Clemens was probably as sorely
+     tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his
+     life, but his resolution field firm.
+
+
+                    To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N.  Y.:
+
+MR. M. H. ARNOT
+
+DEAR SIR,--No--no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied;
+and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal
+examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of
+disinterested people, besides.  My own perfect knowledge of what is
+required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that
+this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it
+difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted
+men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus
+would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself.  And now
+that I go back over the ground, I remember that where I said I could get
+along 3 months without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit
+from you to the machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its
+character and prospects.  I had forgotten all that.  But I remember it
+now; and the fact that it was not "so nominated in the bond" does not
+alter the case or justify me in making my call so prematurely.  I do not
+know that you regarded all that as a part of the bargain--for you were
+thoroughly and magnanimously unexacting--but I so regarded it,
+notwithstanding I have so easily managed to forget all about it.
+
+You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me
+in a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but
+my honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap a
+money advantage from it.
+
+With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours
+                                             S L. CLEMENS.
+
+P. S.  I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed to
+say the main thing in exact enough language--which is, that the
+transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall have
+convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are
+satisfactory.
+
+I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we
+have since been waiting for Mr. Jones.  When he was ready, we were not;
+and now we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in
+Washington by the Silver bill.  He said the other day that to venture out
+of the Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him if
+the bill came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the
+bill, which would pass anyway.  Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or
+three days' notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they
+would follow as soon as I should return word that their coming would not
+inconvenience us.  I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting
+for Mr. Jones, but it would not be wise to go there without money.
+
+The bill is still pending.
+
+
+     The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in
+     the middle stages of experimental development.  It was a slower
+     machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room.
+     There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so
+     delicate, not so human.  These were immense advantages.
+
+     But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter
+     would reap the harvest of millions.  It was only sure that at least
+     one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade
+     stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial
+     success for both, whichever won.  Clemens, with a faith that never
+     faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him
+     millions.
+
+     Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had
+     been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich
+     Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the
+     machine's manufacture.  Goodman was spending a large part of his
+     time traveling back and forth between California and Washington,
+     trying to keep business going at both ends.  Paige spent most of his
+     time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate
+     attachments which complicated its construction more and more.
+
+
+                    To Joe T.  Goodman, in Washington:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, June 22, '90.
+DEAR JOE,--I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this afternoon,
+and my admiration of it towers higher than ever.  There is no sort of
+mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza.  In the 2 hours, the time lost
+by type-breakage was 3 minutes.
+
+This machine is totally without a rival.  Rivalry with it is impossible.
+Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship on
+the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and the
+type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day.
+
+I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad
+and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything
+about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within the
+life of the patents.  Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the
+wealthiest grandees in America--one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact--and
+yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask
+you to take my note instead.
+
+It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman and
+refresh yourself with a draught of the same.
+                                        Ys ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt
+     Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force
+     from doing so.  He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking
+     the machine apart or setting it up again.  Finally, he was allowed
+     to go at it--a disasterous permission, for it was just then that
+     Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch
+     the type-setter in operation.  Paige already had it in parts when
+     this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off.
+     His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day.  In July,
+     Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat
+     diffident in the matter of huge capitalization.  He thought it
+     partly due, at least, to "the fatal delays that have sicklied over
+     the bloom of original enthusiasm."  Clemens himself went down to
+     Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least,
+     Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a
+     qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and
+     capitalist.  How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but
+     certainly more than one.  Jones would seem to have suggested forms
+     of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no
+     evidence of it to-day.
+
+     Any one who has read Mark Twain's, "A Connecticut Yankee in King
+     Arthur's Court," has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in
+     general, and tyrants in particular.  Rule by "divine right," however
+     liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it
+     stirred him to violence.  In his article, "The Czar's Soliloquy," he
+     gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master
+     of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890,
+     he offered a hint as to remedies.  The letter was written by
+     editorial request, but was never mailed.  Perhaps it seemed too
+     openly revolutionary at the moment.
+
+     Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it
+     "timely."  Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the
+     Catskills when it was written.
+
+
+                    An unpublished letter on the Czar.
+
+                                                  ONTEORA, 1890.
+TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your
+invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on
+your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of the
+objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite know
+how to proceed.  Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:
+
+"But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for
+a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting
+to a dire fate they cannot escape.  Besides, foreigners could not see so
+clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the
+grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the
+moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated
+Russia.  But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are
+there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no
+excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity
+against Russian tyranny.  And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident
+in its apparently unassailable position, instead of taking warning from
+the first rebukes, seems to mock this humanitarian age by the aggravation
+of brutalities.  Not satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and
+with burying the flower of our young generation in the Siberian desserts,
+the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by
+deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and
+degradation."
+
+When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's
+revelations, and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly
+figures fail to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend
+into hell to find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement
+of the objects of the several liberation-parties--and is disappointed.
+Apparently none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell
+entirely, they merely want the temperature cooled down a little.
+
+I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of
+the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech.
+Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it
+differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it
+somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and
+fine, when properly "modified," something entitling it to protection from
+the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole.  It seems a
+most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition that man
+is a reasoning being.  If a house is afire, we reason confidently that it
+is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out in any way he can--
+drown it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use any and all means to
+stop the spread of the fire and save the rest of the city.  What is the
+Czar of Russia but a house afire in the midst of a city of eighty
+millions of inhabitants?  Yet instead of extinguishing him, together with
+his nest and system, the liberation-parties are all anxious to merely
+cool him down a little and keep him.
+
+It seems to me that this is illogical--idiotic, in fact.  Suppose you had
+this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your house,
+chasing the helpless women and little children--your own.  What would you
+do with him, supposing you had a shotgun?  Well, he is loose in your
+house-Russia.  And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to
+think up ways to "modify" him.
+
+Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project
+which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and
+has never in one single instance been successful--the "modification" of a
+despotism by other means than bloodshed?  They seem to think they can.
+My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was
+bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands,
+but I possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come
+to me as a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any
+kindred method of procedure.  When we consider that not even the most
+responsible English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right until
+it was wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to suppose
+that gentler methods can win privileges in Russia?
+
+Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne
+would be by revolution.  But it is not possible to get up a revolution
+there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne
+vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with thanks.
+Then organize the Republic.  And on the whole this method has some large
+advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives which cannot
+well be spared, the dynamite way doesn't.  Consider this: the
+conspirators against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of life,
+from the low to the high.  And consider: if so many take an active part,
+where the peril is so dire, is this not evidence that the sympathizers
+who keep still and do not show their hands, are countless for multitudes?
+Can you break the hearts of thousands of families with the awful Siberian
+exodus every year for generations and not eventually cover all Russia
+from limit to limit with bereaved fathers and mothers and brothers and
+sisters who secretly hate the perpetrator of this prodigious crime and
+hunger and thirst for his life?  Do you not believe that if your wife or
+your child or your father was exiled to the mines of Siberia for some
+trivial utterances wrung from a smarting spirit by the Czar's intolerable
+tyranny, and you got a chance to kill him and did not do it, that you
+would always be ashamed to be in your own society the rest of your life?
+Suppose that that refined and lovely Russian lady who was lately stripped
+bare before a brutal soldiery and whipped to death by the Czar's hand in
+the person of the Czar's creature had been your wife, or your daughter or
+your sister, and to-day the Czar should pass within reach of your hand,
+how would you feel--and what would you do?  Consider, that all over vast
+Russia, from boundary to boundary, a myriad of eyes filled with tears
+when that piteous news came, and through those tears that myriad of eyes
+saw, not that poor lady, but lost darlings of their own whose fate her
+fate brought back with new access of grief out of a black and bitter past
+never to be forgotten or forgiven.
+
+If I am a Swinburnian--and clear to the marrow I am--I hold human nature
+in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians
+that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that isn't.
+
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     Type-setter matters were going badly.  Clemens still had faith in
+     Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine.  The money
+     situation, however, was troublesome.  With an expensive
+     establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on
+     the machine, his income would not reach.  Perhaps Goodman had
+     already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from
+     California after the next letter was written--a colorless letter--
+     in which we feel a note of resignation.  The last few lines are
+     sufficient.
+
+
+                    To Joe T. Goodman, in California:
+
+DEAR JOE,--...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two or
+three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money
+before long.
+
+I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon.
+
+I guess we've got a perfect machine at last.  We never break a type, now,
+and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters
+and justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm.
+                         With love to you both,
+                                                  MARK
+
+
+     The year closed gloomily enough.  The type-setter seemed to be
+     perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.
+     The publishing business of Charles L. Webster & Co.  was returning
+     little or no profit.  Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end
+     of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later.  Mark
+     Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager,
+     Fred J. Ball, closed it: "Merry Xmas to you!--and I wish to God I
+     could have one myself before I die."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+LETTERS, 189I, TO HOWELLS, MRS.  CLEMENS AND OTHERS.
+RETURN TO LITERATURE.  AMERICAN CLAIMANT.  LEAVING HARTFORD.
+EUROPE.  DOWN THE RHINE
+
+Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the beginning of
+the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer active, and it presently
+became a moribund.  Jones, on about the middle of February, backed out
+altogether, laying the blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he
+said, had decided not to invest.  Jones "let his victim down easy" with
+friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at least, of machine
+financiering.
+
+It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital.  His publishing business was
+not good.  It was already in debt and needing more money.  There was just
+one thing for him to do and he did it at once, not stopping to cry over
+spilt milk, but with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never
+failed him, he returned to the trade of authorship.  He dug out half-
+finished articles and stories, finished them and sold them, and within a
+week after the Jones collapse he was at work on a novel based an the old
+Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells had worked into a
+play.  The brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells bears
+no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his fifty-sixth
+year; he was by no means well, and his financial prospects were anything
+but golden.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but is
+up and around the room now, and gaining.  I don't know whether she has
+written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet,
+if she hasn't.  We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in
+the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.
+
+Does this item stir an interest in you?  Began a novel four days ago, and
+this moment finished chapter four.  Title of the book
+
+                       "Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
+                           American Claimant
+                                 Of the
+                       Great Earldom of Rossmore'
+                                 in the
+                       Peerage of Great Britain."
+
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly.  He had
+always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than ever
+for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned.  There exists
+a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in which he
+recites his qualifications.  It bears evidence of having been written
+just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
+
+
+                   Fragment of Letter to ------- 1891:
+
+.  .  .  .  I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when
+pretending to portray life.  But I confined myself to the boy-life out on
+the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because
+I was not familiar with other phases of life.  I was a soldier two weeks
+once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole
+time.  Familiar?  My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more burnt-in,
+hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that death-on-the-pale-
+horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw soldier's first fortnight
+in the field--and which, without any doubt, is the most tremendous
+fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see.
+
+Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of
+weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction.
+And I've done "pocket-mining" during three months in the one little patch
+of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in pockets--or
+did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted, obliterated,
+annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in.  There are
+not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on
+the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find it, or have
+even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the
+possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand
+on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.
+
+And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find it--
+just with a touch of the tongue.  And I've been a silver miner and know
+how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast.  And so I know the
+mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them
+exteriorly.
+
+And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
+inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions
+and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally
+three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and
+the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
+
+And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the
+different kinds of steam-boatmen--a race apart, and not like other folk.
+
+And I was for some years a traveling "jour" printer, and wandered from
+city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.
+
+And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was a
+responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets--and so I know
+a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of books,
+but only acquirable by experience.
+
+And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune on
+it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that would make a large
+book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror; and they
+would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this fellow has
+been there--and after would cast dust upon their heads, cursing and
+blaspheming.
+
+And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General Grant's)
+the largest copyright checks this world has seen--aggregating more than
+L80,000 in the first year.
+
+And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
+
+Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in
+the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped
+for that trade.
+
+I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of
+it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his
+     shoulder.  The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated
+     his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled.  The phonograph
+     for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
+     Twain was always ready for any innovation.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, Feb.  28, '91.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New England
+Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary conversation-
+voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it) can take the
+words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to you.  If the
+experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a message which you
+don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out without difficulty)
+won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent me a phonograph for
+3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry 75,000 words.  175
+cylinders, ain't it?
+
+I don't want to erase any of them.  My right arm is nearly disabled by
+rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of
+it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the book
+into a phonograph if I don't have to yell.  I write 2,000 words a day; I
+think I can dictate twice as many.
+
+But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and do
+it, all the same.
+                                   Ys ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
+     few days later reported results.  He wrote: "I talked your letter
+     into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech.  Then
+     the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
+     Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
+     put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out.  I send you the
+     result.  There is a mistake of one word.  I think that if you have
+     the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
+     perfectly easy.  It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
+     did."
+
+     Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
+     not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily.  His
+     early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed.  It happened in this way.  I was proposing to
+acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
+so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere letter-
+writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write literature
+with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift for
+elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of
+expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as
+grave and unsmiling as the devil.
+
+I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have
+said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better.  Then I
+resigned.
+
+I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer--and
+some time I will experiment in that line.
+
+The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me.  But it
+flies too high for me.  Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to
+me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as
+embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly.  I'm
+going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge
+my memory.  Charging my memory is one of my chief industries ....
+
+With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to
+the proprieties.
+                              Yrs ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+P. S.--I'm sending that ancient "Mental Telegraphy" article to Harper's
+--with a modest postscript.  Probably read it to you years ago.
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     The "little book" mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an
+     author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.
+     "Mental Telegraphy" appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now
+     included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books.  It was
+     written in 1878.
+
+     Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear
+     that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington.  On receipt
+     of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word.
+     Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance,
+     and possibly hold him in some measure to blame.  But it was
+     generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage;
+     the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.
+
+     The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following
+     letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence
+     Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
+
+
+                           To Joe T.  Goodman:
+
+                                                  April [?] 1891.
+DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway.  Diplomacy couldn't have saved
+it--diplomacy of mine--at that late day.  I hadn't any diplomacy in
+stock, anyway.  In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender
+the old contract (a contract which made me boss of the situation and gave
+me the whip-hand of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and put in
+its place.  I was running an immense risk, but it was justified by
+Jones's promises--promises made to me not merely once but every time I
+tallied with him.  When February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty
+plain reading.  Signs which meant that Paige was hoping and praying that
+Jones would go back on me--which would leave Paige boss, and me robbed
+and out in the cold.  His prayers were answered, and I am out in the
+cold.  If I ever get back my nine-twentieths interest, it will be by law-
+suit--which will be instituted in the indefinite future, when the time
+comes.
+
+I am at work again--on a book.  Not with a great deal of spirit, but with
+enough--yes, plenty.  And I am pushing my publishing house.  It has
+turned the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive
+years, and piling every cent of it into one book--Library of American
+Literature--and from next January onward it will resume dividends.  But
+I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then--which I will do if
+I keep my health.  This additional capital is needed for that same book,
+because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting.
+
+It is dreadful to think of you in ill health--I can't realize it; you are
+always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless health.
+and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us.  Lord
+save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost
+the faculty of putting out blossoms.
+
+                    With love to you both from us all.
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close.
+     Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain.  They
+     believed that some of the European baths would help them.
+     Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his
+     Hartford home.  In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper.
+     He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters,
+     by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun.  This would
+     at least give him a start on the other side.  The family began
+     immediately their sad arrangements for departure.
+
+
+         To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster & Co.), N. Y.:
+
+                                   HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Privately--keep it to yourself--as you, are already
+aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay.  We shall
+sell the horses and shut up the house.  We wish to provide a place for
+our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,
+diligent, and unusually bright and capable.  You spoke of hiring a
+colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room.  Patrick would
+soon learn that trade and be very valuable.  We will cease to need him by
+the middle or end of June.  Have you made irrevocable arrangements with
+the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he
+would like to try?
+
+I have not said anything to him about it yet.
+
+                                   Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful
+     establishment.  Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of
+     their household help had been like members of the family.  We may
+     guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain
+     cheerful.
+
+     Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to
+     be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it
+     from the papers, and wrote for information.  Likely enough Clemens
+     had not until then had the courage to confess.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, May 20, '91.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths
+somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe.
+The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and little-
+visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you get to
+it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach.  Come, get "sick or
+sorry enough" and join us.  We shall be a little while at that bath, and
+the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute
+Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva.  Spend the winters in Berlin.  I don't know
+how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it.  I'm
+going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind,
+without prejudice, whenever they want to.  Travel has no longer, any
+charm for me.  I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except
+heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of
+those.
+
+I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its lines
+when I came to look at it.  I thought I might get a great deal of
+dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved
+me half a days work.  It was the cursing phonograph.  There was abundance
+of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of the
+story.
+
+Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years
+thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich
+newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my
+time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was
+harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was
+going to be proportionately higher.  I wish I had thought of this the
+other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me
+and I couldn't think of any rational excuse.
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial
+     rights to the McClure syndicate.  The house in Hartford was closed
+     early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie
+     Leary, sailed on the Gascogne.  Two weeks later they had begun a
+     residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.
+
+     It was not easy to get to work in Europe.  Clemens's arm remained
+     lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering.  The Century
+     Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he
+     had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan.  In
+     August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the
+     baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,
+     and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a
+     time.  He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters
+     when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.
+     He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some
+     fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.
+
+     The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the
+     family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.
+     He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged
+     Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European
+     trip, to accompany him.  The courier went over to Bourget and bought
+     for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their
+     pilot.  It was the morning of September 20, when they began their
+     floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through
+     the loveliest and most romantic region of France.  He wrote daily to
+     Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy
+     experience better than the notes made with a view to publication.
+     Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the
+     morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an
+     old castle of the same name.  Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone
+     by a small canal.
+
+
+      Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                                             Sept. 20, 1891.
+                                             Sunday, 11 a.m.
+On the lake Bourget--just started.  The castle of Chatillon high overhead
+showing above the trees.  It was a wonderfully still place to sleep in.
+Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog.  A Pope
+was born in the room I slept in.  No, he became a Pope later.
+
+The lake is smooth as glass--a brilliant sun is shining.
+
+Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning.
+
+11.20  We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal.  Shall
+presently be in the Rhone.
+
+Noon.  Nearly down to the Rhone.  Passing the village of Chanaz.
+
+3.15 p. m.  Sunday.  We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is
+unimaginably still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy.  No rowing
+or work of any kind to do--we merely float with the current--we glide
+noiseless and swift--as fast as a London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an
+hour--the swiftest current I've ever boated in.  We have the entire river
+to ourselves--nowhere a boat of any kind.
+                         Good bye Sweetheart
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                                        PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m.
+                                             [Sept. 21, 1891]
+Name of the village which we left five minutes ago.
+
+We went ashore at 5 p. m.  yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile
+to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had
+a good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the
+Guiers till 7.30.
+
+Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and
+newspapers till midnight.  Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay
+till noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the
+day was still dark and lowering.  But at noon the sun broke through and
+in 15 minutes we were tramping toward the river.  Got afloat at 1 p. m.
+but at 2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above
+village.  Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn,
+the rain let go and came down in great style.  We lost an hour and a half
+there, but we are off again, now, with bright sunshine.
+
+I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every
+day.
+
+Good-day, and love to all of you.
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+                                        ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS,
+                                                  Tuesday noon.
+Good morning, sweetheart.  Night caught us yesterday where we had to take
+quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot
+of cows and calves--also several rabbits.--[His word for fleas.]-- The
+latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly
+and didn't bite.
+
+The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their
+best to make us comfortable.  This morning I breakfasted on the shore in
+the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat.  Clean cloth, napkin and
+table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good
+bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught.
+Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally
+dirty house.
+
+An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and
+dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm.
+It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management
+I ever saw.  Our admiral knew his business.
+
+We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained
+heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a water-
+proof sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although we had
+many heavy showers this morning.
+
+With a word of love to you all and particularly you,
+                                                       SAML.
+
+
+                                             ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA.
+I salute you, my darling.  Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night
+and was very pleasant news indeed.
+
+I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't
+sail from Lyons till 10.3O--an hour and a half lost.  And we've lost
+another hour--two of them, I guess--since, by an error.  We came in sight
+of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed to
+walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us.  So Joseph and I got out
+and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came
+out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed
+that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough.
+Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a
+distinct and even vigorous quiver to it!  I don't know when I have felt
+so much like a donkey.  On an island!  I wanted to drown somebody, but I
+hadn't anybody I could spare.  However, after another long tramp we found
+a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were on the mainland--yes,
+and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we were when we started.
+
+Notes--I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you.  If
+you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon.  I may
+not need it but I fear I shall.
+
+I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close
+fit, I reckon.
+
+
+                                   AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91.
+Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are
+now approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make
+Valence, a City Of 25,000 people.  It's too delicious, floating with the
+swift current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace
+and quietness.  Some of these curious old historical towns strangely
+persuade me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them
+from the outside and sail on.  We get abundance of grapes and peaches for
+next to nothing.
+
+Joseph is perfect.  He is at his very best--and never was better in his
+life.  I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way when
+he is lying around--but here he is perfection, and brim full of useful
+alacrities and helps and ingenuities.
+
+When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said "I seem
+to have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed
+mighty early; I wonder what time I did go to bed."  And I got up and lit
+a candle and looked at my watch to see.
+
+
+                                                       AFLOAT
+                                        2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL.
+                                        Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28.
+Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday.  We left La Voulte in a driving
+storm of cold rain--couldn't write in it--and at 1 p. m.  when we were
+not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a high
+hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it; so
+we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the boat
+ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those cloudy
+heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle built by
+two crusaders 650 years ago.  The work of these asses was full of
+interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and scrutinizing
+it.  All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and precipices,
+and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and broken towers.
+The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced the Romans, the
+Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians displaced the Saracens,
+and it was these pious animals who built these strange lairs and cut each
+other's throats in the name and for the glory of God, and robbed and
+burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper and the slave built
+churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop who racked the money
+out of them.  These are pathetic shores, and they make one despise the
+human race.
+
+We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till
+this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office to
+go to the circus.  I went, too.  It was all one family--parents and 5
+children--performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted villagers,
+who contributed coppers when called on.  It was a most gay and strange
+and pathetic show.  I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor devils
+cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries.
+
+This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon
+before 4 o'clock.  I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St.
+Andeol.
+
+               With a power of love, Sweetheart,
+                                                  SAML.
+
+
+                                             HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,
+                                             Monday, 6 p.m., Sept.  28.
+Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an
+hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart.  It's like hearing
+from home after a long absence.
+
+It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage;
+and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning.  If I ever take such a trip
+again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to
+sea as soon after as possible.  The early dawn on the water-nothing can
+be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience.  I did so long for you
+and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous
+sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming
+dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory.  But it had
+interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world;
+for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette
+mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most
+noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which I
+had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this prodigious
+face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay
+against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors all rayed
+like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching lances of the sun.  It
+made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable
+majesty and beauty.
+
+We had a curious experience today.  A little after I had sealed and
+directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before
+4, we got lost.  We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in
+our "particularizes" and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting along
+by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river!  Confound
+it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat and
+search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had
+happened.  And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers
+and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet
+we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.
+
+Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted
+down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the
+Rhone not frequented in modern times.  We lost an hour and a half by it
+and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden
+masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.
+
+It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the
+letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed.
+
+We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving
+about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.
+Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday
+morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at
+11 at night if the train isn't late.
+
+Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin.  But I
+shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.
+
+          With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you,
+               sweetheart,
+                         SAML.
+
+I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.
+
+
+     The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the
+     beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode.  Mark
+     Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the
+     giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.
+     In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to
+     be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile.  But then he
+     characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the
+     incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the
+     village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;
+     also, that he had made a record of the place.
+
+     But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery
+     was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great
+     natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls.  Theodore Stanton was
+     visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to
+     France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost
+     Napoleon, as he now called it.  But Clemens remembered the wonder as
+     being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a
+     hundred miles above the last-named town.  Stanton naturally failed
+     to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring
+     up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the
+     first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first
+     consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire."  The re-discovery
+     was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it
+     was worth while.  Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a
+     natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,
+     and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will
+     long hold the traveler's attention.
+
+                 To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                              AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.
+DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient papal
+palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a mile
+up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to Arles.  It is a
+perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot--outside; but
+I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here.
+
+Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive
+by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday midnight.
+I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do
+during the next two or three days and get there earlier.  I could put in
+the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without
+telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1,
+care Hotel Manivet.
+
+The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then.
+They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it.
+Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in
+charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were
+allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon
+below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head.  Of course I
+lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the
+tossing waters.  I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in
+deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment
+told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river.  I could
+have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip.
+A boatman in command should obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield
+to nobody's suggestions.
+
+It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much.
+With greatest love and kisses,
+                                   PAPA.
+
+
+                 To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                                             ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.
+Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight
+seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.
+
+Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening.
+We had ten great days in her.
+
+We reached here after dark.  We were due about 4.30, counting by
+distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we
+found.
+               I love you, sweetheart.
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+     It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend
+     Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days
+     thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and
+     Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi
+     Pass.  He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time.
+
+
+              To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn:
+
+                                                  NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.
+DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from
+Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been.
+You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily --and
+you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with
+a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with
+the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the
+world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy
+comfort, and solid happiness.  In fact there's nothing that's so lovely.
+
+But it's all over.  I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am
+loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where
+the tribe are staying.
+                         Love to you all
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse,
+     and later at the Hotel Royal.  There had been no permanent
+     improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.
+     Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still
+     unfinished.
+
+     Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to
+     keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his
+     years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could.  We may
+     believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who
+     found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.
+
+
+                        To Mr. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable.  It came this
+morning.  This is the first time since the business began that I have had
+a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really
+enlightening and satisfactory.  Keep it up.  Don't let it fall into
+desuetude.
+
+Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that I feel
+a great let-up from depression.  The rewards of your long and patient
+industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port, presently,
+seems assured.
+
+By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in!
+
+My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to
+250 Americans.  But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was a
+sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and
+hadn't a gray hair in it.  And now that my arm is better, I have stolen a
+couple of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have been
+lying a long time.
+
+I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday--registered.  Lookout for
+it.
+
+I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the "Jungfrau") next
+Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have
+arrived.
+
+I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied
+Berlin sufficiently.
+
+Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's
+Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+       Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter:
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--This is my birthday and your letter this morning was a
+happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table.  I thought of
+going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came, but
+concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer.
+                                   Sincerely yours
+                                             O. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     "The German Chicago" was the last of the six McClure letters and was
+     finished that winter in Berlin.  It is now included in the Uniform
+     Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive
+     articles of the German capital ever written.  He made no use of the
+     Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form.
+     They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant
+     publication.  A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December,
+     we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract
+     comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports.
+
+
+                 Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and are
+written on rather stiff pale green paper.  If you will have those type-
+writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per mail, not
+two.) I'll see if I can use them.
+
+But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything
+are very slender--I seem to be disabled for life.
+
+Drop McClure a line and tell him the same.  I can't dare to make an
+engagement now for even a single letter.
+
+I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study.
+I shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to
+hold my nose down to the grind-stone much longer.
+
+I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 3o days--then the annual statement
+will arrive and I shall know how we feel!  Merry Xmas to you from us all.
+
+                         Sincerely,
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German
+tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say
+about the past year's business got knocked out of me.  After writing this
+present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and
+overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them
+with the splendid Oct.-Nov.  business, and went to bed feeling refreshed
+and fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year.  Now rush me along
+the Annual Report and let's see how we feel!
+                                                  S. L. C.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE.  IN BERLIN, MENTONE,
+BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE
+
+Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the
+center of every great gathering.  He was entertained by the Kaiser, and
+shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank.  His books were
+as well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and
+embassies he was always a chief center of interest.
+
+He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on
+him.  Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he
+contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and
+a few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia.  It was not a
+severe attack, but it was long continued.  He could write some letters
+and even work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many
+weeks, a condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever
+enjoyed the loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more than
+Mark Twain.  In a memorandum of that time he wrote: "I am having a
+booming time all to myself."
+
+Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the
+publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits.
+He wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most part
+are purely of a business nature and of little interest to the general
+reader.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                        HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Daly wants to get the stage rights of the "American
+Claimant."  The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the
+same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years.  That
+play cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought
+me any.  I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give me
+back his rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and utilize
+this chance to even myself up.  Burbank is a lovely fellow, and if he
+objects I can't urge him.  But you run in at the Lotos and see him; and
+if he relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the
+business with Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under
+your supervision if you prefer.
+
+This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot.
+
+I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to
+start by the end of this month.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+
+     It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so
+     long to place their "Sellers" Play, that now, when the story
+     appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth
+     dramatizing.  Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem
+     that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was
+     going the rounds.  But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in
+     the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers.  The
+     matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should
+     have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in
+     it seems interesting.
+
+     Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as
+     soon as he was able to travel.  This was not until the first of
+     March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the
+     children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France.
+
+
+                       To Susy Clemens, in Berlin:
+
+                                             MENTONE, Mch 22, '92.
+SUSY DEAR,--I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your
+pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and
+another--clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression,
+photographic ability in setting forth an incident--style--good style--no
+barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman
+scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait and
+straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or short
+--and so ought I, but I don't.
+
+Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan
+comes back mended.
+
+We couldn't go to Nice to-day--had to give it up, on various accounts--
+and this was the last chance.  I am sorry for Mamma--I wish she could
+have gone.  She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty stiff
+and lame this morning, but is working it off trunk packing.
+
+Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking--and to get the
+pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she
+didn't take the plug out, as a rule.  When she did, she took nine
+pictures on top of each other--composites.
+                              With lots of love.
+                                                  PAPA.
+
+
+     In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence,
+     where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage
+     a villa for the next winter.  Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they
+     discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace
+     beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a
+     wonderful view of the ancient city.  Clemens felt that he could work
+     there, and time proved that he was right.
+
+     For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at
+     Bad-Nauheim.  Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to
+     give some personal attention to business matters.  For one thing,
+     his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to
+     be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been
+     persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter.
+     It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would
+     make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                        BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92.
+                                                       Saturday.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I am
+leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the "Havel."
+
+If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away
+from the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other
+lodgings where they can't find me.
+
+But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself
+somewhere till I can come to the office.
+
+Yours sincerely
+                         S. L. C.
+
+
+     Nothing of importance happened in America.  The new Paige company
+     had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty
+     machines as a beginning.  They claimed to have capital, or to be
+     able to command it, and as the main control had passed from
+     Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and
+     hope for the best.  As for the business, about all that he could do
+     was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional
+     capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would
+     concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way
+     of new enterprise.  Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down
+     to literature.  This was the middle of July, and he must have worked
+     pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to
+     offer.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       Aug. 10, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALT,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I
+saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling it
+through the lips of Huck Finn.  So I have started Huck Finn and Tom
+Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around
+the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after
+the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then
+nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe
+circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the
+same time apparently unintentional) way.  I have written 12,000 words of
+this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures
+and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to
+100,000 words.
+
+It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy
+between 8 years and 80.
+
+When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,
+wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000
+words long.  I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my
+mind, then.
+
+I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so
+that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any
+man who has ever been a boy.  That immensely enlarges the audience.
+
+Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it is
+proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate.  I
+don't swear it, but I think so.
+
+Proposed title of the story, "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     The "novel" mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,
+     a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later.  It was
+     a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then
+     Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself
+     out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.
+     Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was
+     completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.
+
+     The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.
+     The next letter records a pleasant incident.  The Prince of Wales of
+     that day later became King Edward VII.
+
+
+             To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:
+
+                                   Private.  BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.
+DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--("Private" because no newspaper-man or other
+gossip must get hold of it)
+
+Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer
+here will cure her.
+
+The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with
+them.  Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort,
+Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in
+the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and
+he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually
+comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick to see the
+obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and
+catching.  Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day
+after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will
+smash the talk and spoil everything.
+
+We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if
+this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler.  I take Clara to
+Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added.  Thus
+far, Jean is our only glib French scholar.
+
+We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.
+
+                                   SAM
+
+
+     Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.
+     In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with
+     them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.
+     Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means
+     recovered her health.  We get a general report of conditions from
+     the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,
+     where the party rested for several days.  The "Phelps" mentioned in
+     this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to
+     Germany.  The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated
+     in Berlin.  "Mason" was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,
+     and in later years at Paris.  "Charlie and Ida " were Charles and
+     Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.
+
+
+                    To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N.  Y.:
+
+                                             LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.
+DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone off
+without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me!  I found it out
+yesterday.  Livy advised me to write you about it.
+
+I have been driving this pen hard.  I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called
+"Tom Sawyer Abroad," then took up the "Twins" again, destroyed the last
+half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to
+continue it and finish it in Florence.  "Tom Sawyer" seems rather pale to
+the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it
+after they got used to it
+
+We remained in Nauheim a little too long.  If we had left there four or
+five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time
+we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be
+erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches.  We
+lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring.  We started Thursday and made
+Bale.  Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired
+every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour.  It took
+us 3 � hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20.  We reached
+here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.  The rest
+has made the headaches better.  We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow
+if possible.  Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make
+Bologna, 5 hours.  Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V.  Next year we will
+walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again.  I've got
+seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express
+them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late.  All
+continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should
+travel a mile except in the company of the owner.  (All over Europe
+people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get
+it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day.  It is very
+amusing--uncommonly so.  There seemed grave doubts about our being able
+to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very
+handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all
+Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does.
+
+The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his
+hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it.  She was merely
+allowed a glimpse, no more.  Of course, Phelps said she was merely
+pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.
+
+The children are all right.  They paddle around a little, and drive-so do
+we all.  Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists.  The Fleulen boat
+went out crowded yesterday morning.
+
+The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its
+correspondents with cholera.  A man said yesterday he wished to God they
+would inoculate all of them.  Yes, the interest is quite general and
+strong, and much hope is felt.
+
+Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves
+to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up.  Which I do
+--and shut up.
+                              S. L. C.
+
+
+     They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find
+     Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.
+     Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.
+     Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be
+     out of place.  Of the villa he wrote: "It is a plain, square
+     building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green
+     window-shutters.  It stands in a commanding position on the
+     artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around
+     with masonry.  From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the
+     estate slant away toward the valley....  Roses overflow the
+     retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the gate-
+     post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the drop-
+     curtains in the theaters.  The house is a very fortress for
+     strength."
+
+     The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
+     Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters.  The Ross castle
+     was but a little distance away.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+
+                                   VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
+                                                  Sept.  30, 1892
+DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a
+beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep
+leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and
+occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
+black sky about Galileo's Tower.  It is a charming panorama, and the most
+conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
+looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this
+hillock five and six hundred years ago.
+
+The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
+cheery and cheerful presence in the house.  The butler is equipped with a
+little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but it
+won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian
+tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand
+only that.  It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and
+the others will master it.  Livy's German Nauheim girl is the worst off
+of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help.
+
+With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
+not unhomelike.  At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy
+had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle.  This sounds kind
+of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or
+pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress.
+There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a
+conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.
+
+Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are
+excellent.  She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains
+washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put
+together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain
+stove in the vast central hall.  She is a wonderful woman, and we don't
+quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.
+
+Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house.
+
+Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and
+the best is yet to come.  There is going to be absolute seclusion here--
+a hermit life, in fact.  We (the rest of us) shall run over to the Ross's
+frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy--that is
+all.  Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on his house
+has been stopped and his servants discharged.  Therefore we shall merely
+go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate in Florence
+until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it.
+
+This present house is modern.  It is not much more than two centuries
+old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity.
+The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large
+ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past.
+One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see.  Another
+is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons in
+Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales.  Another is dated 1463--
+he could have met Columbus.....
+
+Evening.  The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in
+floods.  For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such
+a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe
+tumbles together in wreck and ruin.  I have never seen anything more
+spectacular and impressive.
+
+One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway.  Jean prefers it to all
+Europe, save Venice.  Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,
+now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she
+learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.
+
+I am the head French duffer of the family.  Most of the talk goes over my
+head at the table.  I catch only words, not phrases.  When Italian comes
+to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.
+
+This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, "Man hat
+mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe"--unconsciously dropping
+in a couple of Italian words, you see.  So she is going to join the
+polyglots, too, it appears.  They say it is good entertainment to hear
+her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out
+and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along.  Five
+languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked
+of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to
+have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood.
+
+What we lack is a cat.  If we only had Germania!  That was the most
+satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet.  Totally ungermanic in the
+raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the
+spontaneity of his movements.  We shall not look upon his like again....
+
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens got well settled down to work presently.  He found the
+     situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary
+     production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at
+     any other time since his arrival in Europe.  From letters to Mrs.
+     Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his
+     satisfaction.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+
+                                                  VILLA VIVIANI
+                              SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.  Oct. 22, '92.
+DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted.  The open fires have driven away the
+cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place.  Livy and
+the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of
+times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the
+sunset for company.  I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun
+gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to
+wonder and exclaim.  There is always some new miracle in the view, a new
+and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15
+minutes between dawn and night.  Once early in the morning, a multitude
+of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far
+hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick
+with them, clear to the summit.
+
+The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not
+to be believed by any who has not seen it.  No view that I am acquainted
+with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm,
+exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change.  It
+keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time.  Sometimes Florence
+ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes
+and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a
+puff of his breath.
+
+Livy is progressing admirably.  This is just the place for her.
+
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  Dec.  12, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.
+
+I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club
+Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives
+too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of
+ours until the Author book had had its run.  That is for him to decide--
+and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision.  I, for my part,
+prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain as a
+title, but above my judgment I prefer yours.  I mean this--it is not
+taffy.
+
+I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the
+Californian's Story.  Tell him this is because I am going to use that in
+the book I am now writing.
+
+I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or
+80,000 words--haven't counted.
+
+The last third of it suits me to a dot.  I begin, to-day, to entirely
+recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor
+characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the
+Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.
+
+The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
+story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson."
+
+Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!
+
+                                                  S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS.  CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
+BUSINESS TROUBLES.  "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON."  "JOAN OF ARC."
+AT THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK
+
+The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
+his troubles.  He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
+Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager.  The business
+had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
+publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the
+typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
+commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
+volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
+had undertaken to place in a million American homes.  There was plenty of
+sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
+payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and the
+liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
+considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a
+tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense.  A sale of
+twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital
+could be raised from some other source to make and market those books
+through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant
+bankruptcy in reality.  It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to
+keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters.  It was
+also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself,
+and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were
+pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a
+little higher upon the horizon.  If Hall had not been young and an
+optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the
+game.  As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and
+stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would
+happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from
+the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until the
+L. A. L.  tide should turn and float it into safety.
+
+Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him.  He never found fault with
+him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value.  He
+lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed
+for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to
+put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared.
+
+The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined.  The letters to Hall of
+that year are frequent and carry along the story.  To any who had formed
+the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they
+will perhaps be a revelation.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply
+distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with
+you about something.  But most surely that cannot be.  I tell her that
+although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other
+people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you.  I can't
+believe I have done anything so ungrateful.  If I have, pile coals of
+fire on my head, for I deserve it!
+
+I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance?  Do you have to
+deposit the whole amount it calls for?  If that is so, it is an
+encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak.
+I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought
+you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I
+drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for
+you.
+
+I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my
+monthly check pass over a couple of months.  I could have stood that by
+drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would
+have done it cheerfully.
+
+I will write Whitmore to send you the "Century" check for $1,000, and you
+can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I
+think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need
+that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the
+Company's note for a year.  If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr.
+Halsey and let him invest it for me.
+
+I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me if
+I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per cent I
+pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent?  Now don't laugh if
+that is stupid.
+
+Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L.
+for $200,000.  I judged he would.  I hoped he would offer $100,000, but
+he didn't.  If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we
+can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise
+$100,000.  I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.
+
+I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour
+ago, and I believe I am all right again.
+
+How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York
+last summer!  I would have tried my best to raise it.  It would make us
+able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L.  per month, but not any more, I
+guess.
+
+You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the
+money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.
+                              Sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+"Whitmore," in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's
+financial agent.  The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom
+Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas.  Mr. Halsey was a
+down-town broker.
+
+Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had
+conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it
+for enough cash to finance its manufacture.
+
+We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest
+for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars.  But in the next
+letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you think
+of it.  We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a
+valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and
+well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a
+money-breeding species.  Now then I think that the association with us of
+some one of great name and with capital would give our business a
+prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong.
+
+As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all,
+the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying
+venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a
+business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been
+great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man.  It
+is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners.
+Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in
+the several lines I speak of.  Do you know him?  You do by correspondence
+or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so that
+it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of
+mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to
+interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable
+suggestions from him.  I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't
+use it if you don't need to.
+                                   Yours S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec.  $1,000 and the
+Jan. $500--and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no hiatus.
+
+I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover
+the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of it.
+
+Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my
+intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000
+ourselves.  I mean, wait for nothing.  To make my suggestion available I
+should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can
+mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us.
+
+My book is type-written and ready for print--"Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale."
+(Or, "Those Extraordinary Twins," if preferable.)
+
+It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn.  But I don't know what
+to do with it.  Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am. Pub.
+Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription
+machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as
+money-profit goes.  I am in a quandary.  Give me a lift out of it.
+
+I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is
+good or if it is bad.  I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant
+bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am
+destitute of it.
+
+I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done and
+will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were gotten
+up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high enough
+price maybe the L. A. L.  canvassers would take it and run it with that
+book.  Would they?  It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10,
+according to how it was gotten up, I suppose.
+
+I don't want it to go into a magazine.
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+I am having several short things type-"writered."  I will send them to
+you presently.  I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that I
+have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good
+rates.  I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be
+only superstition.  What do you think?
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     "The companion to The Prince and the Pauper," mentioned in this
+     letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of
+     Mark Twain's literary productions.  His interest in Joan had been
+     first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had
+     found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story
+     of her life.  That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,
+     insulted and mistreated by ruffians.  It had aroused all the
+     sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had
+     awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.
+
+     His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until
+     in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story.  As far back
+     as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had
+     begun to make the notes.  One thing and another had interfered, and
+     he had found no opportunity for such a story.  Now, however, in
+     Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking
+     across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the
+     Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of
+     France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, "The noble child,
+     the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have
+     produced."  His surroundings and background would seem to have been
+     perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have
+     completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six
+     weeks.
+
+     Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing
+     seems to have come of the idea.  Once, at a later time, Mask Twain
+     himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that
+     it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket,
+     meaning into iron.  But Carnegie answered, "That's a mistake; put
+     all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket."
+
+     It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was
+     demanded in America.  He must see if anything could be realized from
+     the type-setter or L. A. L.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       March 13, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the Kaiser
+Wilhelm II.
+
+I send herewith 2 magazine articles.
+
+The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words.
+
+The "Diary" contains 3,800 words.
+
+Each would make about 4 pages of the Century.
+
+The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't.
+
+If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for
+both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead of
+breaking into your treasury.
+
+If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the Century,
+without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I will call
+and abuse them when I come.
+
+I signed and mailed the notes yesterday.
+                                        Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to
+     Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair
+     and be laid up with a severe cold.  The machine situation had not
+     progressed.  The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything
+     to a standstill.  The New York bank would advance Webster & Co. no
+     more money.  So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was
+     everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid
+     unrealities.  A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this:
+
+     "I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi
+     and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker
+     City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at
+     Florence--and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real
+     that I almost believe it is real.  I wonder if it is?  But there is
+     no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the
+     dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit.  I wish I knew
+     whether it is a dream or real."
+
+     He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New
+     York, but he had little time for visiting.  On May 13th he sailed
+     again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  On the night before
+     sailing he sent Howells a good-by word.
+
+
+                   To W. D. Howells, in New York City:
+
+                              MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893.
+                                                            Midnight.
+DEAR HOWELLS--I am so sorry I missed you.
+
+I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you
+ever so much for it.
+
+I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I
+wasn't going to have a chance to see him at all.  I forgot to tell you
+how thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office, and
+how true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its details.
+But Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me, and I am
+glad, for I wanted to speak of it.
+
+You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought a
+couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me
+two bottles of whisky and a box of cigars--I go to sea nobly equipped.
+
+Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours--and upon you all I
+leave my benediction.
+                              MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to
+     Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families.
+     There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in
+     the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary
+     of Agriculture.
+
+
+            To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.:
+           Editorial Department Century Magazine, Union Square,
+
+                                             NEW YORK, April 6, 1893.
+TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,--Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark Twain,
+a poor farmer of Connecticut--indeed, the poorest one there, in the
+opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize), and in
+return will zealously support the Administration in all ways honorable
+and otherwise.
+
+To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an English
+lady.  She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a great
+garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had the right
+ammunition.  I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise, both on
+patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which I got
+made from a wax impression.  It is not very good soil, still I think she
+can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select the table.
+If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and Gilder thinks you
+are,) please find the signature and address of your petitioner below.
+
+Respectfully and truly yours.
+                              MARK TWAIN,
+
+67 Fifth Avenue, New York.
+
+P. S.--A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would pleasantly
+add to that lady's employments and give my table a corresponding lift.
+
+
+     His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time
+     he had returned to Florence.  He was not hopeless yet, but he was
+     clearly a good deal disheartened--anxious for freedom.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  FLORENCE May 30, '93
+DEAR MR. HALL,--You were to cable me if you sold any machine royalties--
+so I judge you have not succeeded.
+
+This has depressed me.  I have been looking over the past year's letters
+and statements and am depressed still more.
+
+I am terribly tired of business.  I am by nature and disposition unfitted
+for it and I want to get out of it.  I am standing on the Mount Morris
+volcano with help from the machine a long way off--doubtless a long way
+further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines.
+
+Now here is my idea for getting out.
+
+The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me--I do not know quite how much, but it
+is about $170,000 or $175,000, 1 suppose (I make this guess from the
+documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.)
+
+The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover the
+entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over.  Is that it?  In addition we
+have the L. A. L.  plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000--is
+that correct?
+
+That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above indebtedness,
+I suppose--or, by one of your estimates, $300,000?  The greater part of
+the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent.  The rest (the old
+$70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest.
+
+Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those
+debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm?  (The firm of course taking
+the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me
+clear of all responsibility.)
+
+I don't want much money.  I only want first class notes--$200,000 worth
+of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;--yearly notes, renewable annually
+for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at the beginning and
+middle of each year.  After that, the notes renewable annually and
+(perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable semi-annually.
+
+Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above
+scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not
+able to learn a single detail of it.
+
+Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash
+capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity.  Then your one-third
+would be a fortune--and I hope to see that day!
+
+I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any
+royalties.  But if you can't make this deal don't make any.  Wait a
+little and see if you can't make the deal.  Do make the deal if you
+possibly can.  And if any presence shall be necessary in order to
+complete it I will come over, though I hope it can be done without that.
+
+Get me out of business!
+
+And I will be yours forever gratefully,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for
+thirty or forty thousand dollars.  Is that it?
+
+P. S. S.  The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a
+10 percent royalty.                 S. L. C.
+
+
+                  To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                              VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE)
+                                                       June 9, '93.
+DEAR JOE,--The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in
+tolerable condition--nothing left but weakness, cough all gone.
+
+Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet
+Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading
+his account of the adventures of his youth in the far East.  In a
+footnote he has something to say about a sailor which I thought might
+interest you--viz:
+
+"This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia
+for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The
+windy and watery elements raged.  Tears and prayers was had recourse to,
+but was of no manner of use.  So we hauled up the anchor and got round
+the point.'"
+
+There--it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day.
+
+               With love,
+                         MARK.
+
+
+     They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month
+     arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the
+     German baths.  The next letter is written by her and shows her deep
+     sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle.  There have been few
+     more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's
+     wife.
+
+
+               From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  June 27th 1893
+                                                  MUNICH.
+DEAR MR. HALL,-- Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just reached
+here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you just a
+line in answer to it.
+
+Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter
+should reach you or he would not have sent it just then.  I hope you will
+not worry any more than you can help.  Do not let our interests weigh on
+you too heavily.  We both know you will, as you always have, look in
+every way to the best interests of all.
+
+I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of
+business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much.
+
+But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the very
+farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your
+interests in order to save his own.
+
+I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would
+simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be
+released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not
+endanger your interest or the safety of the business.
+
+I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens'
+should have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible
+pressure.  I hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy.  He would
+not have written you about the money if he had known that it was an
+inconvenience for you to send it.  He thought the book-keeper whose duty
+it is to forward it had forgotten.
+
+We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are a
+little easier with you.  As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say "do not
+send us any more money at present" if we were not afraid to do so.  I
+will say, however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are not
+able to send the usual amount.
+
+Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in
+any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you.
+
+I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some
+helpful light on the situation.
+
+Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit
+of your long and hard labor.
+               Believe me
+                    Very Cordially yours
+                              OLIVIA L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business.  He
+realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the
+public, if his distinguished partner should retire.  He wrote, therefore,
+proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set
+that was swamping them.  It was a good plan--if it would work--and we
+find Clemens entering into it heartily.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             MUNICH, July 3, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted
+dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L.
+
+I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible,
+whereas the other is perhaps not.
+
+The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free--and not only free but has
+large money owing to it.  A proposition to sell that by itself to a big
+house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we
+cannot spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge
+scale necessary to make it an opulent success.
+
+It will be selling a good thing--for somebody; and it will be getting rid
+of a load which we are clearly not able to carry.  Whoever buys will have
+a noble good opening--a complete equipment, a well organized business,
+a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not experimental but
+under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per cent a year on every
+dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it--I mean in making and
+selling the books.
+
+I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the over-supply
+which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so troubled,
+myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper and deeper
+in debt and the L. A. L.  getting to be a heavier and heavier burden all
+the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief.
+
+It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you--for that I
+am not going to do.  But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it will put
+you in better shape.
+               Sincerely Yours
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  July 8, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L.  I am
+glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will be
+out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again.  With
+nothing but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value
+for us, rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it.
+
+I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many
+agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property.
+
+We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for
+some country resort in a few days now.
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+                                                            July 8
+P. S.  No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment
+before discharging your L. A. L.  agents--in fact I didn't mean that.
+I judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once,
+since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us.  It is they who
+have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt.
+
+I feel panicky.
+
+I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than
+later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  No monthly report for many months.
+
+
+     Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall
+     it as a black financial season.  Banks were denying credit,
+     businesses were forced to the wall.  It was a poor time to float any
+     costly enterprise.  The Chicago company who was trying to build the
+     machines made little progress.  The book business everywhere was
+     bad.  In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote
+     Hall:
+
+     "It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the
+     machine is finished.  We are afraid you are having miserable days
+     and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but
+     it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say
+     or do."
+
+     He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben
+     Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: "It is my ingenious
+     scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more
+     year--and after that--well, goodness knows!  I have never felt so
+     desperate in my life--and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to
+     my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep
+     us two months."
+
+     It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project
+     an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning
+     success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions
+     and the steps necessary to achievement.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       July 26, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,-- ..... I hope the machine will be finished this month;
+but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other
+machine after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like a
+house-afire.
+
+I wonder what they call "finished."  After it is absolutely perfect it
+can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running
+night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge.
+
+I may be able to run over about mid-October.  Then if I find you relieved
+of L. A. L.  we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely
+unique sort.  Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it.  Arthur could
+do all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval.
+
+The first number should pay--and all subsequent ones --25 cents a number.
+Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000.  Give most of them away,
+sell the rest.  Advertising and other expenses--cost unknown.  Send one
+to all newspapers--it would get a notice--favorable, too.
+
+But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way.  With our
+hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum.
+
+Where is the Shelley article?  If you have it on hand, keep it and I will
+presently tell you what to do with it.
+
+Don't forget to tell me.
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+
+     The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the "Defense of
+     Harriet Sheller," one of the very best of his essays.  How he could
+     have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction
+     passes comprehension.  Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised,
+     indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  July 30, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--This time "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a success!  Even Mrs.
+Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without
+reserves or qualifications.  Formerly she would not consent that it be
+published either before or after my death.  I have pulled the twins apart
+and made two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they are
+mere flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has
+disappeared from the book.  Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving
+not a trace behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have almost
+disappeared--they scarcely walk across the stage.  The whole story is
+centered on the murder and the trial; from the first chapter the movement
+is straight ahead without divergence or side-play to the murder and the
+trial; everything that is done or said or that happens is a preparation
+for those events.  Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from beginning to
+end, and only 3--Pudd'nhead, "Tom" Driscoll, and his nigger mother,
+Roxana; none of the others are important, or get in the way of the story
+or require the reader's attention.  Consequently, the scenes and episodes
+which were the strength of the book formerly are stronger than ever, now.
+
+When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words,
+now it contains only 58,000.  I have knocked out everything that delayed
+the march of the story--even the description of a Mississippi steamboat.
+There's no weather in, and no scenery--the story is stripped for flight!
+
+Now, then what is she worth?  The amount of matter is but 3,000 words
+short of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500.
+There was nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one
+is virgin ground--absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting
+to everybody.
+
+I don't want any more syndicating--nothing short of $20,000, anyway, and
+that I can't get--but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan will stand?
+
+Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the
+poor-house.
+
+This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just
+received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring.  Everything does look
+so blue, so dismally blue!
+
+By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not now-
+we are going to be moving around too much.  I have torn up some of it,
+but still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that I
+like.  I may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know I
+can write it to suit me.
+
+Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a
+friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools.
+I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his
+childish and ignorant impressions and opinions for him.
+
+Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days.  When you get it cable
+
+                    Mark Twain
+                         Care Brownship, London
+                                        Received.
+
+I mean to ship "Pudd'nhead Wilson" to you-say, tomorrow.  It'll furnish
+me hash for awhile I reckon.  I am almost sorry it is finished; it was
+good entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things.
+
+We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans
+again.  I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end
+of September, then go to Paris and take a rest.
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is deeply
+distressed.  She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have
+reproached you.  She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship
+afloat in this storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from
+what she learns of the American business-situation from her home letters
+you have accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot
+bear to have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and
+the heartiest appreciation--and not the shadow of a reproach will she
+allow.
+
+I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing.  And
+I said I would break open my letter and say so.
+
+Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or
+two--so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power.
+All right--I'm willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would
+send along his little yearly contribution.  I dropped him a line about
+another matter a week ago--asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for
+me--you see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up
+time--but doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I
+don't hear from him and don't get any Daily News either.
+
+
+To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             Aug.  6, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very sorry--it was thoughtless in me.  Let the
+reports go.  Send me once a month two items, and two only:
+
+Cash liabilities--(so much)
+Cash assets--(so much)
+
+I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that
+will be sufficient.
+
+Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
+anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have
+been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do that--
+but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly.  I have
+been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a thing
+that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his resources
+melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure daylight beyond.
+The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and will still offer
+nothing much better for a long time to come; for when Davis's "three
+weeks" is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I guess.  That is
+unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest one on
+prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has ever seen the
+light.  Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with any
+considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down to
+actual work in a printing office.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:
+
+     "Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me!  I never knew the
+     almanac to drag so.  At least since I was finishing that other
+     machine.
+
+     "I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
+     cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week
+     certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old
+     familiar tune I used to hear so much.  Ward don't know what sick-
+     heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out."
+
+     Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.
+     We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and
+     smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out.  It was not the
+     kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;
+     not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       Aug. 14, '93
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to
+see any daylight ahead.  To me none is visible.  I strongly advise that
+every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts.  I may be
+in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course
+open.  We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders--none to the
+Clemenses.  In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and
+copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up
+and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present
+condition of things.
+
+What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties.  If they come into
+danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save
+them, for if they go I am a beggar.
+
+I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and help
+them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors.  I may be
+able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so.
+
+We can never resurrect the L. A. L.  I would not spend any more money on
+that book.  You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a
+preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that,
+I think.  It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that.
+                    Yours Sincerely
+                              S. L. C.
+
+Aug.  16.  I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any
+very definite place.  Of course you will not have an instant's safety
+until the bank debts are paid.  There is nothing to be thought of but to
+hand over every penny as fast as it comes in--and that will be slow
+enough!  Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets
+and--
+
+I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and settled.
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Two weeks following this letter he could endure the suspense no
+     longer, and on August 29th sailed once more for America.  In New
+     York, Clemens settled down at the Players Club, where he could live
+     cheaply, and undertook some literary work while he was casting about
+     for ways and means to relieve the financial situation.  Nothing
+     promising occurred, until one night at the Murray Hill Hotel he was
+     introduced by Dr. Clarence C. Rice to Henry H. Rogers, of the
+     Standard Oil group of financiers.  Rogers had a keen sense of humor
+     and had always been a great admirer of Mark Twain's work.  It was a
+     mirthful evening, and certainly an eventful one in Mark Twain's
+     life.  A day or two later Doctor Rice asked the millionaire to
+     interest himself a little in Clemens's business affairs, which he
+     thought a good deal confused.  Just what happened is not remembered
+     now, but from the date of the next letter we realize that a
+     discussion of the matter by Clemens and Rogers must have followed
+     pretty promptly.
+
+
+                       To Mrs. Clemens, in Europe:
+
+                                                  Oct. 18, '93.
+DEAR, DEAR SWEETHEART,--I don't seem to get even half a chance to write
+you, these last two days, and yet there's lots to say.
+
+Apparently everything is at last settled as to the giveaway of L. A. L.,
+and the papers will be signed and the transfer made to-morrow morning.
+
+Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil
+group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the
+type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching
+into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, "I find the
+machine to be all you represented it--I have here exhaustive reports from
+my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its immense
+value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its inventor's
+character.  I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co. are both
+stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and
+in a hopeless boggle."
+
+Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: "If I can arrange
+with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks to find out--
+I will see to it that they get the money they need.  Then the thing will
+move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste paper.  I will
+post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds.  In the meantime, you
+stop walking the floor.  Go off to the country and try to be gay.  You
+may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you my
+scheme has failed."  And he added: "Keep me posted always as to where you
+are--for if I need you and can use you--I want to know where to put my
+hand on you."
+
+If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely talking
+remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my royalties up.
+
+With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all,
+                                                       SAML.
+
+
+With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders
+of H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward the
+stars.  He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and
+found pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed
+mainly mockery.  We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to
+John Mackay's, and elsewhere.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       Dec. 2, '93.
+LIVY DARLING,--Last night at John Mackay's the dinner consisted of soup,
+raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, and something like a custard.
+I ate without fear or stint, and yet have escaped all suggestion of
+indigestion.  The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew
+when I and they were young and not gray.  The talk was of the days when
+we went gypsying a long time ago--thirty years.  Indeed it was a talk of
+the dead.  Mainly that.  And of how they looked, and the harum-scarum
+things they did and said.  For there were no cares in that life, no aches
+and pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the
+night) to work off one's surplus vigor and energy.  Of the mid-night
+highway robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the
+windswept and desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the
+victim.  All the friendly robbers are gone.  These old fools last night
+laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime.
+
+John Mackay has no family here but a pet monkey--a most affectionate and
+winning little devil.  But he makes trouble for the servants, for he is
+full of curiosity and likes to take everything out of the drawers and
+examine it minutely; and he puts nothing back.  The examinations of
+yesterday count for nothing to-day--he makes a new examination every day.
+But he injures nothing.
+
+I went with Laffan to the Racquet Club the other night and played,
+billiards two hours without starting up any rheumatism.  I suppose it was
+all really taken out of me in Berlin.
+
+Richard Harding Davis spoke yesterday of Clara's impersonations at Mrs.
+Van Rensselaer's here and said they were a wonderful piece of work.
+
+Livy dear, I do hope you are comfortable, as to quarters and food at the
+Hotel Brighton.  But if you're not don't stay there.  Make one more
+effort--don't give it up.  Dear heart, this is from one who loves you--
+which is Saml.
+
+
+     It was decided that Rogers and Clemens should make a trip to Chicago
+     to investigate personally the type-setter situation there.  Clemens
+     reports the details of the excursion to Mrs. Clemens in a long
+     subdivided letter, most of which has no general interest and is here
+     omitted.  The trip, as a whole, would seem to have been
+     satisfactory.  The personal portions of the long Christmas letter
+     may properly be preserved.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             THE PLAYERS, Xmas, 1893.
+                                  No. 1.
+Merry Xmas, my darling, and all my darlings!  I arrived from Chicago
+close upon midnight last night, and wrote and sent down my Christmas
+cablegram before undressing: "Merry Xmas!  Promising progress made in
+Chicago."  It would get to the telegraph office toward 8 this morning and
+reach you at luncheon.
+
+I was vaguely hoping, all the past week, that my Xmas cablegram would be
+definite, and make you all jump with jubilation; but the thought always
+intruded itself, "You are not going out there to negotiate with a man,
+but with a louse.  This makes results uncertain."
+
+I was asleep as Christmas struck upon the clock at mid night, and didn't
+wake again till two hours ago.  It is now half past 10 Xmas morning; I
+have had my coffee and bread, and shan't get out of bed till it is time
+to dress for Mrs. Laflan's Christmas dinner this evening--where I shall
+meet Bram Stoker and must make sure about that photo with Irving's
+autograph.  I will get the picture and he will attend to the rest.  In
+order to remember and not forget--well, I will go there with my dress
+coat wrong side out; it will cause remark and then I shall remember.
+
+
+                               No. 2 and 3.
+I tell you it was interesting!  The Chicago campaign, I mean.  On the way
+out Mr. Rogers would plan out the campaign while I walked the floor and
+smoked and assented.  Then he would close it up with a snap and drop it
+and we would totally change the subject and take up the scenery, etc.
+
+(Here follows the long detailed report of the Chicago conference, of
+interest only to the parties directly concerned.)
+
+
+                                  No. 4.
+We had nice tripe, going and coming.  Mr. Rogers had telegraphed the
+Pennsylvania Railroad for a couple of sections for us in the fast train
+leaving at 2 p. m.  the 22nd.  The Vice President telegraphed back that
+every berth was engaged (which was not true--it goes without saying) but
+that he was sending his own car for us.  It was mighty nice and
+comfortable.  In its parlor it had two sofas, which could become beds at
+night.  It had four comfortably-cushioned cane arm-chairs.  It had a very
+nice bedroom with a wide bed in it; which I said I would take because I
+believed I was a little wider than Mr. Rogers--which turned out to be
+true; so I took it.  It had a darling back-porch--railed, roofed and
+roomy; and there we sat, most of the time, and viewed the scenery and
+talked, for the weather was May weather, and the soft dream-pictures of
+hill and river and mountain and sky were clear and away beyond anything I
+have ever seen for exquisiteness and daintiness.
+
+The colored waiter knew his business, and the colored cook was a finished
+artist.  Breakfasts: coffee with real cream; beefsteaks, sausage, bacon,
+chops, eggs in various ways, potatoes in various--yes, and quite
+wonderful baked potatoes, and hot as fire.  Dinners--all manner of
+things, including canvas-back duck, apollinaris, claret, champagne, etc.
+
+We sat up chatting till midnight, going and coming; seldom read a line,
+day or night, though we were well fixed with magazines, etc.; then I
+finished off with a hot Scotch and we went to bed and slept till 9.30a.m.
+I honestly tried to pay my share of hotel bills, fees, etc., but I was
+not allowed--and I knew the reason why, and respected the motive.  I will
+explain when I see you, and then you will understand.
+
+We were 25 hours going to Chicago; we were there 24 hours; we were 30
+hours returning.  Brisk work, but all of it enjoyable.  We insisted on
+leaving the car at Philadelphia so that our waiter and cook (to whom Mr.
+R. gave $10 apiece,) could have their Christmas-eve at home.
+
+Mr. Rogers's carriage was waiting for us in Jersey City and deposited me
+at the Players.  There--that's all.  This letter is to make up for the
+three letterless days.  I love you, dear heart, I love you all.
+                                                                 SAML.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+LETTERS 1894.  A WINTER IN NEW YORK.  BUSINESS FAILURE.
+END OF THE MACHINE
+
+The beginning of the new year found Mark Twain sailing buoyantly on a
+tide of optimism.  He believed that with H. H. Rogers as his financial
+pilot he could weather safely any storm or stress.  He could divert
+himself, or rest, or work, and consider his business affairs with
+interest and amusement, instead of with haggard anxiety.  He ran over to
+Hartford to see an amateur play; to Boston to give a charity reading; to
+Fair Haven to open the library which Mr. Rogers had established there; he
+attended gay dinners, receptions, and late studio parties, acquiring the
+name of the "Belle of New York."  In the letters that follow we get the
+echo of some of these things.  The Mrs. Rice mentioned in the next brief
+letter was the wife of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, who had introduced
+H. H.  Rogers to Mark Twain.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             Jan. 12, '94
+Livy darling, I came down from Hartford yesterday with Kipling, and he
+and Hutton and I had the small smoking compartment to ourselves and found
+him at last at his ease, and not shy.  He was very pleasant company
+indeed.  He is to be in the city a week, and I wish I could invite him to
+dinner, but it won't do.  I should be interrupted by business, of course.
+The construction of a contract that will suit Paige's lawyer (not Paige)
+turns out to be very difficult.  He is embarrassed by earlier advice to
+Paige, and hates to retire from it and stultify himself.  The
+negotiations are being conducted, by means of tedious long telegrams and
+by talks over the long-distance telephone.  We keep the wires loaded.
+
+Dear me, dinner is ready.  So Mrs. Rice says.
+
+                         With worlds of love,
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+Clemens and Oliver Wendell Holmes had met and become friends soon after
+the publication of Innocents Abroad, in 1869.  Now, twenty-five years
+later, we find a record of what without doubt was their last meeting.
+It occurred at the home of Mrs. James T. Field.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             BOSTON, Jan. 25, '94.
+Livy darling, I am caught out worse this time than ever before, in the
+matter of letters.  Tuesday morning I was smart enough to finish and mail
+my long letter to you before breakfast--for I was suspecting that I would
+not have another spare moment during the day.  It turned out just so.
+
+In a thoughtless moment I agreed to come up here and read for the poor.
+I did not reflect that it would cost me three days.  I could not get
+released.  Yesterday I had myself called at 8 and ran out to Mr. Rogers's
+house at 9, and talked business until half past 10; then caught 11
+o'clock train and arrived here at 6; was shaven and dressed by 7 and
+ready for dinner here in Mrs. Field's charming house.
+
+Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out now (he is in his 84th year,)
+but he came out this time-said he wanted to "have a time" once more with
+me.
+
+Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come and went away crying because she
+wouldn't let him.  She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett and
+sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.
+
+Well, he was just delightful!  He did as brilliant and beautiful talking
+(and listening) as ever he did in his life, I guess.  Fields and Jewett
+said he hadn't been in such splendid form in years.  He had ordered his
+carriage for 9.
+
+The coachman sent in for him at 9; but he said, "Oh, nonsense!--leave
+glories and grandeurs like these?  Tell him to go away and come in an
+hour!"
+
+At 10 he was called for again, and Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but
+he wouldn't go--and so we rattled ahead the same as ever.  Twice more
+Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--and he didn't go till half past 10
+--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days.  He was
+prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, and is having
+Pudd'nhead read to him.  I told him you and I used the Autocrat as a
+courting book and marked it all through, and that you keep it in the
+sacred green box with the love letters, and it pleased him.
+
+Good-bye, my dear darling, it is 15 minutes to dinner and I'm not dressed
+yet.  I have a reception to-night and will be out very late at that place
+and at Irving's Theatre where I have a complimentary box.  I wish you
+were all here.
+                         SAML.
+
+
+     In the next letter we meet James J. Corbett--"Gentleman Jim," as he
+     was sometimes called--the champion pugilist of that day.
+
+     The Howells incident so amusingly dramatized will perhaps be more
+     appreciated if the reader remembers that Mark Twain himself had at
+     intervals been a mind-healing enthusiast.  Indeed, in spite of his
+     strictures on Mrs. Eddy, his interest in the subject of mind-cure
+     continued to the end of his life.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                  Sunday, 9.30 a. m.
+Livy dear, when we got out to the house last night, Mrs. Rogers, who is
+up and around, now, didn't want to go down stairs to dinner, but Mr. R.
+persuaded her and we had a very good time indeed.  By 8 o'clock we were
+down again and bought a fifteen-dollar box in the Madison Square Garden
+(Rogers bought it, not I,) then he went and fetched Dr. Rice while I
+(went) to the Players and picked up two artists--Reid and Simmons--and
+thus we filled 5 of the 6 seats.  There was a vast multitude of people in
+the brilliant place.  Stanford White came along presently and invited me
+to go to the World-Champion's dressing room, which I was very glad to do.
+Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being the
+most perfectly and beautifully constructed human animal in the world.
+I said:
+
+"You have whipped Mitchell, and maybe you will whip Jackson in June--but
+you are not done, then.  You will have to tackle me."
+
+He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in
+earnest:
+
+"No--I am not going to meet you in the ring.  It is not fair or right to
+require it.  You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own,
+but by a purely accidental blow; and then my reputation would be gone and
+you would have a double one.  You have got fame enough and you ought not
+to want to take mine away from me."
+
+Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank in San Francisco.
+
+There were lots of little boxing matches, to entertain the crowd: then at
+last Corbett appeared in the ring and the 8,000 people present went mad
+with enthusiasm.  My two artists went mad about his form.  They said they
+had never seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its perfection
+except Greek statues, and they didn't surpass it.
+
+Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion--oh,
+beautiful to see!--then the show was over and we struggled out through a
+perfect wash of humanity.  When we reached the street I found I had left
+my arctics in the box.  I had to have them, so Simmons said he would go
+back and get them, and I didn't dissuade him.  I couldn't see how he was
+going to make his way a single yard into that solid oncoming wave of
+people--yet he must plow through it full 50 yards.  He was back with the
+shoes in 3 minutes!
+
+How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle?  By saying:
+
+"Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes."
+
+The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, and Simmons
+walked comfortably through and back, dry shod.  Simmons (this was
+revealed to me under seal of secrecy by Reid) is the hero of "Gwen," and
+he and Gwen's author were once engaged to marry.  This is "fire-escape"
+Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: "Exit--in case of Simmons."
+
+I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to the Players for
+10.30; I was there by 10.45.  Thirty cultivated and very musical ladies
+and gentlemen present--all of them acquaintances and many of them
+personal friends of mine.  That wonderful Hungarian Band was there (they
+charge $500 for an evening.) Conversation and Band until midnight; then a
+bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me and I
+told about Dr. B. E. Martin and the etchings, and followed it with the
+Scotch-Irish Christening.  My, but the Martin is a darling story!  Next,
+the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the
+company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch
+accompanying on the piano.
+
+Just a little pause--then the Band burst out into an explosion of weird
+and tremendous dance music, a Hungarian celebrity and his wife took the
+floor--I followed; I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one by one,
+and it was Onteora over again.
+
+By half past 4 I had danced all those people down--and yet was not tired;
+merely breathless.  I was in bed at 5, and asleep in ten minutes.  Up at
+9 and presently at work on this letter to you.  I think I wrote until 2
+or half past.  Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called
+3 miles but it is short of it) arriving at 3.30, but he was out--
+to return at 5.30--(and a person was in, whom I don't particularly like)
+--so I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with the Howellses until
+6.
+
+First, Howells and I had a chat together.  I asked about Mrs. H.  He said
+she was fine, still steadily improving, and nearly back to her old best
+health.  I asked (as if I didn't know):
+
+"What do you attribute this strange miracle to?"
+
+"Mind-cure--simply mind-cure."
+
+"Lord, what a conversion!  You were a scoffer three months ago."
+
+"I?  I wasn't."
+
+"You were.  You made elaborate fun of me in this very room."
+
+"I did not, Clemens."
+
+"It's a lie, Howells, you did."
+
+I detailed to him the conversation of that time--with the stately
+argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually
+been killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when
+the mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a "regular" at last
+because the former can't procure you a burial permit.
+
+At last he gave in--he said he remembered that talk, but had now been a
+mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever
+been anything else.
+
+Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she
+used to be, so many years ago.
+
+Mrs. H. said: "People may call it what they like, but it is just
+hypnotism, and that's all it is--hypnotism pure and simple.  Mind-cure!
+--the idea!  Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any mind.  She's a
+good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and--"
+
+"Now Eleanor!"
+
+"I know what I'm talking about!--don't I go there twice a week?  And Mr.
+Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she
+snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that
+to me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and
+a superstition--oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw!  A-n-d-when she
+tilts up her nose-well, it's--it's--Well it's that kind of a nose that--"
+
+"Now Eleanor!--the woman is not responsible for her nose--" and so-on and
+so-on.  It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having this feast
+and you not there.
+
+She convinced me before she got through, that she and William James are
+right--hypnotism and mind-cure are the same thing; no difference between
+them.  Very well; the very source, the very center of hypnotism is Paris.
+Dr. Charcot's pupils and disciples are right there and ready to your hand
+without fetching poor dear old Susy across the stormy sea.  Let Mrs.
+Mackay (to whom I send my best respects, tell you whom to go to to learn
+all you need to learn and how to proceed.  Do, do it, honey.  Don't lose
+a minute .
+
+.....At 11 o'clock last night Mr. Rogers said:
+
+"I am able to feel physical fatigue--and I feel it now.  You never show
+any, either in your eyes or your movements; do you ever feel any?"
+
+I was able to say that I had forgotten what that feeling was like.  Don't
+you remember how almost impossible it was for me to tire myself at the
+Villa?  Well, it is just so in New York.  I go to bed unfatigued at 3,
+I get up fresh and fine six hours later.  I believe I have taken only one
+daylight nap since I have been here.
+
+When the anchor is down, then I shall say:
+
+"Farewell--a long farewell--to business!  I will never touch it again!"
+
+I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it, I will swim
+in ink!  Joan of Arc--but all this is premature; the anchor is not down
+yet.
+
+To-morrow (Tuesday) I will add a P. S. if I've any to add; but, whether
+or no, I must mail this to morrow, for the mail steamer goes next day.
+
+5.30 p. m.  Great Scott, this is Tuesday!  I must rush this letter into
+the mail instantly.
+
+Tell that sassy Ben I've got her welcome letter, and I'll write her as
+soon as I get a daylight chance.  I've most time at night, but I'd
+druther write daytimes.
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+     The Reid and Simmons mentioned in the foregoing were Robert Reid and
+     Edward Simmons, distinguished painter--the latter a brilliant,
+     fluent, and industrious talker.  The title; "Fire-escape Simmons,"
+     which Clemens gives him, originated when Oliver Herford, whose
+     quaint wit has so long delighted New-Yorkers, one day pinned up by
+     the back door of the Players the notice: "Exit in case of Simmons."
+     Gwen, a popular novel of that day, was written by Blanche Willis
+     Howard.
+
+     "Jamie" Dodge, in the next letter, was the son of Mrs. Mary Mapes
+     Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas.
+
+
+                       To Clara Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                   MR. ROGERS'S OFFICE, Feb.  5, '94.
+Dear Benny--I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am away
+down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for good-
+fellowship.  I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading and
+will ask them to sign them.  I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night, and if
+Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody.
+
+I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, and meantime I hope
+to get a good picture of her to sign.  She was of the breakfast company
+yesterday, but the picture of herself which she signed and gave me does
+not do her majestic beauty justice.
+
+I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have to
+live up to the name which Jamie Dodge has given me--the "Belle of New
+York"--and it just keeps me rushing.  Yesterday I had engagements to
+breakfast at noon, dine at 3, and dine again at 7.  I got away from the
+long breakfast at 2 p. m., went and excused myself from the 3 o'clock
+dinner, then lunched with Mrs. Dodge in 58th street, returned to the
+Players and dressed, dined out at 9, and was back at Mrs. Dodge's at
+10 p. m. where we had magic-lantern views of a superb sort, and a lot of
+yarns until an hour after midnight, and got to bed at 2 this morning
+--a good deal of a gain on my recent hours.  But I don't get tired; I
+sleep as sound as a dead person, and always wake up fresh and strong--
+usually at exactly 9.
+
+I was at breakfast lately where people of seven separate nationalities
+sat and the seven languages were going all the time.  At my side sat
+a charming gentleman who was a delightful and active talker, and
+interesting.  He talked glibly to those folks in all those seven
+languages and still had a language to spare!  I wanted to kill him, for
+very envy.
+
+               I greet you with love and kisses.
+                                                  PAPA.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       Feb. --.
+Livy dear, last night I played billiards with Mr. Rogers until 11, then
+went to Robert Reid's studio and had a most delightful time until 4 this
+morning.  No ladies were invited this time.  Among the people present
+were--
+
+Coquelin;
+Richard Harding Davis;
+Harrison, the great out-door painter;
+Wm. H. Chase, the artist;
+Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph.
+Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about
+him in Jan. or Feb. Century.
+John Drew, actor;
+James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!
+Smedley the artist;
+Zorn the artist;
+Zogbaum the artist;
+Reinhart the artist;
+Metcalf the artist;
+Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;
+
+Oh, a great lot of others.  Everybody there had done something and was in
+his way famous.
+
+Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech; John Drew did
+the like for me in English, and then the fun began.  Coquelin did some
+excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical Englishman
+telling a colorless historiette in French.  It nearly killed the fifteen
+or twenty people who understood it.
+
+I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling
+imitations, Harding Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was of
+course good, but he followed it with that most fascinating (for what
+reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, "On the Road to Mandalay,"
+sang it tenderly, and it searched me deeper and charmed me more than the
+Deever.
+
+Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance music and we all danced
+about an hour.  There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was.
+Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what
+the sense of fatigue is.
+
+Coquelin talks quite good English now.  He said:
+
+"I have a brother who has the fine mind--ah, a charming and delicate
+fancy, and he knows your writings so well, and loves them--and that is
+the same with me.  It will stir him so when I write and tell him I have
+seen you!"
+
+Wasn't that nice?  We talked a good deal together.  He is as winning as
+his own face.  But he wouldn't sign that photograph for Clara.  "That?
+No!  She shall have a better one.  I will send it to you."
+
+He is much driven, and will forget it, but Reid has promised to get the
+picture for me, and I will try and keep him reminded.
+
+Oh, dear, my time is all used up and your letters are not answered.
+
+Mama, dear, I don't go everywhere--I decline most things.  But there are
+plenty that I can't well get out of.
+
+I will remember what you say and not make my yarning too common.
+
+I am so glad Susy has gone on that trip and that you are trying the
+electric.  May you both prosper.  For you are mighty dear to me and in my
+thoughts always.
+                                   SAML.
+
+
+     The affairs of the Webster Publishing Company were by this time
+     getting into a very serious condition indeed.  The effects of the
+     panic of the year before could not be overcome.  Creditors were
+     pressing their claims and profits were negligible.  In the following
+     letter we get a Mark Twain estimate of the great financier who so
+     cheerfully was willing to undertake the solving of Mark Twain's
+     financial problems.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                              THE PLAYERS, Feb. 15, '94.  11.30 p. m.
+Livy darling, Yesterday I talked all my various matters over with Mr.
+Rogers and we decided that it would be safe for me to leave here the 7th
+of March, in the New York.  So his private secretary, Miss Harrison,
+wrote and ordered a berth for me and then I lost no time in cabling you
+that I should reach Southampton March 14, and Paris the 15th.  Land, but
+it made my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again!.....
+One thing at a time.  I never fully laid Webster's disastrous condition
+before Mr. Rogers until to-night after billiards.  I did hate to burden
+his good heart and over-worked head with it, but he took hold with
+avidity and said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a
+pleasure.  We discussed it from various standpoints, and found it a
+sufficiently difficult problem to solve; but he thinks that after he has
+slept upon it and thought it over he will know what to suggest.
+
+You must not think I am ever rude with Mr. Rogers, I am not.  He is not
+common clay, but fine--fine and delicate--and that sort do not call out
+the coarsenesses that are in my sort.  I am never afraid of wounding him;
+I do not need to watch myself in that matter.  The sight of him is peace.
+
+He wants to go to Japan--it is his dream; wants to go with me--which
+means, the two families--and hear no more about business for awhile, and
+have a rest.  And he needs it.  But it is like all the dreams of all busy
+men--fated to remain dreams.
+
+You perceive that he is a pleasant text for me.  It is easy to write
+about him.  When I arrived in September, lord how black the prospect was
+--how desperate, how incurably desperate!  Webster and Co had to have a
+small sum of money or go under at once.  I flew to Hartford--to my
+friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, and I was
+ashamed that I went.  It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the
+money and was by it saved.  And then--while still a stranger--he set
+himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in
+his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity,
+a benevolence--and he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at a
+cost of three months of wearing and difficult labor.  He gave that time
+to me--time which could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand
+dollars a month--no, nor for three times the money.
+
+Well, in the midst of that great fight, that long and admirable fight,
+George Warner came to me and said:
+
+"There is a splendid chance open to you.  I know a man--a prominent man--
+who has written a book that will go like wildfire; a book that arraigns
+the Standard Oil fiends, and gives them unmitigated hell, individual by
+individual.  It is the very book for you to publish; there is a fortune
+in it, and I can put you in communication with the author."
+
+I wanted to say:
+
+"The only man I care for in the world; the only man I would give a damn
+for; the only man who is lavishing his sweat and blood to save me and
+mine from starvation and shame, is a Standard Oil fiend.  If you know me,
+you know whether I want the book or not."
+
+But I didn't say that.  I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get
+out of the publishing business and out of all business, and was here for
+that purpose and would accomplish it if I could.
+
+But there's enough.  I shall be asleep by 3, and I don't need much sleep,
+because I am never drowsy or tired these days.  Dear, dear Susy my
+strength reproaches me when I think of her and you, my darling.
+
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+     But even so able a man as Henry Rogers could not accomplish the
+     impossible.  The affairs of the Webster Company were hopeless, the
+     business was not worth saving.  By Mr. Rogers's advice an assignment
+     was made April, 18, 1894.  After its early spectacular success less
+     than ten years had brought the business to failure.  The publication
+     of the Grant memoirs had been its only great achievement.
+
+     Clemens would seem to have believed that the business would resume,
+     and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but
+     we cannot believe that it long survived.  Young Hall, who had made
+     such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must
+     presently have seen the futility of any effort in that direction.
+
+     Of course the failure of Mark Twain's firm made a great stir in the
+     country, and it is easy to understand that loyal friends would rally
+     in his behalf.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       April 22, '94.
+Dear old darling, we all think the creditors are going to allow us to
+resume business; and if they do we shall pull through and pay the debts.
+I am prodigiously glad we made an assignment.  And also glad that we did
+not make it sooner.  Earlier we should have made a poor showing; but now
+we shall make a good one.
+
+I meet flocks of people, and they all shake me cordially by the hand and
+say "I was so sorry to hear of the assignment, but so glad you did it.
+It was around, this long time, that the concern was tottering, and all
+your friends were afraid you would delay the assignment too long."
+
+John Mackay called yesterday, and said, "Don't let it disturb you, Sam--
+we all have to do it, at one time or another; it's nothing to be ashamed
+of."
+
+One stranger out in New York State sent me a dollar bill and thought he
+would like to get up a dollar-subscription for me.  And Poultney
+Bigelow's note came promptly, with his check for $1,000.  I had been
+meeting him every day at the Club and liking him better and better all
+the time.  I couldn't take his money, of course, but I thanked him
+cordially for his good will.
+
+Now and then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles with me
+and says "Cheer up--don't be downhearted," and some other friend says,
+"I am glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are and how bravely you
+stand it"--and none of them suspect what a burden has been lifted from me
+and how blithe I am inside.  Except when I think of you, dear heart--then
+I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and ashamed, and dreading
+to look people in the face.  For in the thick of the fight there is
+cheer, but you are far away and cannot hear the drums nor see the
+wheeling squadrons.  You only seem to see rout, retreat, and dishonored
+colors dragging in the dirt--whereas none of these things exist.  There
+is temporary defeat, but no dishonor--and we will march again.  Charley
+Warner said to-day, "Sho, Livy isn't worrying.  So long as she's got you
+and the children she doesn't care what happens.  She knows it isn't her
+affair."  Which didn't convince me.
+
+Good bye my darling, I love you and all of the kids--and you can tell
+Clara I am not a spitting gray kitten.
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+     Clemens sailed for Europe as soon as his affairs would permit him to
+     go.  He must get settled where he could work comfortably.  Type-
+     setter prospects seemed promising, but meantime there was need of
+     funds.
+
+     He began writing on the ship, as was his habit, and had completed
+     his article on Fenimore Cooper by the time he reached London.  In
+     August we find him writing to Mr. Rogers from Etretat, a little
+     Norman watering-place.
+
+
+                      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                             ETRETAT, (NORMANDIE)
+                                                  CHALET DES ABRIS)
+                                                       Aug.  25, '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I find the Madam ever so much better in health and
+strength.  The air is superb and soothing and wholesome, and the Chalet
+is remote from noise and people, and just the place to write in.  I shall
+begin work this afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Clemens is in great spirits on, account of the benefit which she has
+received from the electrical treatment in Paris and is bound to take it
+up again and continue it all the winter, and of course I am perfectly
+willing.  She requires me to drop the lecture platform out of my mind and
+go straight ahead with Joan until the book is finished.  If I should have
+to go home for even a week she means to go with me--won't consent to be
+separated again--but she hopes I won't need to go.
+
+I tell her all right, "I won't go unless you send, and then I must."
+
+She keeps the accounts; and as she ciphers it we can't get crowded for
+money for eight months yet.  I didn't know that.  But I don't know much
+anyway.
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The reader may remember that Clemens had written the first half of
+     his Joan of Arc book at the Villa Viviani, in Florence, nearly two
+     years before.  He had closed the manuscript then with the taking of
+     Orleans, and was by no means sure that he would continue the story
+     beyond that point.  Now, however, he was determined to reach the
+     tale's tragic conclusion.
+
+
+                      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                                       ETRETAT,
+                                                  Sunday, Sept. 9, '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS, I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down--in my
+head.  It has now been three days since I laid up.  When I wrote you a
+week ago I had added 10,000 words or thereabout to Joan.  Next day I
+added 1,500 which was a proper enough day's work though not a full one;
+but during Tuesday and Wednesday I stacked up an aggregate of 6,000
+words--and that was a very large mistake.  My head hasn't been worth a
+cent since.
+
+However, there's a compensation; for in those two days I reached and
+passed--successfully--a point which I was solicitous about before I ever
+began the book: viz., the battle of Patay.  Because that would naturally
+be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of either two books
+or one.  In the one case one goes right along from that point (as I shall
+do now); in the other he would add a wind-up chapter and make the book
+consist of Joan's childhood and military career alone.
+
+I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an
+intemperate' rate.  My head is pretty cobwebby yet.
+
+I am hoping that along about this time I shall hear that the machine is
+beginning its test in the Herald office.  I shall be very glad indeed to
+know the result of it.  I wish I could be there.
+                    Sincerely yours
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Rouen, where Joan met her martyrdom, was only a short distance away,
+     and they halted there en route to Paris, where they had arranged to
+     spend the winter.  The health of Susy Clemens was not good, and they
+     lingered in Rouen while Clemens explored the old city and
+     incidentally did some writing of another sort.  In a note to Mr.
+     Rogers he said: "To put in my odd time I am writing some articles
+     about Paul Bourget and his Outre-Mer chapters--laughing at them and
+     at some of our oracular owls who find them important.  What the hell
+     makes them important, I should like to know!"
+
+     He was still at Rouen two weeks later and had received encouraging
+     news from Rogers concerning the type-setter, which had been placed
+     for trial in the office of the Chicago Herald.  Clemens wrote: "I
+     can hardly keep from sending a hurrah by cable.  I would certainly
+     do it if I wasn't superstitious."  His restraint, though wise, was
+     wasted the end was near.
+
+
+                      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Dec. 22; '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, and also
+prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know ourselves
+and how easily we can deceive ourselves.  It hit me like a thunder-clap.
+It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went flying here and
+there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only one clearly
+defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of the crazy
+storm-drift that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril, and out of
+the 60,000 or 90,000 projects for its rescue that came floating through
+my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me to examine it and
+size it up.  Have you ever been like that?  Not so much so, I reckon.
+
+There was another clearly defined idea--I must be there and see it die.
+That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we might hatch up some
+next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed and take a walk.
+
+So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling and walked over to
+the rue Scribe-- 4 P. M.--and asked a question or two and was told I
+should be running a big risk if I took the 9 P. M.  train for London and
+Southampton; "better come right along at 6.52 per Havre special and step
+aboard the New York all easy and comfortable."  Very! and I about two
+miles from home, with no packing done.
+
+Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation-notions that were
+whirl-winding through my head could be examined or made available unless
+at least a month's time could be secured.  So I cabled you, and said to
+myself that I would take the French steamer tomorrow (which will be
+Sunday).
+
+By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational and
+contented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long.  So I went on
+thinking--mixing it with a smoke in the dressing room once an hour--until
+dawn this morning.  Result--a sane resolution; no matter what your answer
+to my cable might be, I would hold still and not sail until I should get
+an answer to this present letter which I am now writing, or a cable
+answer from you saying "Come" or "Remain."
+
+I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sediment of
+my 70,000 projects to be of this character:
+
+[Several pages of suggestions for reconstructing the machine follow.]
+
+Don't say I'm wild.  For really I'm sane again this morning.
+
+                          ......................
+
+I am going right along with Joan, now, and wait untroubled till I hear
+from you.  If you think I can be of the least use, cable me "Come."
+I can write Joan on board ship and lose no time.  Also I could discuss my
+plan with the publisher for a deluxe Joan, time being an object, for some
+of the pictures could be made over here cheaply and quickly, but would
+cost much time and money in America.
+
+                          ......................
+
+If the meeting should decide to quit business Jan. 4, I'd like to have
+Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison doesn't
+mind that disagreeable job.  And I'll have to write them, too, of course.
+                    With love,
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The "Stoker" of this letter was Bram Stoker, long associated with
+     Sir Henry Irving.  Irving himself had also taken stock in the
+     machine.  The address, 169 Rue de l'Universite, whence these letters
+     are written, was the beautiful studio home of the artist Pomroy
+     which they had taken for the winter.
+
+
+                     To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                        PARIS, Dec. 27, '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Notwithstanding your heart is "old and hard," you make
+a body choke up.  I know you "mean every word you say" and I do take it
+"in the same spirit in which you tender it."  I shall keep your regard
+while we two live--that I know; for I shall always remember what you have
+done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything that
+could forfeit it or impair it.  I am 59 years old; yet I never had a
+friend before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he
+found me in deep waters.
+
+It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing
+day, and then through a night without sleep; then settled down next day
+into my right mind (or thereabouts,) and wrote you.  I put in the rest of
+that day till 7 P. M.  plenty comfortably enough writing a long chapter
+of my book; then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking
+Clara along; and we had a good time.  I have lost no day since and
+suffered no discomfort to speak of, but drove my troubles out of my mind
+and had good success in keeping them out--through watchfulness.  I have
+done a good week's work and put the book a good way ahead in the Great
+Trial, which is the difficult part which requires the most thought and
+carefulness.  I cannot see the end of the Trial yet, but I am on the
+road.  I am creeping surely toward it.
+
+"Why not leave them all to me."  My business bothers?  I take you by the
+hand!  I jump at the chance!
+
+I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed--and yet I do
+jump at the chance in spite of it.  I don't want to write Irving and I
+don't want to write Stoker.  It doesn't seem as if I could.  But I can
+suggest something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am
+unwise, you can write them something quite different.  Now this is my
+idea:
+
+     1.  To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock.
+
+     2.  And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will make good to
+     him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay him of his $500.
+
+
+P. S.  Madam says No, I must face the music.  So I enclose my effort to
+be used if you approve, but not otherwise.
+
+There!  Now if you will alter it to suit your judgment and bang away, I
+shall be eternally obliged.
+
+We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter,
+for it costs heavily to live in.  We can never live in it again; though
+it would break the family's hearts if they could believe it.
+
+Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her--which
+is the reason I haven't drowned myself.
+
+We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of yours and
+a Happy New Year!
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+Enclosure:
+
+MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed at
+present.
+
+When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my machine-
+enterprise--a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself the aspect of
+a dissolved dream.  This letter, then, will contain cheque for the $100
+which you have paid.  And will you tell Irving for me--I can't get up
+courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom
+by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage presently
+floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a
+time I will make up to him the rest.
+
+I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home.
+Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker.  I gave up that London lecture-
+project entirely.  Had to--there's never been a chance since to find the
+time.
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS.  FINISHING "JOAN OF ARC."
+THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD.  DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS
+
+
+                   To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                                       [No date.]
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the circular
+to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit--there doesn't seem
+to be any other wise course.
+
+There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that
+my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it reveries my
+horoscope.  The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very
+superstitious.  As a small boy I was notoriously lucky.  It was usual for
+one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or
+in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times
+before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.
+When the "Pennsylvania" blew up and the telegraph reported my brother as
+fatally injured (with 60 others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said
+to my mother "It means that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that
+boat a year and a half--he was born lucky."  Yes, I was somewhere else.
+I am so superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business
+dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were
+unlucky people.  All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large
+size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity
+and carelessness.  And so I have felt entirely certain that that machine
+would turn up trumps eventually.  It disappointed me lots of times, but I
+couldn't shake off the confidence of a life-time in my luck.
+
+Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the
+good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there
+wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.
+
+I wish you had been in at the beginning.  Then we should have had the
+good luck to step promptly ashore.
+
+Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account,
+and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
+prediction sure to be fulfilled.
+
+I've got a first rate subject for a book.  It kept me awake all night,
+and I began it and completed it in my mind.  The minute I finish Joan
+I will take it up.
+               Love and Happy New Year to you all.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
+     was concerned.  Paige succeeded in getting some new people
+     interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
+     affected Mark Twain.  Characteristically he put the whole matter
+     behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
+     a burden of debts with a stout heart.  The beginning of the new year
+     found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
+     but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not
+     permanently--and never more industrious or capable.
+
+
+                   To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought I
+would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate
+holiday since I had the gout.  On the first holiday I wrote a tale of
+about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did
+8,000 before midnight.  I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
+recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and some
+revision; but this time I fared better--I finished the Huck Finn tale
+that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it.
+
+The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000
+words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank
+the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took
+that other holiday.  So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't
+and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one
+which I finished on my second holiday--"Tom Sawyer, Detective."
+
+It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks,
+though I expect young folk to read it, too.  It transfers to the banks of
+the Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in
+Sweden in old times.
+
+I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss Harrison.--
+[Secretary to Mr. Rogers.]
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                   To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             Apr. 29, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th arrived
+three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house.
+
+There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me.  That is
+Brusnahan's money.  If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago
+enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money paid
+back to him.  I will give him as many months to decide in as he pleases--
+let him name 6 or 10 or 12--and we will let the money stay where it is in
+your hands till the time is up.  Will Miss Harrison tell him so?  I mean
+if you approve.  I would like him to have a good investment, but would
+meantime prefer to protect him against loss.
+
+At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the
+stake.
+
+With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today, but
+it will be gone tomorrow.  I judged that this end of the book would be
+hard work, and it turned out so.  I have never done any work before that
+cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and
+cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution.  For I wanted
+the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the
+reader's interest would not flag--in fact I wanted the reader's interest
+to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view--with
+the result that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions.
+Although it is mere history--history pure and simple--history stripped
+naked of flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention--the
+family agree that I have succeeded.  It was a perilous thing to try in a
+tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one--provided I stuck strictly
+to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and skimp
+the work.  The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only needed
+to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference only
+one French history and one English one--and shoveled in as much fancy
+work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I pleased.
+But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and
+five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of them
+has escaped me.
+
+Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was written for
+love.
+
+There--I'm called to see company.  The family seldom require this of me,
+but they know I am not working today.
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     "Brusnahan," of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New
+     York Herald, superintendent of the press-room--who had invested some
+     of his savings in the type-setter.
+
+     In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters
+     connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a reading-
+     tour around the world.  He was nearly sixty years old, and time had
+     not lessened his loathing for the platform.  More than once,
+     however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a debt-payer, and
+     never yet had his burden been so great as now.  He concluded
+     arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the Pacific
+     Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of the
+     tour.  In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing to
+     bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London,
+     where he had visited Stanley the explorer--an old friend.
+
+
+                    To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                             169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                                  Sunday, Apr.7,'95.
+DEAR MR.  ROGERS,--..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in a
+grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing
+Street and Whitehall.  He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and
+fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more
+than a hundred came in, after dinner.  Kept it up till after midnight.
+There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
+Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
+equipped with rank and brains.  I told some yarns and made some speeches.
+I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and
+show them the wife and the daughters.  If I were younger and very strong
+I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work
+on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing.  I think I will lecture
+there a month or two when I return from Australia.
+
+There were many delightful ladies in that company.  One was the wife of
+His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian
+Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me
+in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me
+and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have a
+great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we would
+find him ready.  I have a letter from her this morning enclosing a letter
+of introduction to the Admiral.  I already know the Admiral commanding in
+the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out there.  He sleeps
+with my books under his pillow.  P'raps it is the only way he can sleep.
+
+According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of
+course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend
+June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture in
+San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia
+before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of
+November.  We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and
+they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.
+
+Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
+doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
+finances a little easier.
+                    With a power of love to you all,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
+     he wrote: "I am tired to death all the time:"  To a man of less
+     vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
+     under such circumstances this condition would have remained
+     permanent.  But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on
+     things in general that was his chief life-saver.
+
+
+                    To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                              169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Apr. 29, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I have been hidden an hour or two, reading proof of
+Joan and now I think I am a lost child.  I can't find anybody on the
+place.  The baggage has all disappeared, including the family.  I reckon
+that in the hurry and bustle of moving to the hotel they forgot me.  But
+it is no matter.  It is peacefuller now than I have known it for days and
+days and days.
+
+In these Joan proofs which I have been reading for the September Harper
+I find a couple of tip-top platform readings--and I mean to read them on
+our trip.  If the authorship is known by then; and if it isn't, I will
+reveal it.  The fact is, there is more good platform-stuff in Joan than
+in any previous book of mine, by a long sight.
+
+Yes, every danged member of the tribe has gone to the hotel and left me
+lost.  I wonder how they can be so careless with property.  I have got to
+try to get there by myself now.
+
+All the trunks are going over as luggage; then I've got to find somebody
+on the dock who will agree to ship 6 of them to the Hartford Customhouse.
+If it is difficult I will dump them into the river.  It is very careless
+of Mrs. Clemens to trust trunks and things to me.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     By the latter part of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens,
+     laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour.
+     The outlook was not a pleasant one.  To Mr. Rogers he wrote: "I
+     sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west.  I
+     sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to
+     appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation.  Nothing in
+     this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting
+     performance.  I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house,
+     and how in the nation am I going to sit?  Land of Goshen, it's this
+     night week!  Pray for me."
+
+     The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of
+     a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed
+     amusing to him later.
+
+
+                    To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                                       (Forenoon)
+                                             CLEVELAND, July 16, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,-- Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory Sunday
+night.  But here, last night, I suffered defeat--There were a couple of
+hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of benches
+which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house.  And there was
+nobody to watch them or keep them quiet.  Why, with their scufflings and
+horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie.  Besides, a concert of
+amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,) and their
+families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept encoring
+them and they always responded.  So it was 20 minutes to 9 before I got
+the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar apiece
+for a chance to go to hell in this fashion.
+
+I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling
+boys had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case;
+so I skipped a third of my program and quit.  The newspapers are kind,
+but between you and me it was a defeat.  There ain't going to be any more
+concerts at my lectures.  I care nothing for this defeat, because it was
+not my fault.  My first half hour showed that I had the house, and I
+could have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped.
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+P. S.  Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey.  Crammed the house and turned
+away a crowd.  We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it had
+ever had in it before.  I believe I don't care to have a talk go off
+better than that one did.
+
+
+     Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his
+     daughter Clara--Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at
+     Quarry Farm.  The tour was a financial success from the start.
+     By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand
+     dollars had been remitted to Mr. Rogers against that day of
+     settlement when the debts of Webster & Co. were to be paid.  Perhaps
+     it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged
+     on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his
+     wife consented to this as final.  They would pay in full.
+
+     They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895.  About the only letter
+     of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the
+     moment of departure.
+
+
+                     To Rudyard Kipling, in England:
+
+                                                       August, 1895.
+DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India.  This
+has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload
+from my conscience a debt long due to you.  Years ago you came from India
+to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time.  It has always been my
+purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day.  I shall
+arrive next January and you must be ready.  I shall come riding my ayah
+with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a
+troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild
+bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I
+shall be thirsty.
+                         Affectionately,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters.
+     Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere
+     lavishly entertained.  He was beset by other carbuncles, but would
+     seem not to have been seriously delayed by them.  A letter to his
+     old friend Twichell carries the story.
+
+
+                  To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL,
+                                             NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND,
+                                                  November 29, '95.
+DEAR JOE,--Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has just
+arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle.  It is No. 3.  Not a
+serious one this time.  I lectured last night without inconvenience, but
+the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture.  My second one
+kept me in bed a week in Melbourne.
+
+.....We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights
+us all through.
+
+I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at
+Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city.  Here we
+have the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing
+between us and it but 20 yards of shingle--and hardly a suggestion of
+life in that space to mar it or make a noise.  Away down here fifty-five
+degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar
+tongue--a foreign tongue--tongue bred among the ice-fields of the
+Antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast
+unvisited solitudes it has come from.  It was very delicious and solacing
+to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there.  I wish you were
+here--land, but it would be fine!
+
+Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better than
+one could have expected they would.  They have tough experiences, in the
+way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with the
+worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment.
+
+No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday.  A week later we shall
+reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia.  We
+sailed for New Zealand October 30.
+
+Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and tomorrow
+will be mine.  I shall be 60--no thanks for it.
+
+I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones.
+
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The article mentioned in the foregoing letter was one which Twichell
+     had been engaged by Harper's Magazine to write concerning the home
+     life and characteristics of Mark Twain.  By the time the Clemens
+     party had completed their tour of India--a splendid, triumphant
+     tour, too full of work and recreation for letter-writing--and had
+     reached South Africa, the article had appeared, a satisfactory one,
+     if we may judge by Mark Twain's next.
+
+     This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives
+     of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at
+     Pretoria.
+
+
+                  To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC,
+                                        The Queen's Birthday, '96.
+                                                       (May 24)
+DEAR OLD JOE,--Harper for May was given to me yesterday in Johannesburg
+by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article on me while
+coming up in the train with her and an old friend and fellow-Missourian
+of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and spirited wife of the
+chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here under a 15-year
+sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1 and 5-year
+terms.  Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away above my
+deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and as for
+Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be grateful
+to you to the bottom of her heart.  Between you and Punch and Brander
+Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised sufficiently
+high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it is the study of
+their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere within bounds.
+
+I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on her
+to-day.  She is well.
+
+Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond.  A Boer
+guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only
+he barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) and
+wouldn't let me cross a white mark that was on the ground--the "death-
+line" one of the prisoners called it.  Not in earnest, though, I think.
+I found that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior and a guest
+of Gen. Franklin's.  I also found that I had known Capt. Mein intimately
+32 years ago.  One of the English prisoners had heard me lecture in
+London 23 years ago.  After being introduced in turn to all the
+prisoners, I was allowed to see some of the cells and examine their food,
+beds, etc.  I was told in Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of $150,000
+a year is not stopped, and that the salaries of some of the others are
+still continued.  Hammond was looking very well indeed, and I can say the
+same of all the others.  When the trouble first fell upon them it hit
+some of them very hard; several fell sick (Hammond among them), two or
+three had to be removed to the hospital, and one of the favorites lost
+his mind and killed himself, poor fellow, last week.  His funeral, with a
+sorrowing following of 10,000, took the place of the public demonstration
+the Americans were getting up for me.
+
+These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are all
+educated men.  They are well off; some of them are wealthy.  They have a
+lot of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they will
+be able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for very
+long, I take it.  I am told they have times of deadly brooding and
+depression.  I made them a speech--sitting down.  It just happened so.
+I don't prefer that attitude.  Still, it has one advantage--it is only a
+talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech.  I have tried it once before
+on this trip.  However, if a body wants to make sure of having "liberty,"
+and feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course.  I advised them
+at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to it
+and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again
+somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to go
+and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their
+jail-terms.
+
+We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a
+little over, and we outsiders had to go.  I went again to-day, but the
+Rev. Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer
+named Du Plessis--explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to admit
+saint and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday.  Du Plessis
+--descended from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years ago--
+but he hasn't any French left in him now--all Dutch.
+
+It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara remain
+in Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip to
+Johannesburg.  And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were so
+lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that I
+sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought.  It is just the
+beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool.
+But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as
+lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with
+interest.  I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next
+Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital,
+then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join
+us by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently
+to the Cape--and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and sail
+for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will write
+and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean study
+music and things in London.
+
+We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland,
+July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or land,
+notwithstanding the carbuncles and things.  Even when I was laid up 10
+days at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English
+friends.  All over India the English well, you will never know how good
+and fine they are till you see them.
+
+Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture
+tonight.
+
+A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the
+     Jameson raid would not be out of place here.  Dr. Leander Starr
+     Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley.  President
+     Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of
+     his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief.  From Lobengula
+     concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South
+     African Company.  Jameson gave up his profession and went in for
+     conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.
+     In time he became administrator of Rhodesia.  By the end of 1894.
+     he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as
+     a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time.  Perhaps this turned
+     his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news
+     that "Dr. Jim," as he was called, at the head of six hundred men,
+     had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an
+     uprising at Johannesburg.  The raid was a failure.  Jameson, and
+     those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of
+     "Oom Paul," and some of them barely escaped execution.  The Boer
+     president handed them over to the English Government for punishment,
+     and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually
+     released.  Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African
+     politics, but there is no record of any further raids.
+
+                        .........................
+
+     The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896,
+     and on the last day of the month reached England.  They had not
+     planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near
+     London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his
+     travels.
+
+     The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive
+     August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying
+     that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail.  A cable inquiry was
+     immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory,
+     and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.
+     This was on August 15th.  Three days later, in the old home at
+     Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever.  She had been
+     visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice
+     had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a
+     few steps away.
+
+     Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the
+     hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family
+     happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.
+     There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried
+     long before his arrival.  He awaited in England the return of his
+     broken family.  They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea,
+     No. 23 Tedworth Square.
+
+
+             To Rev. Joseph H.  Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:
+
+                                        Permanent address:
+                                        % CHATTO & WINDUS
+                                        111 T.  MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON,
+                                                       Sept.  27, '96.
+Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood
+poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way down,
+twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the
+peace and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child, and
+again to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother.  It was like you;
+like your good great heart, like your matchless and unmatchable self.
+It was no surprise to me to learn that you stayed by Susy long hours,
+careless of fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me to learn that you
+could still the storms that swept her spirit when no other could; for she
+loved you, revered you, trusted you, and "Uncle Joe" was no empty phrase
+upon her lips!  I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful to the bottom of my
+heart, which has always been filled with love for you, and respect and
+admiration; and I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my
+place at Susy's side and Livy's in those black hours.
+
+Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in
+this generation.  And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner
+and George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the
+Cheneys, and Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick
+Burton, and perhaps others.  And I also was of the number, but not in the
+same degree--for she was above my duller comprehension.  I merely knew
+that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and
+subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent.
+I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded
+the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine
+than I knew it when I had it.  But I have this consolation: that dull as
+I was, I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my work
+--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--and I took it as the accolade
+from the hand of genius.  I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had
+greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of it.
+
+And now she is dead--and I can never tell her.
+
+God bless you Joe--and all of your house.
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+               To Mr. Henry C.  Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:
+
+                                             LONDON, Sept.  28, '96.
+It is as you say, dear old friend, "the pathos of it" yes, it was a
+piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish.  When we
+started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
+1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
+light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
+throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears.  One year, one
+month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
+the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of
+the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a
+journey and was near at hand to meet them.  She was waiting in the house
+she was born in, in her coffin.
+
+All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to
+rags rehearsing them.  The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
+without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
+wanton details.  The child was taken away when her mother was within
+three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.
+
+In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
+with her.  But there is no use in that.  Since it was to happen it would
+have happened.
+                         With love
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
+     privacy.  Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
+     scarcely half a dozen knew his address.  He worked steadily on his
+     book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
+     beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers.  In one of these he
+     said, "I am appalled!  Here I am trying to load you up with work
+     again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
+     for a year.  It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it."
+
+     But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that
+     was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
+     unique and world-wide distinction.
+
+
+                To Mrs. H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+For and in behalf of Helen Keller,
+stone blind and deaf, and formerly dumb.
+
+DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes to
+set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
+bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife.  If she can't
+convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.
+
+Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence
+Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old.  Last July, in Boston,
+when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to
+Radcliffe College.  She passed without a single condition.  She was
+allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and
+this was shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had
+to be read to her.  Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average
+of 78 on the part of the other applicants.
+
+It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
+studies because of poverty.  If she can go on with them she will make a
+fame that will endure in history for centuries.  Along her special lines
+she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
+
+There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
+degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the
+teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember
+her.)  Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
+case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it.
+I see nobody.  Nobody knows my address.  Nothing but the strictest hiding
+can enable me to write my long book in time.
+
+So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get
+him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the
+other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe an
+annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and agree
+to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her
+college course.  I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no,
+they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as
+they please, they have my consent.
+
+Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
+shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want.
+I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and
+disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous
+girl?
+
+No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead
+with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him
+clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have
+spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think
+that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through
+their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer "Here!" when
+its name is called in this one.  638
+
+There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that
+I am making; I know you too well for that.
+
+Good-bye with love to all of you
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly--close by, and handy
+when wanted.
+
+
+     The plea was not made in vain.  Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested
+     themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly
+     no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever
+     had reason for disappointment.
+
+     In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens
+     also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in
+     the matter of his own difficulties.  This particular reference
+     concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen
+     between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house
+     in Franklin Square.
+
+
+                                             LONDON, Dec.  22, '96.
+DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb!  And I am beyond measure grateful to you
+both.  I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that
+Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was
+sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far
+and away beyond the sum I expected--may your lines fall in pleasant
+places here and Hereafter for it!
+
+The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for
+their sakes as well as for Helen's.
+
+I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old
+cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to
+enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it
+the elements of stability and permanency.  However, at any time that he
+says sign, we're going to do it.
+                         Ever sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+LETTERS 1897.  LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA
+
+Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to
+keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that
+'Following the Equator' is more serious than his other books of travel.
+He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends,
+Howells, Twichell, and Rogers.  In the letter to Twichell, which follows,
+there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to
+resume.  One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but
+perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached
+conclusion.  He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin
+it again presently.  The identity of the other tale is uncertain.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 19, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Do I want you to write to me?  Indeed I do.  I do not want
+most people to write, but I do want you to do it.  The others break my
+heart, but you will not.  You have a something divine in you that is not
+in other men,.  You have the touch that heals, not lacerates.  And you
+know the secret places of our hearts.  You know our life--the outside of
+it--as the others do--and the inside of it--which they do not.  You have
+seen our whole voyage.  You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and
+the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts;
+battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone.  For it
+is gone.  And there is nothing in its place.  The vanity of life was all
+we had, and there is no more vanity left in us.  We are even ashamed of
+that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded
+high--to come to this!
+
+I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go
+away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her,
+yet leave our dull bodies behind.  And I did not know what she was.  To
+me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look
+at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary;
+and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there,
+has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I
+am a pauper.  How am I to comprehend this?  How am I to have it?  Why am
+I robbed, and who is benefited?
+
+Ah, well, Susy died at home.  She had that privilege.  Her dying eyes
+rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which
+they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad;
+and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen.  This was happy
+fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her.  If she had died in
+another house-well, I think I could not have borne that.  To us, our
+house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to
+see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was
+of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the
+peace of its benediction.  We never came home from an absence that its
+face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could
+not enter it unmoved.  And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should
+enter it unshod.
+
+I am trying to add to the "assets" which you estimate so generously.
+No, I am not.  The thought is not in my mind.  My purpose is other.  I am
+working, but it is for the sake of the work--the "surcease of sorrow"
+that is found there.  I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when
+I use that magic.  This book will not long stand between it and me, now;
+but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my
+preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the
+beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most.
+Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along--in fact
+have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each.
+The present one will contain 180,000 words--130,000 are done.  I am well
+protected; but Livy!  She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing
+but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me.  She does not
+see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her.  She sits
+solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened,
+and why.  We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her
+comrade--had to be driven from her loving persecutions--sometimes at 1 in
+the morning.  To Livy the persecutions were welcome.  It was heaven to
+her to be plagued like that.  But it is ended now.  Livy stands so in
+need of help; and none among us all could help her like you.
+
+Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk.  I hope so.  We could
+have such talks!  We are all grateful to you and Harmony--how grateful it
+is not given to us to say in words.  We pay as we can, in love; and in
+this coin practicing no economy.
+                         Good bye, dear old Joe!
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of
+     business, but in one of them he said: "I am going to write with all
+     my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can
+     in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that
+     is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the
+     promptest kind of a way and no fooling around."  And in one he
+     wrote: "You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest."
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York
+
+                                                  LONDON, Feb. 23, '97.
+DEAR HOWELLS,-I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to
+thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.
+The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a
+life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan.  I don't mean that I
+am miserable; no--worse than that--indifferent.  Indifferent to nearly
+everything but work.  I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it.  I do it
+without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.
+
+This mood will pass, some day--there is history for it.  But it cannot
+pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence.  She was always so
+quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are
+dead people who go through the motions of life.  Indeed I am a mud image,
+and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has
+comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them.  It is a law of our
+nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the
+presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it
+and apparently of no kinship with it.  I have finished my book, but I go
+on as if the end were indefinitely away--as indeed it is.  There is no
+hurry--at any rate there is no limit.
+
+Jean's spirits are good; Clara's are rising.  They have youth--the only
+thing that was worth giving to the race.
+
+These are sardonic times.  Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle.
+But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on.  If I were not
+a hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle
+over it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race.  This has
+been a bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England
+humbled--that is, not too much.  We are sprung from her loins, and it
+hurts me.  I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in
+that.  We can't count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland
+to count.  Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted--and
+sincere, too, and nearly straight.  But I am appalled to notice that the
+wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her
+rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels.
+
+Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he
+     thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and
+     change.  The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the
+     middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A
+     successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out
+     of it."  Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of
+     his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he
+     wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at
+     a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself.....  I
+     would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de
+     luxe editions of my books.  But Mrs. Clemens and the children object
+     to this, I do not know why."  And, in a moment of depression: "You
+     see the lightning refuses to strike me--there is where the defect
+     is.  We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did.  But
+     nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy."
+
+     They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on
+     Lake Lucerne--"The charmingest place we ever lived in," he declared,
+     "for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery."  It was here that
+     he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one
+     other manuscript.  From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn
+     something of his employments and economies.
+
+
+                    To Henry H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+                         LUCERNE, August the something or other, 1897.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,-- I am writing a novel, and am getting along very well
+with it.
+
+I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the
+loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory.  We have a small house
+on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from the
+inn below on the lake shore.  Six francs a day per head, house and food
+included.  The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful.  We have a row
+boat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors.  Nobody knows we
+are here.  And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  LUCERNE, Aug. 22, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day on
+one of her shopping trips--George Williamson Smith--did I tell you about
+it?  We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual refreshment as
+we had not tasted in many a month.
+
+And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers--6.  I had
+known one of them in London 24 years ago.  Three of the 6 were born in
+slavery, the others were children of slaves.  How charming they were--in
+spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing,
+matter, carriage, clothes--in every detail that goes to make the real
+lady and gentleman, and welcome guest.  We went down to the village hotel
+and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German
+and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their beer mugs
+in front of them--self-contained and unimpressionable looking people, an
+indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience--and up at the far end
+of the room sat the Jubilees in a row.  The Singers got up and stood--the
+talking and glass jingling went on.  Then rose and swelled out above
+those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret of whose
+make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house.  It was
+fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise of
+it.  No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the
+camp was theirs.  It was a triumph.  It reminded me of Launcelot riding
+in Sir Kay's armor and astonishing complacent Knights who thought they
+had struck a soft thing.  The Jubilees sang a lot of pieces.  Arduous and
+painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music,
+but on the contrary--to my surprise--has mightily reinforced its
+eloquence and beauty.  Away back in the beginning--to my mind--their
+music made all other vocal music cheap; and that early notion is
+emphasized now.  It is utterly beautiful, to me; and it moves me
+infinitely more than any other music can.  I think that in the Jubilees
+and their songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages;
+and I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it and
+lavish money on it and go properly crazy over it.
+
+Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were
+native.  It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and
+nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner.
+
+The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great
+enthusiasm--acquired technique etc, included.
+
+One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated
+by him after the war.  The party came up to the house and we had a
+pleasant time.
+
+This is paradise, here--but of course we have got to leave it by and by.
+The 18th of August--[Anniversary of Susy Clemens's death.]--has come and
+gone, Joe--and we still seem to live.
+                         With love from us all.
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis "as
+     anywhere else in the geography," but October found them in Vienna
+     for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole.  The Austrian capital was
+     just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted
+     in the following:
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 23, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--We are gradually getting settled down and wonted.  Vienna is
+not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement
+which: has a distinctly economical aspect.  The Vice Consul made the
+contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30
+and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month.  I used to pay
+$1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford.
+
+Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the most
+important event which has happened to me in ten days--unless I count--in
+my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday, with the
+proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his case comes
+up.
+
+If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much
+politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang
+of it.  It is Christian and Jew by the horns--the advantage with the
+superior man, as usual--the superior man being the Jew every time and in
+all countries.  Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a
+country where there were 3 Jews to 10 Christians!  Oh, not the shade of a
+shadow of a chance.  The difference between the brain of the average
+Christian and that of the average Jew--certainly in Europe--is about the
+difference between a tadpole's and an Archbishop's.  It's a marvelous,
+race--by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I
+suppose.
+
+And there's more politics--the clash between Czech and Austrian.  I wish
+I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can't.
+
+With the abounding love of us all
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing
+     Mark Twain on his trip around the world.  It was a trick photograph
+     made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out
+     and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an
+     ox.  In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of
+     the disreputable cart.  His companions are two negroes.  To the
+     creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic
+     acknowledgment.
+
+
+                             To T. S. Frisbie
+
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 25, '97.
+MR. T. S. FRISBIE,--Dear Sir:  The picture has reached me, and has moved
+me deeply.  That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and
+although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe
+successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even in
+the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts.  Princes and dukes
+and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could hardly
+keep from trying to buy it.  The barouche does not look as fine, now, as
+it did earlier-but that was before the earthquake.
+
+The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and
+your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of
+India is accurate and full of tender feeling.
+
+I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art.  How much
+more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.
+
+                    Very truly yours
+                                   MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark
+     Twain's old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford.  The sale of it
+     was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but
+     also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark
+     Twain's brave struggle to pay his debts.  When the newspapers began
+     to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling
+     up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the
+     sympathy.  He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following
+     result:
+
+
+                     To Frank E.  Bliss, in Hartford:
+
+                                             VIENNA, Nov. 4, 1897.
+DEAR BLISS,--Your cablegram informing me that a report is in circulation
+which purports to come from me and which says I have recently made
+$82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled
+back my regret to you that it is not true.  I wrote a letter--a private
+letter--a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief that I should
+be out of debt within the next twelvemonth.  If you make as much as usual
+for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a fact, and I
+shall be wholly out of debt.  I am encoring you now.
+
+It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar
+mare's nest has developed.  But why do you worry about the various
+reports?  They do not worry me.  They are not unfriendly, and I don't see
+how they can do any harm.  Be patient; you have but a little while to
+wait; the possible reports are nearly all in.  It has been reported that
+I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead
+--the other man again.  It has been reported that I have received a
+legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt--it was another man; and
+now comes this $82,000--still another man.  It has been reported that I
+am writing books--for publication; I am not doing anything of the kind.
+It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be able to get another
+book ready for the press within the next three years.  You can see,
+yourself, that there isn't anything more to be reported--invention is
+exhausted.  Therefore, don't worry, Bliss--the long night is breaking.
+As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have
+become a foreigner.  When you hear it, don't you believe it.  And don't
+take the trouble to deny it.  Merely just raise the American flag on our
+house in Hartford, and let it talk.
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+P. S.  This is not a private letter.  I am getting tired of private
+letters.
+
+
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             VIENNA
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE, NOV. 19, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter.
+You needn't send letters by London.
+
+I am very much obliged for Forrest's Austro-Hungarian articles.  I have
+just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion
+and Vienna's are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me--the
+paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities.  He and Vienna both
+say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the
+whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things
+quiet; can't afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas
+and stirring the public soul.  I am assured that every time a man finds
+himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate
+him to a wholesome obscurity.  It is curious and interesting.
+
+Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine
+(correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from
+the celebrities of the Empire.  She spoke of this.  Two or three bright
+Austrians were present.  They said "There are none who are known all over
+the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work
+and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names;
+Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour
+speech; two names-nothing more.  Every other country in the world,
+perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but
+ours.  We've got the material--have always had it--but we have to
+suppress it; we can't afford to let it develop; our political salvation
+depends upon tranquillity--always has."
+
+Poor Livy!  She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now.
+We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of
+days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
+
+Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and
+we all send love.
+                              MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna.
+     The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies
+     presently became violent.  Clemens found himself intensely
+     interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was
+     cleared by the police.  All sorts of stories were circulated as to
+     what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America.  A letter
+     to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Dec. 10, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in
+it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled
+the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted 'Hoch die Deutschen!'
+and got hustled out.  Oh dear, what a pity it is that one's adventures
+never happen!  When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery
+and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to
+stay, by saying, "But this gentleman is a foreigner--you don't need to
+turn him out--he won't do any harm."
+
+"Oh, I know him very well--I recognize him by his pictures; and I should
+be very glad to let him stay, but I haven't any choice, because of the
+strictness of the orders."
+
+And so we all went out, and no one was hustled.  Below, I ran across the
+London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first
+gallery and I lost none of the show.  The first gallery had not
+misbehaved, and was not disturbed .
+
+.  .  .  We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the
+lovely people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and
+around here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time.
+Jean's woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
+
+Good-bye Joe--and we all love all of you.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best
+     things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations
+     of the Austro-Hungarian confusions.  It was published in Harper's
+     Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
+
+     Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid--at least,
+     none of importance.  The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's
+     hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy
+     burden.  He wrote asking for relief.
+
+
+              Part of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I throw up the sponge.  I pull down the flag.  Let us
+begin on the debts.  I cannot bear the weight any longer.  It totally
+unfits me for work.  I have lost three entire months now.  In that time I
+have begun twenty magazine articles and books--and flung every one of
+them aside in turn.  The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit
+out of any work.  And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no
+time and spared no effort----
+
+Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts.
+Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote
+every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
+
+
+          Extracts from letters to H.  H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+.  .  .  We all delighted with your plan.  Only don't leave B-- out.
+Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women--daughters, no
+doubt.  We don't want to see them lose any thing.  B-- is an ass, and
+disgruntled, but I don't care for that.  I am responsible for the money
+and must do the best I can to pay it.....  I am writing hard--writing for
+the creditors.
+
+
+                                                            Dec.  29.
+Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing.  For the first time in
+my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling
+it in.
+
+
+                                                            Jan.  2.
+Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind
+again--no sense of burden.  Work is become a pleasure again--it is not
+labor any longer.
+
+
+                                                            March 7.
+Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again
+and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really
+happy day she has had since Susy died.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL.  LIFE IN VIENNA.  PAYMENT OF THE
+DEBTS.  ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS
+
+The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts.
+Once more he stood free before the world--a world that sounded his
+praises.  The latter fact rather amused him.  "Honest men must be pretty
+scarce," he said, "when they make so much fuss over even a defective
+specimen."  When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells
+in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                             VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures.  I used to write it
+"Hartford, 1871."  There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now.  And how
+much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
+meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara!  You speak of the
+glorious days of that old time--and they were.  It is my quarrel--that
+traps like that are set.  Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport,
+and then taken away.
+
+About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating disaster
+in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke is further
+away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been through all
+other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done as it ought to
+be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be written with the
+blood out of a man's heart.  I couldn't know, then, how soon I was to be
+made competent.  I have thought of it many a time since.  If you were
+here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in your dream.
+For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our
+passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in eclipse.
+
+I couldn't get along without work now.  I bury myself in it up to the
+ears.  Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes.  And all the days,
+Sundays included.  It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it
+fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year.  It was because of
+the deadness which invaded me when Susy died.  But I have made a change
+lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining.
+I don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll
+write half a dozen that won't, anyway.  Dear me, I didn't know there was
+such fun in it.  I'll write twenty that won't play.  I get into immense
+spirits as soon as my day is fairly started.  Of course a good deal of
+this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co.
+debts, I mean.  (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every
+cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't cash.
+I have marked this "private" because it is for the friends who are
+attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want to
+and if they want to.  There are only two claims which I dispute and which
+I mean to look into personally before I pay them.  But they are small.
+Both together they amount to only $12,500.  I hope you will never get the
+like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years ago.
+And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things that I reckon
+maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble, after all.
+Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the children have
+never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the beginning.
+
+We all send you and all of you our love.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells wrote: "I wish you could understand how unshaken you are,
+     you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep
+     that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the
+     same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare."
+
+     The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social
+     clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like
+     an embassy than the home of a mere literary man.  Celebrities in
+     every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for
+     the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other
+     home in Vienna.  Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a
+     central figure.  Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit,
+     and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal
+     family.  It was following one such event that the next letter was
+     written.
+
+
+(Private)
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98.
+DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago--you see how
+it is: can't get time to finish anything.  I pile up lots of work,
+nevertheless.  There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of
+them.  I say "Private" up there because I've got an adventure to tell,
+and you mustn't let a breath of it get out.  First I thought I would lay
+it up along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same
+purpose--to talk to you about, but--those others have vanished out of my
+memory; and that must not happen with this.
+
+The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of it
+Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir apparent
+of the imperial throne--a beautiful lady, with a beautiful spirit, and
+very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me for writing
+them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the hand--just the
+kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it the prettiest tale
+there is.
+
+Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies,
+the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your
+respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors'
+Book kept in the office of the establishment.  That is the end of it, and
+everything is squared up and ship-shape.
+
+So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by the
+sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for the book
+and said we wished to write our names in it.  And he called a servant in
+livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal Highness was out
+but would soon be in.  Of course Livy said "No--no--we only want the
+book;" but he was firm, and said, "You are Americans?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you are expected, please go up stairs."
+
+"But indeed we are not expected--please let us have the book and--"
+
+"Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while--she commanded me
+to tell you so--and you must wait."
+
+Well, the soldiers were there close by--there was no use trying to
+resist--so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us
+into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in.  And she
+wouldn't stay up there, either.  She said the princess might come in at
+any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for
+anything.  So we went down stairs again--to my unspeakable regret.  For
+it was too darling a comedy to spoil.  I was hoping and praying the
+princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other
+Americans who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by
+the portier, and shot by the sentinels--and then it would all go into the
+papers, and be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be
+perfectly lovely.  And by that time the princess would discover that we
+were not the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out,
+and the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another
+prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and--well, Joe, I was in
+a state of perfect bliss.  But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier
+wouldn't let us out--he was sorry, but he must obey orders--we must go
+back up stairs and wait.  Poor Livy--I couldn't help but enjoy her
+distress.  She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain,
+if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came?  We
+went up stairs again--laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one
+drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed
+upon us.
+
+Livy was in a state of mind!  She said it was too theatrically
+ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I
+would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers--and she
+tried to make me promise--"Promise what?" I said-- "to be quiet about
+this?  Indeed I won't--it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll tell
+it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make it
+perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders myself--it takes all
+three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this.  I would just like
+to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his
+futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging in
+here and wanting to know."  But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a
+time to be trying to be funny--we were in a most miserable and shameful
+situation, and if--
+
+Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little
+princes flowed in!  Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie
+Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses
+present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)--and we shook hands all around
+and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an hour--and by
+and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had been sent for
+by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel.  We were
+invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour and a
+half.
+
+Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation?  Seems a kind of pity we were
+the right ones.  It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come,
+and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody
+suspecting us for impostors.
+
+We send lots and lots of love.
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark
+     Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right--how he
+     wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one
+     large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the
+     Paige type-setter.  It seems incredible that, after that experience
+     and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again.  But
+     scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he
+     was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions,
+     perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern
+     machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius.  That
+     Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic
+     line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers.
+     Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel
+     Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary.
+
+
+                       To Mr. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                                       March 24, '98.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--(I feel like Col. Sellers).
+
+Mr. Kleinberg [agent for Sczezepanik] came according to appointment, at
+8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary.  I asked
+questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call "No. 2 ") and got
+as good an idea of it as I could.  It is a machine.  It automatically
+punches the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical
+accuracy.  It will do for $1 what now costs $3.  So it has value, but
+"No. 2" is the great thing(the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of
+$10 and the jacquard looms must have it.
+
+Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this:
+
+"You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy,
+etc.  I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off
+two or three months.  They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious
+then--just the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them.
+
+"So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the
+grip of a single corporation.  This is a good time to begin.
+
+"We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold
+of just the statistics we want.  Still, we have some good statistics--and
+I will use those for a test.
+
+"You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the
+jacquard.  Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000
+use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.
+
+"You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 3o
+designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year--(a florin
+is 2 francs).  Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).
+
+"Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American
+factories--with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that
+instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we
+allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories--a total of
+20,000 designers.  Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000.  Let us
+consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year.  The
+saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in
+the jacquard business over there.
+
+"Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an
+aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring
+No. 2.
+
+"The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year.  The Company holding in its
+grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.
+Possibly more.
+
+"Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet.
+Price-cutting would end.  Fluctuations in values would cease.  The
+business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics
+could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment
+as Government bonds.  When the patents died the Company would be so
+powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands.  Would
+you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business
+of the world in the grip of a single Company?  And don't you think that
+the business would grow-grow like a weed?"
+
+"Ach, America--it is the country of the big!  Let me get my breath--then
+we will talk."
+
+So then we talked--talked till pretty late.  Would Germany and England
+join the combination?  I said the Company would know how to persuade
+them.
+
+Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we
+parted.
+
+I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection
+with this matter.  And we will now keep the invention itself out of print
+as well as we can.  Descriptions of it have been granted to the "Dry
+Goods Economist" (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers.  I
+have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he
+can do it.
+               With love,
+                              S. L. C.
+
+
+     If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came
+     from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the
+     letter which he inclosed--the brief and concise report from a
+     carpet-machine expert, who said: "I do not feel that it would be of
+     any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in
+     America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no
+     field for a company to develop the invention here.  A cursory
+     examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value
+     upon the invention, from a practical standpoint."
+
+     With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem
+     to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations.
+     Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved
+     him a great sum in money and years of disappointment.  But perhaps
+     he would not have heeded it then.
+
+     The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War.  Clemens was
+     constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose
+     son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA,
+                                                       June 17, '98.
+DEAR JOE,--You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must
+be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension--enough to make
+it just schmeck, as the Germans say.  Dave will come out with two or
+three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall
+all be glad it happened.
+
+We started with Bull Run, before.  Dewey and Hobson have introduced an
+improvement on the game this time.
+
+I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history--as I am enjoying this
+one.  For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my
+knowledge goes.  It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is
+another sight finer to fight for another man's.  And I think this is the
+first time it has been done.
+
+Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus.
+He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it
+will be a world of trouble to settle the rows--better leave well enough
+alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going to break the soft
+smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.
+
+Company!  (Sh! it happens every day--and we came out here to be quiet.)
+
+Love to you all.
+                         MARK.
+
+
+     They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village
+     near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet.  Many friends came
+     out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans.  Clemens,
+     however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we
+     gather from the next to Howells.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN,
+                                                       Aug. 16, '98.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter came yesterday.  It then occurred to me that I
+might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of
+weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to me I
+was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing itself
+while I was at work at my other literature during the day.  But next day
+my other literature was still urgent--and so on and so on; so my letter
+didn't get put into ink at all.  But I see now, that you were writing,
+about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come across the
+Atlantic per mental telegraph.  In 1876 or '75 I wrote 40,000 words of a
+story called "Simon Wheeler" wherein the nub was the preventing of an
+execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the other
+side of the globe.  I had a lot of people scattered about the globe who
+carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button, made
+of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and have
+a talk, they "pressed the button" or did something, I don't remember
+what, and communication was at once opened.  I didn't finish the story,
+though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000
+words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside.
+
+This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able to
+call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental
+telegraph--and not merely by impression, the impression will be
+articulated into words.  It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be,
+because in the upper civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was
+going to say sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people
+along with the already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is called
+who doesn't wish to talk he will be like those visitors you mention: "not
+chosen"--and will be frankly damned and shut off.
+
+Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and
+again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only
+think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen-
+the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men
+whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had
+no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us hope
+so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13 mag.
+articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500 words altogether,
+succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of diligently-wrought MS.,
+the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort.  I could make all of those
+things go if I would take the trouble to re-begin each one half a dozen
+times on a new plan.  But none of them was important enough except one:
+the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out in Paris three or four years
+ago and told you about in New York under seal of confidence--no other
+person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the story to be called "Which was
+the Dream?"
+
+A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was a
+totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself, and
+straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
+confidence.  I think I've struck the right one this time.  I have already
+put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
+satisfied with it-a hard critic to content.  I feel sure that all of the
+first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but by
+the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would have
+been tragedy and unendurable, almost.  I think I can carry the reader a
+long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap.  In the
+present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy; but I
+shall deny myself and restrict it to one.  (If you should see a little
+short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic Sweetheart"
+(written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one.  It may have been a
+suggester, though.
+
+I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not to
+let on that they don't.
+
+We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
+baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
+rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping.  I hope I can get a
+chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell.  But you do it--therefore
+why should you think I can't?
+
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+
+
+     The dream story was never completed.  It was the same that he had
+     worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland.  It would be
+     tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to
+     accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it
+     eventually went to waste.  The short story mentioned, "My Platonic
+     Sweetheart," a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark
+     Twain's lifetime.  Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's
+     Magazine.
+
+     The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the
+     startling event of that summer.  In a letter to Twichell Clemens
+     presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs.  Later he treated it
+     at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of
+     personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld
+     from print.  It has since been included in a volume of essays, What
+     Is Man, etc.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep.  13, '98.
+DEAR JOE,-- You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines.  No--
+Harper, Century and McClure do; an example I should like to recommend to
+other publishers.  And so I thank you very much for sending me Brander's
+article.  When you say "I like Brander Matthews; he impresses me as a man
+of parts and power," I back you, right up to the hub--I feel the same
+way--.  And when you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for
+my crimes against the Leather stockings and the Vicar, I ain't making any
+objection.  Dern your gratitude!
+
+His article is as sound as a nut.  Brander knows literature, and loves
+it; he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so
+lucidly and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him,
+even when you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such
+merits as a book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered
+through an acre of mud.  And so he has a right to be a critic.
+
+To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me.  I
+haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I
+hate them.  I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden
+me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I
+have to stop every time I begin.
+
+That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I
+am living in the midst of world-history again.  The Queen's jubilee last
+year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder,
+which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years
+from now.  To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in
+at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken
+with tears, "My God the Empress is murdered," and fly toward her home
+before we can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to
+you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your
+neighbor Antony should come flying and say "Caesar is butchered--the head
+of the world is fallen!"
+
+Of course there is no talk but of this.  The mourning is universal and
+genuine, the consternation is stupefying.  The Austrian Empire is being
+draped with black.  Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday,
+when the funeral cortege marches.  We are invited to occupy a room in the
+sumptuous new hotel (the "Krantz" where we are to live during the Fall
+and Winter) and view it, and we shall go.
+
+Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom they
+retail similar slanders.  She said in French--she is weak in French--that
+she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of the
+"demimonde."  Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land, that
+mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy.  But these
+Malaproperies are always inventions--they don't happen.
+
+Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids.  Had a
+noble good one with Parker and Dunham--land, but we were grateful for
+that visit!
+               Yours with all our loves.
+                                        MARK.
+
+                      [Inclosed with the foregoing.]
+
+Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
+concede high rank to the German Emperor's.  He justly describes it as a
+"deed unparalleled for ruthlessness," and then adds that it was "ordained
+from above."
+
+I think this verdict will not be popular "above."  A man is either a free
+agent or he isn't.  If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is
+responsible for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if
+the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this
+prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the German court cannot
+condemn him without manifestly committing a crime.  Logic is logic; and
+by disregarding its laws even Emperors as capable and acute as William II
+can be beguiled into making charges which should not be ventured upon
+except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
+                                                       MARK.
+
+
+     The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
+     luxurious, circumstances.  The hard work and good fortune which had
+     enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
+     provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
+     characteristic and interesting.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L.  NEVER MARKT 6
+                                                       Dec.  30, '98.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though I
+shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
+passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure
+moment.  Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how
+indestructible the habit is, afterward!  In your house in Cambridge a
+hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your
+letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any in--
+the years, anyway."  That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost
+me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and
+buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get rid
+of a virtue.....
+
+I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care
+to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in
+difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having
+peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone.
+Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has come
+with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps
+the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were
+lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till
+another figuring-up was necessary.  Last night she figured up for her own
+satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in
+Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which
+represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the
+bank.  I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking
+4 � centers before.
+
+At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the Mouse-
+Trap played and well played.  I thought the house would kill itself with
+laughter.  By George they played with life!  and it was most
+devastatingly funny.  And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses
+in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted
+them.  The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were
+taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls.  Then there was a nigger-
+minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too, for the
+nigger-show was always a passion of mine.  This one was created and
+managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was the
+middle man.  There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a
+Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young
+fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be
+one or the other.
+
+It's quite true--I don't read you "as much as I ought," nor anywhere near
+half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.
+I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete,
+but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the
+papers.  I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey
+begins, and that will not happen again.  The last chance at a bound book
+of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your
+short things, by the Harpers.  I read the whole book twice through and
+some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far
+as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is
+admiring it yet.  Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know
+where they get them.
+
+Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to
+live in New York.  We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and
+expenses.  But perhaps nothing will come of it.  We do afford to live in
+the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4  bedrooms, a dining-room, a
+drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't
+get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).
+
+
+Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us
+of
+
+               "The days when we went gipsying
+               A long time ago."
+
+Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us
+others and will not look our way.  We saw the "Master of Palmyra" last
+night.  How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human grand-
+folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!
+
+With love from all of us to all of you.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS.  VIENNA.  LONDON.  A SUMMER IN
+SWEDEN
+
+The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying
+handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz.  Their rooms, so often thronged
+with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the "Second
+Embassy."  Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies.
+Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most
+notable.  Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners--his
+sayings and opinions were widely quoted.
+
+A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would
+naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review
+of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a
+brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment.
+The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident
+an added interest.
+
+
+                       To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
+
+No.  1.
+                                                       VIENNA, Jan.  9.
+DEAR MR.  STEAD,-The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.
+Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.
+                                        MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+To Wm.  T.  Stead, in London:
+
+No.  2.
+DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion.  That seems a better idea than the
+other.  Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should
+not be able to work it.  We should have to tame the human race first, and
+history seems to show that that cannot be done.  Can't we reduce the
+armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the
+powers?  Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength
+10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise?  For, of
+course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at
+one time.  It has been tried.  We are not going to try to get all of them
+to go into the scheme peaceably, are we?  In that case I must withdraw my
+influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward
+signs of sanity.  Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed
+together.  They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be
+against nature and not operative.  A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per
+cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if
+three other powers will join.  I feel sure that the armaments are now
+many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or
+war.  Take wartime for instance.  Suppose circumstances made it necessary
+for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did
+before--settle a large question and bring peace.  I will guess that
+400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).
+In five hours they disabled 50,000 men.  It took them that tedious, long
+time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.
+But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower
+guns, raining 600 balls a minute.  Four men to a gun--is that the number?
+A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man.  Thus a modern soldier is 149
+Waterloo soldiers in one.  Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of
+each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as
+effectively as we did eighty-five years ago.  We should do the same
+beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then.  The
+allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip
+him.
+
+But instead what do we see?  In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,
+taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field.  Each
+man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
+Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are
+not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.
+Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could
+arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million
+men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,
+they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their
+populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents
+which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking
+and sit down and cipher a little.
+
+Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can
+gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where
+it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed.  Then we can have all the
+peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it.
+
+
+                                                  VIENNA, January 9.
+P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--"350 million" ought
+to be 450 million; "349,982,000" ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark
+about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on the
+planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a half the
+existing males.
+
+
+     Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to
+     him across the years.  He always welcomed such letters -they came as
+     from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness.  He
+     sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an
+     undercurrent of affection.
+
+
+              To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
+
+                              HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,
+                                                  Feb.  26, 1899.
+DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed.  He was to teach
+me the river for a certain specified sum.  I have forgotten what it was,
+but I paid it.  I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A. T.
+Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one trip),
+and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
+
+The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect.  Bixby is not 67: he is
+97.  I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk
+when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for
+57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than
+he really was.  At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac
+commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of
+his before the Revolution.  He has piloted every important river in
+America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.
+I have never revealed these facts before.  I notice, too, that you are
+deceiving the people concerning your age.  The printed portrait which you
+have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was
+19.  I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby
+for your grandson.  Is it spreading, I wonder--this disposition of pilots
+to renew their youth by doubtful methods?  Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan--they
+probably go to Sunday school now--but it will not deceive.
+
+Yes, it is as you say.  All of the procession but a fraction has passed.
+It is time for us all to fall in.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I.  NEUER MARKT 6
+                                                  April 2, '99.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now;
+waiting, and strongly interested.  You are old enough to be a weary man,
+with paling interests, but you do not show it.  You do your work in the
+same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect
+way.  I don't know how you can--but I suspect.  I suspect that to you
+there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a poor
+joke--the poorest that was ever contrived.  Since I wrote my Bible, (last
+year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders over,
+and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of
+it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so I
+have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor praisefully about
+him any more.  And I don't intend to try.  I mean to go on writing, for
+that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much.  (for I don't wish to
+be scalped, any more than another.)
+
+April 5.  The Harper has come.  I have been in Leipzig with your party,
+and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the
+swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding
+Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
+
+Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses
+which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to
+sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which
+used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the
+public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
+
+But maybe that is your art.  Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
+detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery.  Then it is well done,
+perfectly done.  I wrote my last travel book--[Following the Equator.]--
+in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion through
+heaven.  Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness fools me,
+then I shall believe it fooled the reader.  How I did loathe that journey
+around the world!--except the sea-part and India.
+
+Evening.  My tail hangs low.  I thought I was a financier--and I bragged
+to you.  I am not bragging, now.  The stock which I sold at such a fine
+profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth
+$60,000 more than I sold it for.  I feel just as if I had been spending
+$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming
+extravagance.
+
+Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to
+make a speech at a banquet.  Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram
+from London asking for the speech for a New York paper.  I (this is
+strictly private) sent it.  And then I didn't make that speech, but
+another of a quite different character--a speech born of something
+which the introducer said.  If that said speech got cabled and printed,
+you needn't let on that it was never uttered.
+
+That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people.  We
+were there a week and had a great time.  At the banquet I heard their
+chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious
+speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not
+understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian.  But the art of it!-
+it was superlative.
+
+They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience--
+all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the effects.  The
+English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young English
+women who earn their living teaching their language; and that there are.
+others besides these.
+
+For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;
+gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign
+languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night
+the concerts and operas.  Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and
+bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
+
+(Correction.  Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)
+
+I am renewing my youth.  I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last
+Saturday night.  And I've been to a lot of football matches.
+
+Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals ("Literature,"
+March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the
+top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered
+disappointment for the third time--and will never fare any better, I
+hope, for you are where you belong, by every right.  She wanted to know
+who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her.  Nor when
+the election will be completed and decided.
+
+Next Morning.  I have been reading the morning paper.  I do it every
+morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and
+basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and
+cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the
+human race.  I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not
+despair.
+
+(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea.  ('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!
+Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking.  This one,
+a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency
+of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking
+out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for
+she said nothing that was funny.  "Spose so many 've told y' how they
+'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle
+Kehe!  say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe!  Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n
+saw Tolstoi; he said--" It made me shudder.
+
+April 12.  Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining
+that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members;
+and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand it.  But I
+have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the
+pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large difference in these
+things.
+
+13th.  I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens.  The office
+of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and
+that and the other damned breed of priests.
+                                   Yrs ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not
+     with the frequency of former years.  Perhaps neither of them was
+     bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly
+     less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,
+     there was always the discouragement of distance.  Once Howells
+     wrote: "I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn
+     round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can
+     begin it."  And in another letter: "It ought to be as pleasant to
+     sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it
+     isn't.....  The only reason why I write is that I want another
+     letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.
+     I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than
+     lunch.  I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that
+     brings unbearable leisure.  I hope you will be in New York another
+     winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of
+     eternity."
+
+     Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal
+     to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a
+     close.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                                       May 12, 1899.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p.  m.  Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving
+for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human
+race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary of
+Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an
+Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who
+wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and
+wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and
+several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,
+the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans.  It made just a
+comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through
+the folding doors.  I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.
+Clemens, but this was a pleasant one.  I had only one accident.  The old
+Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for we
+violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on others--
+for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious beliefs
+and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is a democrat and
+so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is laborers' rights and
+approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me.  And so on.  After
+she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began to talk sharply
+against her for contributing money, time, labor, and public expression of
+favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day) in the silk factories
+of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and betrayed me into over-warm
+argument.  I am sorry: for she didn't know anything about the subject,
+and I did; and one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the
+chosen of God.
+
+(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place.  The Sec. of Legation
+is a good man, but out of place.  The Attache is a good man, but out of
+place.  Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship;
+and her possible is 17,200 tons.)
+
+May 13, 4 p. m.  A beautiful English girl and her handsome English
+husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird.
+English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk
+English till she was 8 or 10.  She came up clothed like the sunset, and
+was a delight to look at.  (Roumanian costume.).....
+
+Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and to-
+morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and his
+wife have gone to chaperon them.  They gave me a chance to go, but there
+are no snow mountains that I want to look at.  Three hours out, three
+hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance; yelling
+conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new
+acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and
+if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the
+foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on.  The terms
+seemed too severe.  Snow mountains are too dear at the price ....
+
+For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as soon
+as I could afford it.  At last I can afford it, and have put the pot-
+boiler pen away.  What I have been wanting is a chance to write a book
+without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's feelings,
+and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions, delusions;
+a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the plainest
+language and without a limitation of any sort.  I judged that that would
+be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.
+
+It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I
+didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found
+it out.  But I am sure it is started right this time.  It is in tale-
+form.  I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he is
+constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how
+mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities
+and his place among the animals.
+
+So far, I think I am succeeding.  I let the madam into the secret day
+before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
+chapters.  She said--
+
+"It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!"
+
+"Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think."
+
+I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
+out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump
+into it.
+                         Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
+     give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger.  It was not
+     finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
+     after his death.  Six years later (1916) it was published serially
+     in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.
+
+     The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
+     received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
+     earlier years.  Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
+     midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
+     incident of one of their entertainments.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                                  LONDON, July 3, '99
+DEAR HOWELLS,--..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no use--
+I can't get time for anything these days.  I must break off and write a
+postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed.  This afternoon he
+left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and carried off my
+hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.) When the rest of
+us came out there was but one hat that would go on my head--it fitted
+exactly, too.  So wore it away.  It had no name in it, but the Canon was
+the only man who was absent.  I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.; saying that
+for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did not belong
+to me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and my family
+were getting alarmed.  Could he explain my trouble?  And now at 8.30 p.m.
+comes a note from him to say that all the afternoon he has been
+exhibiting a wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace of expression,
+etc., etc., and have I missed a hat?  Our letters have crossed.
+                              Yours ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll.  Clemens had been always
+     one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend.  To
+     Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy.
+
+
+                    To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York:
+
+                                   30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE.
+DEAR MISS FARRELL,--Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any
+death as I have grieved for his.  His was a great and beautiful spirit,
+he was a man--all man from his crown to his foot soles.  My reverence for
+him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it
+with usury.
+                    Sincerely Yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna,
+     in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised
+     by Heinrick Kellgren.  Kellgren's method, known as the "Swedish
+     movements," seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments,
+     and he heralded the discovery far and wide.  He wrote to friends far
+     and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might
+     happen to have.  Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to
+     close with some mention of the new panacea.
+
+
+               To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe:
+
+                                             SANNA, Sept. 6, '99.
+DEAR JOE,--I've no business in here--I ought to be outside.  I shall
+never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven.  Venice?
+land, what a poor interest that is!  This is the place to be.  I have
+seen about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away
+beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and
+marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety.  America?  Italy?  The
+tropics?  They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be.  And this
+one--this unspeakable wonder!  It discounts all the rest.  It brings the
+tears, it is so unutterably beautiful.
+
+If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here.  The
+people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists
+pretend to do.  You wish to advise with a physician about it?  Certainly.
+There is no objection.  He knows next to something about his own trade,
+but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one.
+I respect your superstitions--we all have them.  It would be quite
+natural for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct
+him as to the value of the new religious specialty which the Western
+missionary is trying to put on the market, before investing in it.  (He
+would get a verdict.)
+                         Love to you all!
+                                   Always Yours
+                                                  MARK.
+
+     Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of
+     course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to
+     give.  Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock,
+     without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual
+     practice which few would be likely to imitate.  Nevertheless, what
+     he says is interesting.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                        SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you.  I learned a
+trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago.  I
+meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized
+the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences, then
+remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory
+introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously
+using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to
+carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that I
+was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch
+presently.  It was a beautiful success.  I knew the substance of the
+sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest of
+it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the snap
+and go and freshness of an impromptu.  I was to read several pieces, and
+I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience thought
+I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and was
+going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so I
+always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it had
+begun.  I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time over
+again.  It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented.  Try
+it.  You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment.  Their
+attention is fixed, and never wavers.  And that is not the case where one
+reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly
+exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is
+not improvising, but reciting from memory.  And in the heat of telling a
+thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest
+suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then!  Try it.  Such a phrase has
+a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if
+prepared beforehand, and it "fetches" an audience in such an enthusing
+and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another
+one, sure.
+
+Your September instalment--["Their Silver Wedding journey."]-- was
+delicious--every word of it.  You haven't lost any of your splendid art.
+Callers have arrived.
+                              With love
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     "Yes," wrote Howells, "if I were a great histrionic artist like you
+     I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what
+     I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise
+     their deadness frankly and read them."
+
+     From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned
+     by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science.  It
+     was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic
+     appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check
+     in payment for it.  This brought prompt acknowledgment.
+
+
+               To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.:
+
+                                             LONDON, Oct. 19, '99
+DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man feel
+proud and good!  To say a compliment well is a high art--and few possess
+it.  You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity with a
+handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher go.
+I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say so,
+recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you approve
+an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised peanuts and you
+kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article is worth.
+
+You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now
+     seemed to be coming his way.  The Joan of Arc introduction was the
+     same that today appears in his collected works under the title of
+     Saint Joan of Arc.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                             LONDON, Oct.  19, '99.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains but
+it pours.  I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the English
+translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials and
+Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes.  I wrote the
+introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from a tale
+I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of note-making
+--a fearful job for a man not used to it.  This morning brought a note
+from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who edits the
+translation, saying, "Never mind the notes--we'll make the translators do
+them."  That was comfort and joy.
+
+The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to talk
+Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M. P.'s--
+(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I couldn't
+have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and explain--
+and lose an hour.  Just then came Murray and said "Leave that to me
+--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you write
+a note and tell him I am coming."
+
+(Which I did, later.  Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party
+last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat
+this time.  In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk, now
+--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: "You mustn't think it is
+because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure you
+upon honor it isn't.  I should bring my old one."
+
+I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to
+write introductory monographs for the book.
+
+Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.
+
+The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she
+performed before her judges.
+
+Lord Roberts, her military genius.
+
+Kipling, her patriotism.
+
+And so on.  When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X;
+that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they
+could do monographs worthy of the book.  He hadn't run the others to
+cover yet, but was on their track.  Very good news.  It is a grand book,
+and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people.  As for me, I
+took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a
+performance.
+
+Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter,
+and was lifted higher than ever.  Next came letters from America properly
+glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one
+roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing $200
+additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I didn't
+mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second time he
+has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and no one
+else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust them.
+
+And last of all came a letter from M-.  How I do wish that man was in
+hell.  Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.
+
+But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M---- in hell it
+would have been perfect.  But that will happen, and I can wait.
+
+Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on
+paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said
+it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime
+subject.  I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the
+stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over again
+and have a good time with it.
+
+Oh, I know how you feel!  I've been in hell myself.  You are there
+tonight.  By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not eating
+it.  Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming.  I have
+declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland.  I wanted the money,
+but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance.
+                         With love to all of you
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL.  THE BOER WAR.  BOXER TROUBLES.
+THE RETURN TO AMERICA
+
+The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in
+osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense
+of other healing methods.
+
+
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan.  8, 1900.
+DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another.  Mental Telegraphy will
+be greatly respected a century hence.
+
+By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the remarkable
+cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I brought upon
+myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that she had been
+taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an American
+invention.
+
+Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas, in
+a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after Kellgren
+began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in Germany.  Dr.
+Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded that Kellgren
+moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across six hours of
+longitude, without need of a wire.  By the time Still began to
+experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the principles of
+his system and established himself in a good practice in London--1874
+--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas, Mental
+Telegraphically.
+
+Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in
+arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name
+of Osteopathy.  Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has got
+itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the
+physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges;
+that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a
+school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100
+students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and
+that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America.  Dear me,
+there are not 30 in Europe.  Europe is so sunk in superstitions and
+prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to do
+anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as witness
+the telegraph, dentistry, &c.
+
+Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon
+make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and then,
+25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and tell all
+about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B----- as in the case of the
+telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she
+heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.
+
+I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay
+and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along
+and gives it a first rate trial.  Many an ass in America, is getting a
+deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old healing
+principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let it boom
+along!  I have no objection.  Let them call it by what name they choose,
+so long as it does helpful work among the class which is numerically
+vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e.  the fools, the idiots,
+the pudd'nheads.
+
+We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads.
+We know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the
+race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque
+system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's
+stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach
+at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage to
+some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the drug
+either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of
+the nostrums.  The doctor's insane system has not only been permitted to
+continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by the State and
+made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against a free-man's
+proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method of defending
+his body against disease and death.
+
+And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the
+State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the
+patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous
+business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
+experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
+Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
+the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.
+
+I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list I
+count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure.  But there isn't one
+which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.
+
+Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
+surgeon.  But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
+revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect for
+the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am
+convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
+the silliest.  And they know they are shams and humbugs.  They have taken
+the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face
+without laughing.
+
+See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us: two
+weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and by
+consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple attack--
+influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the gravity of
+the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought she ought to
+send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I should want
+around at such a time.  Of course I did not say no--not that I was
+indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of a
+dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is
+unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor,
+and it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me to
+send for Kellgren.  To-day she is up and around-Lured.  It is safe to say
+that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet, and
+booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition and
+afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.
+
+It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
+Kellgren system was still an ardent one.  Indeed, for a time he gave most
+of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with
+little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically
+expressed.  War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer
+troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China.  It was a
+disturbing, exciting year.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
+                                                  Jan. 25, 1900.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content and
+praise God--it has not happened to another.  But I am sorry he didn't go
+with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn.  He is good company,
+cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle.  Your doing a lecture tour
+was heroic.  It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be
+proud of yourself.  No mount of applause or money or both could save it
+from being a hell to a man constituted as you are.  It is that even to
+me, who am made of coarser stuff.
+
+I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that
+one infallible sign of sincere approval.  In all my life, wherever it
+failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.
+
+Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way
+shameful and excuseless.  Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine
+articles about it, but I have to stop with that.  For England must not
+fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political
+degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of
+Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.
+Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld.  He is an enemy of
+the human race who shall speak against her now.  Why was the human race
+created?  Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of
+it.  God had his opportunity.  He could have made a reputation.  But no,
+He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a
+regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.  For a
+giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this
+war.  I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man
+introduces the topic.  Then I say "My head is with the Briton, but my
+heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will
+talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice."  And so we discuss, and have
+no trouble.
+
+                                                       Jan.  26.
+It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human
+race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the
+purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a
+conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the "Times" various
+samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it
+as of yesterday.  If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a
+paper which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our
+Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with the rest of his
+regalia in the wash.
+
+I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
+smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
+contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval
+of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.
+
+I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
+itself.  But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
+thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.
+
+               With great love to you all
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
+     human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
+     by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
+     preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men.  But his opinion
+     of the race could hardly have been worse than it was.  And nothing
+     that human beings could do would have surprised him.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.
+DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and
+give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang
+the priests and confiscate their property.  If these things are so, the
+war out there has no interest for me.
+
+I have just been examining chapter LXX of "Following the Equator," to see
+if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out.  It reads
+curiously as if it had been written about the present war.
+
+I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
+conceived.  He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
+Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
+ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and
+limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of
+disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise
+and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful life
+void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form of
+civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where to
+look for it.  I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of
+artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it
+isn't complete.  We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the
+great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of
+the two.  My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing
+and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and
+hypocrisies.  As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a
+lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it
+belongs.
+
+Provided we could get something better in the place of it.  But that is
+not possible, perhaps.  Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,
+therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it.
+And so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days,
+nor fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and fall
+would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.... Naturally,
+then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, and no
+(instructed) Englishman doubts it.  At least that is my belief.
+
+Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists.
+I wanted to know how the men impress you.  As to their Art, I know fairly
+well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a
+physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his
+ignorance.  Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are
+not very precious.
+
+Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.
+               Love to you all
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The next letter affords a pleasant variation.  Without doubt it was
+     written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him
+     into indiscretion.  This was always happening to him, and letters
+     like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.
+
+
+                          To Mr. Ann, in London:
+
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.
+DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw that
+letter.  Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for I
+didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a
+stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward
+the investor, and I am not willing to do that.  I have another objection,
+a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise scored
+a success or a failure would damage me.  I can't afford that; even the
+Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more character to
+spare than I have.  (Ah, a happy thought!  If he would sign the letter
+with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing, of course.
+I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme that he would
+sign.  As he does not know me, it follows that he would sign anything
+that I would sign.  This is unassailable logic--but really that is all
+that can be said for it.)
+
+No, I withdraw the letter.  This virgin is pure up to date, and is going
+to remain so.
+                         Ys sincerely,
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  WELLINGTON COURT,
+                                             KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.
+DEAR JOE,-- Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes
+very deep.  I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for me.
+Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of the
+billiard-party in our house.  When we come home, how shall we have
+billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson?
+I believe I could not endure that.  We must find another use for that
+room.  Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry
+Robinson.  The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such
+warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery.
+But not in any repellent sense.  Our dead are welcome there; their life
+made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with
+us always, and there will be no parting.
+
+It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate, youth!
+Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and got his
+great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams and
+entered the Sahara of fact.  The deep consciousness of Susy's good
+fortune is a constant comfort to me.
+
+London is happy-hearted at last.  The British victories have swept the
+clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces.  For three months the
+private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of
+Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley
+and animated again.  Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish
+lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady?  These are darlings,
+every one.  Night before last it was all Irish--24.  One would have to
+travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle
+and absence of shyness and self-consciousness.
+
+It was American in these fine qualities.  This was at Mr. Lecky's.  He is
+Irish, you know.  Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's.  Lord
+Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and a
+disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch
+breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of
+the Mutiny.  You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is
+usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of the
+battle.  An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are
+idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep
+bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull and
+without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but losing
+his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with the Kelt.
+Sir Wm. Butler said "the Kelt is the spear-head of the British lance."
+                         Love to you all.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.
+     Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate
+     friend of the Clemens household.  "Lecky" was W. E. H. Lecky, the
+     Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many
+     years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:
+
+     In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington
+     Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,
+     at Dollis Hill.  To-day the place has been given to the public under
+     the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an
+     earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there.  It was a
+     beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks.  In a
+     letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: "It is
+     simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are
+     beyond everything.  I believe nowhere in the world do you find such
+     trees as in England."  Clemens wrote to Twichell:  "From the house
+     you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green
+     turf.....  Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in
+     three minutes on a horse.  By rail we can be in the heart of London,
+     in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five."
+
+     Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.
+
+
+                  To the Editor of the Times, in London:
+
+SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was
+swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim
+was justified.  But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind.  I live
+eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at 4
+o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon,
+thus making the trip in thirteen hours.
+
+It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.
+
+                              C.
+DOLLIS HILL, N.  W.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W.
+                                             LONDON, Aug.  12, '00.
+DEAR JOE,--The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here to
+tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them.  We
+furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather--and they used it all
+up, in their extravagant American way.  Since then we have sat by coal
+fires, evenings.
+
+We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York
+where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of
+putting this family in proper condition.
+
+Livy and I dined with the Chief justice a month ago and he was as well-
+conditioned as an athlete.
+
+It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese.  They have
+been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I
+hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good.
+I only wish it; of course I don't really expect it.
+
+Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you
+Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the
+connection.  This is thoroughly exasperating.  Aren't we ever going to
+meet again?
+                    With no end of love from all of us,
+                                        MARK.
+
+P. S.  Aug. 18.
+DEAR JOE,--It is 7.30 a. m.  I have been waking very early, lately.  If
+it occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it.
+
+This is our day of mourning.  It is four years since Susy died; it is
+five years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing
+kisses at us from the railway platform when we started West around the
+world.
+
+Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday.
+                    With love
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence
+     was drawing to an end.  More than nine years had passed since the
+     closing of the Hartford house--eventful years that had seen failure,
+     bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes.  All the
+     family were anxious to get home--Mark Twain most anxious of all.
+
+     They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up
+     for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which
+     follows.
+
+
+                   To J. Y. M.  MacAlister, in London:
+
+                                                            Sep.  1900.
+MY DEAR MACALISTER,--We do really start next Saturday.  I meant to sail
+earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family
+Hotels.  They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist
+elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time of
+the Heptarchy.  Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them.  The
+once spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much
+discomfort as can be had anywhere out of jail for any money.  All the
+modern inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete for
+a century.  The prices are astonishingly high for what you get.  The
+bedrooms are hospitals for incurable furniture.  I find it so in this
+one.  They exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like
+inn of fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it.  Some
+quite respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit
+and arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and
+superstition.  The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but
+older I think.  Older and dearer.  The lift was a gift of William the
+Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric.  They represent geological
+periods.  Mine is the oldest.  It is formed in strata of Old Red
+Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende,
+superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of
+prehistoric man.  It is in No. 149.  Thousands of scientists come to see
+it.  They consider it holy.  They want to blast out the prints but
+cannot.  Dynamite rebounds from it.
+
+Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha.
+                    Yours ever affectionately,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week
+     later America gave them a royal welcome.  The press, far and wide,
+     sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were
+     offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him.
+
+     The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of house-
+     hunting.  They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but after a
+     brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote:
+
+
+                     To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston:
+
+                                             NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900.
+DEAR MR. BAXTER,--It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days
+with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and the
+house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to live,
+our hearts will break.  I am not sure that we shall ever be strong enough
+to endure that strain.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but
+     the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive.  Through
+     Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street,
+     a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for
+     the winter.  "We were lucky to get this big house furnished," he
+     wrote MacAlister in London.  "There was not another one in town
+     procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right--space
+     enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned,
+     great size."
+
+     The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely
+     forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
+
+
+              To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:
+
+                                                       Nov. 30.
+DEAR MADAM,--I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am
+weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly
+approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that
+ring door-bells.  My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding
+conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I
+think the boys enjoy it.
+
+My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the
+front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises.  But I am
+very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting
+spongy.
+                    Very truly yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters Vol. 4, by Mark Twain
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Letters of Mark Twain, Vol. 4
+#57 in our series by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
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+Title: The Letters Of Mark Twain, Vol. 4
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3196]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 19, 2001]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Letters of Mark Twain, Vol. 4
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+
+
+MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS  1886-1900
+
+ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
+
+
+
+VOLUME IV.
+
+
+XXVI
+
+LETTERS, 1886-87.  JANE CLEMENS'S ROMANCE.  UNMAILED LETTERS, ETC.
+
+     When Clemens had been platforming with Cable and returned to
+     Hartford for his Christmas vacation, the Warner and Clemens families
+     had joined in preparing for him a surprise performance of The Prince
+     and the Pauper.  The Clemens household was always given to
+     theatricals, and it was about this time that scenery and a stage
+     were prepared--mainly by the sculptor Gerhardt--for these home
+     performances, after which productions of The Prince and the Pauper
+     were given with considerable regularity to audiences consisting of
+     parents and invited friends.  The subject is a fascinating one, but
+     it has been dwelt upon elsewhere.--[In Mark Twain: A Biography,
+     chaps.  cliff and clx.]--We get a glimpse of one of these occasions
+     as well as of Mark Twain's financial progress in the next brief
+     note.
+
+                       To W. D. Howells; in Boston:
+
+                                                  Jan.  3, '86.
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--The date set for the Prince and Pauper play is ten
+days hence--Jan. 13.  I hope you and Pilla can take a train that arrives
+here during the day; the one that leaves Boston toward the end of the
+afternoon would be a trifle late; the performance would have already
+begun when you reached the house.
+
+I'm out of the woods.  On the last day of the year I had paid out
+$182,000 on the Grant book and it was totally free from debt.
+                                        Yrs ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Mark Twain's mother was a woman of sturdy character and with a keen
+     sense of humor and tender sympathies.  Her husband, John Marshall
+     Clemens, had been a man of high moral character, honored by all who
+     knew him, respected and apparently loved by his wife.  No one would
+     ever have supposed that during all her years of marriage, and almost
+     to her death, she carried a secret romance that would only be told
+     at last in the weary disappointment of old age.  It is a curious
+     story, and it came to light in this curious way:
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, May 19, '86.
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--..... Here's a secret.  A most curious and pathetic
+romance, which has just come to light.  Read these things, but don't
+mention them.  Last fall, my old mother--then 82--took a notion to attend
+a convention of old settlers of the Mississippi Valley in an Iowa town.
+My brother's wife was astonished; and represented to her the hardships
+and fatigues of such a trip, and said my mother might possibly not even
+survive them; and said there could be no possible interest for her in
+such a meeting and such a crowd.  But my mother insisted, and persisted;
+and finally gained her point.  They started; and all the way my mother
+was young again with excitement, interest, eagerness, anticipation.  They
+reached the town and the hotel.  My mother strode with the same eagerness
+in her eye and her step, to the counter, and said:
+
+"Is Dr. Barrett of St. Louis, here?"
+
+"No.  He was here, but he returned to St. Louis this morning."
+
+"Will he come again?"
+
+"No."
+
+My mother turned away, the fire all gone from her, and said, "Let us go
+home."
+
+They went straight back to Keokuk.  My mother sat silent and thinking for
+many days--a thing which had never happened before.  Then one day she
+said:
+
+"I will tell you a secret.  When I was eighteen, a young medical student
+named Barrett lived in Columbia (Ky.) eighteen miles away; and he used to
+ride over to see me.  This continued for some time.  I loved him with my
+whole heart, and I knew that he felt the same toward me, though no words
+had been spoken.  He was too bashful to speak--he could not do it.
+Everybody supposed we were engaged--took it for granted we were--but we
+were not.  By and by there was to be a party in a neighboring town, and
+he wrote my uncle telling him his feelings, and asking him to drive me
+over in his buggy and let him (Barrett) drive me back, so that he might
+have that opportunity to propose.  My uncle should have done as he was
+asked, without explaining anything to me; but instead, he read me the
+letter; and then, of course, I could not go--and did not.  He (Barrett)
+left the country presently, and I, to stop the clacking tongues, and to
+show him that I did not care, married, in a pet.  In all these sixty-four
+years I have not seen him since.  I saw in a paper that he was going to
+attend that Old Settlers' Convention.  Only three hours before we reached
+that hotel, he had been standing there!"
+
+Since then, her memory is wholly faded out and gone; and now she writes
+letters to the school-mates who had been dead forty years, and wonders
+why they neglect her and do not answer.
+
+Think of her carrying that pathetic burden in her old heart sixty-four
+years, and no human being ever suspecting it!
+                              Yrs ever,
+                                        MARK.
+
+We do not get the idea from this letter that those two long ago
+sweethearts quarreled, but Mark Twain once spoke of their having done so,
+and there may have been a disagreement, assuming that there was a
+subsequent meeting.  It does not matter, now.  In speaking of it, Mark
+Twain once said: "It is as pathetic a romance as any that has crossed the
+field of my personal experience in a long lifetime."--[When Mark Twain:
+A Biography was written this letter had not come to light, and the matter
+was stated there in accordance with Mark Twain's latest memory of it.]
+
+Howells wrote: "After all, how poor and hackneyed all the inventions are
+compared with the simple and stately facts.  Who could have imagined such
+a heart-break as that?  Yet it went along with the fulfillment of
+everyday duty and made no more noise than a grave under foot.  I doubt if
+fiction will ever get the knack of such things."
+
+Jane Clemens now lived with her son Orion and his wife, in Keokuk, where
+she was more contented than elsewhere.  In these later days her memory
+had become erratic, her realization of events about her uncertain, but
+there were times when she was quite her former self, remembering clearly
+and talking with her old-time gaiety of spirit.  Mark Twain frequently
+sent her playful letters to amuse her, letters full of such boyish gaiety
+as had amused her long years before.  The one that follows is a fair
+example.  It was written after a visit which Clemens and his family had
+paid to Keokuk.
+
+
+                       To Jane Clemens, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug. 7, '86.
+DEAR MA,--I heard that Molly and Orion and Pamela had been sick, but I
+see by your letter that they are much better now, or nearly well.  When
+we visited you a month ago, it seemed to us that your Keokuk weather was
+pretty hot; Jean and Clara sat up in bed at Mrs. McElroy's and cried
+about it, and so did I; but I judge by your letter that it has cooled
+down, now, so that a person is comparatively comfortable, with his skin
+off.  Well it did need cooling; I remember that I burnt a hole in my
+shirt, there, with some ice cream that fell on it; and Miss Jenkins told
+me they never used a stove, but cooked their meals on a marble-topped
+table in the drawing-room, just with the natural heat.  If anybody else
+had told me, I would not have believed it.  I was told by the Bishop of
+Keokuk that he did not allow crying at funerals, because it scalded the
+furniture.  If Miss Jenkins had told me that, I would have believed it.
+This reminds me that you speak of Dr. Jenkins and his family as if they
+were strangers to me.  Indeed they are not.  Don't you suppose I remember
+gratefully how tender the doctor was with Jean when she hurt her arm, and
+how quickly he got the pain out of the hurt, whereas I supposed it was
+going to last at least an hour?  No, I don't forget some things as easily
+as I do others.
+
+Yes, it was pretty hot weather.  Now here, when a person is going to die,
+he is always in a sweat about where he is going to; but in Keokuk of
+course they don't care, because they are fixed for everything.  It has
+set me reflecting, it has taught me a lesson.  By and by, when my health
+fails, I am going to put all my affairs in order, and bid good-bye to my
+friends here, and kill all the people I don't like, and go out to Keokuk
+and prepare for death.
+
+They are all well in this family, and we all send love.
+                                   Affly Your Son
+                                                  SAM.
+
+
+     The ways of city officials and corporations are often past
+     understanding, and Mark Twain sometimes found it necessary to write
+     picturesque letters of protest.  The following to a Hartford
+     lighting company is a fair example of these documents.
+
+
+           To a gas and electric-lighting company, in Hartford:
+
+GENTLEMEN,--There are but two places in our whole street where lights
+could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and
+appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places
+in the centre of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness.  When I
+noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I
+could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it
+was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be
+corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find it out.
+My judgment was right; it is always right, when you axe concerned.  For
+fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and tears, you persistently kept a
+gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn't find
+either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I
+had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running
+into it, nights.  Now I suppose your present idea is, to leave us a
+little more in the dark.
+
+Don't mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no rights
+which you are in any way bound to respect.  Please take your electric
+light and go to--but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you will
+probably find the way; and any way you can reasonably count on divine
+assistance if you lose your bearings.
+
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+     [Etext Editor's Note: Twain wrote another note to Hartford Gas and
+     Electric, which he may not have mailed and which Paine does not
+     include in these volumes:
+     "Gentleman:--Someday you are going to move me almost to the point
+     of irritation with your God-damned chuckle headed fashion of
+     turning off your God-damned gas without giving notice to your
+     God-damned parishioners--and you did it again last night--"
+     D.W.]
+
+     Frequently Clemens did not send letters of this sort after they were
+     written.  Sometimes he realized the uselessness of such protest,
+     sometimes the mere writing of them had furnished the necessary
+     relief, and he put, the letter away, or into the wastebasket, and
+     wrote something more temperate, or nothing at all.  A few such
+     letters here follow.
+
+     Clemens was all the time receiving application from people who
+     wished him to recommend one article or another; books, plays,
+     tobacco, and what not.  They were generally persistent people,
+     unable to accept a polite or kindly denial.  Once he set down some
+     remarks on this particular phase of correspondence.  He wrote:
+
+
+I
+
+No doubt Mr. Edison has been offered a large interest in many and many an
+electrical project, for the use of his name to float it withal.  And no
+doubt all men who have achieved for their names, in any line of activity
+whatever, a sure market value, have been familiar with this sort of
+solicitation.  Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure
+silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
+
+And so, people without a hall-mark of their own are always trying to get
+the loan of somebody else's.
+
+As a rule, that kind of a person sees only one side of the case.  He sees
+that his invention or his painting or his book is--apparently--a trifle
+better than you yourself can do, therefore why shouldn't you be willing
+to put your hall-mark on it?  You will be giving the purchaser his full
+money's worth; so who is hurt, and where is the harm?  Besides, are you
+not helping a struggling fellow-craftsman, and is it not your duty to do
+that?
+
+That side is plenty clear enough to him, but he can't and won't see the
+other side, to-wit: that you are a rascal if you put your hall-mark upon
+a thing which you did not produce yourself, howsoever good it may be.
+How simple that is; and yet there are not two applicants in a hundred who
+can, be made to see it.
+
+When one receives an application of this sort, his first emotion is an
+indignant sense of insult; his first deed is the penning of a sharp
+answer.  He blames nobody but that other person.  That person is a very
+base being; he must be; he would degrade himself for money, otherwise it
+would not occur to him that you would do such a thing.  But all the same,
+that application has done its work, and taken you down in your own
+estimation.  You recognize that everybody hasn't as high an opinion of
+you as you have of yourself; and in spite of you there ensues an interval
+during which you are not, in your own estimation as fine a bird as you
+were before.
+
+However, being old and experienced, you do not mail your sharp letter,
+but leave it lying a day.  That saves you.  For by that time you have
+begun to reflect that you are a person who deals in exaggerations--and
+exaggerations are lies.  You meant yours to be playful, and thought you
+made them unmistakably so.  But you couldn't make them playfulnesses to a
+man who has no sense of the playful and can see nothing but the serious
+side of things.  You rattle on quite playfully, and with measureless
+extravagance, about how you wept at the tomb of Adam; and all in good
+time you find to your astonishment that no end of people took you at your
+word and believed you.  And presently they find out that you were not in
+earnest.  They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue--and there
+is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver.  If you will deceive in
+one way, why shouldn't you in another?  So they apply for the use of your
+trade-mark.  You are amazed and affronted.  You retort that you are not
+that kind of person.  Then they are amazed and affronted; and wonder
+"since when?"
+
+By this time you have got your bearings.  You realize that perhaps there
+is a little blame on both sides.  You are in the right frame, now.  So
+you write a letter void of offense, declining.  You mail this one; you
+pigeon-hole the other.
+
+That is, being old and experienced, you do, but early in your career, you
+don't: you mail the first one.
+
+
+II
+
+An enthusiast who had a new system of musical notation, wrote to me and
+suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities of
+the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to
+make a "rousing hit."  He shouted and shouted over the marvels wrought by
+his system, and quoted the handsome compliments which had been paid it by
+famous musical people; but he forgot to tell me what his notation was
+like, or what its simplicities consisted in.  So I could not have written
+the article if I had wanted to--which I didn't; because I hate strangers
+with axes to grind.  I wrote him a courteous note explaining how busy I
+was--I always explain how busy I am--and casually drooped this remark:
+
+"I judge the X-X notation to be a rational mode of representing music, in
+place of the prevailing fashion, which was the invention of an idiot."
+
+Next mail he asked permission to print that meaningless remark.
+I answered, no--courteously, but still, no; explaining that I could not
+afford to be placed in the attitude of trying to influence people with a
+mere worthless guess.  What a scorcher I got, next mail!  Such irony!
+such sarcasm, such caustic praise of my superhonorable loyalty to the
+public!  And withal, such compassion for my stupidity, too, in not being
+able to understand my own language.  I cannot remember the words of this
+letter broadside, but there was about a page used up in turning this idea
+round and round and exposing it in different lights.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--What is the trouble with you?  If it is your viscera, you
+cannot have them taken out and reorganized a moment too soon.  I mean,
+if they are inside.  But if you are composed of them, that is another
+matter.  Is it your brain?  But it could not be your brain.  Possibly it
+is your skull: you want to look out for that.  Some people, when they get
+an idea, it pries the structure apart.  Your system of notation has got
+in there, and couldn't find room, without a doubt that is what the
+trouble is.  Your skull was not made to put ideas in, it was made to
+throw potatoes at.
+                         Yours Truly.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--Come, come--take a walk; you disturb the children.
+                         Yours Truly.
+
+
+There was a day, now happily nearly over, when certain newspapers made a
+practice of inviting men distinguished in any walk of life to give their
+time and effort without charge to express themselves on some subject of
+the day, or perhaps they were asked to send their favorite passages in
+prose or verse, with the reasons why.  Such symposiums were "features"
+that cost the newspapers only the writing of a number of letters,
+stationery, and postage.  To one such invitation Mark Twain wrote two
+replies.  They follow herewith:
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have received your proposition--which you have imitated from
+a pauper London periodical which had previously imitated the idea of this
+sort of mendicancy from seventh-rate American journalism, where it
+originated as a variation of the inexpensive "interview."
+
+Why do you buy Associated Press dispatches?  To make your paper the more
+salable, you answer.  But why don't you try to beg them?  Why do you
+discriminate?  I can sell my stuff; why should I give it to you?  Why
+don't you ask me for a shirt?  What is the difference between asking me
+for the worth of a shirt and asking me for the shirt itself?  Perhaps you
+didn't know you were begging.  I would not use that argument--it makes
+the user a fool.  The passage of poetry--or prose, if you will--which has
+taken deepest root in my thought, and which I oftenest return to and
+dwell upon with keenest no matter what, is this:  That the proper place
+for journalists who solicit literary charity is on the street corner with
+their hats in their hands.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+DEAR SIR,--Your favor of recent date is received, but I am obliged by
+press of work to decline.
+
+
+     The manager of a traveling theatrical company wrote that he had
+     taken the liberty of dramatizing Tom Sawyer, and would like also the
+     use of the author's name--the idea being to convey to the public
+     that it was a Mark Twain play.  In return for this slight favor the
+     manager sent an invitation for Mark Twain to come and see the play--
+     to be present on the opening night, as it were, at his (the
+     manager's) expense.  He added that if the play should be a go in the
+     cities there might be some "arrangement" of profits.  Apparently
+     these inducements did not appeal to Mark Twain.  The long unmailed
+     reply is the more interesting, but probably the briefer one that
+     follows it was quite as effective.
+
+                             Unmailed Answer:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept. 8, '87.
+DEAR SIR,--And so it has got around to you, at last; and you also have
+"taken the liberty."  You are No. 1365.  When 1364 sweeter and better
+people, including the author, have "tried" to dramatize Tom Sawyer and
+did not arrive, what sort of show do you suppose you stand?  That is a
+book, dear sir, which cannot be dramatized.  One might as well try to
+dramatize any other hymn.  Tom Sawyer is simply a hymn, put into prose
+form to give it a worldly air.
+
+Why the pale doubt that flitteth dim and nebulous athwart the forecastle
+of your third sentence?  Have no fears.  Your piece will be a Go.
+It will go out the back door on the first night.  They've all done it
+--the 1364.  So will 1365.  Not one of us ever thought of the simple
+device of half-soling himself with a stove-lid.  Ah, what suffering a
+little hindsight would have saved us.  Treasure this hint.
+
+How kind of you to invite me to the funeral.  Go to; I have attended a
+thousand of them.  I have seen Tom Sawyer's remains in all the different
+kinds of dramatic shrouds there are.  You cannot start anything fresh.
+Are you serious when you propose to pay my expence--if that is the
+Susquehannian way of spelling it?  And can you be aware that I charge a
+hundred dollars a mile when I travel for pleasure?  Do you realize that
+it is 432 miles to Susquehanna?  Would it be handy for you to send me the
+$43,200 first, so I could be counting it as I come along; because
+railroading is pretty dreary to a sensitive nature when there's nothing
+sordid to buck at for Zeitvertreib.
+
+Now as I understand it, dear and magnanimous 1365, you are going to
+recreate Tom Sawyer dramatically, and then do me the compliment to put me
+in the bills as father of this shady offspring.  Sir, do you know that
+this kind of a compliment has destroyed people before now?  Listen.
+
+Twenty-four years ago, I was strangely handsome.  The remains of it are
+still visible through the rifts of time.  I was so handsome that human
+activities ceased as if spellbound when I came in view, and even
+inanimate things stopped to look--like locomotives, and district
+messenger boys and so-on.  In San Francisco, in the rainy season I was
+often mistaken for fair weather.  Upon one occasion I was traveling in
+the Sonora region, and stopped for an hour's nooning, to rest my horse
+and myself.  All the town came out to look.  The tribes of Indians
+gathered to look.  A Piute squaw named her baby for me,--a voluntary
+compliment which pleased me greatly.  Other attentions were paid me.
+Last of all arrived the president and faculty of Sonora University and
+offered me the post of Professor of Moral Culture and the Dogmatic
+Humanities; which I accepted gratefully, and entered at once upon my
+duties.  But my name had pleased the Indians, and in the deadly kindness
+of their hearts they went on naming their babies after me.  I tried to
+stop it, but the Indians could not understand why I should object to so
+manifest a compliment.  The thing grew and grew and spread and spread and
+became exceedingly embarrassing.  The University stood it a couple of
+years; but then for the sake of the college they felt obliged to call a
+halt, although I had the sympathy of the whole faculty.  The president
+himself said to me, "I am as sorry as I can be for you, and would still
+hold out if there were any hope ahead; but you see how it is: there are a
+hundred and thirty-two of them already, and fourteen precincts to hear
+from.  The circumstance has brought your name into most wide and
+unfortunate renown.  It causes much comment--I believe that that is not
+an over-statement.  Some of this comment is palliative, but some of it
+--by patrons at a distance, who only know the statistics without the
+explanation,--is offensive, and in some cases even violent.  Nine
+students have been called home.  The trustees of the college have been
+growing more and more uneasy all these last months--steadily along with
+the implacable increase in your census--and I will not conceal from you
+that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a change in
+the Professorship of Moral Culture.  The coarsely sarcastic editorial in
+yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest--has brought
+things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of
+receiving your resignation."
+
+I know you only mean me a kindness, dear 1365, but it is a most deadly
+mistake.  Please do not name your Injun for me.  Truly Yours.
+
+
+                              Mailed Answer:
+
+                                        NEW YORK, Sept. 8.  1887.
+DEAR SIR,--Necessarily I cannot assent to so strange a proposition.  And
+I think it but fair to warn you that if you put the piece on the stage,
+you must take the legal consequences.
+                         Yours respectfully,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Before the days of international copyright no American author's
+     books were pirated more freely by Canadian publishers than those of
+     Mark Twain.  It was always a sore point with him that these books,
+     cheaply printed, found their way into the United States, and were
+     sold in competition with his better editions.  The law on the
+     subject seemed to be rather hazy, and its various interpretations
+     exasperating.  In the next unmailed letter Mark Twain relieves
+     himself to a misguided official.  The letter is worth reading today,
+     if for no other reason, to show the absurdity of copyright
+     conditions which prevailed at that time.
+
+
+          Unmailed Letter to H. C. Christiancy, on book Piracy:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+H. C. CHRISTIANCY, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR,--As I understand it, the position of the U. S. Government is
+this: If a person be captured on the border with counterfeit bonds in his
+hands--bonds of the N. Y. Central Railway, for instance--the procedure in
+his case shall be as follows:
+
+1.  If the N. Y. C. have not previously filed in the several police
+offices along the border, proof of ownership of the originals of the
+bonds, the government officials must collect a duty on the counterfeits,
+and then let them go ahead and circulate in this country.
+
+2.  But if there is proof already on file, then the N. Y. C.  may pay the
+duty and take the counterfeits.
+
+But in no case will the United States consent to go without its share of
+the swag.  It is delicious.  The biggest and proudest government on earth
+turned sneak-thief; collecting pennies on stolen property, and pocketing
+them with a greasy and libidinous leer; going into partnership with
+foreign thieves to rob its own children; and when the child escapes the
+foreigner, descending to the abysmal baseness of hanging on and robbing
+the infant all alone by itself!  Dear sir, this is not any more
+respectable than for a father to collect toll on the forced prostitution
+of his own daughter; in fact it is the same thing.  Upon these terms,
+what is a U. S. custom house but a "fence?"  That is all it is: a
+legalized trader in stolen goods.
+
+And this nasty law, this filthy law, this unspeakable law calls itself a
+"regulation for the protection of owners of copyright!"  Can sarcasm go
+further than that?  In what way does it protect them?  Inspiration itself
+could not furnish a rational answer to that question.  Whom does it
+protect, then?  Nobody, as far as I can see, but the foreign thief-
+sometimes--and his fellow-footpad the U. S. government, all the time.
+What could the Central Company do with the counterfeit bonds after it had
+bought them of the star spangled banner Master-thief?  Sell them at a
+dollar apiece and fetch down the market for the genuine hundred-dollar
+bond?  What could I do with that 20-cent copy of "Roughing It" which the
+United States has collared on the border and is waiting to release to me
+for cash in case I am willing to come down to its moral level and help
+rob myself?  Sell it at ten or fifteen cents--duty added--and destroy the
+market for the original $3,50 book?  Who ever did invent that law?  I
+would like to know the name of that immortal jackass.
+
+Dear sir, I appreciate your courtesy in stretching your authority in the
+desire to do me a kindness, and I sincerely thank you for it.  But I have
+no use for that book; and if I were even starving for it I would not pay
+duty on in either to get it or suppress it.  No doubt there are ways in
+which I might consent to go into partnership with thieves and fences,
+but this is not one of them.  This one revolts the remains of my self-
+respect; turns my stomach.  I think I could companion with a highwayman
+who carried a shot-gun and took many risks; yes, I think I should like
+that if I were younger; but to go in with a big rich government that robs
+paupers, and the widows and orphans of paupers and takes no risk--why the
+thought just gags me.
+
+Oh, no, I shall never pay any duties on pirated books of mine.  I am much
+too respectable for that--yet awhile.  But here--one thing that grovels
+me is this: as far as I can discover--while freely granting that the
+U. S. copyright laws are far and away the most idiotic that exist
+anywhere on the face of the earth--they don't authorize the government to
+admit pirated books into this country, toll or no toll.  And so I think
+that that regulation is the invention of one of those people--as a rule,
+early stricken of God, intellectually--the departmental interpreters of
+the laws, in Washington.  They can always be depended on to take any
+reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it.  They
+can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it
+inoperative--yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter
+and derision.  Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department,
+for instance--though I do not mean to suggest that that asylum is any
+worse than the others for the breeding and nourishing of incredible
+lunatics--I merely instance it because it happens to be the first to come
+into my mind.  Take that case of a few years ago where the P. M. General
+suddenly issued an edict requiring you to add the name of the State after
+Boston, New York, Chicago, &c, in your superscriptions, on pain of having
+your letter stopped and forwarded to the dead-letter office; yes, and I
+believe he required the county, too.  He made one little concession in
+favor of New York: you could say "New York City," and stop there; but if
+you left off the "city," you must add "N. Y."  to your "New York."  Why,
+it threw the business of the whole country into chaos and brought
+commerce almost to a stand-still.  Now think of that!  When that man goes
+to--to--well, wherever he is going to--we shan't want the microscopic
+details of his address.  I guess we can find him.
+
+Well, as I was saying, I believe that this whole paltry and ridiculous
+swindle is a pure creation of one of those cabbages that used to be at
+the head of one of those Retreats down there--Departments, you know--and
+that you will find it so, if you will look into it.  And moreover--but
+land, I reckon we are both tired by this time.
+                              Truly Yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF 1887.  LITERARY ARTICLES.  PEACEFUL DAYS AT THE
+FARM.  FAVORITE READING.  APOLOGY TO MRS. CLEVELAND, ETC.
+
+We have seen in the preceding chapter how unknown aspirants in one field
+or another were always seeking to benefit by Mark Twain's reputation.
+Once he remarked, "The symbol of the human race ought to be an ax; every
+human being has one concealed about him somewhere."  He declared when a
+stranger called on him, or wrote to him, in nine cases out of ten he
+could distinguish the gleam of the ax almost immediately.  The following
+letter is closely related to those of the foregoing chapter, only that
+this one was mailed--not once, but many times, in some form adapted to
+the specific applicant.  It does not matter to whom it was originally
+written, the name would not be recognized.
+
+
+            To Mrs. T.  Concerning unearned credentials, etc.
+
+                                                  HARTFORD, 1887.
+MY DEAR MADAM,--It is an idea which many people have had, but it is of no
+value.  I have seen it tried out many and many a time.  I have seen a
+lady lecturer urged and urged upon the public in a lavishly complimentary
+document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes and some others of
+supreme celebrity, but--there was nothing in her and she failed.  If
+there had been any great merit in her she never would have needed those
+men's help and (at her rather mature age,) would never have consented to
+ask for it.
+
+There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must bow
+to that law, she must submit to its requirements.  In brief this law is:
+
+     1.  No occupation without an apprenticeship.
+
+     2.  No pay to the apprentice.
+
+This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a
+General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in
+everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served his
+apprenticeship and proved himself.  Your sister's course is perfectly
+plain.  Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and offer to
+lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to be
+annullable by him at any time, after a month's notice, but not annullable
+by her at all.  The second year, he to have her services, if he wants
+them, at a trifle under the best price offered her by anybody else.
+
+She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to
+remuneration--but she can not learn it in any less time than that, unless
+she is a human miracle.
+
+Try it, and do not be afraid.  It is the fair and right thing.  If she
+wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Howells wrote, in February, offering to get a publisher to take the
+     Library of Humor off Mark Twain's hands.  Howells had been paid
+     twenty-six hundred dollars for the work on it, and his conscience
+     hurt him when he reflected that the book might never be used.  In
+     this letter he also refers to one of the disastrous inventions in
+     which Clemens had invested--a method of casting brass dies for
+     stamping book-covers and wall-paper.  Howells's purpose was to
+     introduce something of the matter into his next story.  Mark Twain's
+     reply gives us a light on this particular invention.
+
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 15, '87.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I was in New York five days ago, and Webster mentioned the
+Library, and proposed to publish it a year or a year and half hence.
+I have written him your proposition to-day.  (The Library is part of the
+property of the C. L. W. & Co.  firm.)
+
+I don't remember what that technical phrase was, but I think you will
+find it in any Cyclopedia under the head of "Brass."  The thing I best
+remember is, that the self-styled "inventor" had a very ingenious way of
+keeping me from seeing him apply his invention: the first appointment was
+spoiled by his burning down the man's shop in which it was to be done,
+the night before; the second was spoiled by his burning down his own shop
+the night before.  He unquestionably did both of these things.  He really
+had no invention; the whole project was a blackmailing swindle, and cost
+me several thousand dollars.
+
+The slip you sent me from the May "Study" has delighted Mrs. Clemens and
+me to the marrow.  To think that thing might be possible to many; but to
+be brave enough to say it is possible to you only, I certainly believe.
+The longer I live the clearer I perceive how unmatchable, how
+unapproachable, a compliment one pays when he says of a man "he has the
+courage (to utter) his convictions."  Haven't you had reviewers talk Alps
+to you, and then print potato hills?
+
+I haven't as good an opinion of my work as you hold of it, but I've
+always done what I could to secure and enlarge my good opinion of it.
+I've always said to myself, "Everybody reads it and that's something--it
+surely isn't pernicious, or the most acceptable people would get pretty
+tired of it."  And when a critic said by implication that it wasn't high
+and fine, through the remark "High and fine literature is wine" I
+retorted (confidentially, to myself,) "yes, high and fine literature is
+wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water."
+
+You didn't tell me to return that proof-slip, so I have pasted it into my
+private scrap-book.  None will see it there.  With a thousand thanks.
+                              Ys Ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     Our next letter is an unmailed answer, but it does not belong with
+     the others, having been withheld for reasons of quite a different
+     sort.  Jeanette Gilder, then of the Critic, was one of Mark Twain's
+     valued friends.  In the comment which he made, when it was shown to
+     him twenty-two years later, he tells us why he thinks this letter
+     was not sent.  The name, "Rest-and-be-Thankful," was the official
+     title given to the summer place at Elmira, but it was more often
+     known as "Quarry Farm."
+
+
+                    To Jeannette Gilder (not mailed):
+
+                                                  HARTFORD, May 14, '87.
+MY DEAR MISS GILDER,--We shall spend the summer at the same old place-the
+remote farm called "Rest-and-be-Thankful," on top of the hills three
+miles from Elmira, N. Y.  Your other question is harder to answer.  It is
+my habit to keep four or five books in process of erection all the time,
+and every summer add a few courses of bricks to two or three of them; but
+I cannot forecast which of the two or three it is going to be.  It takes
+seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a good
+method: gives the public a rest.  I have been accused of "rushing into
+print" prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth
+I have never done that.  Do you care for trifles of information?  (Well,
+then, "Tom Sawyer" and "The Prince and the Pauper" were each on the
+stocks two or three years, and "Old Times on the Mississippi" eight.)
+One of my unfinished books has been on the stocks sixteen years; another
+seventeen.  This latter book could have been finished in a day, at any
+time during the past five years.  But as in the first of these two
+narratives all the action takes place in Noah's ark, and as in the other
+the action takes place in heaven, there seemed to be no hurry, and so I
+have not hurried.  Tales of stirring adventure in those localities do not
+need to be rushed to publication lest they get stale by waiting.  In
+twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal I have written and
+completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that a
+journalist does I could have written sixty in that time.  I do not
+greatly mind being accused of a proclivity for rushing into print, but
+at the same time I don't believe that the charge is really well founded.
+Suppose I did write eleven books, have you nothing to be grateful for?
+Go to---remember the forty-nine which I didn't write.
+                              Truly Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                  Notes (added twenty-two years later):
+
+Stormfield, April 30, 1909.  It seems the letter was not sent.  I
+probably feared she might print it, and I couldn't find a way to say so
+without running a risk of hurting her.  No one would hurt Jeannette
+Gilder purposely, and no one would want to run the risk of doing it
+unintentionally.  She is my neighbor, six miles away, now, and I must
+ask her about this ancient letter.
+
+I note with pride and pleasure that I told no untruths in my unsent
+answer.  I still have the habit of keeping unfinished books lying around
+years and years, waiting.  I have four or five novels on hand at present
+in a half-finished condition, and it is more than three years since I
+have looked at any of them.  I have no intention of finishing them.
+I could complete all of them in less than a year, if the impulse should
+come powerfully upon me: Long, long ago money-necessity furnished that
+impulse once, (" Following the Equator"), but mere desire for money has
+never furnished it, so far as I remember.  Not even money-necessity was
+able to overcome me on a couple of occasions when perhaps I ought to have
+allowed it to succeed.  While I was a bankrupt and in debt two offers
+were made me for weekly literary contributions to continue during a year,
+and they would have made a debtless man of me, but I declined them, with
+my wife's full approval, for I had known of no instance where a man had
+pumped himself out once a week and failed to run "emptyings" before the
+year was finished.
+
+As to that "Noah's Ark" book, I began it in Edinburgh in 1873;--[This is
+not quite correct.  The "Noah's Ark" book was begun in Buffalo in 1870.]
+I don't know where the manuscript is now.  It was a Diary, which
+professed to be the work of Shem, but wasn't.  I began it again several
+months ago, but only for recreation; I hadn't any intention of carrying
+it to a finish
+--or even to the end of the first chapter, in fact.
+
+As to the book whose action "takes place in Heaven."  That was a small
+thing, ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It lay in my pigeon-
+holes 40 years, then I took it out and printed it in Harper's Monthly
+last year.
+                         S. L. C.
+
+
+In the next letter we get a pretty and peaceful picture of "Rest-and-be-
+Thankful."  These were Mark Twain's balmy days.  The financial drain of
+the type-machine was heavy but not yet exhausting, and the prospect of
+vast returns from it seemed to grow brighter each day.  His publishing
+business, though less profitable, was still prosperous, his family life
+was ideal.  How gratefully, then, he could enter into the peace of that
+"perfect day."
+
+
+                  To Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+
+                                   ON THE HILL NEAR ELMIRA, July 10, '87.
+DEAR MOLLIE,--This is a superb Sunday for weather--very cloudy, and the
+thermometer as low as 65.  The city in the valley is purple with shade,
+as seen from up here at the study.  The Cranes are reading and loafing in
+the canvas-curtained summer-house 50 yards away on a higher (the highest)
+point; the cats are loafing over at "Ellerslie" which is the children's
+estate and dwellinghouse in their own private grounds (by deed from Susie
+Crane) a hundred yards from the study, amongst the clover and young oaks
+and willows.  Livy is down at the house, but I shall now go and bring her
+up to the Cranes to help us occupy the lounges and hammocks--whence a
+great panorama of distant hill and valley and city is seeable.  The
+children have gone on a lark through the neighboring hills and woods.
+It is a perfect day indeed.
+                         With love to you all.
+                                                  SAM.
+
+
+Two days after this letter was written we get a hint of what was the
+beginning of business trouble--that is to say, of the failing health of
+Charles L.  Webster.  Webster was ambitious, nervous, and not robust.
+He had overworked and was paying the penalty.  His trouble was
+neurasthenia, and he was presently obliged to retire altogether from the
+business.  The "Sam and Mary" mentioned were Samuel Moffet and his wife.
+
+
+               To Mrs. Pamela Moffett, in Fredonia, N.  Y.
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 12, '87
+MY DEAR SISTER,--I had no idea that Charley's case was so serious.
+I knew it was bad, and persistent, but I was not aware of the full size
+of the matter.
+
+I have just been writing to a friend in Hartford' who treated what I
+imagine was a similar case surgically last fall, and produced a permanent
+cure.  If this is a like case, Charley must go to him.
+
+If relief fails there, he must take the required rest, whether the
+business can stand it or not.
+
+It is most pleasant to hear such prosperous accounts of Sam and Mary,
+I do not see how Sam could well be more advantageously fixed.  He can
+grow up with that paper, and achieve a successful life.
+
+It is not all holiday here with Susie and Clara this time.  They have to
+put in some little time every day on their studies.  Jean thinks she is
+studying too, but I don't know what it is unless it is the horses; she
+spends the day under their heels in the stables--and that is but a
+continuation of her Hartford system of culture.
+
+With love from us all to you all.
+                              Affectionately
+                                             SAM.
+
+
+Mark Twain had a few books that he read regularly every year or two.
+Among these were 'Pepys's Diary', Suetonius's 'Lives of the Twelve
+Caesars', and Thomas Carlyle's 'French Revolution'.  He had a passion for
+history, biography, and personal memoirs of any sort.  In his early life
+he had cared very little for poetry, but along in the middle eighties he
+somehow acquired a taste for Browning and became absorbed in it.
+A Browning club assembled as often as once a week at the Clemens home in
+Hartford to listen to his readings of the master.  He was an impressive
+reader, and he carefully prepared himself for these occasions, indicating
+by graduated underscorings, the exact values he wished to give to words
+and phrases.  Those were memorable gatherings, and they must have
+continued through at least two winters.  It is one of the puzzling phases
+of Mark Twain's character that, notwithstanding his passion for direct
+and lucid expression, he should have found pleasure in the poems of
+Robert Browning.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  22, '87.
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man
+while he sleeps.  When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871,
+I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it
+differently being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and
+environment (and Taine and St. Simon): and now I lay the book down once
+more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte!--And not a pale,
+characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat.  Carlyle teaches no such gospel
+so the change is in me--in my vision of the evidences.
+
+People pretend that the Bible means the same to them at 50 that it did at
+all former milestones in their journey.  I wonder how they can lie so.
+It comes of practice, no doubt.  They would not say that of Dickens's or
+Scott's books.  Nothing remains the same.  When a man goes back to look
+at the house of his childhood, it has always shrunk: there is no instance
+of such a house being as big as the picture in memory and imagination
+call for.  Shrunk how?  Why, to its correct dimensions: the house hasn't
+altered; this is the first time it has been in focus.
+
+Well, that's loss.  To have house and Bible shrink so, under the
+disillusioning corrected angle, is loss-for a moment.  But there are
+compensations.  You tilt the tube skyward and bring planets and comets
+and corona flames a hundred and fifty thousand miles high into the field.
+Which I see you have done, and found Tolstoi.  I haven't got him in focus
+yet, but I've got Browning .  .  .  .
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has been made already of Mark Twain's tendency to
+     absentmindedness.  He was always forgetting engagements, or getting
+     them wrong.  Once he hurried to an afternoon party, and finding the
+     mistress of the house alone, sat down and talked to her comfortably
+     for an hour or two, not remembering his errand at all.  It was only
+     when he reached home that he learned that the party had taken place
+     the week before.  It was always dangerous for him to make
+     engagements, and he never seemed to profit by sorrowful experience.
+     We, however, may profit now by one of his amusing apologies.
+
+
+                 To Mrs. Grover Cleveland, in Washington:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov.  6, 1887.
+MY DEAR MADAM,--I do not know how it is in the White House, but in this
+house of ours whenever the minor half of the administration tries to run
+itself without the help of the major half it gets aground.  Last night
+when I was offered the opportunity to assist you in the throwing open the
+Warner brothers superb benefaction in Bridgeport to those fortunate
+women, I naturally appreciated the honor done me, and promptly seized my
+chance.  I had an engagement, but the circumstances washed it out of my
+mind.  If I had only laid the matter before the major half of the
+administration on the spot, there would have been no blunder; but I never
+thought of that.  So when I did lay it before her, later, I realized once
+more that it will not do for the literary fraction of a combination to
+try to manage affairs which properly belong in the office of the business
+bulk of it.  I suppose the President often acts just like that: goes and
+makes an impossible promise, and you never find it out until it is next
+to impossible to break it up and set things straight again.  Well, that
+is just our way, exactly-one half of the administration always busy
+getting the family into trouble, and the other half busy getting it out
+again.  And so we do seem to be all pretty much alike, after all.  The
+fact is, I had forgotten that we were to have a dinner party on that
+Bridgeport date--I thought it was the next day: which is a good deal of
+an improvement for me, because I am more used to being behind a day or
+two than ahead.  But that is just the difference between one end of this
+kind of an administration and the other end of it, as you have noticed,
+yourself--the other end does not forget these things.  Just so with a
+funeral; if it is the man's funeral, he is most always there, of course-
+but that is no credit to him, he wouldn't be there if you depended on
+hint to remember about it; whereas, if on the other hand--but I seem to
+have got off from my line of argument somehow; never mind about the
+funeral.  Of course I am not meaning to say anything against funerals--
+that is, as occasions--mere occasions--for as diversions I don't think
+they amount to much But as I was saying--if you are not busy I will look
+back and see what it was I was saying.
+
+I don't seem to find the place; but anyway she was as sorry as ever
+anybody could be that I could not go to Bridgeport, but there was no help
+for it.  And I, I have been not only sorry but very sincerely ashamed of
+having made an engagement to go without first making sure that I could
+keep it, and I do not know how to apologize enough for my heedless breach
+of good manners.
+                    With the sincerest respect,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Samuel Clemens was one of the very few authors to copyright a book
+     in England before the enactment of the international copyright law.
+     As early as 1872 he copyrighted 'Roughing It' in England, and
+     piratical publishers there respected his rights.  Finally, in 1887,
+     the inland revenue office assessed him with income tax, which he
+     very willingly paid, instructing his London publishers, Chatto &
+     Windus, to pay on the full amount he had received from them.  But
+     when the receipt for his taxes came it was nearly a yard square with
+     due postage of considerable amount.  Then he wrote:
+
+
+              To Mr. Chatto, of Chatto & Windus, in London:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 5, '87.
+MY DEAR CHATTO,--Look here, I don't mind paying the tax, but don't you
+let the Inland Revenue Office send me any more receipts for it, for the
+postage is something perfectly demoralizing.  If they feel obliged to
+print a receipt on a horse-blanket, why don't they hire a ship and send
+it over at their own expense?
+
+Wasn't it good that they caught me out with an old book instead of a new
+one?  The tax on a new book would bankrupt a body.  It was my purpose to
+go to England next May and stay the rest of the year, but I've found that
+tax office out just in time.  My new book would issue in March, and they
+would tax the sale in both countries.  Come, we must get up a compromise
+somehow.  You go and work in on the good side of those revenue people and
+get them to take the profits and give me the tax.  Then I will come over
+and we will divide the swag and have a good time.
+
+I wish you to thank Mr. Christmas for me; but we won't resist.  The
+country that allows me copyright has a right to tax me.
+                              Sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Another English tax assessment came that year, based on the report
+     that it was understood that he was going to become an English
+     resident, and had leased Buckenham Hall, Norwich, for a year.
+     Clemens wrote his publishers: "I will explain that all that about
+     Buckenham Hall was an English newspaper's mistake.  I was not in
+     England, and if I had been I wouldn't have been at Buckenham Hall,
+     anyway, but at Buckingham Palace, or I would have endeavored to find
+     out the reason why."  Clemens made literature out of this tax
+     experience.  He wrote an open letter to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
+     Such a letter has no place in this collection.  It was published in
+     the "Drawer" of Harper's Magazine, December, 1887, and is now
+     included in the uniform edition of his works under the title of,
+     "A Petition to the Queen of England."
+
+     From the following letter, written at the end of the year, we gather
+     that the type-setter costs were beginning to make a difference in
+     the Clemens economies.
+
+
+                      To Mrs. Moffett, in Fredonia:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 18, '87.
+DEAR PAMELA,--will you take this $15 and buy some candy or some other
+trifle for yourself and Sam and his wife to remember that we remember
+you, by?
+
+If we weren't a little crowded this year by the typesetter, I'd send a
+check large enough to buy a family Bible or some other useful thing like
+that.  However we go on and on, but the type-setter goes on forever--at
+$3,000 a month; which is much more satisfactory than was the case the
+first seventeen months, when the bill only averaged $2,000, and promised
+to take a thousand years.  We'll be through, now, in 3 or 4 months, I
+reckon, and then the strain will let up and we can breathe freely once
+more, whether success ensues or failure.
+
+Even with a type-setter on hand we ought not to be in the least scrimped-
+but it would take a long letter to explain why and who is to blame.
+
+All the family send love to all of you and best Christmas wishes for your
+prosperity.
+                    Affectionately,
+                                        SAM.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+LETTERS,1888.  A YALE DEGREE.  WORK ON "THE YANKEE." ON INTERVIEWING,
+ETC.
+
+     Mark Twain received his first college degree when he was made Master
+     of Arts by Yale, in June, 1888.  Editor of the Courant, Charles H.
+     Clarke, was selected to notify him of his new title.  Clarke was an
+     old friend to whom Clemens could write familiarly.
+
+
+                   To Charles H.  Clarke, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 2, '88.
+MY DEAR CHARLES,--Thanks for your thanks, and for your initiation
+intentions.  I shall be ready for you.  I feel mighty proud of that
+degree; in fact, I could squeeze the truth a little closer and say vain
+of it.  And why shouldn't I be?--I am the only literary animal of my
+particular subspecies who has ever been given a degree by any College in
+any age of the world, as far as I know.
+                                   Sincerely Yours
+                                             S. L. Clemens M. A.
+
+
+                Reply: Charles H. Clarke to S. L Clemens:
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND, You are "the only literary animal of your particular
+subspecies" in existence and you've no cause for humility in the fact.
+Yale has done herself at least as much credit as she has done you, and
+"Don't you forget it."
+                              C. H. C.
+
+
+     With the exception of his brief return to the river in 1882.  Mark
+     Twain had been twenty-seven years away from pilots and piloting.
+     Nevertheless, he always kept a tender place in his heart for the old
+     times and for old river comrades.  Major "Jack" Downing had been a
+     Mississippi pilot of early days, but had long since retired from the
+     river to a comfortable life ashore, in an Ohio town.  Clemens had
+     not heard from him for years when a letter came which invited the
+     following answer.
+
+
+               To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport Ohio:
+
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y.[no month] 1888.
+DEAR MAJOR,--And has it come to this that the dead rise up and speak?
+For I supposed that you were dead, it has been so long since I heard your
+name.
+
+And how young you've grown!  I was a mere boy when I knew you on the
+river, where you had been piloting for 35 years, and now you are only a
+year and a half older than I am!  I mean to go to Hot Springs myself and
+get 30 or 40 years knocked off my age.  It's manifestly the place that
+Ponce de Leon was striking for, but the poor fellow lost the trail.
+
+Possibly I may see you, for I shall be in St. Louis a day or two in
+November.  I propose to go down the river and "note the changes" once
+more before I make the long crossing, and perhaps you can come there.
+Will you?  I want to see all the boys that are left alive.
+
+And so Grant Marsh, too, is flourishing yet?  A mighty good fellow, and
+smart too.  When we were taking that wood flat down to the Chambers,
+which was aground, I soon saw that I was a perfect lubber at piloting
+such a thing.  I saw that I could never hit the Chambers with it, so I
+resigned in Marsh's favor, and he accomplished the task to my admiration.
+We should all have gone to the mischief if I had remained in authority.
+I always had good judgement, more judgement than talent, in fact.
+
+No; the nom de plume did not originate in that way.  Capt. Sellers used
+the signature, "Mark Twain," himself, when he used to write up the
+antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans
+Picayune.  He hated me for burlesquing them in an article in the True
+Delta; so four years later when he died, I robbed the corpse--that is I
+confiscated the nom de plume.  I have published this vital fact 3,000
+times now.  But no matter, it is good practice; it is about the only fact
+that I can tell the same way every time.  Very glad, indeed, to hear from
+you Major, and shall be gladder still to see you in November.
+
+                              Truly yours,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     He did not make the journey down the river planned for that year.
+     He had always hoped to make another steamboat trip with Bixby, but
+     one thing and another interfered and he did not go again.
+
+     Authors were always sending their books to Mark Twain to read, and
+     no busy man was ever more kindly disposed toward such offerings,
+     more generously considerate of the senders.  Louis Pendleton was a
+     young unknown writer in 1888, but Clemens took time to read his
+     story carefully, and to write to him about it a letter that cost
+     precious time, thought, and effort.  It must have rejoiced the young
+     man's heart to receive a letter like that, from one whom all young
+     authors held supreme.
+
+
+                     To Louis Pendleton, in Georgia:
+
+                                        ELMIRA, N. Y., Aug. 4, '88.
+MY DEAR SIR,--I found your letter an hour ago among some others which had
+lain forgotten a couple of weeks, and I at once stole time enough to read
+Ariadne.  Stole is the right word, for the summer "Vacation" is the only
+chance I get for work; so, no minute subtracted from work is borrowed, it
+is stolen.  But this time I do not repent.  As a rule, people don't send
+me books which I can thank them for, and so I say nothing--which looks
+uncourteous.  But I thank you.  Ariadne is a beautiful and satisfying
+story; and true, too--which is the best part of a story; or indeed of any
+other thing.  Even liars have to admit that, if they are intelligent
+liars; I mean in their private [the word conscientious written but
+erased] intervals.  (I struck that word out because a man's private
+thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always;
+what he speaks--but these be platitudes.)
+
+If you want me to pick some flaws--very well--but I do it unwillingly.
+I notice one thing--which one may notice also in my books, and in all
+books whether written by man or God: trifling carelessness of statement
+or Expression.  If I think that you meant that she took the lizard from
+the water which she had drawn from the well, it is evidence--it is almost
+proof--that your words were not as clear as they should have been.  True,
+it is only a trifling thing; but so is mist on a mirror.  I would have
+hung the pail on Ariadne's arm.  You did not deceive me when you said
+that she carried it under her arm, for I knew she didn't; still it was
+not your right to mar my enjoyment of the graceful picture.  If the pail
+had been a portfolio, I wouldn't be making these remarks.  The engraver
+of a fine picture revises, and revises, and revises--and then revises,
+and revises, and revises; and then repeats.  And always the charm of that
+picture grows, under his hand.  It was good enough before--told its
+story, and was beautiful.  True: and a lovely girl is lovely, with
+freckles; but she isn't at her level best with them.
+
+This is not hypercriticism; you have had training enough to know that.
+
+So much concerning exactness of statement.  In that other not-small
+matter--selection of the exact single word--you are hard to catch.
+Still, I should hold that Mrs. Walker considered that there was no
+occasion for concealment; that "motive" implied a deeper mental search
+than she expended on the matter; that it doesn't reflect the attitude of
+her mind with precision.  Is this hypercriticism?  I shan't dispute it.
+I only say, that if Mrs. Walker didn't go so far as to have a motive, I
+had to suggest that when a word is so near the right one that a body
+can't quite tell whether it is or isn't, it's good politics to strike it
+out and go for the Thesaurus.  That's all.  Motive may stand; but you
+have allowed a snake to scream, and I will not concede that that was the
+best word.
+
+I do not apologize for saying these things, for they are not said in the
+speck-hunting spirit, but in the spirit of want-to-help-if-I-can.  They
+would be useful to me if said to me once a month, they may be useful to
+you, said once.
+
+I save the other stories for my real vacation--which is nine months long,
+to my sorrow.  I thank you again.
+                              Truly Yours
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     In the next letter we get a sidelight on the type-setting machine,
+     the Frankenstein monster that was draining their substance and
+     holding out false hopes of relief and golden return.  The program
+     here outlined was one that would continue for several years yet,
+     with the end always in sight, but never quite attained.
+
+
+                    To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Ia.:
+
+                                                       Oct. 3, '88.
+Private
+
+Saturday 29th, by a closely calculated estimate, there were 85 days' work
+to do on the machine.
+
+We can use 4 men, but not constantly.  If they could work constantly it
+would complete the machine in 21 days, of course.  They will all be on
+hand and under wages, and each will get in all the work there is
+opportunity for, but by how much they can reduce the 85 days toward the
+21 days, nobody can tell.
+
+To-day I pay Pratt & Whitney $10,000.  This squares back indebtedness and
+everything to date.  They began about May or April or March 1886--along
+there somewhere, and have always kept from a dozen to two dozen master-
+hands on the machine.
+
+That outgo is done; 4 men for a month or two will close up that leak and
+caulk it.  Work on the patents is also kind of drawing toward a
+conclusion.
+
+Love to you both.  All well here.
+
+And give our love to Ma if she can get the idea.
+
+                                        SAM.
+
+
+     Mark Twain that year was working pretty steadily on 'The Yankee at
+     King Arthur's Court', a book which he had begun two years before.
+     He had published nothing since the Huck Finn story, and his company
+     was badly in need of a new book by an author of distinction.  Also
+     it was highly desirable to earn money for himself; wherefore he set
+     to work to finish the Yankee story.  He had worked pretty steadily
+     that summer in his Elmira study, but on his return to Hartford found
+     a good deal of confusion in the house, so went over to Twichell's,
+     where carpenter work was in progress.  He seems to have worked there
+     successfully, though what improvement of conditions he found in that
+     numerous, lively household, over those at home it would be difficult
+     to say.
+
+
+          To Theodore W.  Crane, at Quarry Farm, Elmira, N.  Y.
+
+                                                  Friday, Oct.,5, '88.
+DEAR THEO,--I am here in Twichell's house at work, with the noise of the
+children and an army of carpenters to help.  Of course they don't help,
+but neither do they hinder.  It's like a boiler-factory for racket, and
+in nailing a wooden ceiling onto the room under me the hammering tickles
+my feet amazingly sometimes, and jars my table a good deal; but I never
+am conscious of the racket at all, and I move my feet into position of
+relief without knowing when I do it.  I began here Monday morning, and
+have done eighty pages since.  I was so tired last night that I thought I
+would lie abed and rest, to-day; but I couldn't resist.  I mean to try to
+knock off tomorrow, but it's doubtful if I do.  I want to finish the day
+the machine finishes, and a week ago the closest calculations for that
+indicated Oct. 22--but experience teaches me that their calculations will
+miss fire, as usual.
+
+The other day the children were projecting a purchase, Livy and I to
+furnish the money--a dollar and a half.  Jean discouraged the idea.  She
+said: "We haven't got any money.  Children, if you would think, you would
+remember the machine isn't done."
+
+It's billiards to-night.  I wish you were here.
+                    With love to you both
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  I got it all wrong.  It wasn't the children, it was Marie.  She
+wanted a box of blacking, for the children's shoes.  Jean reproved her-
+and said:
+
+"Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now.  The machine isn't done."
+
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     The letter that follows is to another of his old pilot friends, one
+     who was also a schoolmate, Will Bowen, of Hannibal.  There is today
+     no means of knowing the occasion upon which this letter was written,
+     but it does not matter; it is the letter itself that is of chief
+     value.
+
+
+                     To Will Bowen, in Hannibal, Mo.:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov 4, '88.
+DEAR WILL,--I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was
+starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately
+busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff
+and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves,
+examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings
+--unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not
+uninfluenced by them.  Here was the near presence of the two supreme
+events of life: marriage, which is the beginning of life, and death which
+is the end of it.  I found myself seeking chances to shirk into corners
+where I might think, undisturbed; and the most I got out of my thought,
+was this: both marriage and death ought to be welcome: the one promises
+happiness, doubtless the other assures it.  A long procession of people
+filed through my mind--people whom you and I knew so many years ago--so
+many centuries ago, it seems like-and these ancient dead marched to the
+soft marriage music of a band concealed in some remote room of the house;
+and the contented music and the dreaming shades seemed in right accord
+with each other, and fitting. Nobody else knew that a procession of the
+dead was passing though this noisy swarm of the living, but there it was,
+and to me there was nothing uncanny about it; Rio, they were welcome
+faces to me.  I would have liked to bring up every creature we knew in
+those days--even the dumb animals--it would be bathing in the fabled
+Fountain of Youth.
+
+We all feel your deep trouble with you; and we would hope, if we might,
+but your words deny us that privilege.  To die one's self is a thing that
+must be easy, and of light consequence, but to lose a part of one's self
+--well, we know how deep that pang goes, we who have suffered that
+disaster, received that wound which cannot heal.
+                              Sincerely your friend
+                                             S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     His next is of quite a different nature.  Evidently the typesetting
+     conditions had alarmed Orion, and he was undertaking some economies
+     with a view of retrenchment.  Orion was always reducing economy to
+     science.  Once, at an earlier date, he recorded that he had figured
+     his personal living expenses down to sixty cents a week, but
+     inasmuch as he was then, by his own confession, unable to earn the
+     sixty cents, this particular economy was wasted.  Orion was a trial,
+     certainly, and the explosion that follows was not without excuse.
+     Furthermore, it was not as bad as it sounds.  Mark Twain's rages
+     always had an element of humor in them, a fact which no one more
+     than Orion himself would appreciate.  He preserved this letter,
+     quietly noting on the envelope, "Letter from Sam, about ma's nurse."
+
+
+                Letter to Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa:
+
+                                                       NOV. 29, '88.
+Jesus Christ!--It is perilous to write such a man.  You can go crazy on
+less material than anybody that ever lived.  What in hell has produced
+all these maniacal imaginings?  You told me you had hired an attendant
+for ma.  Now hire one instantly, and stop this nonsense of wearing Mollie
+and yourself out trying to do that nursing yourselves.  Hire the
+attendant, and tell me her cost so that I can instruct Webster & Co. to
+add it every month to what they already send.  Don't fool away any more
+time about this.  And don't write me any more damned rot about "storms,"
+and inability to pay trivial sums of money and--and--hell and damnation!
+You see I've read only the first page of your letter; I wouldn't read the
+rest for a million dollars.
+                                   Yr
+                                         SAM.
+
+P. S.  Don't imagine that I have lost my temper, because I swear.  I
+swear all day, but I do not lose my temper.  And don't imagine that I am
+on my way to the poorhouse, for I am not; or that I am uneasy, for I am
+not; or that I am uncomfortable or unhappy--for I never am.  I don't know
+what it is to be unhappy or uneasy; and I am not going to try to learn
+how, at this late day.
+                                   SAM.
+
+
+     Few men were ever interviewed oftener than Mark Twain, yet he never
+     welcomed interviewers and was seldom satisfied with them.  "What I
+     say in an interview loses it character in print," he often remarked,
+     "all its life and personality.  The reporter realizes this himself,
+     and tries to improve upon me, but he doesn't help matters any."
+
+     Edward W. Bok, before he became editor of the Ladies Home Journal,
+     was conducting a weekly syndicate column under the title of "Bok's
+     Literary Leaves."  It usually consisted of news and gossip of
+     writers, comment, etc., literary odds and ends, and occasional
+     interviews with distinguished authors.  He went up to Hartford one
+     day to interview Mark Twain.  The result seemed satisfactory to Bok,
+     but wishing to be certain that it would be satisfactory to Clemens,
+     he sent him a copy for approval.  The interview was not returned;
+     in the place of it came a letter-not altogether disappointing, as
+     the reader may believe.
+
+
+                     To Edward W.  Bok, in New York:
+
+MY DEAR MR. BOK,--No, no.  It is like most interviews, pure twaddle and
+valueless.
+
+For several quite plain and simple reasons, an "interview" must, as a
+rule, be an absurdity, and chiefly for this reason--It is an attempt to
+use a boat on land or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively.  Spoken
+speech is one thing, written speech is quite another.  Print is the
+proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former.  The moment
+"talk" is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when
+you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from
+it.  That is its soul.  You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your
+hands.  Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of the voice, the
+laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that
+body warmth, grace, friendliness and charm and commended it to your
+affections--or, at least, to your tolerance--is gone and nothing is left
+but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.
+
+Such is "talk" almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an
+"interview".  The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was
+said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there.  When one
+writes for print his methods are very different.  He follows forms which
+have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader
+understand what the writer is trying to convey.  And when the writer is
+making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his
+characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and
+difficult thing.  "If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,"
+said Alfred, "taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance
+upon the company, blood would have flowed."
+
+"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said Hawkwood, with
+that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty
+assemblage to quake, "blood would have flowed."
+
+"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said the paltry
+blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, "blood would
+have flowed."
+
+So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no
+meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his
+characters with explanations and interpretations.  It is a loud
+confession that print is a poor vehicle for "talk"; it is a recognition
+that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader,
+not instruction.
+
+Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have
+set down the sentences I uttered as I said them.  But you have not a word
+of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated.
+Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I
+was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether.
+Such a report of a conversation has no value.  It can convey many
+meanings to the reader, but never the right one.  To add interpretations
+which would convey the right meaning is a something which would require
+--what?  An art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it
+would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.
+
+No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is
+rubbish.  I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than
+that.
+
+If you wish to print anything print this letter; it may have some value,
+for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in
+interviews, as a rule, men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.
+                         Very sincerely yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+LETTERS, 1889.  THE MACHINE.  DEATH OF MR. CRANE.
+CONCLUSION OF THE YANKEE
+
+In January, 1889, Clemens believed, after his long seven years of
+waiting, fruition had come in the matter of the type machine.  Paige, the
+inventor, seemed at last to have given it its finishing touches.  The
+mechanical marvel that had cost so much time, mental stress, and a
+fortune in money, stood complete, responsive to the human will and touch
+--the latest, and one of the greatest, wonders of the world.  To George
+Standring, a London printer and publisher, Clemens wrote: "The machine is
+finished!" and added, "This is by far the most marvelous invention ever
+contrived by man.  And it is not a thing of rags and patches; it is made
+of massive steel, and will last a century."
+
+In his fever of enthusiasm on that day when he had actually seen it in
+operation, he wrote a number of exuberant letters.  They were more or
+less duplicates, but as the one to his brother is of fuller detail and
+more intimate than the others, it has been selected for preservation
+here.
+
+                       To Orion Clemens, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Jan. 5, '89.
+DEAR ORION,--At 12.20 this afternoon a line of movable types was spaced
+and justified by machinery, for the first time in the history of the
+world!  And I was there to see.  It was done automatically--instantly--
+perfectly.  This is indeed the first line of movable types that ever was
+perfectly spaced and perfectly justified on this earth.
+
+This was the last function that remained to be tested--and so by long
+odds the most amazing and extraordinary invention ever born of the brain
+of man stands completed and perfect.  Livy is down stairs celebrating.
+
+But it's a cunning devil, is that machine!--and knows more than any man
+that ever lived.  You shall see.  We made the test in this way.  We set
+up a lot of random letters in a stick--three-fourths of a line; then
+filled out the line with quads representing 14 spaces, each space to be
+35/1000 of an inch thick.  Then we threw aside the quads and put the
+letters into the machine and formed them into 15 two-letter words,
+leaving the words separated by two-inch vacancies.  Then we started up
+the machine slowly, by hand, and fastened our eyes on the space-selecting
+pins.  The first pin-block projected its third pin as the first word came
+traveling along the race-way; second block did the same; but the third
+block projected its second pin!
+
+"Oh, hell!  stop the machine--something wrong--it's going to set a
+30/1000 space!"
+
+General consternation.  "A foreign substance has got into the spacing
+plates."  This from the head mathematician.
+
+"Yes, that is the trouble," assented the foreman.
+
+Paige examined.  "No--look in, and you can see that there's nothing of
+the kind."  Further examination.  "Now I know what it is--what it must
+be: one of those plates projects and binds.  It's too bad--the first
+testis a failure."  A pause.  "Well, boys, no use to cry.  Get to work--
+take the machine down.--No--Hold on!  don't touch a thing!  Go right
+ahead!  We are fools, the machine isn't.  The machine knows what it's
+about.  There is a speck of dirt on one of those types, and the machine
+is putting in a thinner space to allow for it!"
+
+That was just it.  The machine went right ahead, spaced the line,
+justified it to a hair, and shoved it into the galley complete and
+perfect!  We took it out and examined it with a glass.  You could not
+tell by your eye that the third space was thinner than the others, but
+the glass and the calipers showed the difference.  Paige had always said
+that the machine would measure invisible particles of dirt and allow for
+them, but even he had forgotten that vast fact for the moment.
+
+All the witnesses made written record of the immense historical birth--
+the first justification of a line of movable type by machinery--and also
+set down the hour and the minute.  Nobody had drank anything, and yet
+everybody seemed drunk.  Well-dizzy, stupefied, stunned.
+
+All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly
+into commonplace contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle.
+Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins, sewing machines,
+Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright's
+frames--all mere toys, simplicities!  The Paige Compositor marches alone
+and far in the lead of human inventions.
+
+In two or three weeks we shall work the stiffness out of her joints and
+have her performing as smoothly and softly as human muscles, and then we
+shall speak out the big secret and let the world come and gaze.
+
+Return me this letter when you have read it.
+
+                                   SAM.
+
+
+     Judge of the elation which such a letter would produce in Keokuk!
+     Yet it was no greater than that which existed in Hartford--for a
+     time.
+
+     Then further delays.  Before the machine got "the stiffness out of
+     her joints" that "cunning devil" manifested a tendency to break the
+     types, and Paige, who was never happier than when he was pulling
+     things to pieces and making improvements, had the type-setter apart
+     again and the day of complete triumph was postponed.
+
+     There was sadness at the Elmira farm that spring.  Theodore Crane,
+     who had long been in poor health, seemed to grow daily worse.  In
+     February he had paid a visit to Hartford and saw the machine in
+     operation, but by the end of May his condition was very serious.
+     Remembering his keen sense of humor, Clemens reported to him
+     cheering and amusing incidents.
+
+
+               To Mrs. Theodore Crane.  in Elmira, N. Y.:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, May 28, '89.
+Susie dear, I want you to tell this to Theodore.  You know how absent-
+minded Twichell is, and how desolate his face is when he is in that
+frame.  At such times, he passes the word with a friend on the street and
+is not aware of the meeting at all.  Twice in a week, our Clara had this
+latter experience with him within the past month.  But the second
+instance was too much for her, and she woke him up, in his tracks, with a
+reproach.  She said:
+
+"Uncle Joe, why do you always look as if you were just going down into
+the grave, when you meet a person on the street?"--and then went on to
+reveal to him the funereal spectacle which he presented on such
+occasions.  Well, she has met Twichell three times since then, and would
+swim the Connecticut to avoid meeting him the fourth.  As soon as he
+sights her, no matter how public the place nor how far off she is, he
+makes a bound into the air, heaves arms and legs into all sorts of
+frantic gestures of delight, and so comes prancing, skipping and
+pirouetting for her like a drunken Indian entering heaven.
+
+With a full invoice of love from us all to you and Theodore.
+
+                                                  S. L. C.
+
+
+     The reference in the next to the "closing sentence" in a letter
+     written by Howells to Clemens about this time, refers to a heart-
+     broken utterance of the former concerning his daughter Winnie, who
+     had died some time before.  She had been a gentle talented girl, but
+     never of robust health.  Her death had followed a long period of
+     gradual decline.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Judy 13, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I came on from Elmira a day or two ago, where I left a
+house of mourning.  Mr. Crane died, after ten months of pain and two
+whole days of dying, at the farm on the hill, the 3rd inst: A man who had
+always hoped for a swift death.  Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Clemens and the
+children were in a gloom which brought back to me the days of nineteen
+years ago, when Mr. Langdon died.  It is heart-breaking to see Mrs.
+Crane.  Many a time, in the past ten days, the sight of her has reminded
+me, with a pang, of the desolation which uttered itself in the closing
+sentence of your last letter to me.  I do see that there is an argument
+against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind; the awful
+famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
+
+I shall be here ten days yet, and all alone: nobody in the house but the
+servants.  Can't Mrs. Howells spare you to me?  Can't you come and stay
+with me?  The house is cool and pleasant; your work will not be
+interrupted; we will keep to ourselves and let the rest of the world do
+the same; you can have your choice of three bedrooms, and you will find
+the Children's schoolroom (which was built for my study,) the perfection
+of a retired and silent den for work.  There isn't a fly or a mosquito on
+the estate.  Come--say you will.
+
+With kindest regards to Mrs. Howells, and Pilla and John,
+                                   Yours Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+Howells was more hopeful.  He wrote: "I read something in a strange book,
+The Physical Theory of Another Life, that consoles a little; namely, we
+see and feel the power of Deity in such fullness that we ought to infer
+the infinite justice and Goodness which we do not see or feel."  And a
+few days later, he wrote: "I would rather see and talk with you than any
+other man in the world outside my own blood."
+
+A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was brought to an end that
+year and given to the artist and printer.  Dan Beard was selected for the
+drawings, and was given a free hand, as the next letter shows.
+
+
+           To Fred J. Hall, Manager Charles L. Webster & Co.:
+
+[Charles L.  Webster, owing to poor health, had by this time retired
+from the firm.]
+
+                                                  ELMIRA, July 20, '89.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Upon reflection--thus: tell Beard to obey his own
+inspiration, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on
+paper, be it humorous or be it serious.  I want his genius to be wholly
+unhampered, I shan't have fears as to the result.  They will be better
+pictures than if I mixed in and tried to give him points on his own
+trade.
+
+Send this note and he'll understand.
+                                        Yr
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens had made a good choice in selecting Beard for the
+     illustrations.  He was well qualified for the work, and being of a
+     socialistic turn of mind put his whole soul into it.  When the
+     drawings were completed, Clemens wrote: "Hold me under permanent
+     obligations.  What luck it was to find you!  There are hundreds of
+     artists that could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was
+     only one who could illustrate this one.  Yes, it was a fortunate
+     hour that I went netting for lightning bugs and caught a meteor.
+     Live forever!"
+
+     Clemens, of course, was anxious for Howells to read The Yankee, and
+     Mrs. Clemens particularly so.  Her eyes were giving her trouble that
+     summer, so that she could not read the MS. for herself, and she had
+     grave doubts as to some of its chapters.  It may be said here that
+     the book to-day might have been better if Mrs. Clemens had been able
+     to read it.  Howells was a peerless critic, but the revolutionary
+     subject-matter of the book so delighted him that he was perhaps
+     somewhat blinded to its literary defects.  However, this is
+     premature.  Howells did not at once see the story.  He had promised
+     to come to Hartford, but wrote that trivial matters had made his
+     visit impossible.  From the next letter we get the situation at this
+     time.  The "Mr. Church" mentioned was Frederick S. Church, the well-
+     known artist.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, July 24, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I, too, was as sorry as I could be; yes, and desperately
+disappointed.  I even did a heroic thing: shipped my book off to New York
+lest I should forget hospitality and embitter your visit with it.  Not
+that I think you wouldn't like to read it, for I think you would; but not
+on a holiday that's not the time.  I see how you were situated--another
+familiarity of Providence and wholly wanton intrusion--and of course we
+could not help ourselves.  Well, just think of it: a while ago, while
+Providence's attention was absorbed in disordering some time-tables so as
+to break up a trip of mine to Mr. Church's on the Hudson, that Johnstown
+dam got loose.  I swear I was afraid to pray, for fear I should laugh.
+Well, I'm not going to despair; we'll manage a meet yet.
+
+I expect to go to Hartford again in August and maybe remain till I have
+to come back here and fetch the family.  And, along there in August, some
+time, you let on that you are going to Mexico, and I will let on that I
+am going to Spitzbergen, and then under cover of this clever stratagem we
+will glide from the trains at Worcester and have a time.  I have noticed
+that Providence is indifferent about Mexico and Spitzbergen.
+                                   Ys Ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Possibly Mark Twain was not particularly anxious that Howells should
+     see his MS., fearing that he might lay a ruthless hand on some of
+     his more violent fulminations and wild fancies.  However this may
+     be, further postponement was soon at an end.  Mrs. Clemens's eyes
+     troubled her and would not permit her to read, so she requested that
+     the Yankee be passed upon by soberminded critics, such as Howells
+     and Edmund Clarence Stedman.  Howells wrote that even if he hadn't
+     wanted to read the book for its own sake, or for the author's sake,
+     he would still want to do it for Mrs. Clemens's.  Whereupon the
+     proofs were started in his direction.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             ELMIRA, Aug.  24, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--If you should be moved to speak of my book in the Study,
+I shall be glad and proud--and the sooner it gets in, the better for the
+book; though I don't suppose you can get it in earlier than the November
+number--why, no, you can't get it in till a month later than that.  Well,
+anyway I don't think I'll send out any other press copy--except perhaps
+to Stedman.  I'm not writing for those parties who miscall themselves
+critics, and I don't care to have them paw the book at all.  It's my
+swan-song, my retirement from literature permanently, and I wish to pass
+to the cemetery unclodded.
+
+I judge that the proofs have begun to reach you about this time, as I had
+some (though not revises,) this morning.  I'm sure I'm going to be
+charmed with Beard's pictures.  Observe his nice take-off of Middle-Age
+art-dinner-table scene.
+                              Ys sincerely
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells's approval of the Yankee came almost in the form of exultant
+     shouts, one after reading each batch of proof.  First he wrote:
+     "It's charming, original, wonderful!  good in fancy and sound to the
+     core in morals."  And again, "It's a mighty great book, and it makes
+     my heart burn with wrath.  It seems God did not forget to put a soul
+     into you.  He shuts most literary men off with a brain, merely."
+     Then, a few days later: "The book is glorious--simply noble; what
+     masses of virgin truth never touched in print before!" and, finally,
+     "Last night I read your last chapter.  As Stedman says of the whole
+     book, it's titanic."
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Sept.  22, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--It is immensely good of you to grind through that stuff
+for me; but it gives peace to Mrs. Clemens's soul; and I am as grateful
+to you as a body can be.  I am glad you approve of what I say about the
+French Revolution.  Few people will.  It is odd that even to this day
+Americans still observe that immortal benefaction through English and
+other monarchical eyes, and have no shred of an opinion about it that
+they didn't get at second-hand.
+
+Next to the 4th of July and its results, it was the noblest and the
+holiest thing and the most precious that ever happened in this earth.
+And its gracious work is not done yet--not anywhere in the remote
+neighborhood of it.
+
+Don't trouble to send me all the proofs; send me the pages with your
+corrections on them, and waste-basket the rest.  We issue the book
+Dec. 10; consequently a notice that appears Dec. 20 will be just in good
+time.
+
+I am waiting to see your Study set a fashion in criticism.  When that
+happens--as please God it must--consider that if you lived three
+centuries you couldn't do a more valuable work for this country, or a
+humaner.
+
+As a rule a critic's dissent merely enrages, and so does no good; but by
+the new art which you use, your dissent must be as welcome as your
+approval, and as valuable.  I do not know what the secret of it is,
+unless it is your attitude--man courteously reasoning with man and
+brother, in place of the worn and wearisome critical attitude of all this
+long time--superior being lecturing a boy.
+
+Well, my book is written--let it go.  But if it were only to write over
+again there wouldn't be so many things left out.  They burn in me; and
+they keep multiplying and multiplying; but now they can't ever be said.
+And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell.
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The type-setting machine began to loom large in the background.
+     Clemens believed it perfected by this time.  Paige had got it
+     together again and it was running steadily--or approximately so
+     --setting type at a marvelous speed and with perfect accuracy.  In
+     time an expert operator would be able to set as high as eight
+     thousand ems per hour, or about ten times as much as a good
+     compositor could set and distribute by hand.  Those who saw it were
+     convinced--most of them--that the type-setting problem was solved by
+     this great mechanical miracle.  If there were any who doubted, it
+     was because of its marvelously minute accuracy which the others only
+     admired.  Such accuracy, it was sometimes whispered, required
+     absolutely perfect adjustment, and what would happen when the great
+     inventor--"the poet in steel," as Clemens once called him--was no
+     longer at hand to supervise and to correct the slightest variation.
+     But no such breath of doubt came to Mark Twain; he believed the
+     machine as reliable as a constellation.
+
+     But now there was need of capital to manufacture and market the
+     wonder.  Clemens, casting about in his mind, remembered Senator
+     Jones, of Nevada, a man of great wealth, and his old friend, Joe
+     Goodman, of Nevada, in whom Jones had unlimited confidence.  He
+     wrote to Goodman, and in this letter we get a pretty full exposition
+     of the whole matter as it stood in the fall of 1889.  We note in
+     this communication that Clemens says that he has been at the machine
+     three years and seven months, but this was only the period during
+     which he had spent the regular monthly sum of three thousand
+     dollars.  His interest in the invention had begun as far back as
+     1880.
+
+
+                    To Joseph T.  Goodman, in Nevada:
+
+                                        Private.  HARTFORD, Oct. 7, '89.
+DEAR JOE,-I had a letter from Aleck Badlam day before yesterday, and in
+answering him I mentioned a matter which I asked him to consider a secret
+except to you and John McComb,--[This is Col. McComb, of the Alta-
+California, who had sent Mark Twain on the Quaker City excursion]--as I
+am not ready yet to get into the newspapers.
+
+I have come near writing you about this matter several times, but it
+wasn't ripe, and I waited.  It is ripe, now.  It is a type-setting
+machine which I undertook to build for the inventor(for a consideration).
+I have been at it three years and seven months without losing a day, at a
+cost of $3,000 a month, and in so private a way that Hartford has known
+nothing about it.  Indeed only a dozen men have known of the matter.
+I have reported progress from time to time to the proprietors of the
+N. Y. Sun, Herald, Times, World, Harper Brothers and John F. Trow; also
+to the proprietors of the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe.  Three
+years ago I asked all these people to squelch their frantic desire to
+load up their offices with the Mergenthaler (N. Y. Tribune) machine, and
+wait for mine and then choose between the two.  They have waited--with no
+very gaudy patience--but still they have waited; and I could prove to
+them to-day that they have not lost anything by it.  But I reserve the
+proof for the present--except in the case of the N. Y. Herald; I sent an
+invitation there the other day--a courtesy due a paper which ordered
+$240,000 worth of our machines long ago when it was still in a crude
+condition.  The Herald has ordered its foreman to come up here next
+Thursday; but that is the only invitation which will go out for some time
+yet.
+
+The machine was finished several weeks ago, and has been running ever
+since in the machine shop.  It is a magnificent creature of steel, all of
+Pratt & Whitney's super-best workmanship, and as nicely adjusted and as
+accurate as a watch.  In construction it is as elaborate and complex as
+that machine which it ranks next to, by every right--Man--and in
+performance it is as simple and sure.
+
+Anybody can set type on it who can read--and can do it after only 15
+minutes' instruction.  The operator does not need to leave his seat at
+the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but
+strike the keys and set type--merely one function; the spacing,
+justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is
+all done by the machine without anybody's help--four functions.
+
+The ease with which a cub can learn is surprising.  Day before yesterday
+I saw our newest cub set, perfectly space and perfectly justify 2,150 ems
+of solid nonpareil in an hour and distribute the like amount in the same
+hour--and six hours previously he had never seen the machine or its
+keyboard.  It was a good hour's work for 3-year veterans on the other
+type-setting machines to do.  We have 3 cubs.  The dean of the trio is a
+school youth of 18.  Yesterday morning he had been an apprentice on the
+machine 16 working days (8-hour days); and we speeded him to see what he
+could do in an hour.  In the hour he set 5,900 ems solid nonpareil, and
+the machine perfectly spaced and justified it, and of course distributed
+the like amount in the same hour.  Considering that a good fair
+compositor sets 700 and distributes 700 in the one hour, this boy did the
+work of about 8 x a compositors in that hour.  This fact sends all other
+type-setting machines a thousand miles to the rear, and the best of them
+will never be heard of again after we publicly exhibit in New York.
+
+We shall put on 3 more cubs.  We have one school boy and two compositors,
+now,--and we think of putting on a type writer, a stenographer, and
+perhaps a shoemaker, to show that no special gifts or training are
+required with this machine.  We shall train these beginners two or three
+months--or until some one of them gets up to 7,000 an hour--then we will
+show up in New York and run the machine 24 hours a day 7 days in the
+week, for several months--to prove that this is a machine which will
+never get out of order or cause delay, and can stand anything an anvil
+can stand.  You know there is no other typesetting machine that can run
+two hours on a stretch without causing trouble and delay with its
+incurable caprices.
+
+We own the whole field--every inch of it--and nothing can dislodge us.
+
+Now then, above is my preachment, and here follows the reason and purpose
+of it.  I want you to run over here, roost over the machine a week and
+satisfy yourself, and then go to John P. Jones or to whom you please, and
+sell me a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this property and take ten
+per cent in cash or the "property" for your trouble--the latter, if you
+are wise, because the price I ask is a long way short of the value.
+
+What I call "property" is this.  A small part of my ownership consists of
+a royalty of $500 on every machine marketed under the American patents.
+My selling-terms are, a permanent royalty of one dollar on every
+American-marketed machine for a thousand dollars cash to me in hand paid.
+We shan't market any fewer than 5,000 machines in 15 years--a return of
+fifteen thousand dollars for one thousand.  A royalty is better than
+stock, in one way--it must be paid, every six months, rain or shine; it
+is a debt, and must be paid before dividends are declared.  By and by,
+when we become a stock company I shall buy these royalties back for stock
+if I can get them for anything like reasonable terms.
+
+I have never borrowed a penny to use on the machine, and never sold a
+penny's worth of the property until the machine was entirely finished and
+proven by the severest tests to be what she started out to be--perfect,
+permanent, and occupying the position, as regards all kindred machines,
+which the City of Paris occupies as regards the canvas-backs of the
+mercantile marine.
+
+It is my purpose to sell two hundred dollars of my royalties at the above
+price during the next two months and keep the other $300.
+
+Mrs. Clemens begs Mrs. Goodman to come with you, and asks pardon for not
+writing the message herself--which would be a pathetically-welcome
+spectacle to me; for I have been her amanuensis for 8 months, now, since
+her eyes failed her.  Yours as always
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     While this letter with its amazing contents is on its way to
+     astonish Joe Goodman, we will consider one of quite a different,
+     but equally characteristic sort.  We may assume that Mark Twain's
+     sister Pamela had been visiting him in Hartford and was now making
+     a visit in Keokuk.
+
+
+                       To Mrs. Moffett, in Keokuk:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Oct 9, '89.
+DEAR PAMELA,--An hour after you left I was suddenly struck with a
+realizing sense of the utter chuckle-headedness of that notion of mine:
+to send your trunk after you.  Land! it was idiotic.  None but a lunatic
+would, separate himself from his baggage.
+
+Well, I am soulfully glad the baggage fetcher saved me from consummating
+my insane inspiration.  I met him on the street in the afternoon and paid
+him again.  I shall pay him several times more, as opportunity offers.
+
+I declined the invitation to banquet with the visiting South American
+Congress, in a polite note explaining that I had to go to New York today.
+I conveyed the note privately to Patrick; he got the envelope soiled,
+and asked Livy to put on a clean one.  That is why I am going to the
+banquet; also why I have disinvited the boys I thought I was going to
+punch billiards with, upstairs to-night.
+
+Patrick is one of the injudiciousest people I ever struck.  And I am the
+other.
+                         Your Brother
+                                             SAM.
+
+
+     The Yankee was now ready for publication, and advance sheets were
+     already in the reviewers' hands.  Just at this moment the Brazilian
+     monarchy crumbled, and Clemens was moved to write Sylvester Baxter,
+     of the Boston Herald, a letter which is of special interest in its
+     prophecy of the new day, the dawn of which was even nearer than he
+     suspected.
+
+
+DEAR MR.  BAXTER, Another throne has gone down, and I swim in oceans of
+satisfaction.  I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should
+see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron.  I believe I
+should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the
+swindles ever invented by man-monarchy.  It is enough to make a graven
+image laugh, to see apparently rational people, away down here in this
+wholesome and merciless slaughter-day for shams, still mouthing empty
+reverence for those moss-backed frauds and scoundrelisms, hereditary
+kingship and so-called "nobility."  It is enough to make the monarchs and
+nobles themselves laugh--and in private they do; there can be no question
+about that.  I think there is only one funnier thing, and that is the
+spectacle of these bastard Americans--these Hamersleys and Huntingtons
+and such--offering cash, encumbered by themselves, for rotten carcases
+and stolen titles.  When our great brethren the disenslaved Brazilians
+frame their Declaration of Independence, I hope they will insert this
+missing link: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all monarchs
+are usurpers, and descendants of usurpers; for the reason that no throne
+was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised, of the only
+body possessing the legitimate right to set it up--the numerical mass of
+the nation."
+
+You already have the advance sheets of my forthcoming book in your hands.
+If you will turn to about the five hundredth page, you will find a state
+paper of my Connecticut Yankee in which he announces the dissolution of
+King Arthur's monarchy and proclaims the English Republic.  Compare it
+with the state paper which announces the downfall of the Brazilian
+monarchy and proclaims the Republic of the United States of Brazil, and
+stand by to defend the Yankee from plagiarism.  There is merely a
+resemblance of ideas, nothing more.  The Yankee's proclamation was
+already in print a week ago.  This is merely one of those odd
+coincidences which are always turning up.  Come, protect the Yank from
+that cheapest and easiest of all charges--plagiarism.  Otherwise, you
+see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and
+indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin
+down yonder, and then there might be war, or some similar annoyance.
+
+Have you noticed the rumor that the Portuguese throne is unsteady, and
+that the Portuguese slaves are getting restive?  Also, that the head
+slave-driver of Europe, Alexander III, has so reduced his usual monthly
+order for chains that the Russian foundries are running on only half time
+now?  Also that other rumor that English nobility acquired an added
+stench the other day--and had to ship it to India and the continent
+because there wasn't any more room for it at home?  Things are working.
+By and by there is going to be an emigration, may be.  Of course we shall
+make no preparation; we never do.  In a few years from now we shall have
+nothing but played-out kings and dukes on the police, and driving the
+horse-cars, and whitewashing fences, and in fact overcrowding all the
+avenues of unskilled labor; and then we shall wish, when it is too late,
+that we had taken common and reasonable precautions and drowned them at
+Castle Garden.
+
+
+     There followed at this time a number of letters to Goodman, but as
+     there is much of a sameness in them, we need not print them all.
+     Clemens, in fact, kept the mails warm with letters bulging with
+     schemes for capitalization, and promising vast wealth to all
+     concerned.  When the letters did not go fast enough he sent
+     telegrams.  In one of the letters Goodman is promised "five hundred
+     thousand dollars out of the profits before we get anything
+     ourselves."  One thing we gather from these letters is that Paige
+     has taken the machine apart again, never satisfied with its
+     perfection, or perhaps getting a hint that certain of its
+     perfections were not permanent.  A letter at the end of November
+     seems worth preserving here.
+
+
+                  To Joseph T.  Goodman, in California:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Nov. 29, '89.
+DEAR JOE, Things are getting into better and more flexible shape every
+day.  Papers are now being drawn which will greatly simplify the raising
+of capital; I shall be in supreme command; it will not be necessary for
+the capitalist to arrive at terms with anybody but me.  I don't want to
+dicker with anybody but Jones.  I know him; that is to say, I want to
+dicker with you, and through you with Jones.  Try to see if you can't be
+here by the 15th of January.
+
+The machine was as perfect as a watch when we took her apart the other
+day; but when she goes together again the 15th of January we expect her
+to be perfecter than a watch.
+
+Joe, I want you to sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can,
+for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York.  You know the
+machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any
+man I know.  At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,)
+we shall sell 34,000 in the life of the patent--17 years.
+
+All the family send love to you--and they mean it, or they wouldn't say
+it.
+                              Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The Yankee had come from the press, and Howells had praised it in
+     the "Editor's Study" in Harper's Magazine.  He had given it his
+     highest commendation, and it seems that his opinion of it did not
+     change with time.  "Of all fanciful schemes of fiction it pleases me
+     most," he in one place declared, and again referred to it as
+     "a greatly imagined and symmetrically developed tale."
+
+     In more than one letter to Goodman, Clemens had urged him to come
+     East without delay.  "Take the train, Joe, and come along," he wrote
+     early in December.  And we judge from the following that Joe had
+     decided to come.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Dec. 23, '89.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--The magazine came last night, and the Study notice is just
+great.  The satisfaction it affords us could not be more prodigious if
+the book deserved every word of it; and maybe it does; I hope it does,
+though of course I can't realize it and believe it.  But I am your
+grateful servant, anyway and always.
+
+I am going to read to the Cadets at West Point Jan. 11.  I go from here
+to New York the 9th, and up to the Point the 11th.  Can't you go with me?
+It's great fun.  I'm going to read the passages in the "Yankee" in which
+the Yankee's West Point cadets figure--and shall covertly work in a
+lecture on aristocracy to those boys.  I am to be the guest of the
+Superintendent, but if you will go I will shake him and we will go to the
+hotel.  He is a splendid fellow, and I know him well enough to take that
+liberty.
+
+And won't you give me a day or two's visit toward the end of January?
+For two reasons: the machine will be at work again by that time, and we
+want to hear the rest of the dream-story; Mrs. Clemens keeps speaking
+about it and hankering for it.  And we can have Joe Goodman on hand again
+by that time, and I want you to get to know him thoroughly.  It's well
+worth it.  I am going to run up and stay over night with you as soon as I
+can get a chance.
+
+We are in the full rush of the holidays now, and an awful rush it is,
+too.  You ought to have been here the other day, to make that day perfect
+and complete.  All alone I managed to inflict agonies on Mrs: Clemens,
+whereas I was expecting nothing but praises.  I made a party call the day
+after the party--and called the lady down from breakfast to receive it.
+I then left there and called on a new bride, who received me in her
+dressing-gown; and as things went pretty well, I stayed to luncheon.
+The error here was, that the appointed reception-hour was 3 in the
+afternoon, and not at the bride's house but at her aunt's in another part
+of the town.  However, as I meant well, none of these disasters
+distressed me.
+                         Yrs ever
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The Yankee did not find a very hearty welcome in England.  English
+     readers did not fancy any burlesque of their Arthurian tales, or
+     American strictures on their institutions.  Mark Twain's publishers
+     had feared this, and asked that the story be especially edited for
+     the English edition.  Clemens, however, would not listen to any
+     suggestions of the sort.
+
+
+              To Messrs.  Chatto & Windus, in London, Eng.:
+
+GENTLEMEN,--Concerning The Yankee, I have already revised the story
+twice; and it has been read critically by W. D. Howells and Edmund
+Clarence Stedman, and my wife has caused me to strike out several
+passages that have been brought to her attention, and to soften others.
+Furthermore, I have read chapters of the book in public where Englishmen
+were present and have profited by their suggestions.
+
+Now, mind you, I have taken all this pains because I wanted to say a
+Yankee mechanic's say against monarchy and its several natural props,
+and yet make a book which you would be willing to print exactly as it
+comes to you, without altering a word.
+
+We are spoken of (by Englishmen) as a thin-skinned people.  It is you who
+are thin-skinned.  An Englishman may write with the most brutal frankness
+about any man or institution among us and we republish him without
+dreaming of altering a line or a word.  But England cannot stand that
+kind of a book written about herself.  It is England that is thin-
+skinned.  It causeth me to smile when I read the modifications of my
+language which have been made in my English editions to fit them for the
+sensitive English palate.
+
+Now, as I say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of
+offense that you might not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands.
+I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can.  I want you
+to read it carefully.  If you can publish it without altering a single
+word, go ahead.  Otherwise, please hand it to J. R. Osgood in time for
+him to have it published at my expense.
+
+This is important, for the reason that the book was not written for
+America; it was written for England.  So many Englishmen have done their
+sincerest best to teach us something for our betterment that it seems to
+me high time that some of us should substantially recognize the good
+intent by trying to pry up the English nation to a little higher level of
+manhood in turn.
+                    Very truly yours,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+The English nation, at least a considerable portion of it, did not wish
+to be "pried up to a higher level of manhood" by a Connecticut Yankee.
+The papers pretty generally denounced the book as coarse; in fact, a
+vulgar travesty.  Some of the critics concluded that England, after all,
+had made a mistake in admiring Mark Twain.  Clemens stood this for a time
+and then seems to have decided that something should be done.  One of the
+foremost of English critics was his friend and admirer; he would state
+the case to him fully and invite his assistance.
+
+
+                        To Andrew Lang, in London:
+
+[First page missing.]
+
+                                                            1889
+They vote but do not print.  The head tells you pretty promptly whether
+the food is satisfactory or not; and everybody hears, and thinks the
+whole man has spoken.  It is a delusion.  Only his taste and his smell
+have been heard from--important, both, in a way, but these do not build
+up the man; and preserve his life and fortify it.
+
+The little child is permitted to label its drawings "This is a cow this
+is a horse," and so on.  This protects the child.  It saves it from the
+sorrow and wrong of hearing its cows and its horses criticized as
+kangaroos and work benches.  A man who is white-washing a fence is doing
+a useful thing, so also is the man who is adorning a rich man's house
+with costly frescoes; and all of us are sane enough to judge these
+performances by standards proper to each.  Now, then, to be fair, an
+author ought to be allowed to put upon his book an explanatory line:
+"This is written for the Head;"  "This is written for the Belly and the
+Members."  And the critic ought to hold himself in honor bound to put
+away from him his ancient habit of judging all books by one standard, and
+thenceforth follow a fairer course.
+
+The critic assumes, every time, that if a book doesn't meet the
+cultivated-class standard, it isn't valuable.  Let us apply his law all
+around: for if it is sound in the case of novels, narratives, pictures,
+and such things, it is certainly sound and applicable to all the steps
+which lead up to culture and make culture possible.  It condemns the
+spelling book, for a spelling book is of no use to a person of culture;
+it condemns all school books and all schools which lie between the
+child's primer and Greek, and between the infant school and the
+university; it condemns all the rounds of art which lie between the cheap
+terra cotta groups and the Venus de Medici, and between the chromo and
+the Transfiguration; it requires Whitcomb Riley to sing no more till he
+can sing like Shakespeare, and it forbids all amateur music and will
+grant its sanction to nothing below the "classic."
+
+Is this an extravagant statement?  No, it is a mere statement of fact.
+It is the fact itself that is extravagant and grotesque.  And what is the
+result?  This--and it is sufficiently curious: the critic has actually
+imposed upon the world the superstition that a painting by Raphael is
+more valuable to the civilizations of the earth than is a chromo; and the
+august opera than the hurdy-gurdy and the villagers' singing society; and
+Homer than the little everybody's-poet whose rhymes are in all mouths
+today and will be in nobody's mouth next generation; and the Latin
+classics than Kipling's far-reaching bugle-note; and Jonathan Edwards
+than the Salvation Army; and the Venus de Medici than the plaster-cast
+peddler; the superstition, in a word, that the vast and awful comet that
+trails its cold lustre through the remote abysses of space once a century
+and interests and instructs a cultivated handful of astronomers is worth
+more to the world than the sun which warms and cheers all the nations
+every day and makes the crops to grow.
+
+If a critic should start a religion it would not have any object but to
+convert angels: and they wouldn't need it.  The thin top crust of
+humanity--the cultivated--are worth pacifying, worth pleasing, worth
+coddling, worth nourishing and preserving with dainties and delicacies,
+it is true; but to be caterer to that little faction is no very dignified
+or valuable occupation, it seems to me; it is merely feeding the over-
+fed, and there must be small satisfaction in that.  It is not that little
+minority who are already saved that are best worth trying to uplift,
+I should think, but the mighty mass of the uncultivated who are
+underneath.  That mass will never see the Old Masters--that sight is for
+the few; but the chromo maker can lift them all one step upward toward
+appreciation of art; they cannot have the opera, but the hurdy-gurdy and
+the singing class lift them a little way toward that far light; they will
+never know Homer, but the passing rhymester of their day leaves them
+higher than he found them; they may never even hear of the Latin
+classics, but they will strike step with Kipling's drum-beat, and they
+will march; for all Jonathan Edwards's help they would die in their
+slums, but the Salvation Army will beguile some of them up to pure air
+and a cleaner life; they know no sculpture, the Venus is not even a name
+to them, but they are a grade higher in the scale of civilization by the
+ministrations of the plaster-cast than they were before it took its place
+upon then mantel and made it beautiful to their unexacting eyes.
+
+Indeed I have been misjudged, from the very first.  I have never tried in
+even one single instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes.
+I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training.  And I
+never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger
+game--the masses.  I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them,
+but have done my best to entertain them.  To simply amuse them would have
+satisfied my dearest ambition at any time; for they could get instruction
+elsewhere, and I had two chances to help to the teacher's one: for
+amusement is a good preparation for study and a good healer of fatigue
+after it.  My audience is dumb, it has no voice in print, and so I cannot
+know whether I have won its approbation or only got its censure.
+
+Yes, you see, I have always catered for the Belly and the Members, but
+have been served like the others--criticized from the culture-standard
+--to my sorrow and pain; because, honestly, I never cared what became of
+the cultured classes; they could go to the theatre and the opera--they
+had no use for me and the melodeon.
+
+And now at last I arrive at my object and tender my petition, making
+supplication to this effect: that the critics adopt a rule recognizing
+the Belly and the Members, and formulate a standard whereby work done for
+them shall be judged.  Help me, Mr. Lang; no voice can reach further than
+yours in a case of this kind, or carry greater weight of authority.
+
+
+     Lang's reply was an article in the Illustrated London News on "The
+     Art of Mark Twain."  Lang had no admiration to express for the
+     Yankee, which he confessed he had not cared to read, but he
+     glorified Huck Finn to the highest.  "I can never forget, nor be
+     ungrateful for the exquisite pleasure with which I read Huckleberry
+     Finn for the first time, years ago," he wrote; "I read it again last
+     night, deserting Kenilworth for Huck.  I never laid it down till I
+     had finished it."
+
+     Lang closed his article by referring to the story of Huck as the
+     "great American novel which had escaped the eyes of those who
+     watched to see this new planet swim into their ken."
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS, 1890, CHIEFLY TO JOS. T. GOODMAN.  THE GREAT MACHINE ENTERPRISE
+
+     Dr. John Brown's son, whom Mark Twain and his wife had known in 1873
+     as "Jock," sent copies of Dr. John Brown and His Sister Isabella, by
+     E.  T.  McLaren.  It was a gift appreciated in the Clemens home.
+
+
+                To Mr. John Brown, in Edinburgh, Scotland:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feby 11, 1890.
+DEAR MR. BROWN,--Both copies came, and we are reading and re-reading the
+one, and lending the other, to old time adorers of "Rab and his Friends."
+It is an exquisite book; the perfection of literary workmanship.  It says
+in every line, "Don't look at me, look at him"--and one tries to be good
+and obey; but the charm of the painter is so strong that one can't keep
+his entire attention on the developing portrait, but must steal side-
+glimpses of the artist, and try to divine the trick of her felicitous
+brush.  In this book the doctor lives and moves just as he was.  He was
+the most extensive slave-holder of his time, and the kindest; and yet he
+died without setting one of his bondmen free.  We all send our very, very
+kindest regards.
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     If Mark Twain had been less interested in the type-setting machine
+     he might possibly have found a profit that winter in the old Sellers
+     play, which he had written with Howells seven years before.  The
+     play had eventually been produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York,
+     with A. P. Burbank in the leading role, and Clemens and Howells as
+     financial backers.  But it was a losing investment, nor did it pay
+     any better when Clemens finally sent Burbank with it on the road.
+     Now, however, James A.  Herne, a well-known actor and playwright,
+     became interested in the idea, after a discussion of the matter with
+     Howells, and there seemed a probability that with changes made under
+     Herne's advisement the play might be made sensible and successful.
+
+     But Mark Twain's greater interest was now all in the type-machine,
+     and certainly he had no money to put into any other venture.  His
+     next letter to Goodman is illuminating--the urgency of his need for
+     funds opposed to that conscientiousness which was one of the most
+     positive forces of Mark Twain's body spiritual.  The Mr. Arnot of
+     this letter was an Elmira capitalist.
+
+
+                    To Jos. T. Goodman, in California:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, March 31, '90.
+DEAR JOE,--If you were here, I should say, "Get you to Washington and beg
+Senator Jones to take the chances and put up about ten or "--no, I
+wouldn't.  The money would burn a hole in my pocket and get away from me
+if the furnisher of it were proceeding upon merely your judgment and mine
+and without other evidence.  It is too much of a responsibility.
+
+But I am in as close a place to-day as ever I was; $3,000 due for the
+last month's machine-expenses, and the purse empty.  I notified Mr. Arnot
+a month ago that I should want $5,000 to-day, and his check arrived last
+night; but I sent it back to him, because when he bought of me on the 9th
+of December I said that I would not draw upon him for 3 months, and that
+before that date Senator Jones would have examined the machine and
+approved, or done the other thing.  If Jones should arrive here a week or
+ten days from now (as he expects to do,) and should not approve, and
+shouldn't buy any royalties, my deal with Arnot would not be
+symmetrically square, and then how could I refund?  The surest way was to
+return his check.
+
+I have talked with the madam, and here is the result.  I will go down to
+the factory and notify Paige that I will scrape together $6,000 to meet
+the March and April expenses, and will retire on the 30th of April and
+return the assignment to him if in the meantime I have not found
+financial relief.
+
+It is very rough; for the machine does at last seem perfect, and just a
+bird to go!  I think she's going to be good for 8,000 ems an hour in the
+hands of a good ordinary man after a solid year's practice.  I may be in
+error, but I most solidly believe it.
+
+There's an improved Mergenthaler in New York; Paige and Davis and I
+watched it two whole afternoons.
+                         With the love of us all,
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Arnot wrote Clemens urging him to accept the check for five thousand
+     dollars in this moment of need.  Clemens was probably as sorely
+     tempted to compromise with his conscience as he had ever been in his
+     life, but his resolution field firm.
+
+
+                    To M. H. Arnot, in Elmira, N.  Y.:
+
+MR. M. H. ARNOT
+
+DEAR SIR,--No--no, I could not think of taking it, with you unsatisfied;
+and you ought not to be satisfied until you have made personal
+examination of the machine and had a consensus of testimony of
+disinterested people, besides.  My own perfect knowledge of what is
+required of such a machine, and my perfect knowledge of the fact that
+this is the only machine that can meet that requirement, make it
+difficult for me to realize that a doubt is possible to less well-posted
+men; and so I would have taken your money without thinking, and thus
+would have done a great wrong to you and a great one to myself.  And now
+that I go back over the ground, I remember that where I said I could get
+along 3 months without drawing on you, that delay contemplated a visit
+from you to the machine in the interval, and your satisfaction with its
+character and prospects.  I had forgotten all that.  But I remember it
+now; and the fact that it was not "so nominated in the bond" does not
+alter the case or justify me in making my call so prematurely.  I do not
+know that you regarded all that as a part of the bargain--for you were
+thoroughly and magnanimously unexacting--but I so regarded it,
+notwithstanding I have so easily managed to forget all about it.
+
+You so gratified me, and did me so much honor in bonding yourself to me
+in a large sum, upon no evidence but my word and with no protection but
+my honor, that my pride in that is much stronger than my desire to reap a
+money advantage from it.
+
+With the sincerest appreciation I am Truly yours
+                                             S L. CLEMENS.
+
+P. S.  I have written a good many words and yet I seem to have failed to
+say the main thing in exact enough language--which is, that the
+transaction between us is not complete and binding until you shall have
+convinced yourself that the machine's character and prospects are
+satisfactory.
+
+I ought to explain that the grippe delayed us some weeks, and that we
+have since been waiting for Mr. Jones.  When he was ready, we were not;
+and now we have been ready more than a month, while he has been kept in
+Washington by the Silver bill.  He said the other day that to venture out
+of the Capitol for a day at this time could easily chance to hurt him if
+the bill came up for action, meantime, although it couldn't hurt the
+bill, which would pass anyway.  Mrs. Jones said she would send me two or
+three days' notice, right after the passage of the bill, and that they
+would follow as soon as I should return word that their coming would not
+inconvenience us.  I suppose I ought to go to New York without waiting
+for Mr. Jones, but it would not be wise to go there without money.
+
+The bill is still pending.
+
+
+     The Mergenthaler machine, like the Paige, was also at this time in
+     the middle stages of experimental development.  It was a slower
+     machine, but it was simpler, less expensive, occupied less room.
+     There was not so much about it to get out of order; it was not so
+     delicate, not so human.  These were immense advantages.
+
+     But no one at this time could say with certainty which typesetter
+     would reap the harvest of millions.  It was only sure that at least
+     one of them would, and the Mergenthaler people were willing to trade
+     stock for stock with the Paige company in order to insure financial
+     success for both, whichever won.  Clemens, with a faith that never
+     faltered, declined this offer, a decision that was to cost him
+     millions.
+
+     Winter and spring had gone and summer had come, but still there had
+     been no financial conclusion with Jones, Mackay, and the other rich
+     Californians who were to put up the necessary million for the
+     machine's manufacture.  Goodman was spending a large part of his
+     time traveling back and forth between California and Washington,
+     trying to keep business going at both ends.  Paige spent most of his
+     time working out improvements for the type-setter, delicate
+     attachments which complicated its construction more and more.
+
+
+                    To Joe T.  Goodman, in Washington:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, June 22, '90.
+DEAR JOE,--I have been sitting by the machine 2 hours, this afternoon,
+and my admiration of it towers higher than ever.  There is no sort of
+mistake about it, it is the Big Bonanza.  In the 2 hours, the time lost
+by type-breakage was 3 minutes.
+
+This machine is totally without a rival.  Rivalry with it is impossible.
+Last Friday, Fred Whitmore (it was the 28th day of his apprenticeship on
+the machine) stacked up 49,700 ems of solid nonpareil in 8 hours, and the
+type-breaking delay was only 6 minutes for the day.
+
+I claim yet, as I have always claimed, that the machine's market (abroad
+and here together,) is today worth $150,000,000 without saying anything
+about the doubling and trebling of this sum that will follow within the
+life of the patents.  Now here is a queer fact: I am one of the
+wealthiest grandees in America--one of the Vanderbilt gang, in fact--and
+yet if you asked me to lend you a couple of dollars I should have to ask
+you to take my note instead.
+
+It makes me cheerful to sit by the machine: come up with Mrs. Goodman and
+refresh yourself with a draught of the same.
+                                        Ys ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The machine was still breaking the types now and then, and no doubt
+     Paige was itching to take it to pieces, and only restrained by force
+     from doing so.  He was never thoroughly happy unless he was taking
+     the machine apart or setting it up again.  Finally, he was allowed
+     to go at it--a disasterous permission, for it was just then that
+     Jones decided to steal a day or two from the Silver Bill and watch
+     the type-setter in operation.  Paige already had it in parts when
+     this word came from Goodman, and Jones's visit had to be called off.
+     His enthusiasm would seem to have weakened from that day.  In July,
+     Goodman wrote that both Mackay and Jones had become somewhat
+     diffident in the matter of huge capitalization.  He thought it
+     partly due, at least, to "the fatal delays that have sicklied over
+     the bloom of original enthusiasm."  Clemens himself went down to
+     Washington and perhaps warmed Jones with his eloquence; at least,
+     Jones seemed to have agreed to make some effort in the matter a
+     qualified promise, the careful word of a wary politician and
+     capitalist.  How many Washington trips were made is not certain, but
+     certainly more than one.  Jones would seem to have suggested forms
+     of contracts, but if he came to the point of signing any there is no
+     evidence of it to-day.
+
+     Any one who has read Mark Twain's, "A Connecticut Yankee in King
+     Arthur's Court," has a pretty good idea of his opinion of kings in
+     general, and tyrants in particular.  Rule by "divine right," however
+     liberal, was distasteful to him; where it meant oppression it
+     stirred him to violence.  In his article, "The Czar's Soliloquy," he
+     gave himself loose rein concerning atrocities charged to the master
+     of Russia, and in a letter which he wrote during the summer of 1890,
+     he offered a hint as to remedies.  The letter was written by
+     editorial request, but was never mailed.  Perhaps it seemed too
+     openly revolutionary at the moment.
+
+     Yet scarcely more than a quarter of a century was needed to make it
+     "timely."  Clemens and his family were spending some weeks in the
+     Catskills when it was written.
+
+
+                    An unpublished letter on the Czar.
+
+                                                  ONTEORA, 1890.
+TO THE EDITOR OF FREE RUSSIA,--I thank you for the compliment of your
+invitation to say something, but when I ponder the bottom paragraph on
+your first page, and then study your statement on your third page, of the
+objects of the several Russian liberation-parties, I do not quite know
+how to proceed.  Let me quote here the paragraph referred to:
+
+"But men's hearts are so made that the sight of one voluntary victim for
+a noble idea stirs them more deeply than the sight of a crowd submitting
+to a dire fate they cannot escape.  Besides, foreigners could not see so
+clearly as the Russians how much the Government was responsible for the
+grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the
+moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated
+Russia.  But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are
+there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no
+excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity
+against Russian tyranny.  And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident
+in its apparently unassailable position, instead of taking warning from
+the first rebukes, seems to mock this humanitarian age by the aggravation
+of brutalities.  Not satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and
+with burying the flower of our young generation in the Siberian desserts,
+the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by
+deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and
+degradation."
+
+When one reads that paragraph in the glare of George Kennan's
+revelations, and considers how much it means; considers that all earthly
+figures fail to typify the Czar's government, and that one must descend
+into hell to find its counterpart, one turns hopefully to your statement
+of the objects of the several liberation-parties--and is disappointed.
+Apparently none of them can bear to think of losing the present hell
+entirely, they merely want the temperature cooled down a little.
+
+I now perceive why all men are the deadly and uncompromising enemies of
+the rattlesnake: it is merely because the rattlesnake has not speech.
+Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade men that it
+differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it
+somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and
+fine, when properly "modified," something entitling it to protection from
+the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole.  It seems a
+most strange delusion and not reconcilable with our superstition that man
+is a reasoning being.  If a house is afire, we reason confidently that it
+is the first comer's plain duty to put the fire out in any way he can--
+drown it with water, blow it up with dynamite, use any and all means to
+stop the spread of the fire and save the rest of the city.  What is the
+Czar of Russia but a house afire in the midst of a city of eighty
+millions of inhabitants?  Yet instead of extinguishing him, together with
+his nest and system, the liberation-parties are all anxious to merely
+cool him down a little and keep him.
+
+It seems to me that this is illogical--idiotic, in fact.  Suppose you had
+this granite-hearted, bloody-jawed maniac of Russia loose in your house,
+chasing the helpless women and little children--your own.  What would you
+do with him, supposing you had a shotgun?  Well, he is loose in your
+house-Russia.  And with your shotgun in your hand, you stand trying to
+think up ways to "modify" him.
+
+Do these liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project
+which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and
+has never in one single instance been successful--the "modification" of a
+despotism by other means than bloodshed?  They seem to think they can.
+My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was
+bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands,
+but I possess not one single little paltry right or privilege that come
+to me as a result of petition, persuasion, agitation for reform, or any
+kindred method of procedure.  When we consider that not even the most
+responsible English monarch ever yielded back a stolen public right until
+it was wrenched from them by bloody violence, is it rational to suppose
+that gentler methods can win privileges in Russia?
+
+Of course I know that the properest way to demolish the Russian throne
+would be by revolution.  But it is not possible to get up a revolution
+there; so the only thing left to do, apparently, is to keep the throne
+vacant by dynamite until a day when candidates shall decline with thanks.
+Then organize the Republic.  And on the whole this method has some large
+advantages; for whereas a revolution destroys some lives which cannot
+well be spared, the dynamite way doesn't.  Consider this: the
+conspirators against the Czar's life are caught in every rank of life,
+from the low to the high.  And consider: if so many take an active part,
+where the peril is so dire, is this not evidence that the sympathizers
+who keep still and do not show their hands, are countless for multitudes?
+Can you break the hearts of thousands of families with the awful Siberian
+exodus every year for generations and not eventually cover all Russia
+from limit to limit with bereaved fathers and mothers and brothers and
+sisters who secretly hate the perpetrator of this prodigious crime and
+hunger and thirst for his life?  Do you not believe that if your wife or
+your child or your father was exiled to the mines of Siberia for some
+trivial utterances wrung from a smarting spirit by the Czar's intolerable
+tyranny, and you got a chance to kill him and did not do it, that you
+would always be ashamed to be in your own society the rest of your life?
+Suppose that that refined and lovely Russian lady who was lately stripped
+bare before a brutal soldiery and whipped to death by the Czar's hand in
+the person of the Czar's creature had been your wife, or your daughter or
+your sister, and to-day the Czar should pass within reach of your hand,
+how would you feel--and what would you do?  Consider, that all over vast
+Russia, from boundary to boundary, a myriad of eyes filled with tears
+when that piteous news came, and through those tears that myriad of eyes
+saw, not that poor lady, but lost darlings of their own whose fate her
+fate brought back with new access of grief out of a black and bitter past
+never to be forgotten or forgiven.
+
+If I am a Swinburnian--and clear to the marrow I am--I hold human nature
+in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians
+that are of the same stripe, and only one Russian family that isn't.
+
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     Type-setter matters were going badly.  Clemens still had faith in
+     Jones, and he had lost no grain of faith in the machine.  The money
+     situation, however, was troublesome.  With an expensive
+     establishment, and work of one sort or another still to be done on
+     the machine, his income would not reach.  Perhaps Goodman had
+     already given up hope, for he does not seem to have returned from
+     California after the next letter was written--a colorless letter--
+     in which we feel a note of resignation.  The last few lines are
+     sufficient.
+
+
+                    To Joe T. Goodman, in California:
+
+DEAR JOE,--...... I wish you could get a day off and make those two or
+three Californians buy those privileges, for I'm going to need money
+before long.
+
+I don't know where the Senator is; but out on the Coast I reckon.
+
+I guess we've got a perfect machine at last.  We never break a type, now,
+and the new device for enabling the operator to touch the last letters
+and justify the line simultaneously works, to a charm.
+                         With love to you both,
+                                                  MARK
+
+
+     The year closed gloomily enough.  The type-setter seemed to be
+     perfected, but capital for its manufacture was not forthcoming.
+     The publishing business of Charles L. Webster & Co.  was returning
+     little or no profit.  Clemens's mother had died in Keokuk at the end
+     of October, and his wife's mother, in Elmira a month later.  Mark
+     Twain, writing a short business letter to his publishing manager,
+     Fred J. Ball, closed it: "Merry Xmas to you!--and I wish to God I
+     could have one myself before I die."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+LETTERS, 1891, TO HOWELLS, MRS. CLEMENS AND OTHERS.
+RETURN TO LITERATURE.  AMERICAN CLAIMANT.  LEAVING HARTFORD.
+EUROPE.  DOWN THE RHINE
+
+Clemens was still not without hope in the machine, at the beginning of
+the new year (1891) but it was a hope no longer active, and it presently
+became a moribund.  Jones, on about the middle of February, backed out
+altogether, laying the blame chiefly on Mackay and the others, who, he
+said, had decided not to invest.  Jones "let his victim down easy" with
+friendly words, but it was the end, for the present, at least, of machine
+financiering.
+
+It was also the end of Mark Twain's capital.  His publishing business was
+not good.  It was already in debt and needing more money.  There was just
+one thing for him to do and he did it at once, not stopping to cry over
+spilt milk, but with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never
+failed him, he returned to the trade of authorship.  He dug out half-
+finished articles and stories, finished them and sold them, and within a
+week after the Jones collapse he was at work on a novel based an the old
+Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells had worked into a
+play.  The brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells bears
+no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his fifty-sixth
+year; he was by no means well, and his financial prospects were anything
+but golden.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                             HARTFORD, Feb. 24, '91
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Mrs. Clemens has been sick abed for near two weeks, but is
+up and around the room now, and gaining.  I don't know whether she has
+written Mrs. Howells or not--I only know she was going to--and will yet,
+if she hasn't.  We are promising ourselves a whole world of pleasure in
+the visit, and you mustn't dream of disappointing us.
+
+Does this item stir an interest in you?  Began a novel four days ago, and
+this moment finished chapter four.  Title of the book
+
+                       "Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
+                           American Claimant
+                                 Of the
+                       Great Earldom of Rossmore'
+                                 in the
+                       Peerage of Great Britain."
+
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+Probably Mark Twain did not return to literary work reluctantly.  He had
+always enjoyed writing and felt now that he was equipped better than ever
+for authorship, at least so far as material was concerned.  There exists
+a fragmentary copy of a letter to some unknown correspondent, in which he
+recites his qualifications.  It bears evidence of having been written
+just at this time and is of unusual interest at this point.
+
+
+                   Fragment of Letter to -------, 1891:
+
+.  .  .  .  I confine myself to life with which I am familiar when
+pretending to portray life.  But I confined myself to the boy-life out on
+the Mississippi because that had a peculiar charm for me, and not because
+I was not familiar with other phases of life.  I was a soldier two weeks
+once in the beginning of the war, and was hunted like a rat the whole
+time.  Familiar?  My splendid Kipling himself hasn't a more burnt-in,
+hard-baked, and unforgetable familiarity with that death-on-the-pale-
+horse-with-hell-following-after, which is a raw soldier's first fortnight
+in the field--and which, without any doubt, is the most tremendous
+fortnight and the vividest he is ever going to see.
+
+Yes, and I have shoveled silver tailings in a quartz-mill a couple of
+weeks, and acquired the last possibilities of culture in that direction.
+And I've done "pocket-mining" during three months in the one little patch
+of ground in the whole globe where Nature conceals gold in pockets--or
+did before we robbed all of those pockets and exhausted, obliterated,
+annihilated the most curious freak Nature ever indulged in.  There are
+not thirty men left alive who, being told there was a pocket hidden on
+the broad slope of a mountain, would know how to go and find it, or have
+even the faintest idea of how to set about it; but I am one of the
+possible 20 or 30 who possess the secret, and I could go and put my hand
+on that hidden treasure with a most deadly precision.
+
+And I've been a prospector, and know pay rock from poor when I find it--
+just with a touch of the tongue.  And I've been a silver miner and know
+how to dig and shovel and drill and put in a blast.  And so I know the
+mines and the miners interiorly as well as Bret Harte knows them
+exteriorly.
+
+And I was a newspaper reporter four years in cities, and so saw the
+inside of many things; and was reporter in a legislature two sessions
+and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally
+three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and
+the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
+
+And I was some years a Mississippi pilot, and familiarly knew all the
+different kinds of steam-boatmen--a race apart, and not like other folk.
+
+And I was for some years a traveling "jour" printer, and wandered from
+city to city--and so I know that sect familiarly.
+
+And I was a lecturer on the public platform a number of seasons and was a
+responder to toasts at all the different kinds of banquets--and so I know
+a great many secrets about audiences--secrets not to be got out of books,
+but only acquirable by experience.
+
+And I watched over one dear project of mine for years, spent a fortune on
+it, and failed to make it go--and the history of that would make a large
+book in which a million men would see themselves as in a mirror; and they
+would testify and say, Verily, this is not imagination; this fellow has
+been there--and after would cast dust upon their heads, cursing and
+blaspheming.
+
+And I am a publisher, and did pay to one author's widow (General Grant's)
+the largest copyright checks this world has seen--aggregating more than
+L80,000 in the first year.
+
+And I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
+
+Now then; as the most valuable capital or culture or education usable in
+the building of novels is personal experience I ought to be well equipped
+for that trade.
+
+I surely have the equipment, a wide culture, and all of it real, none of
+it artificial, for I don't know anything about books.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     Clemens for several years had been bothered by rheumatism in his
+     shoulder.  The return now to the steady use of the pen aggravated
+     his trouble, and at times he was nearly disabled.  The phonograph
+     for commercial dictation had been tried experimentally, and Mark
+     Twain was always ready for any innovation.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, Feb.  28, '91.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Won't you drop-in at the Boylston Building (New England
+Phonograph Co) and talk into a phonograph in an ordinary conversation-
+voice and see if another person (who didn't hear you do it) can take the
+words from the thing without difficulty and repeat them to you.  If the
+experiment is satisfactory (also make somebody put in a message which you
+don't hear, and see if afterward you can get it out without difficulty)
+won't you then ask them on what terms they will rent me a phonograph for
+3 months and furnish me cylinders enough to carry 75,000 words.  175
+cylinders, ain't it?
+
+I don't want to erase any of them.  My right arm is nearly disabled by
+rheumatism, but I am bound to write this book (and sell 100,000 copies of
+it--no, I mean a million--next fall) I feel sure I can dictate the book
+into a phonograph if I don't have to yell.  I write 2,000 words a day; I
+think I can dictate twice as many.
+
+But mind, if this is going to be too much trouble to you--go ahead and do
+it, all the same.
+                                   Ys ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells, always willing to help, visited the phonograph place, and a
+     few days later reported results.  He wrote: "I talked your letter
+     into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech.  Then
+     the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell.
+     Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
+     put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out.  I send you the
+     result.  There is a mistake of one word.  I think that if you have
+     the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
+     perfectly easy.  It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
+     did."
+
+     Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
+     not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily.  His
+     early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed.  It happened in this way.  I was proposing to
+acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
+so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere letter-
+writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write literature
+with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift for
+elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity of
+expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental, and as
+grave and unsmiling as the devil.
+
+I filled four dozen cylinders in two sittings, then found I could have
+said about as much with the pen and said it a deal better.  Then I
+resigned.
+
+I believe it could teach one to dictate literature to a phonographer--and
+some time I will experiment in that line.
+
+The little book is charmingly written, and it interested me.  But it
+flies too high for me.  Its concretest things are filmy abstractions to
+me, and when I lay my grip on one of them and open my hand, I feel as
+embarrassed as I use to feel when I thought I had caught a fly.  I'm
+going to try to mail it back to you to-day--I mean I am going to charge
+my memory.  Charging my memory is one of my chief industries ....
+
+With our loves and our kindest regards distributed among you according to
+the proprieties.
+                              Yrs ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+P. S.--I'm sending that ancient "Mental Telegraphy" article to Harper's
+--with a modest postscript.  Probably read it to you years ago.
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     The "little book" mentioned in this letter was by Swedenborg, an
+     author in whom the Boston literary set was always deeply interested.
+     "Mental Telegraphy" appeared in Harper's Magazine, and is now
+     included in the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain's books.  It was
+     written in 1878.
+
+     Joe Goodman had long since returned to California, it being clear
+     that nothing could be gained by remaining in Washington.  On receipt
+     of the news of the type-setter's collapse he sent a consoling word.
+     Perhaps he thought Clemens would rage over the unhappy circumstance,
+     and possibly hold him in some measure to blame.  But it was
+     generally the smaller annoyances of life that made Mark Twain rage;
+     the larger catastrophes were likely to stir only his philosophy.
+
+     The Library of American Literature, mentioned in the following
+     letter, was a work in many volumes, edited by Edmund Clarence
+     Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
+
+
+                           To Joe T.  Goodman:
+
+                                                  April [?] 1891.
+DEAR JOE, Well, it's all right, anyway.  Diplomacy couldn't have saved
+it--diplomacy of mine--at that late day.  I hadn't any diplomacy in
+stock, anyway.  In order to meet Jones's requirements I had to surrender
+the old contract (a contract which made me boss of the situation and gave
+me the whip-hand of Paige) and allow the new one to be drafted and put in
+its place.  I was running an immense risk, but it was justified by
+Jones's promises--promises made to me not merely once but every time I
+tallied with him.  When February arrived, I saw signs which were mighty
+plain reading.  Signs which meant that Paige was hoping and praying that
+Jones would go back on me--which would leave Paige boss, and me robbed
+and out in the cold.  His prayers were answered, and I am out in the
+cold.  If I ever get back my nine-twentieths interest, it will be by law-
+suit--which will be instituted in the indefinite future, when the time
+comes.
+
+I am at work again--on a book.  Not with a great deal of spirit, but with
+enough--yes, plenty.  And I am pushing my publishing house.  It has
+turned the corner after cleaning $50,000 a year for three consecutive
+years, and piling every cent of it into one book--Library of American
+Literature--and from next January onward it will resume dividends.  But
+I've got to earn $50,000 for it between now and then--which I will do if
+I keep my health.  This additional capital is needed for that same book,
+because its prosperity is growing so great and exacting.
+
+It is dreadful to think of you in ill health--I can't realize it; you are
+always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless health.
+and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us.  Lord
+save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost
+the faculty of putting out blossoms.
+
+                    With love to you both from us all.
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     Mark Twain's residence in Hartford was drawing rapidly to a close.
+     Mrs. Clemens was poorly, and his own health was uncertain.  They
+     believed that some of the European baths would help them.
+     Furthermore, Mark Twain could no longer afford the luxury of his
+     Hartford home.  In Europe life could be simpler and vastly cheaper.
+     He was offered a thousand dollars apiece for six European letters,
+     by the McClure syndicate and W. M. Laffan, of the Sun.  This would
+     at least give him a start on the other side.  The family began
+     immediately their sad arrangements for departure.
+
+
+         To Fred J. Hall (manager Chas. L. Webster & Co.), N. Y.:
+
+                                   HARTFORD, Apl. 14, '91.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Privately--keep it to yourself--as you, are already
+aware, we are going to Europe in June, for an indefinite stay.  We shall
+sell the horses and shut up the house.  We wish to provide a place for
+our coachman, who has been with us a 21 years, and is sober, active,
+diligent, and unusually bright and capable.  You spoke of hiring a
+colored man as engineer and helper in the packing room.  Patrick would
+soon learn that trade and be very valuable.  We will cease to need him by
+the middle or end of June.  Have you made irrevocable arrangements with
+the colored man, or would you prefer to have Patrick, if he thinks he
+would like to try?
+
+I have not said anything to him about it yet.
+
+                                   Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     It was to be a complete breaking up of their beautiful
+     establishment.  Patrick McAleer, George the butler, and others of
+     their household help had been like members of the family.  We may
+     guess at the heartbreak of it all, even though the letters remain
+     cheerful.
+
+     Howells, strangely enough, seems to have been about the last one to
+     be told of their European plans; in fact, he first got wind of it
+     from the papers, and wrote for information.  Likely enough Clemens
+     had not until then had the courage to confess.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        HARTFORD, May 20, '91.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--For her health's sake Mrs. Clemens must try baths
+somewhere, and this it is that has determined us to go to Europe.
+The water required seems to be provided at a little obscure and little-
+visited nook up in the hills back of the Rhine somewhere and you get to
+it by Rhine traffic-boat and country stage-coach.  Come, get "sick or
+sorry enough" and join us.  We shall be a little while at that bath, and
+the rest of the summer at Annecy (this confidential to you) in Haute
+Savoie, 22 miles from Geneva.  Spend the winters in Berlin.  I don't know
+how long we shall be in Europe--I have a vote, but I don't cast it.  I'm
+going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind,
+without prejudice, whenever they want to.  Travel has no longer, any
+charm for me.  I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except
+heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one of
+those.
+
+I found I couldn't use the play--I had departed too far from its lines
+when I came to look at it.  I thought I might get a great deal of
+dialogue out of it, but I got only 15 loosely written pages--they saved
+me half a days work.  It was the cursing phonograph.  There was abundance
+of good dialogue, but it couldn't befitted into the new conditions of the
+story.
+
+Oh, look here--I did to-day what I have several times in past years
+thought of doing: answered an interviewing proposition from a rich
+newspaper with the reminder that they had not stated the terms; that my
+time was all occupied with writing, at good pay, and that as talking was
+harder work I should not care to venture it unless I knew the pay was
+going to be proportionately higher.  I wish I had thought of this the
+other day when Charley Stoddard turned a pleasant Englishman loose on me
+and I couldn't think of any rational excuse.
+                                        Ys Ever
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens had finished his Sellers book and had disposed of the serial
+     rights to the McClure syndicate.  The house in Hartford was closed
+     early in June, and on the 6th the family, with one maid, Katie
+     Leary, sailed on the Gascogne.  Two weeks later they had begun a
+     residence abroad which was to last for more than nine years.
+
+     It was not easy to get to work in Europe.  Clemens's arm remained
+     lame, and any effort at writing brought suffering.  The Century
+     Magazine proposed another set of letters, but by the end of July he
+     had barely begun on those promised to McClure and Laffan.  In
+     August, however, he was able to send three: one from Aix about the
+     baths there, another from Bayreuth concerning the Wagner festival,
+     and a third from Marienbad, in Bohemia, where they rested for a
+     time.  He decided that he would arrange for no more European letters
+     when the six were finished, but would gather material for a book.
+     He would take a courier and a kodak and go tramping again in some
+     fashion that would be interesting to do and to write.
+
+     The idea finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the
+     family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman.
+     He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged
+     Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European
+     trip, to accompany him.  The courier went over to Bourget and bought
+     for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner as their
+     pilot.  It was the morning of September 20, when they began their
+     floating-trip down the beautiful historic river that flows through
+     the loveliest and most romantic region of France.  He wrote daily to
+     Mrs. Clemens, and his letters tell the story of that drowsy, happy
+     experience better than the notes made with a view to publication.
+     Clemens had arrived at Lake Bourget on the evening before the
+     morning of their start and slept on the Island of Chatillon, in an
+     old castle of the same name.  Lake Bourget connects with the Rhone
+     by a small canal.
+
+
+      Letters and Memoranda to Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                                             Sept. 20, 1891.
+                                             Sunday, 11 a.m.
+On the lake Bourget--just started.  The castle of Chatillon high overhead
+showing above the trees.  It was a wonderfully still place to sleep in.
+Beside us there was nobody in it but a woman, a boy and a dog.  A Pope
+was born in the room I slept in.  No, he became a Pope later.
+
+The lake is smooth as glass--a brilliant sun is shining.
+
+Our boat is comfortable and shady with its awning.
+
+11.20  We have crossed the lake and are entering the canal.  Shall
+presently be in the Rhone.
+
+Noon.  Nearly down to the Rhone.  Passing the village of Chanaz.
+
+3.15 p. m.  Sunday.  We have been in the Rhone 3 hours. It is
+unimaginably still and reposeful and cool and soft and breezy.  No rowing
+or work of any kind to do--we merely float with the current--we glide
+noiseless and swift--as fast as a London cab-horse rips along--8 miles an
+hour--the swiftest current I've ever boated in.  We have the entire river
+to ourselves--nowhere a boat of any kind.
+                         Good bye Sweetheart
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                                        PORT DE GROLEE, Monday, 4.15 p.m.
+                                             [Sept. 21, 1891]
+Name of the village which we left five minutes ago.
+
+We went ashore at 5 p. m.  yesterday, dear heart, and walked a short mile
+to St. Geuix, a big village, and took quarters at the principal inn; had
+a good dinner and afterwards along walk out of town on the banks of the
+Guiers till 7.30.
+
+Went to bed at 8.30 and continued to make notes and read books and
+newspapers till midnight.  Slept until 8, breakfasted in bed, and lay
+till noon, because there had been a very heavy rain in the night and the
+day was still dark and lowering.  But at noon the sun broke through and
+in 15 minutes we were tramping toward the river.  Got afloat at 1 p. m.
+but at 2.40 we had to rush suddenly ashore and take refuge in the above
+village.  Just as we got ourselves and traps safely housed in the inn,
+the rain let go and came down in great style.  We lost an hour and a half
+there, but we are off again, now, with bright sunshine.
+
+I wrote you yesterday my darling, and shall expect to write you every
+day.
+
+Good-day, and love to all of you.
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+                                        ON THE RHONE BELOW VILLEBOIS,
+                                                  Tuesday noon.
+Good morning, sweetheart.  Night caught us yesterday where we had to take
+quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot
+of cows and calves--also several rabbits.--[His word for fleas.]--The
+latter had a ball, and I was the ball-room; but they were very friendly
+and didn't bite.
+
+The peasants were mighty kind and hearty, and flew around and did their
+best to make us comfortable.  This morning I breakfasted on the shore in
+the open air with two sociable dogs and a cat.  Clean cloth, napkin and
+table furniture, white sugar, a vast hunk of excellent butter, good
+bread, first class coffee with pure milk, fried fish just caught.
+Wonderful that so much cleanliness should come out of such a phenomenally
+dirty house.
+
+An hour ago we saw the Falls of the Rhone, a prodigiously rough and
+dangerous looking place; shipped a little water but came to no harm.
+It was one of the most beautiful pieces of piloting and boat-management
+I ever saw.  Our admiral knew his business.
+
+We have had to run ashore for shelter every time it has rained
+heretofore, but Joseph has been putting in his odd time making a water-
+proof sun-bonnet for the boat, and now we sail along dry although we had
+many heavy showers this morning.
+
+With a word of love to you all and particularly you,
+                                                       SAML.
+
+
+                                             ON THE RHONE, BELOW VIENNA.
+I salute you, my darling.  Your telegram reached me in Lyons last night
+and was very pleasant news indeed.
+
+I was up and shaved before 8 this morning, but we got delayed and didn't
+sail from Lyons till 10.3O--an hour and a half lost.  And we've lost
+another hour--two of them, I guess--since, by an error.  We came in sight
+of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed to
+walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us.  So Joseph and I got out
+and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came
+out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed
+that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough.
+Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a
+distinct and even vigorous quiver to it!  I don't know when I have felt
+so much like a donkey.  On an island!  I wanted to drown somebody, but I
+hadn't anybody I could spare.  However, after another long tramp we found
+a lonely native, and he had a scow and soon we were on the mainland--yes,
+and a blamed sight further from Vienne than we were when we started.
+
+Notes--I make millions of them; and so I get no time to write to you.  If
+you've got a pad there, please send it poste-restante to Avignon.  I may
+not need it but I fear I shall.
+
+I'm straining to reach St. Pierre de Boef, but it's going to be a close
+fit, I reckon.
+
+
+                                   AFLOAT, Friday, 3 p.m., '91.
+Livy darling, we sailed from St. Pierre de Boef six hours ago, and are
+now approaching Tournon, where we shall not stop, but go on and make
+Valence, a City Of 25,000 people.  It's too delicious, floating with the
+swift current under the awning these superb sunshiny days in deep peace
+and quietness.  Some of these curious old historical towns strangely
+persuade me, but it is so lovely afloat that I don't stop, but view them
+from the outside and sail on.  We get abundance of grapes and peaches for
+next to nothing.
+
+Joseph is perfect.  He is at his very best--and never was better in his
+life.  I guess he gets discouraged and feels disliked and in the way when
+he is lying around--but here he is perfection, and brim full of useful
+alacrities and helps and ingenuities.
+
+When I woke up an hour ago and heard the clock strike 4, I said "I seem
+to have been asleep an immensely long time; I must have gone to bed
+mighty early; I wonder what time I did go to bed."  And I got up and lit
+a candle and looked at my watch to see.
+
+
+                                                       AFLOAT
+                                        2 HOURS BELOW BOURG ST. ANDEOL.
+                                        Monday, 11 a.m., Sept. 28.
+Livy darling, I didn't write yesterday.  We left La Voulte in a driving
+storm of cold rain--couldn't write in it--and at 1 p. m.  when we were
+not thinking of stopping, we saw a picturesque and mighty ruin on a high
+hill back of a village, and I was seized with a desire to explore it; so
+we landed at once and set out with rubbers and umbrella, sending the boat
+ahead to St. Andeol, and we spent 3 hours clambering about those cloudy
+heights among those worn and vast and idiotic ruins of a castle built by
+two crusaders 650 years ago.  The work of these asses was full of
+interest, and we had a good time inspecting, examining and scrutinizing
+it.  All the hills on both sides of the Rhone have peaks and precipices,
+and each has its gray and wasted pile of mouldy walls and broken towers.
+The Romans displaced the Gauls, the Visigoths displaced the Romans, the
+Saracens displaced the Visigoths, the Christians displaced the Saracens,
+and it was these pious animals who built these strange lairs and cut each
+other's throats in the name and for the glory of God, and robbed and
+burned and slew in peace and war; and the pauper and the slave built
+churches, and the credit of it went to the Bishop who racked the money
+out of them.  These are pathetic shores, and they make one despise the
+human race.
+
+We came down in an hour by rail, but I couldn't get your telegram till
+this morning, for it was Sunday and they had shut up the post office to
+go to the circus.  I went, too.  It was all one family--parents and 5
+children--performing in the open air to 200 of these enchanted villagers,
+who contributed coppers when called on.  It was a most gay and strange
+and pathetic show.  I got up at 7 this morning to see the poor devils
+cook their poor breakfast and pack up their sordid fineries.
+
+This is a 9 k-m. current and the wind is with us; we shall make Avignon
+before 4 o'clock.  I saw watermelons and pomegranates for sale at St.
+Andeol.
+
+               With a power of love, Sweetheart,
+                                                  SAML.
+
+
+                                             HOTEL D'EUROPE, AVIGNON,
+                                             Monday, 6 p.m., Sept. 28.
+Well, Livy darling, I have been having a perfect feast of letters for an
+hour, and I thank you and dear Clam with all my heart.  It's like hearing
+from home after a long absence.
+
+It is early to be in bed, but I'm always abed before 9, on this voyage;
+and up at 7 or a trifle later, every morning.  If I ever take such a trip
+again, I will have myself called at the first tinge of dawn and get to
+sea as soon after as possible.  The early dawn on the water-nothing can
+be finer, as I know by old Mississippi experience.  I did so long for you
+and Sue yesterday morning--the most superb sunrise!--the most marvelous
+sunrise! and I saw it all from the very faintest suspicion of the coming
+dawn all the way through to the final explosion of glory.  But it had
+interest private to itself and not to be found elsewhere in the world;
+for between me and it, in the far distant-eastward, was a silhouette
+mountain-range in which I had discovered, the previous afternoon, a most
+noble face upturned to the sky, and mighty form out stretched, which I
+had named Napoleon Dreaming of Universal Empire--and now, this prodigious
+face, soft, rich, blue, spirituelle, asleep, tranquil, reposeful, lay
+against that giant conflagration of ruddy and golden splendors all rayed
+like a wheel with the upstreaming and far-reaching lances of the sun.  It
+made one want to cry for delight, it was so supreme in its unimaginable
+majesty and beauty.
+
+We had a curious experience today.  A little after I had sealed and
+directed my letter to you, in which I said we should make Avignon before
+4, we got lost.  We ceased to encounter any village or ruin mentioned in
+our "particularizes" and detailed Guide of the Rhone--went drifting along
+by the hour in a wholly unknown land and on an uncharted river!  Confound
+it, we stopped talking and did nothing but stand up in the boat and
+search the horizons with the glass and wonder what in the devil had
+happened.  And at last, away yonder at 5 o'clock when some east towers
+and fortresses hove in sight we couldn't recognize them for Avignon--yet
+we knew by the broken bridge that it was Avignon.
+
+Then we saw what the trouble was--at some time or other we had drifted
+down the wrong side of an island and followed a sluggish branch of the
+Rhone not frequented in modern times.  We lost an hour and a half by it
+and missed one of the most picturesque and gigantic and history-sodden
+masses of castellated medieval ruin that Europe can show.
+
+It was dark by the time we had wandered through the town and got the
+letters and found the hotel--so I went to bed.
+
+We shall leave here at noon tomorrow and float down to Arles, arriving
+about dark, and there bid good bye to the boat, the river-trip finished.
+Between Arles and Nimes (and Avignon again,) we shall be till Saturday
+morning--then rail it through on that day to Ouchy, reaching the hotel at
+11 at night if the train isn't late.
+
+Next day (Sunday) if you like, go to Basel, and Monday to Berlin.  But I
+shall be at your disposal, to do exactly as you desire and prefer.
+
+          With no end of love to all of you and twice as much to you,
+               sweetheart,
+                         SAML.
+
+I believe my arm is a trifle better than it was when I started.
+
+
+     The mention in the foregoing letter of the Napoleon effigy is the
+     beginning of what proved to be a rather interesting episode.  Mark
+     Twain thought a great deal of his discovery, as he called it--the
+     giant figure of Napoleon outlined by the distant mountain range.
+     In his note-book he entered memoranda telling just where it was to
+     be seen, and added a pencil sketch of the huge profile.  But then he
+     characteristically forgot all about it, and when he recalled the
+     incident ten years later, he could not remember the name of the
+     village, Beauchastel, from which the great figure could be seen;
+     also, that he had made a record of the place.
+
+     But he was by this time more certain than ever that his discovery
+     was a remarkable one, which, if known, would become one of the great
+     natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls.  Theodore Stanton was
+     visiting him at the time, and Clemens urged him, on his return to
+     France, to make an excursion to the Rhone and locate the Lost
+     Napoleon, as he now called it.  But Clemens remembered the wonder as
+     being somewhere between Arles and Avignon, instead of about a
+     hundred miles above the last-named town.  Stanton naturally failed
+     to find it, and it remained for the writer of these notes, motoring
+     up the Rhone one September day, exactly twenty-two years after the
+     first discovery, to re-locate the vast reclining figure of the first
+     consul of France, "dreaming of Universal Empire."  The re-discovery
+     was not difficult--with Mark Twain's memoranda as a guide--and it
+     was worth while.  Perhaps the Lost Napoleon is not so important a
+     natural wonder as Mark Twain believed, but it is a striking picture,
+     and on a clear day the calm blue face outlined against the sky will
+     long hold the traveler's attention.
+
+                 To Clara Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                              AFLOAT, 11.20 a.m., Sept. 29, Tuesday.
+DEAR OLD BEN,--The vast stone masses and huge towers of the ancient papal
+palace of Avignon are projected above an intervening wooded island a mile
+up the river behind me--for we are already on our way to Arles.  It is a
+perfectly still morning, with a brilliant sun, and very hot--outside; but
+I am under cover of the linen hood, and it is cool and shady in here.
+
+Please tell mamma I got her very last letter this morning, and I perceive
+by it that I do not need to arrive at Ouchy before Saturday midnight.
+I am glad, because I couldn't do the railroading I am proposing to do
+during the next two or three days and get there earlier.  I could put in
+the time till Sunday midnight, but shall not venture it without
+telegraphic instructions from her to Nimes day after tomorrow, Oct. 1,
+care Hotel Manivet.
+
+The only adventures we have is in drifting into rough seas now and then.
+They are not dangerous, but they go thro' all the motions of it.
+Yesterday when we shot the Bridge of the Holy Spirit it was probably in
+charge of some inexperienced deputy spirit for the day, for we were
+allowed to go through the wrong arch, which brought us into a tourbillon
+below which tried to make this old scow stand on its head.  Of course I
+lost my temper and blew it off in a way to be heard above the roar of the
+tossing waters.  I lost it because the admiral had taken that arch in
+deference to my opinion that it was the best one, while his own judgment
+told him to take the one nearest the other side of the river.  I could
+have poisoned him I was so mad to think I had hired such a turnip.
+A boatman in command should obey nobody's orders but his own, and yield
+to nobody's suggestions.
+
+It was very sweet of you to write me, dear, and I thank you ever so much.
+With greatest love and kisses,
+                                   PAPA.
+
+
+                 To Mrs. Clemens, in Ouchy, Switzerland:
+
+                                             ARLES, Sept. 30, noon.
+Livy darling, I hain't got no time to write today, because I am sight
+seeing industriously and imagining my chapter.
+
+Bade good-bye to the river trip and gave away the boat yesterday evening.
+We had ten great days in her.
+
+We reached here after dark.  We were due about 4.30, counting by
+distance, but we couldn't calculate on such a lifeless current as we
+found.
+               I love you, sweetheart.
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+     It had been a long time since Clemens had written to his old friend
+     Twichell, but the Rhone trip must have reminded him of those days
+     thirteen years earlier, when, comparatively young men, he and
+     Twichell were tramping through the Black Forest and scaling Gemmi
+     Pass.  He sent Twichell a reminder of that happy time.
+
+
+              To Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in Hartford, Conn:
+
+                                                  NIMES, Oct. 1, '91.
+DEAR JOE,--I have been ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from
+Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been.
+You ought to have been along--I could have made room for you easily--and
+you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with
+a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with
+the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the
+world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy
+comfort, and solid happiness.  In fact there's nothing that's so lovely.
+
+But it's all over.  I gave the raft away yesterday at Arles, and am
+loafing along back by short stages on the rail to Ouchy-Lausanne where
+the tribe are staying.
+                         Love to you all
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The Clemenses settled in Berlin for the winter, at 7 Kornerstrasse,
+     and later at the Hotel Royal.  There had been no permanent
+     improvement in Mark Twain's arm and he found writing difficult.
+     Some of the letters promised to Laffan and McClure were still
+     unfinished.
+
+     Young Hall, his publishing manager in America, was working hard to
+     keep the business afloat, and being full of the optimism of his
+     years did not fail to make as good a showing as he could.  We may
+     believe his letters were very welcome to Clemens and his wife, who
+     found little enough in the general prospect to comfort them.
+
+
+                        To Mr. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  BERLIN, Nov. 27, '91.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--That kind of a statement is valuable.  It came this
+morning.  This is the first time since the business began that I have had
+a report that furnished the kind of information I wanted, and was really
+enlightening and satisfactory.  Keep it up.  Don't let it fall into
+desuetude.
+
+Everything looks so fine and handsome with the business, now, that I feel
+a great let-up from depression.  The rewards of your long and patient
+industry are on their way, and their arrival safe in port, presently,
+seems assured.
+
+By George, I shall be glad when the ship comes in!
+
+My arm is so much better that I was able to make a speech last night to
+250 Americans.  But when they threw my portrait on the screen it was a
+sorrowful reminder, for it was from a negative of 15 years ago, and
+hadn't a gray hair in it.  And now that my arm is better, I have stolen a
+couple of days and finished up a couple of McClure letters that have been
+lying a long time.
+
+I shall mail one of them to you next Tuesday--registered.  Lookout for
+it.
+
+I shall register and mail the other one (concerning the "Jungfrau") next
+Friday look out for it also, and drop me a line to let me know they have
+arrived.
+
+I shall write the 6th and last letter by and by when I have studied
+Berlin sufficiently.
+
+Yours in a most cheerful frame of mind, and with my and all the family's
+Thanksgiving greetings and best wishes,
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+       Postscript by Mrs. Clemens written on Mr. Clemens's letter:
+
+DEAR MR. HALL,--This is my birthday and your letter this morning was a
+happy addition to the little gifts on the breakfast table.  I thought of
+going out and spending money for something unnecessary after it came, but
+concluded perhaps I better wait a little longer.
+                                   Sincerely yours
+                                             O. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     "The German Chicago" was the last of the six McClure letters and was
+     finished that winter in Berlin.  It is now included in the Uniform
+     Edition of Mark Twain's works, and is one of the best descriptive
+     articles of the German capital ever written.  He made no use of the
+     Rhone notes further than to put them together in literary form.
+     They did not seem to him to contain enough substance to warrant
+     publication.  A letter to Hall, written toward the end of December,
+     we find rather gloomy in tone, though he is still able to extract
+     comfort and even cheerfulness from one of Mr. Hall's reports.
+
+
+                 Memorandum to Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+Among the MSS I left with you are a few that have a recent look and are
+written on rather stiff pale green paper.  If you will have those type-
+writered and keep the originals and send me the copies (one per mail, not
+two.) I'll see if I can use them.
+
+But tell Howells and other inquirers that my hopes of writing anything
+are very slender--I seem to be disabled for life.
+
+Drop McClure a line and tell him the same.  I can't dare to make an
+engagement now for even a single letter.
+
+I am glad Howells is on a magazine, but sorry he gave up the Study.
+I shall have to go on a magazine myself if this L. A. L. continues to
+hold my nose down to the grind-stone much longer.
+
+I'm going to hold my breath, now, for 30 days--then the annual statement
+will arrive and I shall know how we feel!  Merry Xmas to you from us all.
+
+                         Sincerely,
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  Just finished the above and finished raging at the eternal German
+tax-gatherer, and so all the jubilant things which I was going to say
+about the past year's business got knocked out of me.  After writing this
+present letter I was feeling blue about Huck Finn, but I sat down and
+overhauled your reports from now back to last April and compared them
+with the splendid Oct.-Nov.  business, and went to bed feeling refreshed
+and fine, for certainly it has been a handsome year.  Now rush me along
+the Annual Report and let's see how we feel!
+                                                  S. L. C.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+LETTERS, 1892, CHIEFLY TO MR. HALL AND MRS. CRANE.  IN BERLIN, MENTONE,
+BAD-NAUHEIM, FLORENCE
+
+Mark Twain was the notable literary figure in Berlin that winter, the
+center of every great gathering.  He was entertained by the Kaiser, and
+shown many special attentions by Germans of every rank.  His books were
+as well known in Berlin as in New York, and at court assemblies and
+embassies he was always a chief center of interest.
+
+He was too popular for his own good; the gaiety of the capital told on
+him.  Finally, one night, after delivering a lecture in a hot room, he
+contracted a severe cold, driving to a ball at General von Versen's, and
+a few days later was confined to his bed with pneumonia.  It was not a
+severe attack, but it was long continued.  He could write some letters
+and even work a little, but he was not allowed to leave his bed for many
+weeks, a condition which he did not find a hardship, for no man ever
+enjoyed the loose luxury of undress and the comfort of pillows more than
+Mark Twain.  In a memorandum of that time he wrote: "I am having a
+booming time all to myself."
+
+Meantime, Hall, in America, was sending favorable reports of the
+publishing business, and this naturally helped to keep up his spirits.
+He wrote frequently to Hall, of course, but the letters for the most part
+are purely of a business nature and of little interest to the general
+reader.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                        HOTEL ROYAL, BERLIN, Feb. 12.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Daly wants to get the stage rights of the "American
+Claimant."  The foundation from which I wrote the story is a play of the
+same name which has been in A. P. Burbank's hands 5 or 6 years.  That
+play cost me some money (helping Burbank stage it) but has never brought
+me any.  I have written Burbank (Lotos Club) and asked him to give me
+back his rights in the old play so that I can treat with Daly and utilize
+this chance to even myself up.  Burbank is a lovely fellow, and if he
+objects I can't urge him.  But you run in at the Lotos and see him; and
+if he relinquishes his claim, then I would like you to conduct the
+business with Daly; or have Whitford or some other lawyer do it under
+your supervision if you prefer.
+
+This morning I seem to have rheumatism in my right foot.
+
+I am ordered south by the doctor and shall expect to be well enough to
+start by the end of this month.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+
+     It is curious, after Clemens and Howells had tried so hard and so
+     long to place their "Sellers" Play, that now, when the story
+     appeared in book form, Augustin Daly should have thought it worth
+     dramatizing.  Daly and Clemens were old friends, and it would seem
+     that Daly could hardly have escaped seeing the play when it was
+     going the rounds.  But perhaps there is nothing more mysterious in
+     the world than the ways and wants of theatrical managers.  The
+     matter came to nothing, of course, but the fact that Daly should
+     have thought a story built from an old discarded play had a play in
+     it seems interesting.
+
+     Clemens and his wife were advised to leave the cold of Berlin as
+     soon as he was able to travel.  This was not until the first of
+     March, when, taking their old courier, Joseph Very, they left the
+     children in good hands and journeyed to the south of France.
+
+
+                       To Susy Clemens, in Berlin:
+
+                                             MENTONE, Mch 22, '92.
+SUSY DEAR,--I have been delighted to note your easy facility with your
+pen and proud to note also your literary superiorities of one kind and
+another--clearness of statement, directness, felicity of expression,
+photographic ability in setting forth an incident--style--good style--no
+barnacles on it in the way of unnecessary, retarding words (the Shipman
+scrapes off the barnacles when he wants his racer to go her best gait and
+straight to the buoy.) You should write a letter every day, long or short
+--and so ought I, but I don't.
+
+Mamma says, tell Clara yes, she will have to write a note if the fan
+comes back mended.
+
+We couldn't go to Nice to-day--had to give it up, on various accounts--
+and this was the last chance.  I am sorry for Mamma--I wish she could
+have gone.  She got a heavy fall yesterday evening and was pretty stiff
+and lame this morning, but is working it off trunk packing.
+
+Joseph is gone to Nice to educate himself in Kodaking--and to get the
+pictures mounted which Mamma thinks she took here; but I noticed she
+didn't take the plug out, as a rule.  When she did, she took nine
+pictures on top of each other--composites.
+                              With lots of love.
+                                                  PAPA.
+
+
+     In the course of their Italian wanderings they reached Florence,
+     where they were so comfortable and well that they decided to engage
+     a villa for the next winter.  Through Prof. Willard Fiske, they
+     discovered the Villa Viviani, near Settignano, an old palace
+     beautifully located on the hilltops east of Florence, commanding a
+     wonderful view of the ancient city.  Clemens felt that he could work
+     there, and time proved that he was right.
+
+     For the summer, however, they returned to Germany, and located at
+     Bad-Nauheim.  Clemens presently decided to make a trip to America to
+     give some personal attention to business matters.  For one thing,
+     his publishing-house, in spite of prosperity, seemed constantly to
+     be requiring more capital, and then a Chicago company had been
+     persuaded by Paige to undertake the manufacture of the type-setter.
+     It was the beginning of a series of feverish trips which he would
+     make back and forth across the ocean during the next two years.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                        BAD-NAUHEIM, June 11, '92.
+                                                       Saturday.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--If this arrives before I do, let it inform you that I am
+leaving Bremen for New York next Tuesday in the "Havel."
+
+If you can meet me when the ship arrives, you can help me to get away
+from the reporters; and maybe you can take me to your own or some other
+lodgings where they can't find me.
+
+But if the hour is too early or too late for you, I shall obscure myself
+somewhere till I can come to the office.
+
+Yours sincerely
+                         S. L. C.
+
+
+     Nothing of importance happened in America.  The new Paige company
+     had a factory started in Chicago and expected to manufacture fifty
+     machines as a beginning.  They claimed to have capital, or to be
+     able to command it, and as the main control had passed from
+     Clemens's hands, he could do no more than look over the ground and
+     hope for the best.  As for the business, about all that he could do
+     was to sign certain notes necessary to provide such additional
+     capital as was needed, and agree with Hall that hereafter they would
+     concentrate their efforts and resist further temptation in the way
+     of new enterprise.  Then he returned to Bad-Nauheim and settled down
+     to literature.  This was the middle of July, and he must have worked
+     pretty steadily, for he presently had a variety of MSS. ready to
+     offer.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       Aug. 10, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALT,--I have dropped that novel I wrote you about, because I
+saw a more effective way of using the main episode--to wit: by telling it
+through the lips of Huck Finn.  So I have started Huck Finn and Tom
+Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around
+the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after
+the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then
+nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe
+circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the
+same time apparently unintentional) way.  I have written 12,000 words of
+this narrative, and find that the humor flows as easily as the adventures
+and surprises--so I shall go along and make a book of from 50,000 to
+100,000 words.
+
+It is a story for boys, of course, and I think will interest any boy
+between 8 years and 80.
+
+When I was in New York the other day Mrs. Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas,
+wrote and, offered me $5,000 for (serial right) a story for boys 50,000
+words long.  I wrote back and declined, for I had other matter in my
+mind, then.
+
+I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so
+that it will not only interest boys but will also strongly interest any
+man who has ever been a boy.  That immensely enlarges the audience.
+
+Now this story doesn't need to be restricted to a Childs magazine--it is
+proper enough for any magazine, I should think, or for a syndicate.  I
+don't swear it, but I think so.
+
+Proposed title of the story, "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     The "novel" mentioned in the foregoing was The Extraordinary Twins,
+     a story from which Pudd'nhead Wilson would be evolved later.  It was
+     a wildly extravagant farce--just the sort of thing that now and then
+     Mark Twain plunged into with an enthusiasm that had to work itself
+     out and die a natural death, or mellow into something worth while.
+     Tom Sawyer Abroad, as the new Huck story was finally called, was
+     completed and disposed of to St. Nicholas for serial publication.
+
+     The Twichells were in Europe that summer, and came to Bad-Nauheim.
+     The next letter records a pleasant incident.  The Prince of Wales of
+     that day later became King Edward VII.
+
+
+             To Mr. and Mrs. Orion Clemens, in Keokuk, Iowa.:
+
+                                   Private.  BAD-NAUHEIM, Aug. 23, '92.
+DEAR ORION AND MOLLIE,--("Private" because no newspaper-man or other
+gossip must get hold of it)
+
+Livy is getting along pretty well, and the doctor thinks another summer
+here will cure her.
+
+The Twichell's have been here four days and we have had good times with
+them.  Joe and I ran over to Homburg, the great pleasure resort,
+Saturday, to dine with some friends, and in the morning I went walking in
+the promenade and met the British Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, and
+he introduced me to the Prince of Wales, and I found him a most unusually
+comfortable and unembarrassing Englishman to talk with--quick to see the
+obscurest point, and equipped with a laugh which is spontaneous and
+catching.  Am invited by a near friend of his to meet him at dinner day
+after tomorrow, and there could be a good time, but the brass band will
+smash the talk and spoil everything.
+
+We are expecting to move to Florence ten or twelve days hence, but if
+this hot weather continues we shall wait for cooler.  I take Clara to
+Berlin for the winter-music, mainly, with German and French added.  Thus
+far, Jean is our only glib French scholar.
+
+We all send love to you all and to Pamela and Sam's family, and Annie.
+
+                                   SAM
+
+
+     Clemens and family left Bad-Nauheim for Italy by way of Switzerland.
+     In September Mrs. Clemens's sister, Mrs. Crane, who had been with
+     them in Europe during the first year, had now returned to America.
+     Mrs. Clemens had improved at the baths, though she had by no means
+     recovered her health.  We get a general report of conditions from
+     the letter which Clemens wrote Mrs. Crane from Lucerne, Switzerland,
+     where the party rested for several days.  The "Phelps" mentioned in
+     this letter was William Walter Phelps, United States Minister to
+     Germany.  The Phelps and Clemens families had been much associated
+     in Berlin.  "Mason" was Frank Mason, Consul General at Frankfort,
+     and in later years at Paris.  "Charlie and Ida" were Charles and
+     Mrs. Langdon, of Elmira.
+
+
+                    To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira, N.  Y.:
+
+                                             LUCERNE, Sept. 18, '92.
+DEAR AUNT SUE,--Imagine how I felt to find that you had actually gone off
+without filling my traveling ink stand which you gave me!  I found it out
+yesterday.  Livy advised me to write you about it.
+
+I have been driving this pen hard.  I wrote 280 pages on a yarn called
+"Tom Sawyer Abroad," then took up the "Twins" again, destroyed the last
+half of the manuscript and re-wrote it in another form, and am going to
+continue it and finish it in Florence.  "Tom Sawyer" seems rather pale to
+the family after the extravagances of the Twins, but they came to like it
+after they got used to it
+
+We remained in Nauheim a little too long.  If we had left there four or
+five days earlier we should have made Florence in 3 days; but by the time
+we got started Livy had got smitten with what we feared might be
+erysipelas--greatly swollen neck and face, and unceasing headaches.  We
+lay idle in Frankfort 4 days, doctoring.  We started Thursday and made
+Bale.  Hard trip, because it was one of those trains that gets tired
+every seven minutes and stops to rest three quarters of an hour.  It took
+us 3 1/2 hours to get here, instead of the regulation 2.20.  We reached
+here Friday evening and will leave tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.  The rest
+has made the headaches better.  We shall pull through to Milan tomorrow
+if possible.  Next day we shall start at 10 a. m., and try to make
+Bologna, 5 hours.  Next day (Thursday) Florence, D. V.  Next year we will
+walk, for these excursions have got to be made over again.  I've got
+seven trunks, and I undertook to be courier because I meant to express
+them to Florence direct, but we were a couple of days too late.  All
+continental roads had issued a peremptory order that no baggage should
+travel a mile except in the company of the owner.  (All over Europe
+people are howling; they are separated from their baggage and can't get
+it forwarded to them) I have to re-ship my trunks every day.  It is very
+amusing--uncommonly so.  There seemed grave doubts about our being able
+to get these trunks over the Italian frontier, but I've got a very
+handsome note from the Frankfort Italian Consul General addressed to all
+Italian Customs Officers, and we shall get through if anybody does.
+
+The Phelpses came to Frankfort and we had some great times--dinner at his
+hotel, the Masons, supper at our inn--Livy not in it.  She was merely
+allowed a glimpse, no more.  Of course, Phelps said she was merely
+pretending to be ill; was never looking so well and fine.
+
+The children are all right.  They paddle around a little, and drive-so do
+we all.  Lucerne seems to be pretty full of tourists.  The Fleulen boat
+went out crowded yesterday morning.
+
+The Paris Herald has created a public interest by inoculating one of its
+correspondents with cholera.  A man said yesterday he wished to God they
+would inoculate all of them.  Yes, the interest is quite general and
+strong, and much hope is felt.
+
+Livy says, I have said enough bad things, and better send all our loves
+to you and Charley and Ida and all the children and shut up.  Which I do
+--and shut up.
+                              S. L. C.
+
+
+     They reached Florence on the 26th, and four days later we find
+     Clemens writing again to Mrs. Crane, detailing everything at length.
+     Little comment on this letter is required; it fully explains itself.
+     Perhaps a word of description from one of his memoranda will not be
+     out of place.  Of the villa he wrote: "It is a plain, square
+     building, like a box, and is painted light green and has green
+     window-shutters.  It stands in a commanding position on the
+     artificial terrace of liberal dimensions, which is walled around
+     with masonry.  From the walls the vineyards and olive groves of the
+     estate slant away toward the valley....  Roses overflow the
+     retaining walls and the battered and mossy stone urn on the gate-
+     post, in pink and yellow cataracts, exactly as they do on the drop-
+     curtains in the theaters.  The house is a very fortress for
+     strength."
+
+     The Mrs. Ross in this letter was Janet Ross, daughter of Lady Duff
+     Gordon, remembered to-day for her Egyptian letters.  The Ross castle
+     was but a little distance away.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+
+                                   VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.
+                                                  Sept.  30, 1892
+DEAR SUE,--We have been in the house several days, and certainly it is a
+beautiful place,--particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep
+leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, and
+occasional perpendicular coils of lightning quivering intensely in the
+black sky about Galileo's Tower.  It is a charming panorama, and the most
+conspicuous towers and domes down in the city look to-day just as they
+looked when Boccaccio and Dante used to contemplate them from this
+hillock five and six hundred years ago.
+
+The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, and is a
+cheery and cheerful presence in the house.  The butler is equipped with a
+little French, and it is this fact that enables the house to go--but it
+won't go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian
+tongue, for the cook, the woman-of-all-work and the coachman understand
+only that.  It is a stubborn and devilish language to learn, but Jean and
+the others will master it.  Livy's German Nauheim girl is the worst off
+of anybody, as there is no market for her tongue at all among the help.
+
+With the furniture in and the curtains up the house is very pretty, and
+not unhomelike.  At mid-night last night we heard screams up stairs--Susy
+had set the lofty window curtains afire with a candle.  This sounds kind
+of frightful, whereas when you come to think of it, a burning curtain or
+pile of furniture hasn't any element of danger about it in this fortress.
+There isn't any conceivable way to burn this house down, or enable a
+conflagration on one floor to climb to the next.
+
+Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are
+excellent.  She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains
+washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed and put
+together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain
+stove in the vast central hall.  She is a wonderful woman, and we don't
+quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her.
+
+Observe our address above--the post delivers letters daily at the house.
+
+Even with the work and fuss of settling the house Livy has improved--and
+the best is yet to come.  There is going to be absolute seclusion here--
+a hermit life, in fact.  We (the rest of us) shall run over to the Ross's
+frequently, and they will come here now and then and see Livy--that is
+all.  Mr. Fiske is away--nobody knows where--and the work on his house
+has been stopped and his servants discharged.  Therefore we shall merely
+go Rossing--as far as society is concerned--shan't circulate in Florence
+until Livy shall be well enough to take a share in it.
+
+This present house is modern.  It is not much more than two centuries
+old; but parts of it, and also its foundations are of high antiquity.
+The fine beautiful family portraits--the great carved ones in the large
+ovals over the doors of the big hall--carry one well back into the past.
+One of them is dated 1305--he could have known Dante, you see.  Another
+is dated 1343--he could have known Boccaccio and spent his afternoons in
+Fiesole listening to the Decameron tales.  Another is dated 1463--
+he could have met Columbus.....
+
+Evening.  The storm thundered away until night, and the rain came down in
+floods.  For awhile there was a partial break, which furnished about such
+a sunset as will be exhibited when the Last Day comes and the universe
+tumbles together in wreck and ruin.  I have never seen anything more
+spectacular and impressive.
+
+One person is satisfied with the villa, anyway.  Jean prefers it to all
+Europe, save Venice.  Jean is eager to get at the Italian tongue again,
+now, and I see that she has forgotten little or nothing of what she
+learned of it in Rome and Venice last spring.
+
+I am the head French duffer of the family.  Most of the talk goes over my
+head at the table.  I catch only words, not phrases.  When Italian comes
+to be substituted I shall be even worse off than I am now, I suppose.
+
+This reminds me that this evening the German girl said to Livy, "Man hat
+mir gesagt loss Sie una candella verlaught habe"--unconsciously dropping
+in a couple of Italian words, you see.  So she is going to join the
+polyglots, too, it appears.  They say it is good entertainment to hear
+her and the butler talk together in their respective tongues, piecing out
+and patching up with the universal sign-language as they go along.  Five
+languages in use in the house (including the sign-language-hardest-worked
+of them all) and yet with all this opulence of resource we do seem to
+have an uncommonly tough time making ourselves understood.
+
+What we lack is a cat.  If we only had Germania!  That was the most
+satisfactory all-round cat I have seen yet.  Totally ungermanic in the
+raciness of his character and in the sparkle of his mind and the
+spontaneity of his movements.  We shall not look upon his like again....
+
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens got well settled down to work presently.  He found the
+     situation, the climate, the background, entirely suited to literary
+     production, and in a little while he had accomplished more than at
+     any other time since his arrival in Europe.  From letters to Mrs.
+     Crane and to Mr. Hall we learn something of his employments and his
+     satisfaction.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Crane, in Elmira:
+
+                                                  VILLA VIVIANI
+                              SETTIGNANO, FLORENCE.  Oct. 22, '92.
+DEAR SUE,--We are getting wonted.  The open fires have driven away the
+cold and the doubt, and now a cheery spirit pervades the place.  Livy and
+the Kings and Mademoiselle having been taking their tea a number of
+times, lately, on the open terrace with the city and the hills and the
+sunset for company.  I stop work, a few minutes, as a rule, when the sun
+gets down to the hilltops west of Florence, and join the tea-group to
+wonder and exclaim.  There is always some new miracle in the view, a new
+and exquisite variation in the show, a variation which occurs every 15
+minutes between dawn and night.  Once early in the morning, a multitude
+of white villas not before perceived, revealed themselves on the far
+hills; then we recognized that all those great hills are snowed thick
+with them, clear to the summit.
+
+The variety of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not
+to be believed by any who has not seen it.  No view that I am acquainted
+with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm,
+exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change.  It
+keeps a person drunk with pleasure all the time.  Sometimes Florence
+ceases to be substantial, and becomes just a faint soft dream, with domes
+and towers of air, and one is persuaded that he might blow it away with a
+puff of his breath.
+
+Livy is progressing admirably.  This is just the place for her.
+
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  Dec.  12, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--November check received.
+
+I have lent the Californian's Story to Arthur Stedman for his Author Club
+Book, so your suggestion that my new spring-book bear that name arrives
+too late, as he probably would not want us to use that story in a book of
+ours until the Author book had had its run.  That is for him to decide--
+and I don't want him hampered at all in his decision.  I, for my part,
+prefer the "$1,000,000 Banknote and Other Stories" by Mark Twain as a
+title, but above my judgment I prefer yours.  I mean this--it is not
+taffy.
+
+I told Arthur to leave out the former squib or paragraph and use only the
+Californian's Story.  Tell him this is because I am going to use that in
+the book I am now writing.
+
+I finished "Those Extraordinary Twins" night before last makes 60 or
+80,000 words--haven't counted.
+
+The last third of it suits me to a dot.  I begin, to-day, to entirely
+recast and re-write the first two-thirds--new plan, with two minor
+characters, made very prominent, one major character cropped out, and the
+Twins subordinated to a minor but not insignificant place.
+
+The minor character will now become the chiefest, and I will name the
+story after him--"Puddn'head Wilson."
+
+Merry Xmas to you, and great prosperity and felicity!
+
+                                                  S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+LETTERS, 1893, TO MR. HALL, MRS.  CLEMENS, AND OTHERS. FLORENCE.
+BUSINESS TROUBLES.  "PUDD'NHEAD WILSON."  "JOAN OF ARC."
+AT THE PLAYERS, NEW YORK
+
+The reader may have suspected that young Mr. Hall in New York was having
+his troubles.  He was by this time one-third owner in the business of
+Charles L. Webster & Co., as well as its general manager.  The business
+had been drained of its capital one way and another-partly by the
+publication of unprofitable books; partly by the earlier demands of the
+typesetter, but more than all by the manufacturing cost and agents'
+commissions demanded by L. A. L.; that is to say, the eleven large
+volumes constituting the Library of American Literature, which Webster
+had undertaken to place in a million American homes.  There was plenty of
+sale for it--indeed, that was just the trouble; for it was sold on
+payments--small monthly payments--while the cost of manufacture and the
+liberal agents' commissions were cash items, and it would require a
+considerable period before the dribble of collections would swell into a
+tide large enough to satisfy the steady outflow of expense.  A sale of
+twenty-five sets a day meant prosperity on paper, but unless capital
+could be raised from some other source to make and market those books
+through a period of months, perhaps even years, to come, it meant
+bankruptcy in reality.  It was Hall's job, with Clemens to back him, to
+keep their ship afloat on these steadily ebbing financial waters.  It was
+also Hall's affair to keep Mark Twain cheerful, to look pleasant himself,
+and to show how they were steadily getting rich because orders were
+pouring in, though a cloud that resembled bankruptcy loomed always a
+little higher upon the horizon.  If Hall had not been young and an
+optimist, he would have been frightened out of his boots early in the
+game.  As it was, he made a brave steady fight, kept as cheerful and
+stiff an upper lip as possible, always hoping that something would
+happen--some grand sale of his other books, some unexpected inflow from
+the type-setter interests--anything that would sustain his ship until the
+L. A. L.  tide should turn and float it into safety.
+
+Clemens had faith in Hall and was fond of him.  He never found fault with
+him; he tried to accept his encouraging reports at their face value.  He
+lent the firm every dollar of his literary earnings not absolutely needed
+for the family's support; he signed new notes; he allowed Mrs. Clemens to
+put in such remnants of her patrimony as the type-setter had spared.
+
+The situation in 1893 was about as here outlined.  The letters to Hall of
+that year are frequent and carry along the story.  To any who had formed
+the idea that Mark Twain was irascible, exacting, and faultfinding, they
+will perhaps be a revelation.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 1, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Yours of Dec. 19 is to hand, and Mrs. Clemens is deeply
+distressed, for she thinks I have been blaming you or finding fault with
+you about something.  But most surely that cannot be.  I tell her that
+although I am prone to write hasty and regrettable things to other
+people, I am not a bit likely to write such things to you.  I can't
+believe I have done anything so ungrateful.  If I have, pile coals of
+fire on my head, for I deserve it!
+
+I wonder if my letter of credit isn't an encumbrance?  Do you have to
+deposit the whole amount it calls for?  If that is so, it is an
+encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak.
+I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought
+you deposited nothing against it, and only had to put up money that I
+drew upon it; that therefore the less I drew the easier it would be for
+you.
+
+I am dreadfully sorry I didn't know it would be a help to you to let my
+monthly check pass over a couple of months.  I could have stood that by
+drawing what is left of Mrs. Clemens's letter of credit, and we would
+have done it cheerfully.
+
+I will write Whitmore to send you the "Century" check for $1,000, and you
+can collect Mrs. Dodge's $2,000 (Whitmore has power of attorney which I
+think will enable him to endorse it over to you in my name.) If you need
+that $3,000 put it in the business and use it, and send Whitmore the
+Company's note for a year.  If you don't need it, turn it over to Mr.
+Halsey and let him invest it for me.
+
+I've a mighty poor financial head, and I may be all wrong--but tell me if
+I am wrong in supposing that in lending my own firm money at 6 per cent I
+pay 4 of it myself and so really get only a per cent?  Now don't laugh if
+that is stupid.
+
+Of course my friend declined to buy a quarter interest in the L. A. L.
+for $200,000.  I judged he would.  I hoped he would offer $100,000, but
+he didn't.  If the cholera breaks out in America, a few months hence, we
+can't borrow or sell; but if it doesn't we must try hard to raise
+$100,000.  I wish we could do it before there is a cholera scare.
+
+I have been in bed two or three days with a cold, but I got up an hour
+ago, and I believe I am all right again.
+
+How I wish I had appreciated the need of $100,000 when I was in New York
+last summer!  I would have tried my best to raise it.  It would make us
+able to stand 1,000 sets of L. A. L.  per month, but not any more, I
+guess.
+
+You have done magnificently with the business, and we must raise the
+money somehow, to enable you to reap the reward of all that labor.
+                              Sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+"Whitmore," in this letter, was F. G. Whitmore, of Hartford, Mark Twain's
+financial agent.  The money due from Mrs. Dodge was a balance on Tom
+Sawyer Abroad, which had been accepted by St. Nicholas.  Mr. Halsey was a
+down-town broker.
+
+Clemens, who was growing weary of the constant demands of L. A. L., had
+conceived the idea that it would be well to dispose of a portion of it
+for enough cash to finance its manufacture.
+
+We don't know who the friend was to whom he offered a quarter interest
+for the modest sum of two hundred thousand dollars.  But in the next
+letter we discover designs on a certain very canny Scotchman of Skibo.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             FLORENCE, Jan. 28, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I want to throw out a suggestion and see what you think
+of it.  We have a good start, and solid ground under us; we have a
+valuable reputation; our business organization is practical, sound and
+well-devised; our publications are of a respect-worthy character and of a
+money-breeding species.  Now then I think that the association with us of
+some one of great name and with capital would give our business a
+prodigious impetus--that phrase is not too strong.
+
+As I look at it, it is not money merely that is needed; if that were all,
+the firm has friends enough who would take an interest in a paying
+venture; we need some one who has made his life a success not only from a
+business standpoint, but with that achievement back of him, has been
+great enough to make his power felt as a thinker and a literary man.  It
+is a pretty usual thing for publishers to have this sort of partners.
+Now you see what a power Carnegie is, and how far his voice reaches in
+the several lines I speak of.  Do you know him?  You do by correspondence
+or purely business talks about his books--but personally, I mean? so that
+it would not be an intrusion for you to speak to him about this desire of
+mine--for I would like you to put it before him, and if you fail to
+interest him in it, you will probably get at least some valuable
+suggestions from him.  I'll enclose a note of introduction--you needn't
+use it if you don't need to.
+                                   Yours S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  Yes, I think I have already acknowledged the Dec.  $1,000 and the
+Jan. $500--and if another $500 was mailed 3 days ago there's no hiatus.
+
+I think I also reminded you that the new letter of credit does not cover
+the unexpended balance of the old one but falls considerably short of it.
+
+Do your best with Carnegie, and don't wait to consider any of my
+intermediate suggestions or talks about our raising half of the $200,000
+ourselves.  I mean, wait for nothing.  To make my suggestion available I
+should have to go over and see Arnot, and I don't want to until I can
+mention Carnegie's name to him as going in with us.
+
+My book is type-written and ready for print--"Pudd'nhead Wilson-a Tale."
+(Or, "Those Extraordinary Twins," if preferable.)
+
+It makes 82,500 words--12,000 more than Huck Finn.  But I don't know what
+to do with it.  Mrs. Clemens thinks it wouldn't do to go to the Am. Pub.
+Co. or anywhere outside of our own house; we have no subscription
+machinery, and a book in the trade is a book thrown away, as far as
+money-profit goes.  I am in a quandary.  Give me a lift out of it.
+
+I will mail the book to you and get you to examine it and see if it is
+good or if it is bad.  I think it is good, and I thought the Claimant
+bad, when I saw it in print; but as for real judgment, I think I am
+destitute of it.
+
+I am writing a companion to the Prince and Pauper, which is half done and
+will make 200,000 words; and I have had the idea that if it were gotten
+up in handsome style, with many illustrations and put at a high enough
+price maybe the L. A. L.  canvassers would take it and run it with that
+book.  Would they?  It could be priced anywhere from $4 up to $10,
+according to how it was gotten up, I suppose.
+
+I don't want it to go into a magazine.
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+I am having several short things type-"writered."  I will send them to
+you presently.  I like the Century and Harper's, but I don't know that I
+have any business to object to the Cosmopolitan if they pay as good
+rates.  I suppose a man ought to stick to one magazine, but that may be
+only superstition.  What do you think?
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     "The companion to The Prince and the Pauper," mentioned in this
+     letter, was the story of Joan of Arc, perhaps the most finished of
+     Mark Twain's literary productions.  His interest in Joan had been
+     first awakened when, as a printer's apprentice in Hannibal, he had
+     found blowing along the street a stray leaf from some printed story
+     of her life.  That fragment of history had pictured Joan in prison,
+     insulted and mistreated by ruffians.  It had aroused all the
+     sympathy and indignation in the boy, Sam Clemens; also, it had
+     awakened his interest in history, and, indeed, in all literature.
+
+     His love for the character of Joan had grown with the years, until
+     in time he had conceived the idea of writing her story.  As far back
+     as the early eighties he had collected material for it, and had
+     begun to make the notes.  One thing and another had interfered, and
+     he had found no opportunity for such a story.  Now, however, in
+     Florence, in the ancient villa, and in the quiet garden, looking
+     across the vineyards and olive groves to the dream city along the
+     Arno, he felt moved to take up the tale of the shepherd girl of
+     France, the soldier maid, or, as he called her, "The noble child,
+     the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have
+     produced."  His surroundings and background would seem to have been
+     perfect, and he must have written with considerable ease to have
+     completed a hundred thousand words in a period of not more than six
+     weeks.
+
+     Perhaps Hall did not even go to see Carnegie; at all events nothing
+     seems to have come of the idea.  Once, at a later time, Mask Twain
+     himself mentioned the matter to Carnegie, and suggested to him that
+     it was poor financiering to put all of one's eggs into one basket,
+     meaning into iron.  But Carnegie answered, "That's a mistake; put
+     all your eggs into one basket and watch that basket."
+
+     It was March when Clemens felt that once more his presence was
+     demanded in America.  He must see if anything could be realized from
+     the type-setter or L. A. L.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       March 13, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am busy getting ready to sail the 22d, in the Kaiser
+Wilhelm II.
+
+I send herewith 2 magazine articles.
+
+The Story contains 3,800 to 4,000 words.
+
+The "Diary" contains 3,800 words.
+
+Each would make about 4 pages of the Century.
+
+The Diary is a gem, if I do say it myself that shouldn't.
+
+If the Cosmopolitan wishes to pay $600 for either of them or $1,200 for
+both, gather in the check, and I will use the money in America instead of
+breaking into your treasury.
+
+If they don't wish to trade for either, send the articles to the Century,
+without naming a price, and if their check isn't large enough I will call
+and abuse them when I come.
+
+I signed and mailed the notes yesterday.
+                                        Yours
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Clemens reached New York on the 3d of April and made a trip to
+     Chicago, but accomplished nothing, except to visit the World's Fair
+     and be laid up with a severe cold.  The machine situation had not
+     progressed.  The financial stringency of 1893 had brought everything
+     to a standstill.  The New York bank would advance Webster & Co. no
+     more money.  So disturbed were his affairs, so disordered was
+     everything, that sometimes he felt himself as one walking amid
+     unrealities.  A fragment of a letter to Mrs. Crane conveys this:
+
+     "I dreamed I was born and grew up and was a pilot on the Mississippi
+     and a miner and a journalist in Nevada and a pilgrim in the Quaker
+     City, and had a wife and children and went to live in a villa at
+     Florence--and this dream goes on and on and sometimes seems so real
+     that I almost believe it is real.  I wonder if it is?  But there is
+     no way to tell, for if one applies tests they would be part of the
+     dream, too, and so would simply aid the deceit.  I wish I knew
+     whether it is a dream or real."
+
+     He saw Warner, briefly, in America; also Howells, now living in New
+     York, but he had little time for visiting.  On May 13th he sailed
+     again for Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  On the night before
+     sailing he sent Howells a good-by word.
+
+
+                   To W. D. Howells, in New York City:
+
+                              MURRAY HILL HOTEL, NEW YORE, May 12, 1893.
+                                                            Midnight.
+DEAR HOWELLS--I am so sorry I missed you.
+
+I am very glad to have that book for sea entertainment, and I thank you
+ever so much for it.
+
+I've had a little visit with Warner at last; I was getting afraid I
+wasn't going to have a chance to see him at all.  I forgot to tell you
+how thoroughly I enjoyed your account of the country printing office, and
+how true it all was and how intimately recognizable in all its details.
+But Warner was full of delight over it, and that reminded me, and I am
+glad, for I wanted to speak of it.
+
+You have given me a book; Annie Trumbull has sent me her book; I bought a
+couple of books; Mr. Hall gave me a choice German book; Laflan gave me
+two bottles of whisky and a box of cigars--I go to sea nobly equipped.
+
+Good-bye and all good fortune attend you and yours--and upon you all I
+leave my benediction.
+                              MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has already been made of the Ross home being very near to
+     Viviani, and the association of the Ross and Clemens families.
+     There was a fine vegetable garden on the Ross estate, and it was in
+     the interest of it that the next letter was written to the Secretary
+     of Agriculture.
+
+
+            To Hon. J. Sterling Morton, in Washington, D. C.:
+           Editorial Department Century Magazine, Union Square,
+
+                                             NEW YORK, April 6, 1893.
+TO THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON,--Dear Sir: Your petitioner, Mark Twain,
+a poor farmer of Connecticut--indeed, the poorest one there, in the
+opinion of many-desires a few choice breeds of seed corn (maize), and in
+return will zealously support the Administration in all ways honorable
+and otherwise.
+
+To speak by the card, I want these things to hurry to Italy to an English
+lady.  She is a neighbor of mine outside of Florence, and has a great
+garden and thinks she could raise corn for her table if she had the right
+ammunition.  I myself feel a warm interest in this enterprise, both on
+patriotic grounds and because I have a key to that garden, which I got
+made from a wax impression.  It is not very good soil, still I think she
+can grow enough for one table and I am in a position to select the table.
+If you are willing to aid and abet a countryman (and Gilder thinks you
+are,) please find the signature and address of your petitioner below.
+
+Respectfully and truly yours.
+                              MARK TWAIN,
+
+67 Fifth Avenue, New York.
+
+P. S.--A handful of choice (Southern) watermelon seeds would pleasantly
+add to that lady's employments and give my table a corresponding lift.
+
+
+     His idea of business values had moderated considerably by the time
+     he had returned to Florence.  He was not hopeless yet, but he was
+     clearly a good deal disheartened--anxious for freedom.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  FLORENCE May 30, '93
+DEAR MR. HALL,--You were to cable me if you sold any machine royalties--
+so I judge you have not succeeded.
+
+This has depressed me.  I have been looking over the past year's letters
+and statements and am depressed still more.
+
+I am terribly tired of business.  I am by nature and disposition unfitted
+for it and I want to get out of it.  I am standing on the Mount Morris
+volcano with help from the machine a long way off--doubtless a long way
+further off than the Connecticut Co. imagines.
+
+Now here is my idea for getting out.
+
+The firm owes Mrs. Clemens and me--I do not know quite how much, but it
+is about $170,000 or $175,000, 1 suppose (I make this guess from the
+documents here, whose technicalities confuse me horribly.)
+
+The firm owes other sums, but there is stock and cash assets to cover the
+entire indebtedness and $116,679.20 over.  Is that it?  In addition we
+have the L. A. L.  plates and copyright, worth more than $130,000--is
+that correct?
+
+That is to say, we have property worth about $250,000 above indebtedness,
+I suppose--or, by one of your estimates, $300,000?  The greater part of
+the first debts to me is in notes paying 6 percent.  The rest (the old
+$70,000 or whatever it is) pays no interest.
+
+Now then, will Harper or Appleton, or Putnam give me $200,000 for those
+debts and my two-thirds interest in the firm?  (The firm of course taking
+the Mount Morris and all such obligations off my hands and leaving me
+clear of all responsibility.)
+
+I don't want much money.  I only want first class notes--$200,000 worth
+of them at 6 per cent, payable monthly;--yearly notes, renewable annually
+for 3 years, with $5,000 of the principal payable at the beginning and
+middle of each year.  After that, the notes renewable annually and
+(perhaps) a larger part of the principal payable semi-annually.
+
+Please advise me and suggest alterations and emendations of the above
+scheme, for I need that sort of help, being ignorant of business and not
+able to learn a single detail of it.
+
+Such a deal would make it easy for a big firm to pour in a big cash
+capital and jump L. A. L. up to enormous prosperity.  Then your one-third
+would be a fortune--and I hope to see that day!
+
+I enclose an authority to use with Whitmore in case you have sold any
+royalties.  But if you can't make this deal don't make any.  Wait a
+little and see if you can't make the deal.  Do make the deal if you
+possibly can.  And if any presence shall be necessary in order to
+complete it I will come over, though I hope it can be done without that.
+
+Get me out of business!
+
+And I will be yours forever gratefully,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+My idea is, that I am offering my 2/3 of L. A. L. and the business for
+thirty or forty thousand dollars.  Is that it?
+
+P. S. S.  The new firm could retain my books and reduce them to a
+10 percent royalty.                 S. L. C.
+
+
+                  To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                              VILLA VIVIANI, SETTIGNANO (FLORENCE)
+                                                       June 9, '93.
+DEAR JOE,--The sea voyage set me up and I reached here May 27 in
+tolerable condition--nothing left but weakness, cough all gone.
+
+Old Sir Henry Layard was here the other day, visiting our neighbor Janet
+Ross, daughter of Lady Duff Gordon, and since then I have been reading
+his account of the adventures of his youth in the far East.  In a
+footnote he has something to say about a sailor which I thought might
+interest you--viz:
+
+"This same quartermaster was celebrated among the English in Mesopotamia
+for an entry which he made in his log-book-after a perilous storm; 'The
+windy and watery elements raged.  Tears and prayers was had recourse to,
+but was of no manner of use.  So we hauled up the anchor and got round
+the point.'"
+
+There--it isn't Ned Wakeman; it was before his day.
+
+               With love,
+                         MARK.
+
+
+     They closed Villa Viviani in June and near the end of the month
+     arrived in Munich in order that Mrs. Clemens might visit some of the
+     German baths.  The next letter is written by her and shows her deep
+     sympathy with Hall in his desperate struggle.  There have been few
+     more unselfish and courageous women in history than Mark Twain's
+     wife.
+
+
+               From Mrs. Clemens to Mr. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  June 27th 1893
+                                                  MUNICH.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--Your letter to Mr. Clemens of June 16th has just reached
+here; as he has gone to Berlin for Clara I am going to send you just a
+line in answer to it.
+
+Mr. Clemens did not realize what trouble you would be in when his letter
+should reach you or he would not have sent it just then.  I hope you will
+not worry any more than you can help.  Do not let our interests weigh on
+you too heavily.  We both know you will, as you always have, look in
+every way to the best interests of all.
+
+I think Mr. Clemens is right in feeling that he should get out of
+business, that he is not fitted for it; it worries him too much.
+
+But he need be in no haste about it, and of course, it would be the very
+farthest from his desire to imperil, in the slightest degree, your
+interests in order to save his own.
+
+I am sure that I voice his wish as well as mine when I say that he would
+simply like you to bear in mind the fact that he greatly desires to be
+released from his present anxiety and worry, at a time when it shall not
+endanger your interest or the safety of the business.
+
+I am more sorry than I can express that this letter of Mr. Clemens'
+should have reached you when you were struggling under such terrible
+pressure.  I hope now that the weight is not quite so heavy.  He would
+not have written you about the money if he had known that it was an
+inconvenience for you to send it.  He thought the book-keeper whose duty
+it is to forward it had forgotten.
+
+We can draw on Mr. Langdon for money for a few weeks until things are a
+little easier with you.  As Mr. Clemens wrote you we would say "do not
+send us any more money at present" if we were not afraid to do so.  I
+will say, however, do not trouble yourself if for a few weeks you are not
+able to send the usual amount.
+
+Mr. Clemens and I have the greatest possible desire, not to increase in
+any way your burdens, and sincerely wish we might aid you.
+
+I trust my brother may be able, in his talk with you, to throw some
+helpful light on the situation.
+
+Hoping you will see a change for the better and begin to reap the fruit
+of your long and hard labor.
+               Believe me
+                    Very Cordially yours
+                              OLIVIA L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+Hall, naturally, did not wish to be left alone with the business.  He
+realized that his credit would suffer, both at the bank and with the
+public, if his distinguished partner should retire.  He wrote, therefore,
+proposing as an alternate that they dispose of the big subscription set
+that was swamping them.  It was a good plan--if it would work--and we
+find Clemens entering into it heartily.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             MUNICH, July 3, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--You make a suggestion which has once or twice flitted
+dimly through my mind heretofore to wit, sell L. A. L.
+
+I like that better than the other scheme, for it is no doubt feasible,
+whereas the other is perhaps not.
+
+The firm is in debt, but L. A. L. is free--and not only free but has
+large money owing to it.  A proposition to sell that by itself to a big
+house could be made without embarrassment we merely confess that we
+cannot spare capital from the rest of the business to run it on the huge
+scale necessary to make it an opulent success.
+
+It will be selling a good thing--for somebody; and it will be getting rid
+of a load which we are clearly not able to carry.  Whoever buys will have
+a noble good opening--a complete equipment, a well organized business,
+a capable and experienced manager, and enterprise not experimental but
+under full sail, and immediately able to pay 50 per cent a year on every
+dollar the publisher shall actually invest in it--I mean in making and
+selling the books.
+
+I am miserably sorry to be adding bothers and torments to the over-supply
+which you already have in these hideous times, but I feel so troubled,
+myself, considering the dreary fact that we are getting deeper and deeper
+in debt and the L. A. L.  getting to be a heavier and heavier burden all
+the time, that I must bestir myself and seek a way of relief.
+
+It did not occur to me that in selling out I would injure you--for that I
+am not going to do.  But to sell L. A. L. will not injure you it will put
+you in better shape.
+               Sincerely Yours
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  July 8, '92.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am sincerely glad you are going to sell L. A. L.  I am
+glad you are shutting off the agents, and I hope the fatal book will be
+out of our hands before it will be time to put them on again.  With
+nothing but our non-existent capital to work with the book has no value
+for us, rich a prize as it will be to any competent house that gets it.
+
+I hope you are making an effort to sell before you discharge too many
+agents, for I suppose the agents are a valuable part of the property.
+
+We have been stopping in Munich for awhile, but we shall make a break for
+some country resort in a few days now.
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+                                                            July 8
+P. S.  No, I suppose I am wrong in suggesting that you wait a moment
+before discharging your L. A. L.  agents--in fact I didn't mean that.
+I judge your only hope of salvation is in discharging them all at once,
+since it is their commissions that threaten to swamp us.  It is they who
+have eaten up the $14,000 I left with you in such a brief time, no doubt.
+
+I feel panicky.
+
+I think the sale might be made with better advantage, however, now, than
+later when the agents have got out of the purchaser's reach.
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  No monthly report for many months.
+
+
+     Those who are old enough to remember the summer of 1893 may recall
+     it as a black financial season.  Banks were denying credit,
+     businesses were forced to the wall.  It was a poor time to float any
+     costly enterprise.  The Chicago company who was trying to build the
+     machines made little progress.  The book business everywhere was
+     bad.  In a brief note following the foregoing letters Clemens wrote
+     Hall:
+
+     "It is now past the middle of July and no cablegram to say the
+     machine is finished.  We are afraid you are having miserable days
+     and worried nights, and we sincerely wish we could relieve you, but
+     it is all black with us and we don't know any helpful thing to say
+     or do."
+
+     He inclosed some kind of manuscript proposition for John Brisben
+     Walker, of the Cosmopolitan, with the comment: "It is my ingenious
+     scheme to protect the family against the alms-house for one more
+     year--and after that--well, goodness knows!  I have never felt so
+     desperate in my life--and good reason, for I haven't got a penny to
+     my name, and Mrs. Clemens hasn't enough laid up with Langdon to keep
+     us two months."
+
+     It was like Mark Twain, in the midst of all this turmoil, to project
+     an entirely new enterprise; his busy mind was always visioning
+     success in unusual undertakings, regardless of immediate conditions
+     and the steps necessary to achievement.
+
+
+                      To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       July 26, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--..... I hope the machine will be finished this month;
+but it took me four years and cost me $100,000 to finish the other
+machine after it was apparently entirely complete and setting type like a
+house-afire.
+
+I wonder what they call "finished."  After it is absolutely perfect it
+can't go into a printing-office until it has had a month's wear, running
+night and day, to get the bearings smooth, I judge.
+
+I may be able to run over about mid-October.  Then if I find you relieved
+of L. A. L.  we will start a magazine inexpensive, and of an entirely
+unique sort.  Arthur Stedman and his father editors of it.  Arthur could
+do all the work, merely submitting it to his father for approval.
+
+The first number should pay--and all subsequent ones--25 cents a number.
+Cost of first number (20,000 copies) $2,000.  Give most of them away,
+sell the rest.  Advertising and other expenses--cost unknown.  Send one
+to all newspapers--it would get a notice--favorable, too.
+
+But we cannot undertake it until L. A. L, is out of the way.  With our
+hands free and some capital to spare, we could make it hum.
+
+Where is the Shelley article?  If you have it on hand, keep it and I will
+presently tell you what to do with it.
+
+Don't forget to tell me.
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                   S. L. C.
+
+
+     The Shelley article mentioned in this letter was the "Defense of
+     Harriet Sheller," one of the very best of his essays.  How he could
+     have written this splendid paper at a time of such distraction
+     passes comprehension.  Furthermore, it is clear that he had revised,
+     indeed rewritten, the long story of Pudd'nhead Wilson.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                  July 30, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--This time "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a success!  Even Mrs.
+Clemens, the most difficult of critics, confesses it, and without
+reserves or qualifications.  Formerly she would not consent that it be
+published either before or after my death.  I have pulled the twins apart
+and made two individuals of them; I have sunk them out of sight, they are
+mere flitting shadows, now, and of no importance; their story has
+disappeared from the book.  Aunt Betsy Hale has vanished wholly, leaving
+not a trace behind; aunt Patsy Cooper and her daughter Rowena have almost
+disappeared--they scarcely walk across the stage.  The whole story is
+centered on the murder and the trial; from the first chapter the movement
+is straight ahead without divergence or side-play to the murder and the
+trial; everything that is done or said or that happens is a preparation
+for those events.  Therefore, 3 people stand up high, from beginning to
+end, and only 3--Pudd'nhead, "Tom" Driscoll, and his nigger mother,
+Roxana; none of the others are important, or get in the way of the story
+or require the reader's attention.  Consequently, the scenes and episodes
+which were the strength of the book formerly are stronger than ever, now.
+
+When I began this final reconstruction the story contained 81,500 words,
+now it contains only 58,000.  I have knocked out everything that delayed
+the march of the story--even the description of a Mississippi steamboat.
+There's no weather in, and no scenery--the story is stripped for flight!
+
+Now, then what is she worth?  The amount of matter is but 3,000 words
+short of the American Claimant, for which the syndicate paid $12,500.
+There was nothing new in that story, but the finger-prints in this one
+is virgin ground--absolutely fresh, and mighty curious and interesting
+to everybody.
+
+I don't want any more syndicating--nothing short of $20,000, anyway, and
+that I can't get--but won't you see how much the Cosmopolitan will stand?
+
+Do your best for me, for I do not sleep these nights, for visions of the
+poor-house.
+
+This in spite of the hopeful tone of yours of 11th to Langdon (just
+received) for in me hope is very nearly expiring.  Everything does look
+so blue, so dismally blue!
+
+By and by I shall take up the Rhone open-boat voyage again, but not now-
+we are going to be moving around too much.  I have torn up some of it,
+but still have 15,000 words that Mrs. Clemens approves of, and that I
+like.  I may go at it in Paris again next winter, but not unless I know I
+can write it to suit me.
+
+Otherwise I shall tackle Adam once more, and do him in a kind of a
+friendly and respectful way that will commend him to the Sunday schools.
+I've been thinking out his first life-days to-day and framing his
+childish and ignorant impressions and opinions for him.
+
+Will ship Pudd'nhead in a few days.  When you get it cable
+
+                    Mark Twain
+                         Care Brownship, London
+                                        Received.
+
+I mean to ship "Pudd'nhead Wilson" to you-say, tomorrow.  It'll furnish
+me hash for awhile I reckon.  I am almost sorry it is finished; it was
+good entertainment to work at it, and kept my mind away from things.
+
+We leave here in about ten days, but the doctors have changed our plans
+again.  I think we shall be in Bohemia or thereabouts till near the end
+of September, then go to Paris and take a rest.
+                         Yours Sincerely
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+P. S.  Mrs. Clemens has come in since, and read your letter and is deeply
+distressed.  She thinks that in some letter of mine I must have
+reproached you.  She says it is wonderful that you have kept the ship
+afloat in this storm that has seen fleets and fleets go down; that from
+what she learns of the American business-situation from her home letters
+you have accomplished a marvel in the circumstances, and that she cannot
+bear to have a word said to you that shall voice anything but praise and
+the heartiest appreciation--and not the shadow of a reproach will she
+allow.
+
+I tell her I didn't reproach you and never thought of such a thing.  And
+I said I would break open my letter and say so.
+
+Mrs. Clemens says I must tell you not to send any money for a month or
+two--so that you may be afforded what little relief is in our power.
+All right--I'm willing; (this is honest) but I wish Brer Chatto would
+send along his little yearly contribution.  I dropped him a line about
+another matter a week ago--asked him to subscribe for the Daily News for
+me--you see I wanted to remind him in a covert way that it was pay-up
+time--but doubtless I directed the letter to you or some one else, for I
+don't hear from him and don't get any Daily News either.
+
+
+To Fred J.  Hall, in New York:
+
+                                             Aug.  6, '93.
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very sorry--it was thoughtless in me.  Let the
+reports go.  Send me once a month two items, and two only:
+
+Cash liabilities--(so much)
+Cash assets--(so much)
+
+I can perceive the condition of the business at a glance, then, and that
+will be sufficient.
+
+Here we never see a newspaper, but even if we did I could not come
+anywhere near appreciating or correctly estimating the tempest you have
+been buffeting your way through--only the man who is in it can do that--
+but I have tried not to burden you thoughtlessly or wantonly.  I have
+been wrought and unsettled in mind by apprehensions, and that is a thing
+that is not helpable when one is in a strange land and sees his resources
+melt down to a two months' supply and can't see any sure daylight beyond.
+The bloody machine offered but a doubtful outlook--and will still offer
+nothing much better for a long time to come; for when Davis's "three
+weeks" is up there's three months' tinkering to follow I guess.  That is
+unquestionably the boss machine of the world, but is the toughest one on
+prophets, when it is in an incomplete state, that has ever seen the
+light.  Neither Davis nor any other man can foretell with any
+considerable approach to certainty when it will be ready to get down to
+actual work in a printing office.
+
+                             [No signature.]
+
+
+     Three days after the foregoing letter was written he wrote, briefly:
+
+     "Great Scott but it's a long year-for you and me!  I never knew the
+     almanac to drag so.  At least since I was finishing that other
+     machine.
+
+     "I watch for your letters hungrily--just as I used to watch for the
+     cablegram saying the machine's finished; but when 'next week
+     certainly' swelled into 'three weeks sure' I recognized the old
+     familiar tune I used to hear so much.  Ward don't know what sick-
+     heartedness is--but he is in a way to find out."
+
+     Always the quaint form of his humor, no matter how dark the way.
+     We may picture him walking the floor, planning, scheming, and
+     smoking--always smoking--trying to find a way out.  It was not the
+     kind of scheming that many men have done under the circumstances;
+     not scheming to avoid payment of debts, but to pay them.
+
+
+                      To Fred J. Hall, in New York:
+
+                                                       Aug. 14, '93
+DEAR MR. HALL,--I am very glad indeed if you and Mr. Langdon are able to
+see any daylight ahead.  To me none is visible.  I strongly advise that
+every penny that comes in shall be applied to paying off debts.  I may be
+in error about this, but it seems to me that we have no other course
+open.  We can pay a part of the debts owing to outsiders--none to the
+Clemenses.  In very prosperous times we might regard our stock and
+copyrights as assets sufficient, with the money owing to us, to square up
+and quit even, but I suppose we may not hope for such luck in the present
+condition of things.
+
+What I am mainly hoping for, is to save my royalties.  If they come into
+danger I hope you will cable me, so that I can come over and try to save
+them, for if they go I am a beggar.
+
+I would sail to-day if I had anybody to take charge of my family and help
+them through the difficult journeys commanded by the doctors.  I may be
+able to sail ten days hence; I hope so, and expect so.
+
+We can never resurrect the L. A. L.  I would not spend any more money on
+that book.  You spoke, a while back, of trying to start it up again as a
+preparation to disposing of it, but we are not in shape to venture that,
+I think.  It would require more borrowing, and we must not do that.
+                    Yours Sincerely
+                              S. L. C.
+
+Aug.  16.  I have thought, and thought, but I don't seem to arrive in any
+very definite place.  Of course you will not have an instant's safety
+until the bank debts are paid.  There is nothing to be thought of but to
+hand over every penny as fast as it comes in--and that will be slow
+enough!  Or could you secure them by pledging part of our cash assets
+and--
+
+I am coming over, just as soon as I can get the family moved and settled.
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+     Two weeks following this letter he could endure the suspense no
+     longer, and on August 29th sailed once more for America.  In New
+     York, Clemens settled down at the Players Club, where he could live
+     cheaply, and undertook some literary work while he was casting about
+     for ways and means to relieve the financial situation.  Nothing
+     promising occurred, until one night at the Murray Hill Hotel he was
+     introduced by Dr. Clarence C. Rice to Henry H. Rogers, of the
+     Standard Oil group of financiers.  Rogers had a keen sense of humor
+     and had always been a great admirer of Mark Twain's work.  It was a
+     mirthful evening, and certainly an eventful one in Mark Twain's
+     life.  A day or two later Doctor Rice asked the millionaire to
+     interest himself a little in Clemens's business affairs, which he
+     thought a good deal confused.  Just what happened is not remembered
+     now, but from the date of the next letter we realize that a
+     discussion of the matter by Clemens and Rogers must have followed
+     pretty promptly.
+
+
+                       To Mrs. Clemens, in Europe:
+
+                                                  Oct. 18, '93.
+DEAR, DEAR SWEETHEART,--I don't seem to get even half a chance to write
+you, these last two days, and yet there's lots to say.
+
+Apparently everything is at last settled as to the giveaway of L. A. L.,
+and the papers will be signed and the transfer made to-morrow morning.
+
+Meantime I have got the best and wisest man in the whole Standard Oil
+group of mufti-millionaires a good deal interested in looking into the
+type-setter (this is private, don't mention it.) He has been searching
+into that thing for three weeks, and yesterday he said to me, "I find the
+machine to be all you represented it--I have here exhaustive reports from
+my own experts, and I know every detail of its capacity, its immense
+value, its construction, cost, history, and all about its inventor's
+character.  I know that the New York Co. and the Chicago Co. are both
+stupid, and that they are unbusinesslike people, destitute of money and
+in a hopeless boggle."
+
+Then he told me the scheme he had planned, then said: "If I can arrange
+with these people on this basis--it will take several weeks to find out--
+I will see to it that they get the money they need.  Then the thing will
+move right along and your royalties will cease to be waste paper.  I will
+post you the minute my scheme fails or succeeds.  In the meantime, you
+stop walking the floor.  Go off to the country and try to be gay.  You
+may have to go to walking again, but don't begin till I tell you my
+scheme has failed."  And he added: "Keep me posted always as to where you
+are--for if I need you and can use you--I want to know where to put my
+hand on you."
+
+If I should even divulge the fact that the Standard Oil is merely talking
+remotely about going into the type-setter, it would send my royalties up.
+
+With worlds and worlds of love and kisses to you all,
+                                                       SAML.
+
+
+With so great a burden of care shifted to the broad financial shoulders
+of H. H. Rogers, Mark Twain's spirits went ballooning, soaring toward the
+stars.  He awoke, too, to some of the social gaieties about him, and
+found pleasure in the things that in the hour of his gloom had seemed
+mainly mockery.  We find him going to a Sunday evening at Howells's, to
+John Mackay's, and elsewhere.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       Dec. 2, '93.
+LIVY DARLING,--Last night at John Mackay's the dinner consisted of soup,
+raw oysters, corned beef and cabbage, and something like a custard.
+I ate without fear or stint, and yet have escaped all suggestion of
+indigestion.  The men present were old gray Pacific-coasters whom I knew
+when I and they were young and not gray.  The talk was of the days when
+we went gypsying a long time ago--thirty years.  Indeed it was a talk of
+the dead.  Mainly that.  And of how they looked, and the harum-scarum
+things they did and said.  For there were no cares in that life, no aches
+and pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the
+night) to work off one's surplus vigor and energy.  Of the mid-night
+highway robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the
+windswept and desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the
+victim.  All the friendly robbers are gone.  These old fools last night
+laughed till they cried over the particulars of that old forgotten crime.
+
+John Mackay has no family here but a pet monkey--a most affectionate and
+winning little devil.  But he makes trouble for the servants, for he is
+full of curiosity and likes to take everything out of the drawers and
+examine it minutely; and he puts nothing back.  The examinations of
+yesterday count for nothing to-day--he makes a new examination every day.
+But he injures nothing.
+
+I went with Laffan to the Racquet Club the other night and played,
+billiards two hours without starting up any rheumatism.  I suppose it was
+all really taken out of me in Berlin.
+
+Richard Harding Davis spoke yesterday of Clara's impersonations at Mrs.
+Van Rensselaer's here and said they were a wonderful piece of work.
+
+Livy dear, I do hope you are comfortable, as to quarters and food at the
+Hotel Brighton.  But if you're not don't stay there.  Make one more
+effort--don't give it up.  Dear heart, this is from one who loves you--
+which is Saml.
+
+
+     It was decided that Rogers and Clemens should make a trip to Chicago
+     to investigate personally the type-setter situation there.  Clemens
+     reports the details of the excursion to Mrs. Clemens in a long
+     subdivided letter, most of which has no general interest and is here
+     omitted.  The trip, as a whole, would seem to have been
+     satisfactory.  The personal portions of the long Christmas letter
+     may properly be preserved.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             THE PLAYERS, Xmas, 1893.
+                                  No. 1.
+Merry Xmas, my darling, and all my darlings!  I arrived from Chicago
+close upon midnight last night, and wrote and sent down my Christmas
+cablegram before undressing: "Merry Xmas!  Promising progress made in
+Chicago."  It would get to the telegraph office toward 8 this morning and
+reach you at luncheon.
+
+I was vaguely hoping, all the past week, that my Xmas cablegram would be
+definite, and make you all jump with jubilation; but the thought always
+intruded itself, "You are not going out there to negotiate with a man,
+but with a louse.  This makes results uncertain."
+
+I was asleep as Christmas struck upon the clock at mid night, and didn't
+wake again till two hours ago.  It is now half past 10 Xmas morning; I
+have had my coffee and bread, and shan't get out of bed till it is time
+to dress for Mrs. Laflan's Christmas dinner this evening--where I shall
+meet Bram Stoker and must make sure about that photo with Irving's
+autograph.  I will get the picture and he will attend to the rest.  In
+order to remember and not forget--well, I will go there with my dress
+coat wrong side out; it will cause remark and then I shall remember.
+
+
+                               No. 2 and 3.
+I tell you it was interesting!  The Chicago campaign, I mean.  On the way
+out Mr. Rogers would plan out the campaign while I walked the floor and
+smoked and assented.  Then he would close it up with a snap and drop it
+and we would totally change the subject and take up the scenery, etc.
+
+(Here follows the long detailed report of the Chicago conference, of
+interest only to the parties directly concerned.)
+
+
+                                  No. 4.
+We had nice tripe, going and coming.  Mr. Rogers had telegraphed the
+Pennsylvania Railroad for a couple of sections for us in the fast train
+leaving at 2 p. m.  the 22nd.  The Vice President telegraphed back that
+every berth was engaged (which was not true--it goes without saying) but
+that he was sending his own car for us.  It was mighty nice and
+comfortable.  In its parlor it had two sofas, which could become beds at
+night.  It had four comfortably-cushioned cane arm-chairs.  It had a very
+nice bedroom with a wide bed in it; which I said I would take because I
+believed I was a little wider than Mr. Rogers--which turned out to be
+true; so I took it.  It had a darling back-porch--railed, roofed and
+roomy; and there we sat, most of the time, and viewed the scenery and
+talked, for the weather was May weather, and the soft dream-pictures of
+hill and river and mountain and sky were clear and away beyond anything I
+have ever seen for exquisiteness and daintiness.
+
+The colored waiter knew his business, and the colored cook was a finished
+artist.  Breakfasts: coffee with real cream; beefsteaks, sausage, bacon,
+chops, eggs in various ways, potatoes in various--yes, and quite
+wonderful baked potatoes, and hot as fire.  Dinners--all manner of
+things, including canvas-back duck, apollinaris, claret, champagne, etc.
+
+We sat up chatting till midnight, going and coming; seldom read a line,
+day or night, though we were well fixed with magazines, etc.; then I
+finished off with a hot Scotch and we went to bed and slept till 9.30a.m.
+I honestly tried to pay my share of hotel bills, fees, etc., but I was
+not allowed--and I knew the reason why, and respected the motive.  I will
+explain when I see you, and then you will understand.
+
+We were 25 hours going to Chicago; we were there 24 hours; we were 30
+hours returning.  Brisk work, but all of it enjoyable.  We insisted on
+leaving the car at Philadelphia so that our waiter and cook (to whom Mr.
+R. gave $10 apiece,) could have their Christmas-eve at home.
+
+Mr. Rogers's carriage was waiting for us in Jersey City and deposited me
+at the Players.  There--that's all.  This letter is to make up for the
+three letterless days.  I love you, dear heart, I love you all.
+                                                                 SAML.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+LETTERS 1894.  A WINTER IN NEW YORK.  BUSINESS FAILURE.
+END OF THE MACHINE
+
+The beginning of the new year found Mark Twain sailing buoyantly on a
+tide of optimism.  He believed that with H. H. Rogers as his financial
+pilot he could weather safely any storm or stress.  He could divert
+himself, or rest, or work, and consider his business affairs with
+interest and amusement, instead of with haggard anxiety.  He ran over to
+Hartford to see an amateur play; to Boston to give a charity reading; to
+Fair Haven to open the library which Mr. Rogers had established there; he
+attended gay dinners, receptions, and late studio parties, acquiring the
+name of the "Belle of New York."  In the letters that follow we get the
+echo of some of these things.  The Mrs. Rice mentioned in the next brief
+letter was the wife of Dr. Clarence C. Rice, who had introduced
+H. H.  Rogers to Mark Twain.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             Jan. 12, '94
+Livy darling, I came down from Hartford yesterday with Kipling, and he
+and Hutton and I had the small smoking compartment to ourselves and found
+him at last at his ease, and not shy.  He was very pleasant company
+indeed.  He is to be in the city a week, and I wish I could invite him to
+dinner, but it won't do.  I should be interrupted by business, of course.
+The construction of a contract that will suit Paige's lawyer (not Paige)
+turns out to be very difficult.  He is embarrassed by earlier advice to
+Paige, and hates to retire from it and stultify himself.  The
+negotiations are being conducted, by means of tedious long telegrams and
+by talks over the long-distance telephone.  We keep the wires loaded.
+
+Dear me, dinner is ready.  So Mrs. Rice says.
+
+                         With worlds of love,
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+Clemens and Oliver Wendell Holmes had met and become friends soon after
+the publication of Innocents Abroad, in 1869.  Now, twenty-five years
+later, we find a record of what without doubt was their last meeting.
+It occurred at the home of Mrs. James T. Field.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                             BOSTON, Jan. 25, '94.
+Livy darling, I am caught out worse this time than ever before, in the
+matter of letters.  Tuesday morning I was smart enough to finish and mail
+my long letter to you before breakfast--for I was suspecting that I would
+not have another spare moment during the day.  It turned out just so.
+
+In a thoughtless moment I agreed to come up here and read for the poor.
+I did not reflect that it would cost me three days.  I could not get
+released.  Yesterday I had myself called at 8 and ran out to Mr. Rogers's
+house at 9, and talked business until half past 10; then caught 11
+o'clock train and arrived here at 6; was shaven and dressed by 7 and
+ready for dinner here in Mrs. Field's charming house.
+
+Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes never goes out now (he is in his 84th year,)
+but he came out this time-said he wanted to "have a time" once more with
+me.
+
+Mrs. Fields said Aldrich begged to come and went away crying because she
+wouldn't let him.  She allowed only her family (Sarah Orne Jewett and
+sister) to be present, because much company would overtax Dr. Holmes.
+
+Well, he was just delightful!  He did as brilliant and beautiful talking
+(and listening) as ever he did in his life, I guess.  Fields and Jewett
+said he hadn't been in such splendid form in years.  He had ordered his
+carriage for 9.
+
+The coachman sent in for him at 9; but he said, "Oh, nonsense!--leave
+glories and grandeurs like these?  Tell him to go away and come in an
+hour!"
+
+At 10 he was called for again, and Mrs. Fields, getting uneasy, rose, but
+he wouldn't go--and so we rattled ahead the same as ever.  Twice more
+Mrs. Fields rose, but he wouldn't go--and he didn't go till half past 10
+--an unwarrantable dissipation for him in these days.  He was
+prodigiously complimentary about some of my books, and is having
+Pudd'nhead read to him.  I told him you and I used the Autocrat as a
+courting book and marked it all through, and that you keep it in the
+sacred green box with the love letters, and it pleased him.
+
+Good-bye, my dear darling, it is 15 minutes to dinner and I'm not dressed
+yet.  I have a reception to-night and will be out very late at that place
+and at Irving's Theatre where I have a complimentary box.  I wish you
+were all here.
+                         SAML.
+
+
+     In the next letter we meet James J. Corbett--"Gentleman Jim," as he
+     was sometimes called--the champion pugilist of that day.
+
+     The Howells incident so amusingly dramatized will perhaps be more
+     appreciated if the reader remembers that Mark Twain himself had at
+     intervals been a mind-healing enthusiast.  Indeed, in spite of his
+     strictures on Mrs. Eddy, his interest in the subject of mind-cure
+     continued to the end of his life.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                  Sunday, 9.30 a. m.
+Livy dear, when we got out to the house last night, Mrs. Rogers, who is
+up and around, now, didn't want to go down stairs to dinner, but Mr. R.
+persuaded her and we had a very good time indeed.  By 8 o'clock we were
+down again and bought a fifteen-dollar box in the Madison Square Garden
+(Rogers bought it, not I,) then he went and fetched Dr. Rice while I
+(went) to the Players and picked up two artists--Reid and Simmons--and
+thus we filled 5 of the 6 seats.  There was a vast multitude of people in
+the brilliant place.  Stanford White came along presently and invited me
+to go to the World-Champion's dressing room, which I was very glad to do.
+Corbett has a fine face and is modest and diffident, besides being the
+most perfectly and beautifully constructed human animal in the world.
+I said:
+
+"You have whipped Mitchell, and maybe you will whip Jackson in June--but
+you are not done, then.  You will have to tackle me."
+
+He answered, so gravely that one might easily have thought him in
+earnest:
+
+"No--I am not going to meet you in the ring.  It is not fair or right to
+require it.  You might chance to knock me out, by no merit of your own,
+but by a purely accidental blow; and then my reputation would be gone and
+you would have a double one.  You have got fame enough and you ought not
+to want to take mine away from me."
+
+Corbett was for a long time a clerk in the Nevada Bank in San Francisco.
+
+There were lots of little boxing matches, to entertain the crowd: then at
+last Corbett appeared in the ring and the 8,000 people present went mad
+with enthusiasm.  My two artists went mad about his form.  They said they
+had never seen anything that came reasonably near equaling its perfection
+except Greek statues, and they didn't surpass it.
+
+Corbett boxed 3 rounds with the middle-weight Australian champion--oh,
+beautiful to see!--then the show was over and we struggled out through a
+perfect wash of humanity.  When we reached the street I found I had left
+my arctics in the box.  I had to have them, so Simmons said he would go
+back and get them, and I didn't dissuade him.  I couldn't see how he was
+going to make his way a single yard into that solid oncoming wave of
+people--yet he must plow through it full 50 yards.  He was back with the
+shoes in 3 minutes!
+
+How do you reckon he accomplished that miracle?  By saying:
+
+"Way, gentlemen, please--coming to fetch Mr. Corbett's overshoes."
+
+The word flew from mouth to mouth, the Red Sea divided, and Simmons
+walked comfortably through and back, dry shod.  Simmons (this was
+revealed to me under seal of secrecy by Reid) is the hero of "Gwen," and
+he and Gwen's author were once engaged to marry.  This is "fire-escape"
+Simmons, the inveterate talker, you know: "Exit--in case of Simmons."
+
+I had an engagement at a beautiful dwelling close to the Players for
+10.30; I was there by 10.45.  Thirty cultivated and very musical ladies
+and gentlemen present--all of them acquaintances and many of them
+personal friends of mine.  That wonderful Hungarian Band was there (they
+charge $500 for an evening.) Conversation and Band until midnight; then a
+bite of supper; then the company was compactly grouped before me and I
+told about Dr. B. E. Martin and the etchings, and followed it with the
+Scotch-Irish Christening.  My, but the Martin is a darling story!  Next,
+the head tenor from the Opera sang half a dozen great songs that set the
+company wild, yes, mad with delight, that nobly handsome young Damrosch
+accompanying on the piano.
+
+Just a little pause--then the Band burst out into an explosion of weird
+and tremendous dance music, a Hungarian celebrity and his wife took the
+floor--I followed; I couldn't help it; the others drifted in, one by one,
+and it was Onteora over again.
+
+By half past 4 I had danced all those people down--and yet was not tired;
+merely breathless.  I was in bed at 5, and asleep in ten minutes.  Up at
+9 and presently at work on this letter to you.  I think I wrote until 2
+or half past.  Then I walked leisurely out to Mr. Rogers's (it is called
+3 miles but it is short of it) arriving at 3.30, but he was out--
+to return at 5.30--(and a person was in, whom I don't particularly like)
+--so I didn't stay, but dropped over and chatted with the Howellses until
+6.
+
+First, Howells and I had a chat together.  I asked about Mrs. H.  He said
+she was fine, still steadily improving, and nearly back to her old best
+health.  I asked (as if I didn't know):
+
+"What do you attribute this strange miracle to?"
+
+"Mind-cure--simply mind-cure."
+
+"Lord, what a conversion!  You were a scoffer three months ago."
+
+"I?  I wasn't."
+
+"You were.  You made elaborate fun of me in this very room."
+
+"I did not, Clemens."
+
+"It's a lie, Howells, you did."
+
+I detailed to him the conversation of that time--with the stately
+argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually
+been killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when
+the mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a "regular" at last
+because the former can't procure you a burial permit.
+
+At last he gave in--he said he remembered that talk, but had now been a
+mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever
+been anything else.
+
+Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she
+used to be, so many years ago.
+
+Mrs. H. said: "People may call it what they like, but it is just
+hypnotism, and that's all it is--hypnotism pure and simple.  Mind-cure!
+--the idea!  Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any mind.  She's a
+good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and--"
+
+"Now Eleanor!"
+
+"I know what I'm talking about!--don't I go there twice a week?  And Mr.
+Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she
+snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that
+to me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and
+a superstition--oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw!  A-n-d-when she
+tilts up her nose-well, it's--it's--Well it's that kind of a nose that--"
+
+"Now Eleanor!--the woman is not responsible for her nose--" and so-on and
+so-on.  It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having this feast
+and you not there.
+
+She convinced me before she got through, that she and William James are
+right--hypnotism and mind-cure are the same thing; no difference between
+them.  Very well; the very source, the very center of hypnotism is Paris.
+Dr. Charcot's pupils and disciples are right there and ready to your hand
+without fetching poor dear old Susy across the stormy sea.  Let Mrs.
+Mackay (to whom I send my best respects), tell you whom to go to to learn
+all you need to learn and how to proceed.  Do, do it, honey.  Don't lose
+a minute.
+
+.....At 11 o'clock last night Mr. Rogers said:
+
+"I am able to feel physical fatigue--and I feel it now.  You never show
+any, either in your eyes or your movements; do you ever feel any?"
+
+I was able to say that I had forgotten what that feeling was like.  Don't
+you remember how almost impossible it was for me to tire myself at the
+Villa?  Well, it is just so in New York.  I go to bed unfatigued at 3,
+I get up fresh and fine six hours later.  I believe I have taken only one
+daylight nap since I have been here.
+
+When the anchor is down, then I shall say:
+
+"Farewell--a long farewell--to business!  I will never touch it again!"
+
+I will live in literature, I will wallow in it, revel in it, I will swim
+in ink!  Joan of Arc--but all this is premature; the anchor is not down
+yet.
+
+To-morrow (Tuesday) I will add a P. S. if I've any to add; but, whether
+or no, I must mail this to morrow, for the mail steamer goes next day.
+
+5.30 p. m.  Great Scott, this is Tuesday!  I must rush this letter into
+the mail instantly.
+
+Tell that sassy Ben I've got her welcome letter, and I'll write her as
+soon as I get a daylight chance.  I've most time at night, but I'd
+druther write daytimes.
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+     The Reid and Simmons mentioned in the foregoing were Robert Reid and
+     Edward Simmons, distinguished painter--the latter a brilliant,
+     fluent, and industrious talker.  The title; "Fire-escape Simmons,"
+     which Clemens gives him, originated when Oliver Herford, whose
+     quaint wit has so long delighted New-Yorkers, one day pinned up by
+     the back door of the Players the notice: "Exit in case of Simmons."
+     Gwen, a popular novel of that day, was written by Blanche Willis
+     Howard.
+
+     "Jamie" Dodge, in the next letter, was the son of Mrs. Mary Mapes
+     Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas.
+
+
+                       To Clara Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                   MR. ROGERS'S OFFICE, Feb.  5, '94.
+Dear Benny--I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am away
+down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for good-
+fellowship.  I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading and
+will ask them to sign them.  I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night, and if
+Hading is not present I will send her picture to her by somebody.
+
+I am to breakfast with Madame Nordica in a few days, and meantime I hope
+to get a good picture of her to sign.  She was of the breakfast company
+yesterday, but the picture of herself which she signed and gave me does
+not do her majestic beauty justice.
+
+I am too busy to attend to the photo-collecting right, because I have to
+live up to the name which Jamie Dodge has given me--the "Belle of New
+York"--and it just keeps me rushing.  Yesterday I had engagements to
+breakfast at noon, dine at 3, and dine again at 7.  I got away from the
+long breakfast at 2 p. m., went and excused myself from the 3 o'clock
+dinner, then lunched with Mrs. Dodge in 58th street, returned to the
+Players and dressed, dined out at 9, and was back at Mrs. Dodge's at
+10 p. m. where we had magic-lantern views of a superb sort, and a lot of
+yarns until an hour after midnight, and got to bed at 2 this morning
+--a good deal of a gain on my recent hours.  But I don't get tired; I
+sleep as sound as a dead person, and always wake up fresh and strong--
+usually at exactly 9.
+
+I was at breakfast lately where people of seven separate nationalities
+sat and the seven languages were going all the time.  At my side sat
+a charming gentleman who was a delightful and active talker, and
+interesting.  He talked glibly to those folks in all those seven
+languages and still had a language to spare!  I wanted to kill him, for
+very envy.
+
+               I greet you with love and kisses.
+                                                  PAPA.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       Feb.--.
+Livy dear, last night I played billiards with Mr. Rogers until 11, then
+went to Robert Reid's studio and had a most delightful time until 4 this
+morning.  No ladies were invited this time.  Among the people present
+were--
+
+Coquelin;
+Richard Harding Davis;
+Harrison, the great out-door painter;
+Wm. H. Chase, the artist;
+Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph.
+Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about
+him in Jan. or Feb. Century.
+John Drew, actor;
+James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him!
+Smedley the artist;
+Zorn the artist;
+Zogbaum the artist;
+Reinhart the artist;
+Metcalf the artist;
+Ancona, head tenor at the Opera;
+
+Oh, a great lot of others.  Everybody there had done something and was in
+his way famous.
+
+Somebody welcomed Coquelin in a nice little French speech; John Drew did
+the like for me in English, and then the fun began.  Coquelin did some
+excellent French monologues--one of them an ungrammatical Englishman
+telling a colorless historiette in French.  It nearly killed the fifteen
+or twenty people who understood it.
+
+I told a yarn, Ancona sang half a dozen songs, Barnes did his darling
+imitations, Harding Davis sang the hanging of Danny Deever, which was of
+course good, but he followed it with that most fascinating (for what
+reason I don't know) of all Kipling's poems, "On the Road to Mandalay,"
+sang it tenderly, and it searched me deeper and charmed me more than the
+Deever.
+
+Young Gerrit Smith played some ravishing dance music and we all danced
+about an hour.  There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was.
+Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what
+the sense of fatigue is.
+
+Coquelin talks quite good English now.  He said:
+
+"I have a brother who has the fine mind--ah, a charming and delicate
+fancy, and he knows your writings so well, and loves them--and that is
+the same with me.  It will stir him so when I write and tell him I have
+seen you!"
+
+Wasn't that nice?  We talked a good deal together.  He is as winning as
+his own face.  But he wouldn't sign that photograph for Clara.  "That?
+No!  She shall have a better one.  I will send it to you."
+
+He is much driven, and will forget it, but Reid has promised to get the
+picture for me, and I will try and keep him reminded.
+
+Oh, dear, my time is all used up and your letters are not answered.
+
+Mama, dear, I don't go everywhere--I decline most things.  But there are
+plenty that I can't well get out of.
+
+I will remember what you say and not make my yarning too common.
+
+I am so glad Susy has gone on that trip and that you are trying the
+electric.  May you both prosper.  For you are mighty dear to me and in my
+thoughts always.
+                                   SAML.
+
+
+     The affairs of the Webster Publishing Company were by this time
+     getting into a very serious condition indeed.  The effects of the
+     panic of the year before could not be overcome.  Creditors were
+     pressing their claims and profits were negligible.  In the following
+     letter we get a Mark Twain estimate of the great financier who so
+     cheerfully was willing to undertake the solving of Mark Twain's
+     financial problems.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                              THE PLAYERS, Feb. 15, '94.  11.30 p. m.
+Livy darling, Yesterday I talked all my various matters over with Mr.
+Rogers and we decided that it would be safe for me to leave here the 7th
+of March, in the New York.  So his private secretary, Miss Harrison,
+wrote and ordered a berth for me and then I lost no time in cabling you
+that I should reach Southampton March 14, and Paris the 15th.  Land, but
+it made my pulses leap, to think I was going to see you again!.....
+One thing at a time.  I never fully laid Webster's disastrous condition
+before Mr. Rogers until to-night after billiards.  I did hate to burden
+his good heart and over-worked head with it, but he took hold with
+avidity and said it was no burden to work for his friends, but a
+pleasure.  We discussed it from various standpoints, and found it a
+sufficiently difficult problem to solve; but he thinks that after he has
+slept upon it and thought it over he will know what to suggest.
+
+You must not think I am ever rude with Mr. Rogers, I am not.  He is not
+common clay, but fine--fine and delicate--and that sort do not call out
+the coarsenesses that are in my sort.  I am never afraid of wounding him;
+I do not need to watch myself in that matter.  The sight of him is peace.
+
+He wants to go to Japan--it is his dream; wants to go with me--which
+means, the two families--and hear no more about business for awhile, and
+have a rest.  And he needs it.  But it is like all the dreams of all busy
+men--fated to remain dreams.
+
+You perceive that he is a pleasant text for me.  It is easy to write
+about him.  When I arrived in September, lord how black the prospect was
+--how desperate, how incurably desperate!  Webster and Co had to have a
+small sum of money or go under at once.  I flew to Hartford--to my
+friends--but they were not moved, not strongly interested, and I was
+ashamed that I went.  It was from Mr. Rogers, a stranger, that I got the
+money and was by it saved.  And then--while still a stranger--he set
+himself the task of saving my financial life without putting upon me (in
+his native delicacy) any sense that I was the recipient of a charity,
+a benevolence--and he has accomplished that task; accomplished it at a
+cost of three months of wearing and difficult labor.  He gave that time
+to me--time which could not be bought by any man at a hundred thousand
+dollars a month--no, nor for three times the money.
+
+Well, in the midst of that great fight, that long and admirable fight,
+George Warner came to me and said:
+
+"There is a splendid chance open to you.  I know a man--a prominent man--
+who has written a book that will go like wildfire; a book that arraigns
+the Standard Oil fiends, and gives them unmitigated hell, individual by
+individual.  It is the very book for you to publish; there is a fortune
+in it, and I can put you in communication with the author."
+
+I wanted to say:
+
+"The only man I care for in the world; the only man I would give a damn
+for; the only man who is lavishing his sweat and blood to save me and
+mine from starvation and shame, is a Standard Oil fiend.  If you know me,
+you know whether I want the book or not."
+
+But I didn't say that.  I said I didn't want any book; I wanted to get
+out of the publishing business and out of all business, and was here for
+that purpose and would accomplish it if I could.
+
+But there's enough.  I shall be asleep by 3, and I don't need much sleep,
+because I am never drowsy or tired these days.  Dear, dear Susy my
+strength reproaches me when I think of her and you, my darling.
+
+                                        SAML.
+
+
+     But even so able a man as Henry Rogers could not accomplish the
+     impossible.  The affairs of the Webster Company were hopeless, the
+     business was not worth saving.  By Mr. Rogers's advice an assignment
+     was made April, 18, 1894.  After its early spectacular success less
+     than ten years had brought the business to failure.  The publication
+     of the Grant memoirs had been its only great achievement.
+
+     Clemens would seem to have believed that the business would resume,
+     and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but
+     we cannot believe that it long survived.  Young Hall, who had made
+     such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must
+     presently have seen the futility of any effort in that direction.
+
+     Of course the failure of Mark Twain's firm made a great stir in the
+     country, and it is easy to understand that loyal friends would rally
+     in his behalf.
+
+
+                        To Mrs. Clemens, in Paris:
+
+                                                       April 22, '94.
+Dear old darling, we all think the creditors are going to allow us to
+resume business; and if they do we shall pull through and pay the debts.
+I am prodigiously glad we made an assignment.  And also glad that we did
+not make it sooner.  Earlier we should have made a poor showing; but now
+we shall make a good one.
+
+I meet flocks of people, and they all shake me cordially by the hand and
+say "I was so sorry to hear of the assignment, but so glad you did it.
+It was around, this long time, that the concern was tottering, and all
+your friends were afraid you would delay the assignment too long."
+
+John Mackay called yesterday, and said, "Don't let it disturb you, Sam--
+we all have to do it, at one time or another; it's nothing to be ashamed
+of."
+
+One stranger out in New York State sent me a dollar bill and thought he
+would like to get up a dollar-subscription for me.  And Poultney
+Bigelow's note came promptly, with his check for $1,000.  I had been
+meeting him every day at the Club and liking him better and better all
+the time.  I couldn't take his money, of course, but I thanked him
+cordially for his good will.
+
+Now and then a good and dear Joe Twichell or Susy Warner condoles with me
+and says "Cheer up--don't be downhearted," and some other friend says,
+"I am glad and surprised to see how cheerful you are and how bravely you
+stand it"--and none of them suspect what a burden has been lifted from me
+and how blithe I am inside.  Except when I think of you, dear heart--then
+I am not blithe; for I seem to see you grieving and ashamed, and dreading
+to look people in the face.  For in the thick of the fight there is
+cheer, but you are far away and cannot hear the drums nor see the
+wheeling squadrons.  You only seem to see rout, retreat, and dishonored
+colors dragging in the dirt--whereas none of these things exist.  There
+is temporary defeat, but no dishonor--and we will march again.  Charley
+Warner said to-day, "Sho, Livy isn't worrying.  So long as she's got you
+and the children she doesn't care what happens.  She knows it isn't her
+affair."  Which didn't convince me.
+
+Good bye my darling, I love you and all of the kids--and you can tell
+Clara I am not a spitting gray kitten.
+                                             SAML.
+
+
+     Clemens sailed for Europe as soon as his affairs would permit him to
+     go.  He must get settled where he could work comfortably.  Type-
+     setter prospects seemed promising, but meantime there was need of
+     funds.
+
+     He began writing on the ship, as was his habit, and had completed
+     his article on Fenimore Cooper by the time he reached London.  In
+     August we find him writing to Mr. Rogers from Etretat, a little
+     Norman watering-place.
+
+
+                      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                             ETRETAT, (NORMANDIE)
+                                                  CHALET DES ABRIS
+                                                       Aug.  25, '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I find the Madam ever so much better in health and
+strength.  The air is superb and soothing and wholesome, and the Chalet
+is remote from noise and people, and just the place to write in.  I shall
+begin work this afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Clemens is in great spirits on, account of the benefit which she has
+received from the electrical treatment in Paris and is bound to take it
+up again and continue it all the winter, and of course I am perfectly
+willing.  She requires me to drop the lecture platform out of my mind and
+go straight ahead with Joan until the book is finished.  If I should have
+to go home for even a week she means to go with me--won't consent to be
+separated again--but she hopes I won't need to go.
+
+I tell her all right, "I won't go unless you send, and then I must."
+
+She keeps the accounts; and as she ciphers it we can't get crowded for
+money for eight months yet.  I didn't know that.  But I don't know much
+anyway.
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The reader may remember that Clemens had written the first half of
+     his Joan of Arc book at the Villa Viviani, in Florence, nearly two
+     years before.  He had closed the manuscript then with the taking of
+     Orleans, and was by no means sure that he would continue the story
+     beyond that point.  Now, however, he was determined to reach the
+     tale's tragic conclusion.
+
+
+                      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                                       ETRETAT,
+                                                  Sunday, Sept. 9, '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS, I drove the quill too hard, and I broke down--in my
+head.  It has now been three days since I laid up.  When I wrote you a
+week ago I had added 10,000 words or thereabout to Joan.  Next day I
+added 1,500 which was a proper enough day's work though not a full one;
+but during Tuesday and Wednesday I stacked up an aggregate of 6,000
+words--and that was a very large mistake.  My head hasn't been worth a
+cent since.
+
+However, there's a compensation; for in those two days I reached and
+passed--successfully--a point which I was solicitous about before I ever
+began the book: viz., the battle of Patay.  Because that would naturally
+be the next to the last chapter of a work consisting of either two books
+or one.  In the one case one goes right along from that point (as I shall
+do now); in the other he would add a wind-up chapter and make the book
+consist of Joan's childhood and military career alone.
+
+I shall resume work to-day; and hereafter I will not go at such an
+intemperate' rate.  My head is pretty cobwebby yet.
+
+I am hoping that along about this time I shall hear that the machine is
+beginning its test in the Herald office.  I shall be very glad indeed to
+know the result of it.  I wish I could be there.
+                    Sincerely yours
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Rouen, where Joan met her martyrdom, was only a short distance away,
+     and they halted there en route to Paris, where they had arranged to
+     spend the winter.  The health of Susy Clemens was not good, and they
+     lingered in Rouen while Clemens explored the old city and
+     incidentally did some writing of another sort.  In a note to Mr.
+     Rogers he said: "To put in my odd time I am writing some articles
+     about Paul Bourget and his Outre-Mer chapters--laughing at them and
+     at some of our oracular owls who find them important.  What the hell
+     makes them important, I should like to know!"
+
+     He was still at Rouen two weeks later and had received encouraging
+     news from Rogers concerning the type-setter, which had been placed
+     for trial in the office of the Chicago Herald.  Clemens wrote: "I
+     can hardly keep from sending a hurrah by cable.  I would certainly
+     do it if I wasn't superstitious."  His restraint, though wise, was
+     wasted the end was near.
+
+
+                      To H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Dec. 22; '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I seemed to be entirely expecting your letter, and also
+prepared and resigned; but Lord, it shows how little we know ourselves
+and how easily we can deceive ourselves.  It hit me like a thunder-clap.
+It knocked every rag of sense out of my head, and I went flying here and
+there and yonder, not knowing what I was doing, and only one clearly
+defined thought standing up visible and substantial out of the crazy
+storm-drift that my dream of ten years was in desperate peril, and out of
+the 60,000 or 90,000 projects for its rescue that came floating through
+my skull, not one would hold still long enough for me to examine it and
+size it up.  Have you ever been like that?  Not so much so, I reckon.
+
+There was another clearly defined idea--I must be there and see it die.
+That is, if it must die; and maybe if I were there we might hatch up some
+next-to-impossible way to make it take up its bed and take a walk.
+
+So, at the end of four hours I started, still whirling and walked over to
+the rue Scribe--4 P. M.--and asked a question or two and was told I
+should be running a big risk if I took the 9 P. M.  train for London and
+Southampton; "better come right along at 6.52 per Havre special and step
+aboard the New York all easy and comfortable."  Very! and I about two
+miles from home, with no packing done.
+
+Then it occurred to me that none of these salvation-notions that were
+whirl-winding through my head could be examined or made available unless
+at least a month's time could be secured.  So I cabled you, and said to
+myself that I would take the French steamer tomorrow (which will be
+Sunday).
+
+By bedtime Mrs. Clemens had reasoned me into a fairly rational and
+contented state of mind; but of course it didn't last long.  So I went on
+thinking--mixing it with a smoke in the dressing room once an hour--until
+dawn this morning.  Result--a sane resolution; no matter what your answer
+to my cable might be, I would hold still and not sail until I should get
+an answer to this present letter which I am now writing, or a cable
+answer from you saying "Come" or "Remain."
+
+I have slept 6 hours, my pond has clarified, and I find the sediment of
+my 70,000 projects to be of this character:
+
+[Several pages of suggestions for reconstructing the machine follow.]
+
+Don't say I'm wild.  For really I'm sane again this morning.
+
+                          ......................
+
+I am going right along with Joan, now, and wait untroubled till I hear
+from you.  If you think I can be of the least use, cable me "Come."
+I can write Joan on board ship and lose no time.  Also I could discuss my
+plan with the publisher for a deluxe Joan, time being an object, for some
+of the pictures could be made over here cheaply and quickly, but would
+cost much time and money in America.
+
+                          ......................
+
+If the meeting should decide to quit business Jan. 4, I'd like to have
+Stoker stopped from paying in any more money, if Miss Harrison doesn't
+mind that disagreeable job.  And I'll have to write them, too, of course.
+                    With love,
+                         S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The "Stoker" of this letter was Bram Stoker, long associated with
+     Sir Henry Irving.  Irving himself had also taken stock in the
+     machine.  The address, 169 Rue de l'Universite, whence these letters
+     are written, was the beautiful studio home of the artist Pomroy
+     which they had taken for the winter.
+
+
+                     To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                        PARIS, Dec. 27, '94.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Notwithstanding your heart is "old and hard," you make
+a body choke up.  I know you "mean every word you say" and I do take it
+"in the same spirit in which you tender it."  I shall keep your regard
+while we two live--that I know; for I shall always remember what you have
+done for me, and that will insure me against ever doing anything that
+could forfeit it or impair it.  I am 59 years old; yet I never had a
+friend before who put out a hand and tried to pull me ashore when he
+found me in deep waters.
+
+It is six days or seven days ago that I lived through that despairing
+day, and then through a night without sleep; then settled down next day
+into my right mind (or thereabouts,) and wrote you.  I put in the rest of
+that day till 7 P. M.  plenty comfortably enough writing a long chapter
+of my book; then went to a masked ball blacked up as Uncle Remus, taking
+Clara along; and we had a good time.  I have lost no day since and
+suffered no discomfort to speak of, but drove my troubles out of my mind
+and had good success in keeping them out--through watchfulness.  I have
+done a good week's work and put the book a good way ahead in the Great
+Trial, which is the difficult part which requires the most thought and
+carefulness.  I cannot see the end of the Trial yet, but I am on the
+road.  I am creeping surely toward it.
+
+"Why not leave them all to me."  My business bothers?  I take you by the
+hand!  I jump at the chance!
+
+I ought to be ashamed and I am trying my best to be ashamed--and yet I do
+jump at the chance in spite of it.  I don't want to write Irving and I
+don't want to write Stoker.  It doesn't seem as if I could.  But I can
+suggest something for you to write them; and then if you see that I am
+unwise, you can write them something quite different.  Now this is my
+idea:
+
+     1.  To return Stoker's $100 to him and keep his stock.
+
+     2.  And tell Irving that when luck turns with me I will make good to
+     him what the salvage from the dead Co. fails to pay him of his $500.
+
+
+P. S.  Madam says No, I must face the music.  So I enclose my effort to
+be used if you approve, but not otherwise.
+
+There!  Now if you will alter it to suit your judgment and bang away, I
+shall be eternally obliged.
+
+We shall try to find a tenant for our Hartford house; not an easy matter,
+for it costs heavily to live in.  We can never live in it again; though
+it would break the family's hearts if they could believe it.
+
+Nothing daunts Mrs. Clemens or makes the world look black to her--which
+is the reason I haven't drowned myself.
+
+We all send our deepest and warmest greetings to you and all of yours and
+a Happy New Year!
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+Enclosure:
+
+MY DEAR STOKER,--I am not dating this because it is not to be mailed at
+present.
+
+When it reaches you it will mean that there is a hitch in my machine-
+enterprise--a hitch so serious as to make it take to itself the aspect of
+a dissolved dream.  This letter, then, will contain cheque for the $100
+which you have paid.  And will you tell Irving for me--I can't get up
+courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom
+by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage presently
+floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a
+time I will make up to him the rest.
+
+I'm not feeling as fine as I was when I saw you there in your home.
+Please remember me kindly to Mrs. Stoker.  I gave up that London lecture-
+project entirely.  Had to--there's never been a chance since to find the
+time.
+                    Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+LETTERS, 1895-96, TO H. H. ROGERS AND OTHERS.  FINISHING "JOAN OF ARC."
+THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD.  DEATH OF SUSY CLEMENS
+
+
+                   To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                                       [No date.]
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Yours of Dec. 21 has arrived, containing the circular
+to stockholders and I guess the Co. will really quit--there doesn't seem
+to be any other wise course.
+
+There's one thing which makes it difficult for me to soberly realize that
+my ten year dream is actually dissolved; and that is, that it reveries my
+horoscope.  The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very
+superstitious.  As a small boy I was notoriously lucky.  It was usual for
+one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or
+in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times
+before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.
+When the "Pennsylvania" blew up and the telegraph reported my brother as
+fatally injured (with 60 others) but made no mention of me, my uncle said
+to my mother "It means that Sam was somewhere else, after being on that
+boat a year and a half--he was born lucky."  Yes, I was somewhere else.
+I am so superstitious that I have always been afraid to have business
+dealings with certain relatives and friends of mine because they were
+unlucky people.  All my life I have stumbled upon lucky chances of large
+size, and whenever they were wasted it was because of my own stupidity
+and carelessness.  And so I have felt entirely certain that that machine
+would turn up trumps eventually.  It disappointed me lots of times, but I
+couldn't shake off the confidence of a life-time in my luck.
+
+Well, whatever I get out of the wreckage will be due to good luck--the
+good luck of getting you into the scheme--for, but for that, there
+wouldn't be any wreckage; it would be total loss.
+
+I wish you had been in at the beginning.  Then we should have had the
+good luck to step promptly ashore.
+
+Miss Harrison has had a dream which promises me a large bank account,
+and I want her to go ahead and dream it twice more, so as to make the
+prediction sure to be fulfilled.
+
+I've got a first rate subject for a book.  It kept me awake all night,
+and I began it and completed it in my mind.  The minute I finish Joan
+I will take it up.
+               Love and Happy New Year to you all.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     This was about the end of the machine interests so far as Clemens
+     was concerned.  Paige succeeded in getting some new people
+     interested, but nothing important happened, or that in any way
+     affected Mark Twain.  Characteristically he put the whole matter
+     behind him and plunged into his work, facing comparative poverty and
+     a burden of debts with a stout heart.  The beginning of the new year
+     found him really poorer in purse than he had ever been in his life,
+     but certainly not crushed, or even discouraged--at least, not
+     permanently--and never more industrious or capable.
+
+
+                   To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             PARIS, Jan. 23, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--After I wrote you, two or three days ago I thought I
+would make a holiday of the rest of the day--the second deliberate
+holiday since I had the gout.  On the first holiday I wrote a tale of
+about 6,000 words, which was 3 days' work in one; and this time I did
+8,000 before midnight.  I got nothing out of that first holiday but the
+recreation of it, for I condemned the work after careful reading and some
+revision; but this time I fared better--I finished the Huck Finn tale
+that lies in your safe, and am satisfied with it.
+
+The Bacheller syndicate (117 Tribune Building) want a story of 5,000
+words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank
+the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took
+that other holiday.  So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't
+and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one
+which I finished on my second holiday--"Tom Sawyer, Detective."
+
+It makes 27 or 28,000 words, and is really written for grown folks,
+though I expect young folk to read it, too.  It transfers to the banks of
+the Mississippi the incidents of a strange murder which was committed in
+Sweden in old times.
+
+I'll refer applicants for a sight of the story to you or Miss Harrison.--
+[Secretary to Mr. Rogers.]
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                   To H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                        169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                             Apr. 29, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Your felicitous delightful letter of the 15th arrived
+three days ago, and brought great pleasure into the house.
+
+There is one thing that weighs heavily on Mrs. Clemens and me.  That is
+Brusnahan's money.  If he is satisfied to have it invested in the Chicago
+enterprise, well and good; if not, we would like to have the money paid
+back to him.  I will give him as many months to decide in as he pleases--
+let him name 6 or 10 or 12--and we will let the money stay where it is in
+your hands till the time is up.  Will Miss Harrison tell him so?  I mean
+if you approve.  I would like him to have a good investment, but would
+meantime prefer to protect him against loss.
+
+At 6 minutes past 7, yesterday evening, Joan of Arc was burned at the
+stake.
+
+With the long strain gone, I am in a sort of physical collapse today, but
+it will be gone tomorrow.  I judged that this end of the book would be
+hard work, and it turned out so.  I have never done any work before that
+cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and
+cramming, or so much cautious and painstaking execution.  For I wanted
+the whole Rouen trial in, if it could be got in in such a way that the
+reader's interest would not flag--in fact I wanted the reader's interest
+to increase; and so I stuck to it with that determination in view--with
+the result that I have left nothing out but unimportant repetitions.
+Although it is mere history--history pure and simple--history stripped
+naked of flowers, embroideries, colorings, exaggerations, invention--the
+family agree that I have succeeded.  It was a perilous thing to try in a
+tale, but I never believed it a doubtful one--provided I stuck strictly
+to business and didn't weaken and give up: or didn't get lazy and skimp
+the work.  The first two-thirds of the book were easy; for I only needed
+to keep my historical road straight; therefore I used for reference only
+one French history and one English one--and shoveled in as much fancy
+work and invention on both sides of the historical road as I pleased.
+But on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and
+five English ones and I think no telling historical nugget in any of them
+has escaped me.
+
+Possibly the book may not sell, but that is nothing--it was written for
+love.
+
+There--I'm called to see company.  The family seldom require this of me,
+but they know I am not working today.
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     "Brusnahan," of the foregoing letter, was an employee of the New
+     York Herald, superintendent of the press-room--who had invested some
+     of his savings in the type-setter.
+
+     In February Clemens returned to New York to look after matters
+     connected with his failure and to close arrangements for a reading-
+     tour around the world.  He was nearly sixty years old, and time had
+     not lessened his loathing for the platform.  More than once,
+     however, in earlier years, he had turned to it as a debt-payer, and
+     never yet had his burden been so great as now.  He concluded
+     arrangements with Major Pond to take him as far as the Pacific
+     Coast, and with R. S. Smythe, of Australia, for the rest of the
+     tour.  In April we find him once more back in Paris preparing to
+     bring the family to America, He had returned by way of London,
+     where he had visited Stanley the explorer--an old friend.
+
+
+                    To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                             169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE,
+                                                  Sunday, Apr.7,'95.
+DEAR MR.  ROGERS,--..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in a
+grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing
+Street and Whitehall.  He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and
+fame there to meet me--thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more
+than a hundred came in, after dinner.  Kept it up till after midnight.
+There were cabinet ministers, ambassadors, admirals, generals, canons,
+Oxford professors, novelists, playwrights, poets, and a number of people
+equipped with rank and brains.  I told some yarns and made some speeches.
+I promised to call on all those people next time I come to London, and
+show them the wife and the daughters.  If I were younger and very strong
+I would dearly love to spend a season in London--provided I had no work
+on hand, or no work more exacting than lecturing.  I think I will lecture
+there a month or two when I return from Australia.
+
+There were many delightful ladies in that company.  One was the wife of
+His Excellency Admiral Bridge, Commander-in Chief of the Australian
+Station, and she said her husband was able to throw wide all doors to me
+in that part of the world and would be glad to do it, and would yacht me
+and my party around, and excursion us in his flag-ship and make us have a
+great time; and she said she would write him we were coming, and we would
+find him ready.  I have a letter from her this morning enclosing a letter
+of introduction to the Admiral.  I already know the Admiral commanding in
+the China Seas and have promised to look in on him out there.  He sleeps
+with my books under his pillow.  P'raps it is the only way he can sleep.
+
+According to Mrs. Clemens's present plans--subject to modification, of
+course--we sail in May; stay one day, or two days in New York, spend
+June, July and August in Elmira and prepare my lectures; then lecture in
+San Francisco and thereabouts during September and sail for Australia
+before the middle of October and open the show there about the middle of
+November.  We don't take the girls along; it would be too expensive and
+they are quite willing to remain behind anyway.
+
+Mrs. C. is feeling so well that she is not going to try the New York
+doctor till we have gone around the world and robbed it and made the
+finances a little easier.
+                    With a power of love to you all,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     There would come moments of depression, of course, and a week later
+     he wrote: "I am tired to death all the time:"  To a man of less
+     vitality, less vigor of mind and body, it is easy to believe that
+     under such circumstances this condition would have remained
+     permanent.  But perhaps, after all, it was his comic outlook on
+     things in general that was his chief life-saver.
+
+
+                    To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                              169 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Apr. 29, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I have been hidden an hour or two, reading proof of
+Joan and now I think I am a lost child.  I can't find anybody on the
+place.  The baggage has all disappeared, including the family.  I reckon
+that in the hurry and bustle of moving to the hotel they forgot me.  But
+it is no matter.  It is peacefuller now than I have known it for days and
+days and days.
+
+In these Joan proofs which I have been reading for the September Harper
+I find a couple of tip-top platform readings--and I mean to read them on
+our trip.  If the authorship is known by then; and if it isn't, I will
+reveal it.  The fact is, there is more good platform-stuff in Joan than
+in any previous book of mine, by a long sight.
+
+Yes, every danged member of the tribe has gone to the hotel and left me
+lost.  I wonder how they can be so careless with property.  I have got to
+try to get there by myself now.
+
+All the trunks are going over as luggage; then I've got to find somebody
+on the dock who will agree to ship 6 of them to the Hartford Customhouse.
+If it is difficult I will dump them into the river.  It is very careless
+of Mrs. Clemens to trust trunks and things to me.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     By the latter part of May they were at Quarry Farm, and Clemens,
+     laid up there with a carbuncle, was preparing for his long tour.
+     The outlook was not a pleasant one.  To Mr. Rogers he wrote: "I
+     sha'n't be able to stand on the platform before we start west.  I
+     sha'n't get a single chance to practice my reading; but will have to
+     appear in Cleveland without the essential preparation.  Nothing in
+     this world can save it from being a shabby, poor disgusting
+     performance.  I've got to stand; I can't do it and talk to a house,
+     and how in the nation am I going to sit?  Land of Goshen, it's this
+     night week!  Pray for me."
+
+     The opening at Cleveland July 15th appears not to have been much of
+     a success, though from another reason, one that doubtless seemed
+     amusing to him later.
+
+
+                    To H. H. Rogers, in New York City:
+
+                                                       (Forenoon)
+                                             CLEVELAND, July 16, '95.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--Had a roaring success at the Elmira reformatory Sunday
+night.  But here, last night, I suffered defeat--There were a couple of
+hundred little boys behind me on the stage, on a lofty tier of benches
+which made them the most conspicuous objects in the house.  And there was
+nobody to watch them or keep them quiet.  Why, with their scufflings and
+horse-play and noise, it was just a menagerie.  Besides, a concert of
+amateurs had been smuggled into the program (to precede me,) and their
+families and friends (say ten per cent of the audience) kept encoring
+them and they always responded.  So it was 20 minutes to 9 before I got
+the platform in front of those 2,600 people who had paid a dollar apiece
+for a chance to go to hell in this fashion.
+
+I got started magnificently, but inside of half an hour the scuffling
+boys had the audience's maddened attention and I saw it was a gone case;
+so I skipped a third of my program and quit.  The newspapers are kind,
+but between you and me it was a defeat.  There ain't going to be any more
+concerts at my lectures.  I care nothing for this defeat, because it was
+not my fault.  My first half hour showed that I had the house, and I
+could have kept it if I hadn't been so handicapped.
+                         Yours sincerely,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+P. S.  Had a satisfactory time at Petoskey.  Crammed the house and turned
+away a crowd.  We had $548 in the house, which was $300 more than it had
+ever had in it before.  I believe I don't care to have a talk go off
+better than that one did.
+
+
+     Mark Twain, on this long tour, was accompanied by his wife and his
+     daughter Clara--Susy and Jean Clemens remaining with their aunt at
+     Quarry Farm.  The tour was a financial success from the start.
+     By the time they were ready to sail from Vancouver five thousand
+     dollars had been remitted to Mr. Rogers against that day of
+     settlement when the debts of Webster & Co. were to be paid.  Perhaps
+     it should be stated here that a legal settlement had been arranged
+     on a basis of fifty cents on the dollar, but neither Clemens nor his
+     wife consented to this as final.  They would pay in full.
+
+     They sailed from Vancouver August 23, 1895.  About the only letter
+     of this time is an amusing note to Rudyard Kipling, written at the
+     moment of departure.
+
+
+                     To Rudyard Kipling, in England:
+
+                                                       August, 1895.
+DEAR KIPLING,--It is reported that you are about to visit India.  This
+has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload
+from my conscience a debt long due to you.  Years ago you came from India
+to Elmira to visit me, as you said at the time.  It has always been my
+purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day.  I shall
+arrive next January and you must be ready.  I shall come riding my ayah
+with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons and escorted by a
+troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild
+bungalows; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I
+shall be thirsty.
+                         Affectionately,
+                              S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Clemens, platforming in Australia, was too busy to write letters.
+     Everywhere he was welcomed by great audiences, and everywhere
+     lavishly entertained.  He was beset by other carbuncles, but would
+     seem not to have been seriously delayed by them.  A letter to his
+     old friend Twichell carries the story.
+
+
+                  To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   FRANK MOELLER'S MASONIC HOTEL,
+                                             NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND,
+                                                  November 29, '95.
+DEAR JOE,--Your welcome letter of two months and five days ago has just
+arrived, and finds me in bed with another carbuncle.  It is No. 3.  Not a
+serious one this time.  I lectured last night without inconvenience, but
+the doctors thought best to forbid to-night's lecture.  My second one
+kept me in bed a week in Melbourne.
+
+.....We are all glad it is you who is to write the article, it delights
+us all through.
+
+I think it was a good stroke of luck that knocked me on my back here at
+Napier, instead of some hotel in the centre of a noisy city.  Here we
+have the smooth and placidly-complaining sea at our door, with nothing
+between us and it but 20 yards of shingle--and hardly a suggestion of
+life in that space to mar it or make a noise.  Away down here fifty-five
+degrees south of the Equator this sea seems to murmur in an unfamiliar
+tongue--a foreign tongue--tongue bred among the ice-fields of the
+Antarctic--a murmur with a note of melancholy in it proper to the vast
+unvisited solitudes it has come from.  It was very delicious and solacing
+to wake in the night and find it still pulsing there.  I wish you were
+here--land, but it would be fine!
+
+Livy and Clara enjoy this nomadic life pretty well; certainly better than
+one could have expected they would.  They have tough experiences, in the
+way of food and beds and frantic little ships, but they put up with the
+worst that befalls with heroic endurance that resembles contentment.
+
+No doubt I shall be on the platform next Monday.  A week later we shall
+reach Wellington; talk there 3 nights, then sail back to Australia.  We
+sailed for New Zealand October 30.
+
+Day before yesterday was Livy's birthday (under world time), and tomorrow
+will be mine.  I shall be 60--no thanks for it.
+
+I and the others send worlds and worlds of love to all you dear ones.
+
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The article mentioned in the foregoing letter was one which Twichell
+     had been engaged by Harper's Magazine to write concerning the home
+     life and characteristics of Mark Twain.  By the time the Clemens
+     party had completed their tour of India--a splendid, triumphant
+     tour, too full of work and recreation for letter-writing--and had
+     reached South Africa, the article had appeared, a satisfactory one,
+     if we may judge by Mark Twain's next.
+
+     This letter, however, has a special interest in the account it gives
+     of Mark Twain's visit to the Jameson raiders, then imprisoned at
+     Pretoria.
+
+
+                  To Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC,
+                                        The Queen's Birthday, '96.
+                                                       (May 24)
+DEAR OLD JOE,--Harper for May was given to me yesterday in Johannesburg
+by an American lady who lives there, and I read your article on me while
+coming up in the train with her and an old friend and fellow-Missourian
+of mine, Mrs. John Hays Hammond, the handsome and spirited wife of the
+chief of the 4 Reformers, who lies in prison here under a 15-year
+sentence, along with 50 minor Reformers who are in for 1 and 5-year
+terms.  Thank you a thousand times Joe, you have praised me away above my
+deserts, but I am not the man to quarrel with you for that; and as for
+Livy, she will take your very hardiest statements at par, and be grateful
+to you to the bottom of her heart.  Between you and Punch and Brander
+Matthews, I am like to have my opinion of myself raised sufficiently
+high; and I guess the children will be after you, for it is the study of
+their lives to keep my self-appreciation down somewhere within bounds.
+
+I had a note from Mrs. Rev. Gray (nee Tyler) yesterday, and called on her
+to-day.  She is well.
+
+Yesterday I was allowed to enter the prison with Mrs. Hammond.  A Boer
+guard was at my elbow all the time, but was courteous and polite, only
+he barred the way in the compound (quadrangle or big open court) and
+wouldn't let me cross a white mark that was on the ground--the "death-
+line" one of the prisoners called it.  Not in earnest, though, I think.
+I found that I had met Hammond once when he was a Yale senior and a guest
+of Gen. Franklin's.  I also found that I had known Capt. Mein intimately
+32 years ago.  One of the English prisoners had heard me lecture in
+London 23 years ago.  After being introduced in turn to all the
+prisoners, I was allowed to see some of the cells and examine their food,
+beds, etc.  I was told in Johannesburg that Hammond's salary of $150,000
+a year is not stopped, and that the salaries of some of the others are
+still continued.  Hammond was looking very well indeed, and I can say the
+same of all the others.  When the trouble first fell upon them it hit
+some of them very hard; several fell sick (Hammond among them), two or
+three had to be removed to the hospital, and one of the favorites lost
+his mind and killed himself, poor fellow, last week.  His funeral, with a
+sorrowing following of 10,000, took the place of the public demonstration
+the Americans were getting up for me.
+
+These prisoners are strong men, prominent men, and I believe they are all
+educated men.  They are well off; some of them are wealthy.  They have a
+lot of books to read, they play games and smoke, and for awhile they will
+be able to bear up in their captivity; but not for long, not for very
+long, I take it.  I am told they have times of deadly brooding and
+depression.  I made them a speech--sitting down.  It just happened so.
+I don't prefer that attitude.  Still, it has one advantage--it is only a
+talk, it doesn't take the form of a speech.  I have tried it once before
+on this trip.  However, if a body wants to make sure of having "liberty,"
+and feeling at home, he had better stand up, of course.  I advised them
+at considerable length to stay where they were--they would get used to it
+and like it presently; if they got out they would only get in again
+somewhere else, by the look of their countenances; and I promised to go
+and see the President and do what I could to get him to double their
+jail-terms.
+
+We had a very good sociable time till the permitted time was up and a
+little over, and we outsiders had to go.  I went again to-day, but the
+Rev. Mr. Gray had just arrived, and the warden, a genial, elderly Boer
+named Du Plessis--explained that his orders wouldn't allow him to admit
+saint and sinner at the same time, particularly on a Sunday.  Du Plessis
+--descended from the Huguenot fugitives, you see, of 200 years ago--
+but he hasn't any French left in him now--all Dutch.
+
+It gravels me to think what a goose I was to make Livy and Clara remain
+in Durban; but I wanted to save them the 30-hour railway trip to
+Johannesburg.  And Durban and its climate and opulent foliage were so
+lovely, and the friends there were so choice and so hearty that I
+sacrificed myself in their interests, as I thought.  It is just the
+beginning of winter, and although the days are hot, the nights are cool.
+But it's lovely weather in these regions, too; and the friends are as
+lovely as the weather, and Johannesburg and Pretoria are brimming with
+interest.  I talk here twice more, then return to Johannesburg next
+Wednesday for a fifth talk there; then to the Orange Free State capital,
+then to some town on the way to Port Elizabeth, where the two will join
+us by sea from Durban; then the gang will go to Kimberley and presently
+to the Cape--and so, in the course of time, we shall get through and sail
+for England; and then we will hunt up a quiet village and I will write
+and Livy edit, for a few months, while Clara and Susy and Jean study
+music and things in London.
+
+We have had noble good times everywhere and every day, from Cleveland,
+July 15, to Pretoria, May 24, and never a dull day either on sea or land,
+notwithstanding the carbuncles and things.  Even when I was laid up 10
+days at Jeypore in India we had the charmingest times with English
+friends.  All over India the English well, you will never know how good
+and fine they are till you see them.
+
+Midnight and after! and I must do many things to-day, and lecture
+tonight.
+
+A world of thanks to you, Joe dear, and a world of love to all of you.
+
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Perhaps for readers of a later day a word as to what constituted the
+     Jameson raid would not be out of place here.  Dr. Leander Starr
+     Jameson was an English physician, located at Kimberley.  President
+     Kruger (Oom Paul), head of the South African Republic, was one of
+     his patients; also, Lobengula, the Matabele chief.  From Lobengula
+     concessions were obtained which led to the formation of the South
+     African Company.  Jameson gave up his profession and went in for
+     conquest, associating himself with the projects of Cecil Rhodes.
+     In time he became administrator of Rhodesia.  By the end of 1894.
+     he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as
+     a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time.  Perhaps this turned
+     his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news
+     that "Dr. Jim," as he was called, at the head of six hundred men,
+     had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an
+     uprising at Johannesburg.  The raid was a failure.  Jameson, and
+     those other knights of adventure, were captured by the forces of
+     "Oom Paul," and some of them barely escaped execution.  The Boer
+     president handed them over to the English Government for punishment,
+     and they received varying sentences, but all were eventually
+     released.  Jameson, later, became again prominent in South-African
+     politics, but there is no record of any further raids.
+
+                        .........................
+
+     The Clemens party sailed from South Africa the middle of July, 1896,
+     and on the last day of the month reached England.  They had not
+     planned to return to America, but to spend the winter in or near
+     London in some quiet place where Clemens could write the book of his
+     travels.
+
+     The two daughters in America, Susy and Jean, were expected to arrive
+     August 12th, but on that day there came, instead, a letter saying
+     that Susy Clemens was not well enough to sail.  A cable inquiry was
+     immediately sent, but the reply when it came was not satisfactory,
+     and Mrs. Clemens and Clara sailed for America without further delay.
+     This was on August 15th.  Three days later, in the old home at
+     Hartford, Susy Clemens died of cerebral fever.  She had been
+     visiting Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner, but by the physician's advice
+     had been removed to the comfort and quiet of her own home, only a
+     few steps away.
+
+     Mark Twain, returning from his triumphant tour of the world in the
+     hope that soon, now, he might be free from debt, with his family
+     happily gathered about him, had to face alone this cruel blow.
+     There was no purpose in his going to America; Susy would be buried
+     long before his arrival.  He awaited in England the return of his
+     broken family.  They lived that winter in a quiet corner of Chelsea,
+     No. 23 Tedworth Square.
+
+
+             To Rev. Joseph H.  Twichell, in Hartford, Conn.:
+
+                                        Permanent address:
+                                        % CHATTO & WINDUS
+                                        111 T.  MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON,
+                                                       Sept.  27, '96.
+Through Livy and Katy I have learned, dear old Joe, how loyally you stood
+poor Susy's friend, and mine, and Livy's: how you came all the way down,
+twice, from your summer refuge on your merciful errands to bring the
+peace and comfort of your beloved presence, first to that poor child, and
+again to the broken heart of her poor desolate mother.  It was like you;
+like your good great heart, like your matchless and unmatchable self.
+It was no surprise to me to learn that you stayed by Susy long hours,
+careless of fatigue and heat, it was no surprise to me to learn that you
+could still the storms that swept her spirit when no other could; for she
+loved you, revered you, trusted you, and "Uncle Joe" was no empty phrase
+upon her lips!  I am grateful to you, Joe, grateful to the bottom of my
+heart, which has always been filled with love for you, and respect and
+admiration; and I would have chosen you out of all the world to take my
+place at Susy's side and Livy's in those black hours.
+
+Susy was a rare creature; the rarest that has been reared in Hartford in
+this generation.  And Livy knew it, and you knew it, and Charley Warner
+and George, and Harmony, and the Hillyers and the Dunhams and the
+Cheneys, and Susy and Lilly, and the Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick
+Burton, and perhaps others.  And I also was of the number, but not in the
+same degree--for she was above my duller comprehension.  I merely knew
+that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and
+subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent.
+I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded
+the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine
+than I knew it when I had it.  But I have this consolation: that dull as
+I was, I always knew enough to be proud when she commended me or my work
+--as proud as if Livy had done it herself--and I took it as the accolade
+from the hand of genius.  I see now--as Livy always saw--that she had
+greatness in her; and that she herself was dimly conscious of it.
+
+And now she is dead--and I can never tell her.
+
+God bless you Joe--and all of your house.
+                                             S. L. C.
+
+
+               To Mr. Henry C.  Robinson, Hartford, Conn.:
+
+                                             LONDON, Sept.  28, '96.
+It is as you say, dear old friend, "the pathos of it" yes, it was a
+piteous thing--as piteous a tragedy as any the year can furnish.  When we
+started westward upon our long trip at half past ten at night, July 14,
+1895, at Elmira, Susy stood on the platform in the blaze of the electric
+light waving her good-byes to us as the train glided away, her mother
+throwing back kisses and watching her through her tears.  One year, one
+month, and one week later, Clara and her mother having exactly completed
+the circuit of the globe, drew up at that platform at the same hour of
+the night, in the same train and the same car--and again Susy had come a
+journey and was near at hand to meet them.  She was waiting in the house
+she was born in, in her coffin.
+
+All the circumstances of this death were pathetic--my brain is worn to
+rags rehearsing them.  The mere death would have been cruelty enough,
+without overloading it and emphasizing it with that score of harsh and
+wanton details.  The child was taken away when her mother was within
+three days of her, and would have given three decades for sight of her.
+
+In my despair and unassuageable misery I upbraid myself for ever parting
+with her.  But there is no use in that.  Since it was to happen it would
+have happened.
+                         With love
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+     The life at Tedworth Square that winter was one of almost complete
+     privacy.  Of the hundreds of friends which Mark Twain had in London
+     scarcely half a dozen knew his address.  He worked steadily on his
+     book of travels, 'Following the Equator', and wrote few letters
+     beyond business communications to Mr. Rogers.  In one of these he
+     said, "I am appalled!  Here I am trying to load you up with work
+     again after you have been dray-horsing over the same tiresome ground
+     for a year.  It's too bad, and I am ashamed of it."
+
+     But late in November he sent a letter of a different sort--one that
+     was to have an important bearing on the life of a girl today of
+     unique and world-wide distinction.
+
+
+                To Mrs. H.  H.  Rogers, in New York City:
+
+For and in behalf of Helen Keller,
+stone blind and deaf, and formerly dumb.
+
+DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--Experience has convinced me that when one wishes to
+set a hard-worked man at something which he mightn't prefer to be
+bothered with, it is best to move upon him behind his wife.  If she can't
+convince him it isn't worth while for other people to try.
+
+Mr. Rogers will remember our visit with that astonishing girl at Lawrence
+Hutton's house when she was fourteen years old.  Last July, in Boston,
+when she was 16 she underwent the Harvard examination for admission to
+Radcliffe College.  She passed without a single condition.  She was
+allowed the same amount of time that is granted to other applicants, and
+this was shortened in her case by the fact that the question papers had
+to be read to her.  Yet she scored an average of 90 as against an average
+of 78 on the part of the other applicants.
+
+It won't do for America to allow this marvelous child to retire from her
+studies because of poverty.  If she can go on with them she will make a
+fame that will endure in history for centuries.  Along her special lines
+she is the most extraordinary product of all the ages.
+
+There is danger that she must retire from the struggle for a College
+degree for lack of support for herself and for Miss Sullivan, (the
+teacher who has been with her from the start--Mr. Rogers will remember
+her.)  Mrs. Hutton writes to ask me to interest rich Englishmen in her
+case, and I would gladly try, but my secluded life will not permit it.
+I see nobody.  Nobody knows my address.  Nothing but the strictest hiding
+can enable me to write my long book in time.
+
+So I thought of this scheme: Beg you to lay siege to your husband and get
+him to interest himself and Mess. John D. and William Rockefeller and the
+other Standard Oil chiefs in Helen's case; get them to subscribe an
+annual aggregate of six or seven hundred or a thousand dollars--and agree
+to continue this for three or four years, until she has completed her
+college course.  I'm not trying to limit their generosity--indeed no,
+they may pile that Standard Oil, Helen Keller College Fund as high as
+they please, they have my consent.
+
+Mrs. Hutton's idea is to raise a permanent fund the interest upon which
+shall support Helen and her teacher and put them out of the fear of want.
+I shan't say a word against it, but she will find it a difficult and
+disheartening job, and meanwhile what is to become of that miraculous
+girl?
+
+No, for immediate and sound effectiveness, the thing is for you to plead
+with Mr. Rogers for this hampered wonder of your sex, and send him
+clothed with plenary powers to plead with the other chiefs--they have
+spent mountains of money upon the worthiest benevolences, and I think
+that the same spirit which moved them to put their hands down through
+their hearts into their pockets in those cases will answer "Here!" when
+its name is called in this one.  638
+
+There--I don't need to apologize to you or to H. H. for this appeal that
+I am making; I know you too well for that.
+
+Good-bye with love to all of you
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+Laurence Hutton is on the staff of Harper's Monthly--close by, and handy
+when wanted.
+
+
+     The plea was not made in vain.  Mr. and Mrs. Rogers interested
+     themselves most liberally in Helen Keller's fortune, and certainly
+     no one can say that any of those who contributed to her success ever
+     had reason for disappointment.
+
+     In his letter of grateful acknowledgment, which follows, Clemens
+     also takes occasion to thank Mr. Rogers for his further efforts in
+     the matter of his own difficulties.  This particular reference
+     concerns the publishing, complications which by this time had arisen
+     between the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, and the house
+     in Franklin Square.
+
+
+                                             LONDON, Dec.  22, '96.
+DEAR MRS. ROGERS,--It is superb!  And I am beyond measure grateful to you
+both.  I knew you would be interested in that wonderful girl, and that
+Mr. Rogers was already interested in her and touched by her; and I was
+sure that if nobody else helped her you two would; but you have gone far
+and away beyond the sum I expected--may your lines fall in pleasant
+places here and Hereafter for it!
+
+The Huttons are as glad and grateful as they can be, and I am glad for
+their sakes as well as for Helen's.
+
+I want to thank Mr. Rogers for crucifying himself again on the same old
+cross between Bliss and Harper; and goodness knows I hope he will come to
+enjoy it above all other dissipations yet, seeing that it has about it
+the elements of stability and permanency.  However, at any time that he
+says sign, we're going to do it.
+                         Ever sincerely Yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+LETTERS 1897.  LONDON, SWITZERLAND, VIENNA
+
+Mark Twain worked steadily on his book that sad winter and managed to
+keep the gloom out of his chapters, though it is noticeable that
+'Following the Equator' is more serious than his other books of travel.
+He wrote few letters, and these only to his three closest friends,
+Howells, Twichell, and Rogers.  In the letter to Twichell, which follows,
+there is mention of two unfinished manuscripts which he expects to
+resume.  One of these was a dream story, enthusiastically begun, but
+perhaps with insufficient plot to carry it through, for it never reached
+conclusion.  He had already tried it in one or two forms and would begin
+it again presently.  The identity of the other tale is uncertain.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 19, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Do I want you to write to me?  Indeed I do.  I do not want
+most people to write, but I do want you to do it.  The others break my
+heart, but you will not.  You have a something divine in you that is not
+in other men.  You have the touch that heals, not lacerates.  And you
+know the secret places of our hearts.  You know our life--the outside of
+it--as the others do--and the inside of it--which they do not.  You have
+seen our whole voyage.  You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail--and
+the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift--derelicts;
+battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone.  For it
+is gone.  And there is nothing in its place.  The vanity of life was all
+we had, and there is no more vanity left in us.  We are even ashamed of
+that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded
+high--to come to this!
+
+I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go
+away; I did not know that she could go away, and take our lives with her,
+yet leave our dull bodies behind.  And I did not know what she was.  To
+me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look
+at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary;
+and now that I would do it, it is too late; they tell me it is not there,
+has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I
+am a pauper.  How am I to comprehend this?  How am I to have it?  Why am
+I robbed, and who is benefited?
+
+Ah, well, Susy died at home.  She had that privilege.  Her dying eyes
+rested upon nothing that was strange to them, but only upon things which
+they had known and loved always and which had made her young years glad;
+and she had you, and Sue, and Katy, and John, and Ellen.  This was happy
+fortune--I am thankful that it was vouchsafed to her.  If she had died in
+another house-well, I think I could not have borne that.  To us, our
+house was not unsentient matter--it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to
+see us with; and approvals, and solicitudes, and deep sympathies; it was
+of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the
+peace of its benediction.  We never came home from an absence that its
+face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome--and we could
+not enter it unmoved.  And could we now, oh, now, in spirit we should
+enter it unshod.
+
+I am trying to add to the "assets" which you estimate so generously.
+No, I am not.  The thought is not in my mind.  My purpose is other.  I am
+working, but it is for the sake of the work--the "surcease of sorrow"
+that is found there.  I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when
+I use that magic.  This book will not long stand between it and me, now;
+but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my
+preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the
+beginning of the next will not be more than an hour, at most.
+Continuances, I mean; for two of them are already well along--in fact
+have reached exactly the same stage in their journey: 19,000 words each.
+The present one will contain 180,000 words--130,000 are done.  I am well
+protected; but Livy!  She has nothing in the world to turn to; nothing
+but housekeeping, and doing things for the children and me.  She does not
+see people, and cannot; books have lost their interest for her.  She sits
+solitary; and all the day, and all the days, wonders how it all happened,
+and why.  We others were always busy with our affairs, but Susy was her
+comrade--had to be driven from her loving persecutions--sometimes at 1 in
+the morning.  To Livy the persecutions were welcome.  It was heaven to
+her to be plagued like that.  But it is ended now.  Livy stands so in
+need of help; and none among us all could help her like you.
+
+Some day you and I will walk again, Joe, and talk.  I hope so.  We could
+have such talks!  We are all grateful to you and Harmony--how grateful it
+is not given to us to say in words.  We pay as we can, in love; and in
+this coin practicing no economy.
+                         Good bye, dear old Joe!
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     The letters to Mr. Rogers were, for the most part, on matters of
+     business, but in one of them he said: "I am going to write with all
+     my might on this book, and follow it up with others as fast as I can
+     in the hope that within three years I can clear out the stuff that
+     is in me waiting to be written, and that I shall then die in the
+     promptest kind of a way and no fooling around."  And in one he
+     wrote: "You are the best friend ever a man had, and the surest."
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York
+
+                                                  LONDON, Feb. 23, '97.
+DEAR HOWELLS,-I find your generous article in the Weekly, and I want to
+thank you for its splendid praises, so daringly uttered and so warmly.
+The words stir the dead heart of me, and throw a glow of color into a
+life which sometimes seems to have grown wholly wan.  I don't mean that I
+am miserable; no--worse than that--indifferent.  Indifferent to nearly
+everything but work.  I like that; I enjoy it, and stick to it.  I do it
+without purpose and without ambition; merely for the love of it.
+
+This mood will pass, some day--there is history for it.  But it cannot
+pass until my wife comes up out of the submergence.  She was always so
+quick to recover herself before, but now there is no rebound, and we are
+dead people who go through the motions of life.  Indeed I am a mud image,
+and it will puzzle me to know what it is in me that writes, and has
+comedy-fancies and finds pleasure in phrasing them.  It is a law of our
+nature, of course, or it wouldn't happen; the thing in me forgets the
+presence of the mud image and goes its own way, wholly unconscious of it
+and apparently of no kinship with it.  I have finished my book, but I go
+on as if the end were indefinitely away--as indeed it is.  There is no
+hurry--at any rate there is no limit.
+
+Jean's spirits are good; Clara's are rising.  They have youth--the only
+thing that was worth giving to the race.
+
+These are sardonic times.  Look at Greece, and that whole shabby muddle.
+But I am not sorry to be alive and privileged to look on.  If I were not
+a hermit I would go to the House every day and see those people scuffle
+over it and blether about the brotherhood of the human race.  This has
+been a bitter year for English pride, and I don't like to see England
+humbled--that is, not too much.  We are sprung from her loins, and it
+hurts me.  I am for republics, and she is the only comrade we've got, in
+that.  We can't count France, and there is hardly enough of Switzerland
+to count.  Beneath the governing crust England is sound-hearted--and
+sincere, too, and nearly straight.  But I am appalled to notice that the
+wide extension of the surface has damaged her manners, and made her
+rather Americanly uncourteous on the lower levels.
+
+Won't you give our love to the Howellses all and particular?
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     The travel-book did not finish easily, and more than once when he
+     thought it completed he found it necessary to cut and add and
+     change.  The final chapters were not sent to the printer until the
+     middle of May, and in a letter to Mr. Rogers he commented: "A
+     successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out
+     of it."  Clemens was at the time contemplating a uniform edition of
+     his books, and in one of his letters to Mr. Rogers on the matter he
+     wrote, whimsically, "Now I was proposing to make a thousand sets at
+     a hundred dollars a set, and do the whole canvassing myself.....  I
+     would load up every important jail and saloon in America with de
+     luxe editions of my books.  But Mrs. Clemens and the children object
+     to this, I do not know why."  And, in a moment of depression: "You
+     see the lightning refuses to strike me--there is where the defect
+     is.  We have to do our own striking as Barney Barnato did.  But
+     nobody ever gets the courage until he goes crazy."
+
+     They went to Switzerland for the summer to the village of Weggis, on
+     Lake Lucerne--"The charmingest place we ever lived in," he declared,
+     "for repose, and restfulness, and superb scenery."  It was here that
+     he began work on a new story of Tom and Huck, and at least upon one
+     other manuscript.  From a brief note to Mr. Rogers we learn
+     something of his employments and economies.
+
+
+                    To Henry H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+                         LUCERNE, August the something or other, 1897.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I am writing a novel, and am getting along very well
+with it.
+
+I believe that this place (Weggis, half an hour from Lucerne,) is the
+loveliest in the world, and the most satisfactory.  We have a small house
+on the hillside all to ourselves, and our meals are served in it from the
+inn below on the lake shore.  Six francs a day per head, house and food
+included.  The scenery is beyond comparison beautiful.  We have a row
+boat and some bicycles, and good roads, and no visitors.  Nobody knows we
+are here.  And Sunday in heaven is noisy compared to this quietness.
+                         Sincerely yours
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  LUCERNE, Aug. 22, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Livy made a noble find on the Lucerne boat the other day on
+one of her shopping trips--George Williamson Smith--did I tell you about
+it?  We had a lovely time with him, and such intellectual refreshment as
+we had not tasted in many a month.
+
+And the other night we had a detachment of the jubilee Singers--6.  I had
+known one of them in London 24 years ago.  Three of the 6 were born in
+slavery, the others were children of slaves.  How charming they were--in
+spirit, manner, language, pronunciation, enunciation, grammar, phrasing,
+matter, carriage, clothes--in every detail that goes to make the real
+lady and gentleman, and welcome guest.  We went down to the village hotel
+and bought our tickets and entered the beer-hall, where a crowd of German
+and Swiss men and women sat grouped at round tables with their beer mugs
+in front of them--self-contained and unimpressionable looking people, an
+indifferent and unposted and disheartened audience--and up at the far end
+of the room sat the Jubilees in a row.  The Singers got up and stood--the
+talking and glass jingling went on.  Then rose and swelled out above
+those common earthly sounds one of those rich chords the secret of whose
+make only the Jubilees possess, and a spell fell upon that house.  It was
+fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder and surprise of
+it.  No one was indifferent any more; and when the singers finished, the
+camp was theirs.  It was a triumph.  It reminded me of Launcelot riding
+in Sir Kay's armor and astonishing complacent Knights who thought they
+had struck a soft thing.  The Jubilees sang a lot of pieces.  Arduous and
+painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music,
+but on the contrary--to my surprise--has mightily reinforced its
+eloquence and beauty.  Away back in the beginning--to my mind--their
+music made all other vocal music cheap; and that early notion is
+emphasized now.  It is utterly beautiful, to me; and it moves me
+infinitely more than any other music can.  I think that in the Jubilees
+and their songs America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages;
+and I wish it were a foreign product, so that she would worship it and
+lavish money on it and go properly crazy over it.
+
+Now, these countries are different: they would do all that, if it were
+native.  It is true they praise God, but that is merely a formality, and
+nothing in it; they open out their whole hearts to no foreigner.
+
+The musical critics of the German press praise the Jubilees with great
+enthusiasm--acquired technique etc, included.
+
+One of the jubilee men is a son of General Joe Johnson, and was educated
+by him after the war.  The party came up to the house and we had a
+pleasant time.
+
+This is paradise, here--but of course we have got to leave it by and by.
+The 18th of August--[Anniversary of Susy Clemens's death.]--has come and
+gone, Joe--and we still seem to live.
+                         With love from us all.
+                                                  MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens declared he would as soon spend his life in Weggis "as
+     anywhere else in the geography," but October found them in Vienna
+     for the winter, at the Hotel Metropole.  The Austrian capital was
+     just then in a political turmoil, the character of which is hinted
+     in the following:
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 23, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--We are gradually getting settled down and wonted.  Vienna is
+not a cheap place to live in, but I have made one small arrangement
+which: has a distinctly economical aspect.  The Vice Consul made the
+contract for me yesterday-to-wit: a barber is to come every morning 8.30
+and shave me and keep my hair trimmed for $2.50 a month.  I used to pay
+$1.50 per shave in our house in Hartford.
+
+Does it suggest to you reflections when you reflect that this is the most
+important event which has happened to me in ten days--unless I count--in
+my handing a cabman over to the police day before yesterday, with the
+proper formalities, and promised to appear in court when his case comes
+up.
+
+If I had time to run around and talk, I would do it; for there is much
+politics agoing, and it would be interesting if a body could get the hang
+of it.  It is Christian and Jew by the horns--the advantage with the
+superior man, as usual--the superior man being the Jew every time and in
+all countries.  Land, Joe, what chance would the Christian have in a
+country where there were 3 Jews to 10 Christians!  Oh, not the shade of a
+shadow of a chance.  The difference between the brain of the average
+Christian and that of the average Jew--certainly in Europe--is about the
+difference between a tadpole's and an Archbishop's.  It's a marvelous,
+race--by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I
+suppose.
+
+And there's more politics--the clash between Czech and Austrian.  I wish
+I could understand these quarrels, but of course I can't.
+
+With the abounding love of us all
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     In Following the Equator there was used an amusing picture showing
+     Mark Twain on his trip around the world.  It was a trick photograph
+     made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out
+     and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an
+     ox.  In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of
+     the disreputable cart.  His companions are two negroes.  To the
+     creator of this ingenious effect Mark Twain sent a characteristic
+     acknowledgment.
+
+
+                             To T. S. Frisbie
+
+                                                  VIENNA, Oct. 25, '97.
+MR. T. S. FRISBIE,--Dear Sir:  The picture has reached me, and has moved
+me deeply.  That was a steady, sympathetic and honorable team, and
+although it was not swift, and not showy, it pulled me around the globe
+successfully, and always attracted its proper share of attention, even in
+the midst of the most costly and fashionable turnouts.  Princes and dukes
+and other experts were always enthused by the harness and could hardly
+keep from trying to buy it.  The barouche does not look as fine, now, as
+it did earlier-but that was before the earthquake.
+
+The portraits of myself and uncle and nephew are very good indeed, and
+your impressionist reproduction of the palace of the Governor General of
+India is accurate and full of tender feeling.
+
+I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art.  How much
+more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.
+
+                    Very truly yours
+                                   MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     Following the Equator was issued by subscription through Mark
+     Twain's old publishers, the Blisses, of Hartford.  The sale of it
+     was large, not only on account of the value of the book itself, but
+     also because of the sympathy of the American people with Mark
+     Twain's brave struggle to pay his debts.  When the newspapers began
+     to print exaggerated stories of the vast profits that were piling
+     up, Bliss became worried, for he thought it would modify the
+     sympathy.  He cabled Clemens for a denial, with the following
+     result:
+
+
+                     To Frank E.  Bliss, in Hartford:
+
+                                             VIENNA, Nov. 4, 1897.
+DEAR BLISS,--Your cablegram informing me that a report is in circulation
+which purports to come from me and which says I have recently made
+$82,000 and paid all my debts has just reached me, and I have cabled
+back my regret to you that it is not true.  I wrote a letter--a private
+letter--a short time ago, in which I expressed the belief that I should
+be out of debt within the next twelvemonth.  If you make as much as usual
+for me out of the book, that belief will crystallize into a fact, and I
+shall be wholly out of debt.  I am encoring you now.
+
+It is out of that moderate letter that the Eighty-Two Thousand-Dollar
+mare's nest has developed.  But why do you worry about the various
+reports?  They do not worry me.  They are not unfriendly, and I don't see
+how they can do any harm.  Be patient; you have but a little while to
+wait; the possible reports are nearly all in.  It has been reported that
+I was seriously ill--it was another man; dying--it was another man; dead
+--the other man again.  It has been reported that I have received a
+legacy it was another man; that I am out of debt--it was another man; and
+now comes this $82,000--still another man.  It has been reported that I
+am writing books--for publication; I am not doing anything of the kind.
+It would surprise (and gratify) me if I should be able to get another
+book ready for the press within the next three years.  You can see,
+yourself, that there isn't anything more to be reported--invention is
+exhausted.  Therefore, don't worry, Bliss--the long night is breaking.
+As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported, except that I have
+become a foreigner.  When you hear it, don't you believe it.  And don't
+take the trouble to deny it.  Merely just raise the American flag on our
+house in Hartford, and let it talk.
+                                   Truly yours,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+P. S.  This is not a private letter.  I am getting tired of private
+letters.
+
+
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             VIENNA
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE, NOV. 19, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Above is our private (and permanent) address for the winter.
+You needn't send letters by London.
+
+I am very much obliged for Forrest's Austro-Hungarian articles.  I have
+just finished reading the first one: and in it I find that his opinion
+and Vienna's are the same, upon a point which was puzzling me--the
+paucity (no, the absence) of Austrian Celebrities.  He and Vienna both
+say the country cannot afford to allow great names to grow up; that the
+whole safety and prosperity of the Empire depends upon keeping things
+quiet; can't afford to have geniuses springing up and developing ideas
+and stirring the public soul.  I am assured that every time a man finds
+himself blooming into fame, they just softly snake him down and relegate
+him to a wholesome obscurity.  It is curious and interesting.
+
+Three days ago the New York World sent and asked a friend of mine
+(correspondent of a London daily) to get some Christmas greetings from
+the celebrities of the Empire.  She spoke of this.  Two or three bright
+Austrians were present.  They said "There are none who are known all over
+the world! none who have achieved fame; none who can point to their work
+and say it is known far and wide in the earth: there are no names;
+Kossuth (known because he had a father) and Lecher, who made the 12 hour
+speech; two names-nothing more.  Every other country in the world,
+perhaps, has a giant or two whose heads are away up and can be seen, but
+ours.  We've got the material--have always had it--but we have to
+suppress it; we can't afford to let it develop; our political salvation
+depends upon tranquillity--always has."
+
+Poor Livy!  She is laid up with rheumatism; but she is getting along now.
+We have a good doctor, and he says she will be out of bed in a couple of
+days, but must stay in the house a week or ten.
+
+Clara is working faithfully at her music, Jean at her usual studies, and
+we all send love.
+                              MARK.
+
+
+     Mention has already been made of the political excitement in Vienna.
+     The trouble between the Hungarian and German legislative bodies
+     presently became violent.  Clemens found himself intensely
+     interested, and was present in one of the galleries when it was
+     cleared by the police.  All sorts of stories were circulated as to
+     what happened to him, one of which was cabled to America.  A letter
+     to Twichell sets forth what really happened.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Dec. 10, '97.
+DEAR JOE,--Pond sends me a Cleveland paper with a cablegram from here in
+it which says that when the police invaded the parliament and expelled
+the 11 members I waved my handkerchief and shouted 'Hoch die Deutschen!'
+and got hustled out.  Oh dear, what a pity it is that one's adventures
+never happen!  When the Ordner (sergeant-at-arms) came up to our gallery
+and was hurrying the people out, a friend tried to get leave for me to
+stay, by saying, "But this gentleman is a foreigner--you don't need to
+turn him out--he won't do any harm."
+
+"Oh, I know him very well--I recognize him by his pictures; and I should
+be very glad to let him stay, but I haven't any choice, because of the
+strictness of the orders."
+
+And so we all went out, and no one was hustled.  Below, I ran across the
+London Times correspondent, and he showed me the way into the first
+gallery and I lost none of the show.  The first gallery had not
+misbehaved, and was not disturbed.
+
+.  .  .  We cannot persuade Livy to go out in society yet, but all the
+lovely people come to see her; and Clara and I go to dinner parties, and
+around here and there, and we all have a most hospitable good time.
+Jean's woodcarving flourishes, and her other studies.
+
+Good-bye Joe--and we all love all of you.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Clemens made an article of the Austrian troubles, one of the best
+     things he ever wrote, and certainly one of the clearest elucidations
+     of the Austro-Hungarian confusions.  It was published in Harper's
+     Magazine, and is now included in his complete works.
+
+     Thus far none of the Webster Company debts had been paid--at least,
+     none of importance.  The money had been accumulating in Mr. Rogers's
+     hands, but Clemens was beginning to be depressed by the heavy
+     burden.  He wrote asking for relief.
+
+
+              Part of a letter to H. H. Rogers, in New York:
+
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--I throw up the sponge.  I pull down the flag.  Let us
+begin on the debts.  I cannot bear the weight any longer.  It totally
+unfits me for work.  I have lost three entire months now.  In that time I
+have begun twenty magazine articles and books--and flung every one of
+them aside in turn.  The debts interfered every time, and took the spirit
+out of any work.  And yet I have worked like a bond slave and wasted no
+time and spared no effort----
+
+Rogers wrote, proposing a plan for beginning immediately upon the debts.
+Clemens replied enthusiastically, and during the next few weeks wrote
+every few days, expressing his delight in liquidation.
+
+
+          Extracts from letters to H.  H.  Rogers, in New York:
+
+.  .  .  We all delighted with your plan.  Only don't leave B--out.
+Apparently that claim has been inherited by some women--daughters, no
+doubt.  We don't want to see them lose any thing.  B----- is an ass, and
+disgruntled, but I don't care for that.  I am responsible for the money
+and must do the best I can to pay it.....  I am writing hard--writing for
+the creditors.
+
+
+                                                            Dec.  29.
+Land we are glad to see those debts diminishing.  For the first time in
+my life I am getting more pleasure out of paying money out than pulling
+it in.
+
+
+                                                            Jan.  2.
+Since we have begun to pay off the debts I have abundant peace of mind
+again--no sense of burden.  Work is become a pleasure again--it is not
+labor any longer.
+
+
+                                                            March 7.
+Mrs. Clemens has been reading the creditors' letters over and over again
+and thanks you deeply for sending them, and says it is the only really
+happy day she has had since Susy died.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+LETTERS, 1898, TO HOWELLS AND TWICHELL.  LIFE IN VIENNA.  PAYMENT OF THE
+DEBTS.  ASSASSINATION OF THE EMPRESS
+
+The end of January saw the payment of the last of Mark Twain's debts.
+Once more he stood free before the world--a world that sounded his
+praises.  The latter fact rather amused him.  "Honest men must be pretty
+scarce," he said, "when they make so much fuss over even a defective
+specimen."  When the end was in sight Clemens wrote the news to Howells
+in a letter as full of sadness as of triumph.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                        HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                             VIENNA, Jan. 22, '98.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Look at those ghastly figures.  I used to write it
+"Hartford, 1871."  There was no Susy then--there is no Susy now.  And how
+much lies between--one long lovely stretch of scented fields, and
+meadows, and shady woodlands, and suddenly Sahara!  You speak of the
+glorious days of that old time--and they were.  It is my quarrel--that
+traps like that are set.  Susy and Winnie given us, in miserable sport,
+and then taken away.
+
+About the last time I saw you I described to you the culminating disaster
+in a book I was going to write (and will yet, when the stroke is further
+away)--a man's dead daughter brought to him when he had been through all
+other possible misfortunes--and I said it couldn't be done as it ought to
+be done except by a man who had lived it--it must be written with the
+blood out of a man's heart.  I couldn't know, then, how soon I was to be
+made competent.  I have thought of it many a time since.  If you were
+here I think we could cry down each other's necks, as in your dream.
+For we are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our
+passengers gone and the sunniness of the others in eclipse.
+
+I couldn't get along without work now.  I bury myself in it up to the
+ears.  Long hours--8 and 9 on a stretch, sometimes.  And all the days,
+Sundays included.  It isn't all for print, by any means, for much of it
+fails to suit me; 50,000 words of it in the past year.  It was because of
+the deadness which invaded me when Susy died.  But I have made a change
+lately--into dramatic work--and I find it absorbingly entertaining.
+I don't know that I can write a play that will play: but no matter, I'll
+write half a dozen that won't, anyway.  Dear me, I didn't know there was
+such fun in it.  I'll write twenty that won't play.  I get into immense
+spirits as soon as my day is fairly started.  Of course a good deal of
+this friskiness comes of my being in sight of land--on the Webster & Co.
+debts, I mean.  (Private.) We've lived close to the bone and saved every
+cent we could, and there's no undisputed claim, now, that we can't cash.
+I have marked this "private" because it is for the friends who are
+attending to the matter for us in New York to reveal it when they want to
+and if they want to.  There are only two claims which I dispute and which
+I mean to look into personally before I pay them.  But they are small.
+Both together they amount to only $12,500.  I hope you will never get the
+like of the load saddled onto you that was saddled onto me 3 years ago.
+And yet there is such a solid pleasure in paying the things that I reckon
+maybe it is worth while to get into that kind of a hobble, after all.
+Mrs. Clemens gets millions of delight out of it; and the children have
+never uttered one complaint about the scrimping, from the beginning.
+
+We all send you and all of you our love.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells wrote: "I wish you could understand how unshaken you are,
+     you old tower, in every way; your foundations are struck so deep
+     that you will catch the sunshine of immortal years, and bask in the
+     same light as Cervantes and Shakespeare."
+
+     The Clemens apartments at the Metropole became a sort of social
+     clearing-house of the Viennese art and literary life, much more like
+     an embassy than the home of a mere literary man.  Celebrities in
+     every walk of life, persons of social and official rank, writers for
+     the press, assembled there on terms hardly possible in any other
+     home in Vienna.  Wherever Mark Twain appeared in public he was a
+     central figure.  Now and then he read or spoke to aid some benefit,
+     and these were great gatherings attended by members of the royal
+     family.  It was following one such event that the next letter was
+     written.
+
+
+(Private)
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             HOTEL METROPOLE,
+                                                  VIENNA, Feb. 3, '98.
+DEAR JOE, There's that letter that I began so long ago--you see how
+it is: can't get time to finish anything.  I pile up lots of work,
+nevertheless.  There may be idle people in the world, but I'm not one of
+them.  I say "Private" up there because I've got an adventure to tell,
+and you mustn't let a breath of it get out.  First I thought I would lay
+it up along with a thousand others that I've laid up for the same
+purpose--to talk to you about, but--those others have vanished out of my
+memory; and that must not happen with this.
+
+The other night I lectured for a Vienna charity; and at the end of it
+Livy and I were introduced to a princess who is aunt to the heir apparent
+of the imperial throne--a beautiful lady, with a beautiful spirit, and
+very cordial in her praises of my books and thanks to me for writing
+them; and glad to meet me face to face and shake me by the hand--just the
+kind of princess that adorns a fairy tale and makes it the prettiest tale
+there is.
+
+Very well, we long ago found that when you are noticed by supremacies,
+the correct etiquette is to go, within a couple of days, and pay your
+respects in the quite simple form of writing your name in the Visitors'
+Book kept in the office of the establishment.  That is the end of it, and
+everything is squared up and ship-shape.
+
+So at noon today Livy and I drove to the Archducal palace, and got by the
+sentries all right, and asked the grandly-uniformed porter for the book
+and said we wished to write our names in it.  And he called a servant in
+livery and was sending us up stairs; and said her Royal Highness was out
+but would soon be in.  Of course Livy said "No--no--we only want the
+book;" but he was firm, and said, "You are Americans?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you are expected, please go up stairs."
+
+"But indeed we are not expected--please let us have the book and--"
+
+"Her Royal Highness will be back in a very little while--she commanded me
+to tell you so--and you must wait."
+
+Well, the soldiers were there close by--there was no use trying to
+resist--so we followed the servant up; but when he tried to beguile us
+into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in.  And she
+wouldn't stay up there, either.  She said the princess might come in at
+any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for
+anything.  So we went down stairs again--to my unspeakable regret.  For
+it was too darling a comedy to spoil.  I was hoping and praying the
+princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other
+Americans who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by
+the portier, and shot by the sentinels--and then it would all go into the
+papers, and be cabled all over the world, and make an immense stir and be
+perfectly lovely.  And by that time the princess would discover that we
+were not the right ones, and the Minister of War would be ordered out,
+and the garrison, and they would come for us, and there would be another
+prodigious time, and that would get cabled too, and--well, Joe, I was in
+a state of perfect bliss.  But happily, oh, so happily, that big portier
+wouldn't let us out--he was sorry, but he must obey orders--we must go
+back up stairs and wait.  Poor Livy--I couldn't help but enjoy her
+distress.  She said we were in a fix, and how were we going to explain,
+if the princess should arrive before the rightful Americans came?  We
+went up stairs again--laid off our wraps, and were conducted through one
+drawing room and into another, and left alone there and the door closed
+upon us.
+
+Livy was in a state of mind!  She said it was too theatrically
+ridiculous; and that I would never be able to keep my mouth shut; that I
+would be sure to let it out and it would get into the papers--and she
+tried to make me promise--"Promise what?" I said--"to be quiet about
+this?  Indeed I won't--it's the best thing that ever happened; I'll tell
+it, and add to it; and I wish Joe and Howells were here to make it
+perfect; I can't make all the rightful blunders myself--it takes all
+three of us to do justice to an opportunity like this.  I would just like
+to see Howells get down to his work and explain, and lie, and work his
+futile and inventionless subterfuges when that princess comes raging in
+here and wanting to know."  But Livy could not hear fun--it was not a
+time to be trying to be funny--we were in a most miserable and shameful
+situation, and if--
+
+Just then the door spread wide and our princess and 4 more, and 3 little
+princes flowed in!  Our princess, and her sister the Archduchess Marie
+Therese (mother to the imperial Heir and to the young girl Archduchesses
+present, and aunt to the 3 little princes)--and we shook hands all around
+and sat down and had a most sociable good time for half an hour--and by
+and by it turned out that we were the right ones, and had been sent for
+by a messenger who started too late to catch us at the hotel.  We were
+invited for 2 o'clock, but we beat that arrangement by an hour and a
+half.
+
+Wasn't it a rattling good comedy situation?  Seems a kind of pity we were
+the right ones.  It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come,
+and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody
+suspecting us for impostors.
+
+We send lots and lots of love.
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The reader who has followed these pages has seen how prone Mark
+     Twain was to fall a victim to the lure of a patent-right--how he
+     wasted several small fortunes on profitless contrivances, and one
+     large one on that insatiable demon of intricacy and despair, the
+     Paige type-setter.  It seems incredible that, after that experience
+     and its attending disaster, he should have been tempted again.  But
+     scarcely was the ink dry on the receipts from his creditors when he
+     was once more borne into the clouds on the prospect of millions,
+     perhaps even billions, to be made from a marvelous carpet-pattern
+     machine, the invention of Sczezepanik, an Austrian genius.  That
+     Clemens appreciated his own tendencies is shown by the parenthetic
+     line with which he opens his letter on the subject to Mr. Rogers.
+     Certainly no man was ever a more perfect prototype of Colonel
+     Sellers than the creator of that lovely, irrepressible visionary.
+
+
+                       To Mr. Rogers, in New York:
+
+                                                       March 24, '98.
+DEAR MR. ROGERS,--(I feel like Col. Sellers).
+
+Mr. Kleinberg [agent for Sczezepanik] came according to appointment, at
+8.30 last night, and brought his English-speaking Secretary.  I asked
+questions about the auxiliary invention (which I call "No. 2 ") and got
+as good an idea of it as I could.  It is a machine.  It automatically
+punches the holes in the jacquard cards, and does it with mathematical
+accuracy.  It will do for $1 what now costs $3.  So it has value, but
+"No. 2" is the great thing(the designing invention.) It saves $9 out of
+$10 and the jacquard looms must have it.
+
+Then I arrived at my new project, and said to him in substance, this:
+
+"You are on the point of selling the No. 2 patents to Belgium, Italy,
+etc.  I suggest that you stop those negotiations and put those people off
+two or three months.  They are anxious now, they will not be less anxious
+then--just the reverse; people always want a thing that is denied them.
+
+"So far as I know, no great world-patent has ever yet been placed in the
+grip of a single corporation.  This is a good time to begin.
+
+"We have to do a good deal of guess-work here, because we cannot get hold
+of just the statistics we want.  Still, we have some good statistics--and
+I will use those for a test.
+
+"You say that of the 1500 Austrian textile factories, 800 use the
+jacquard.  Then we will guess that of the 4,000 American factories 2,000
+use the jacquard and must have our No. 2.
+
+"You say that a middle-sized Austrian factory employs from 20 to 30
+designers and pays them from 800 to 3,000 odd florins a year--(a florin
+is 2 francs).  Let us call the average wage 1500 florins ($600).
+
+"Let us apply these figures (the low wages too) to the 2,000 American
+factories--with this difference, to guard against over-guessing; that
+instead of allowing for 20 to 30 designers to a middle-sized factory, we
+allow only an average of 10 to each of the 2,000 factories--a total of
+20,000 designers.  Wages at $600, a total of $12,000,000.  Let us
+consider that No. 2 will reduce this expense to $2,000,000 a year.  The
+saving is $5,000,000 per each of the $200,000,000 of capital employed in
+the jacquard business over there.
+
+"Let us consider that in the countries covered by this patent, an
+aggregate of $1,500,000,000 of capital is employed in factories requiring
+No. 2.
+
+"The saving (as above) is $75,000,000 a year.  The Company holding in its
+grip all these patents would collar $50,000,000 of that, as its share.
+Possibly more.
+
+"Competition would be at an end in the Jacquard business, on this planet.
+Price-cutting would end.  Fluctuations in values would cease.  The
+business would be the safest and surest in the world; commercial panics
+could not seriously affect it; its stock would be as choice an investment
+as Government bonds.  When the patents died the Company would be so
+powerful that it could still keep the whole business in its hands.  Would
+you like to grant me the privilege of placing the whole jacquard business
+of the world in the grip of a single Company?  And don't you think that
+the business would grow-grow like a weed?"
+
+"Ach, America--it is the country of the big!  Let me get my breath--then
+we will talk."
+
+So then we talked--talked till pretty late.  Would Germany and England
+join the combination?  I said the Company would know how to persuade
+them.
+
+Then I asked for a Supplementary Option, to cover the world, and we
+parted.
+
+I am taking all precautions to keep my name out of print in connection
+with this matter.  And we will now keep the invention itself out of print
+as well as we can.  Descriptions of it have been granted to the "Dry
+Goods Economist" (New York) and to a syndicate of American papers.  I
+have asked Mr. Kleinberg to suppress these, and he feels pretty sure he
+can do it.
+               With love,
+                              S. L. C.
+
+
+     If this splendid enthusiasm had not cooled by the time a reply came
+     from Mr. Rogers, it must have received a sudden chill from the
+     letter which he inclosed--the brief and concise report from a
+     carpet-machine expert, who said: "I do not feel that it would be of
+     any value to us in our mills, and the number of jacquard looms in
+     America is so limited that I am of the opinion that there is no
+     field for a company to develop the invention here.  A cursory
+     examination of the pamphlet leads me to place no very high value
+     upon the invention, from a practical standpoint."
+
+     With the receipt of this letter carpet-pattern projects would seem
+     to have suddenly ceased to be a factor in Mark Twain's calculations.
+     Such a letter in the early days of the type-machine would have saved
+     him a great sum in money and years of disappointment.  But perhaps
+     he would not have heeded it then.
+
+     The year 1898 brought the Spanish-American War.  Clemens was
+     constitutionally against all wars, but writing to Twichell, whose
+     son had enlisted, we gather that this one was an exception.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, NEAR VIENNA,
+                                                       June 17, '98.
+DEAR JOE,--You are living your war-days over again in Dave, and it must
+be a strong pleasure, mixed with a sauce of apprehension--enough to make
+it just schmeck, as the Germans say.  Dave will come out with two or
+three stars on his shoulder-straps if the war holds, and then we shall
+all be glad it happened.
+
+We started with Bull Run, before.  Dewey and Hobson have introduced an
+improvement on the game this time.
+
+I have never enjoyed a war-even in written history--as I am enjoying this
+one.  For this is the worthiest one that was ever fought, so far as my
+knowledge goes.  It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom; it is
+another sight finer to fight for another man's.  And I think this is the
+first time it has been done.
+
+Oh, never mind Charley Warner, he would interrupt the raising of Lazarus.
+He would say, the will has been probated, the property distributed, it
+will be a world of trouble to settle the rows--better leave well enough
+alone; don't ever disturb anything, where it's going to break the soft
+smooth flow of things and wobble our tranquillity.
+
+Company!  (Sh! it happens every day--and we came out here to be quiet.)
+
+Love to you all.
+                         MARK.
+
+
+     They were spending the summer at Kaltenleutgeben, a pleasant village
+     near Vienna, but apparently not entirely quiet.  Many friends came
+     out from Vienna, including a number of visiting Americans.  Clemens,
+     however, appears to have had considerable time for writing, as we
+     gather from the next to Howells.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, BEI WIEN,
+                                                       Aug. 16, '98.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Your letter came yesterday.  It then occurred to me that I
+might have known (per mental telegraph) that it was due; for a couple of
+weeks ago when the Weekly came containing that handsome reference to me I
+was powerfully moved to write you; and my letter went on writing itself
+while I was at work at my other literature during the day.  But next day
+my other literature was still urgent--and so on and so on; so my letter
+didn't get put into ink at all.  But I see now, that you were writing,
+about that time, therefore a part of my stir could have come across the
+Atlantic per mental telegraph.  In 1876 or '75 I wrote 40,000 words of a
+story called "Simon Wheeler" wherein the nub was the preventing of an
+execution through testimony furnished by mental telegraph from the other
+side of the globe.  I had a lot of people scattered about the globe who
+carried in their pockets something like the old mesmerizer-button, made
+of different metals, and when they wanted to call up each other and have
+a talk, they "pressed the button" or did something, I don't remember
+what, and communication was at once opened.  I didn't finish the story,
+though I re-began it in several new ways, and spent altogether 70,000
+words on it, then gave it up and threw it aside.
+
+This much as preliminary to this remark: some day people will be able to
+call each other up from any part of the world and talk by mental
+telegraph--and not merely by impression, the impression will be
+articulated into words.  It could be a terrible thing, but it won't be,
+because in the upper civilizations everything like sentimentality (I was
+going to say sentiment) will presently get materialized out of people
+along with the already fading spiritualities; and so when a man is called
+who doesn't wish to talk he will be like those visitors you mention: "not
+chosen"--and will be frankly damned and shut off.
+
+Speaking of the ill luck of starting a piece of literary work wrong-and
+again and again; always aware that there is a way, if you could only
+think it out, which would make the thing slide effortless from the pen-
+the one right way, the sole form for you, the other forms being for men
+whose line those forms are, or who are capabler than yourself: I've had
+no end of experience in that (and maybe I am the only one--let us hope
+so.) Last summer I started 16 things wrong--3 books and 13 mag.
+articles--and could only make 2 little wee things, 1500 words altogether,
+succeed:--only that out of piles and stacks of diligently-wrought MS.,
+the labor of 6 weeks' unremitting effort.  I could make all of those
+things go if I would take the trouble to re-begin each one half a dozen
+times on a new plan.  But none of them was important enough except one:
+the story I (in the wrong form) mapped out in Paris three or four years
+ago and told you about in New York under seal of confidence--no other
+person knows of it but Mrs. Clemens--the story to be called "Which was
+the Dream?"
+
+A week ago I examined the MS--10,000 words--and saw that the plan was a
+totally impossible one-for me; but a new plan suggested itself, and
+straightway the tale began to slide from the pen with ease and
+confidence.  I think I've struck the right one this time.  I have already
+put 12,000 words of it on paper and Mrs. Clemens is pretty outspokenly
+satisfied with it-a hard critic to content.  I feel sure that all of the
+first half of the story--and I hope three-fourths--will be comedy; but by
+the former plan the whole of it (except the first 3 chapters) would have
+been tragedy and unendurable, almost.  I think I can carry the reader a
+long way before he suspects that I am laying a tragedy-trap.  In the
+present form I could spin 16 books out of it with comfort and joy; but I
+shall deny myself and restrict it to one.  (If you should see a little
+short story in a magazine in the autumn called "My Platonic Sweetheart"
+written 3 weeks ago) that is not this one.  It may have been a
+suggester, though.
+
+I expect all these singular privacies to interest you, and you are not to
+let on that they don't.
+
+We are leaving, this afternoon, for Ischl, to use that as a base for the
+baggage, and then gad around ten days among the lakes and mountains to
+rest-up Mrs. Clemens, who is jaded with housekeeping.  I hope I can get a
+chance to work a little in spots--I can't tell.  But you do it--therefore
+why should you think I can't?
+
+                           [Remainder missing.]
+
+
+     The dream story was never completed.  It was the same that he had
+     worked on in London, and perhaps again in Switzerland.  It would be
+     tried at other times and in other forms, but it never seemed to
+     accommodate itself to a central idea, so that the good writing in it
+     eventually went to waste.  The short story mentioned, "My Platonic
+     Sweetheart," a charming, idyllic tale, was not published during Mark
+     Twain's lifetime.  Two years after his death it appeared in Harper's
+     Magazine.
+
+     The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva was the
+     startling event of that summer.  In a letter to Twichell Clemens
+     presents the tragedy in a few vivid paragraphs.  Later he treated it
+     at some length in a magazine article which, very likely because of
+     personal relations with members of the Austrian court, he withheld
+     from print.  It has since been included in a volume of essays, What
+     Is Man, etc.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                        KALTENLEUTGEBEN, Sep.  13, '98.
+DEAR JOE,--You are mistaken; people don't send us the magazines.  No--
+Harper, Century and McClure do; an example I should like to recommend to
+other publishers.  And so I thank you very much for sending me Brander's
+article.  When you say "I like Brander Matthews; he impresses me as a man
+of parts and power," I back you, right up to the hub--I feel the same
+way--.  And when you say he has earned your gratitude for cuffing me for
+my crimes against the Leather stockings and the Vicar, I ain't making any
+objection.  Dern your gratitude!
+
+His article is as sound as a nut.  Brander knows literature, and loves
+it; he can talk about it and keep his temper; he can state his case so
+lucidly and so fairly and so forcibly that you have to agree with him,
+even when you don't agree with him; and he can discover and praise such
+merits as a book has, even when they are half a dozen diamonds scattered
+through an acre of mud.  And so he has a right to be a critic.
+
+To detail just the opposite of the above invoice is to describe me.  I
+haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I
+hate them.  I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden
+me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I
+have to stop every time I begin.
+
+That good and unoffending lady the Empress is killed by a mad-man, and I
+am living in the midst of world-history again.  The Queen's jubilee last
+year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this murder,
+which will still be talked of and described and painted a thousand years
+from now.  To have a personal friend of the wearer of the crown burst in
+at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say in a voice broken
+with tears, "My God the Empress is murdered," and fly toward her home
+before we can utter a question-why, it brings the giant event home to
+you, makes you a part of it and personally interested; it is as if your
+neighbor Antony should come flying and say "Caesar is butchered--the head
+of the world is fallen!"
+
+Of course there is no talk but of this.  The mourning is universal and
+genuine, the consternation is stupefying.  The Austrian Empire is being
+draped with black.  Vienna will be a spectacle to see, by next Saturday,
+when the funeral cortege marches.  We are invited to occupy a room in the
+sumptuous new hotel (the "Krantz" where we are to live during the Fall
+and Winter) and view it, and we shall go.
+
+Speaking of Mrs. Leiter, there is a noble dame in Vienna, about whom they
+retail similar slanders.  She said in French--she is weak in French--that
+she had been spending a Sunday afternoon in a gathering of the
+"demimonde."  Meaning the unknown land, that mercantile land, that
+mysterious half-world which underlies the aristocracy.  But these
+Malaproperies are always inventions--they don't happen.
+
+Yes, I wish we could have some talks; I'm full to the eye-lids.  Had a
+noble good one with Parker and Dunham--land, but we were grateful for
+that visit!
+               Yours with all our loves.
+                                        MARK.
+
+                      [Inclosed with the foregoing.]
+
+Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
+concede high rank to the German Emperor's.  He justly describes it as a
+"deed unparalleled for ruthlessness," and then adds that it was "ordained
+from above."
+
+I think this verdict will not be popular "above."  A man is either a free
+agent or he isn't.  If a man is a free agent, this prisoner is
+responsible for what he has done; but if a man is not a free agent, if
+the deed was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this
+prisoner even partially responsible for it, and the German court cannot
+condemn him without manifestly committing a crime.  Logic is logic; and
+by disregarding its laws even Emperors as capable and acute as William II
+can be beguiled into making charges which should not be ventured upon
+except in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
+                                                       MARK.
+
+
+     The end of the year 1898 found Mark Twain once more in easy, even
+     luxurious, circumstances.  The hard work and good fortune which had
+     enabled him to pay his debts had, in the course of another year,
+     provided what was comparative affluence: His report to Howells is
+     characteristic and interesting.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN, L.  NEVER MARKT 6
+                                                       Dec.  30, '98.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I begin with a date--including all the details--though I
+shall be interrupted presently by a South-African acquaintance who is
+passing through, and it may be many days before I catch another leisure
+moment.  Note how suddenly a thing can become habit, and how
+indestructible the habit is, afterward!  In your house in Cambridge a
+hundred years ago, Mrs. Howells said to me, "Here is a bunch of your
+letters, and the dates are of no value, because you don't put any in--
+the years, anyway."  That remark diseased me with a habit which has cost
+me worlds of time and torture and ink, and millions of vain efforts and
+buckets of tears to break it, and here it is yet--I could easier get rid
+of a virtue.....
+
+I hope it will interest you (for I have no one else who would much care
+to know it) that here lately the dread of leaving the children in
+difficult circumstances has died down and disappeared and I am now having
+peace from that long, long nightmare, and can sleep as well as anyone.
+Every little while, for these three years, now, Mrs. Clemens has come
+with pencil and paper and figured up the condition of things (she keeps
+the accounts and the bank-book) and has proven to me that the clouds were
+lifting, and so has hoisted my spirits temporarily and kept me going till
+another figuring-up was necessary.  Last night she figured up for her own
+satisfaction, not mine, and found that we own a house and furniture in
+Hartford; that my English and American copyrights pay an income which
+represents a value of $200,000; and that we have $107,000 cash in the
+bank.  I have been out and bought a box of 6-cent cigars; I was smoking
+4 1/2 centers before.
+
+At the house of an English friend, on Christmas Eve, we saw the Mouse-
+Trap played and well played.  I thought the house would kill itself with
+laughter.  By George they played with life!  and it was most
+devastatingly funny.  And it was well they did, for they put us Clemenses
+in the front seat, and if they played it poorly I would have assaulted
+them.  The head young man and girl were Americans, the other parts were
+taken by English, Irish and Scotch girls.  Then there was a nigger-
+minstrel show, of the genuine old sort, and I enjoyed that, too, for the
+nigger-show was always a passion of mine.  This one was created and
+managed by a Quaker doctor from Philada., (23 years old) and he was the
+middle man.  There were 9 others--5 Americans from 5 States and a
+Scotchman, 2 Englishmen and an Irishman--all post-graduate-medical young
+fellows, of course--or, it could be music; but it would be bound to be
+one or the other.
+
+It's quite true--I don't read you "as much as I ought," nor anywhere near
+half as much as I want to; still I read you all I get a chance to.
+I saved up your last story to read when the numbers should be complete,
+but before that time arrived some other admirer of yours carried off the
+papers.  I will watch admirers of yours when the Silver Wedding journey
+begins, and that will not happen again.  The last chance at a bound book
+of yours was in London nearly two years ago--the last volume of your
+short things, by the Harpers.  I read the whole book twice through and
+some of the chapters several times, and the reason that that was as far
+as I got with it was that I lent it to another admirer of yours and he is
+admiring it yet.  Your admirers have ways of their own; I don't know
+where they get them.
+
+Yes, our project is to go home next autumn if we find we can afford to
+live in New York.  We've asked a friend to inquire about flats and
+expenses.  But perhaps nothing will come of it.  We do afford to live in
+the finest hotel in Vienna, and have 4  bedrooms, a dining-room, a
+drawing-room, 3 bath-rooms and 3 Vorzimmers, (and food) but we couldn't
+get the half of it in New York for the same money ($600 a month).
+
+
+Susy hovers about us this holiday week, and the shadows fall all about us
+of
+
+               "The days when we went gipsying
+               A long time ago."
+
+Death is so kind, so benignant, to whom he loves; but he goes by us
+others and will not look our way.  We saw the "Master of Palmyra" last
+night.  How Death, with the gentleness and majesty, made the human grand-
+folk around him seem little and trivial and silly!
+
+With love from all of us to all of you.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+LETTERS, 1899, TO HOWELLS AND OTHERS.  VIENNA.  LONDON.  A SUMMER IN
+SWEDEN
+
+The beginning of 1899 found the Clemens family still in Vienna, occupying
+handsome apartments at the Hotel Krantz.  Their rooms, so often thronged
+with gay and distinguished people, were sometimes called the "Second
+Embassy."  Clemens himself was the central figure of these assemblies.
+Of all the foreign visitors in the Austrian capital he was the most
+notable.  Everywhere he was surrounded by a crowd of listeners--his
+sayings and opinions were widely quoted.
+
+A project for world disarmament promulgated by the Czar of Russia would
+naturally interest Mark Twain, and when William T. Stead, of the Review
+of Reviews, cabled him for an opinion on the matter, he sent at first a
+brief word and on the same day followed it with more extended comment.
+The great war which has since devastated the world gives to this incident
+an added interest.
+
+
+                       To Wm. T. Stead, in London:
+
+No.  1.
+                                                       VIENNA, Jan.  9.
+DEAR MR.  STEAD,-The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm.
+Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.
+                                        MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+To Wm.  T.  Stead, in London:
+
+No.  2.
+DEAR MR. STEAD,--Peace by compulsion.  That seems a better idea than the
+other.  Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should
+not be able to work it.  We should have to tame the human race first, and
+history seems to show that that cannot be done.  Can't we reduce the
+armaments little by little--on a pro rata basis--by concert of the
+powers?  Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength
+10 per cent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise?  For, of
+course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at
+one time.  It has been tried.  We are not going to try to get all of them
+to go into the scheme peaceably, are we?  In that case I must withdraw my
+influence; because, for business reasons, I must preserve the outward
+signs of sanity.  Four is enough if they can be securely harnessed
+together.  They can compel peace, and peace without compulsion would be
+against nature and not operative.  A sliding scale of reduction of 10 per
+cent a year has a sort of plausible look, and I am willing to try that if
+three other powers will join.  I feel sure that the armaments are now
+many times greater than necessary for the requirements of either peace or
+war.  Take wartime for instance.  Suppose circumstances made it necessary
+for us to fight another Waterloo, and that it would do what it did
+before--settle a large question and bring peace.  I will guess that
+400,000 men were on hand at Waterloo (I have forgotten the figures).
+In five hours they disabled 50,000 men.  It took them that tedious, long
+time because the firearms delivered only two or three shots a minute.
+But we would do the work now as it was done at Omdurman, with shower
+guns, raining 600 balls a minute.  Four men to a gun--is that the number?
+A hundred and fifty shots a minute per man.  Thus a modern soldier is 149
+Waterloo soldiers in one.  Thus, also, we can now retain one man out of
+each 150 in service, disband the others, and fight our Waterloos just as
+effectively as we did eighty-five years ago.  We should do the same
+beneficent job with 2,800 men now that we did with 400,000 then.  The
+allies could take 1,400 of the men, and give Napoleon 1,400 and then whip
+him.
+
+But instead what do we see?  In war-time in Germany, Russia and France,
+taken together we find about 8 million men equipped for the field.  Each
+man represents 149 Waterloo men, in usefulness and killing capacity.
+Altogether they constitute about 350 million Waterloo men, and there are
+not quite that many grown males of the human race now on this planet.
+Thus we have this insane fact--that whereas those three countries could
+arm 18,000 men with modern weapons and make them the equals of 3 million
+men of Napoleon's day, and accomplish with them all necessary war work,
+they waste their money and their prosperity creating forces of their
+populations in piling together 349,982,000 extra Waterloo equivalents
+which they would have no sort of use for if they would only stop drinking
+and sit down and cipher a little.
+
+Perpetual peace we cannot have on any terms, I suppose; but I hope we can
+gradually reduce the war strength of Europe till we get it down to where
+it ought to be--20,000 men, properly armed.  Then we can have all the
+peace that is worth while, and when we want a war anybody can afford it.
+
+
+                                                  VIENNA, January 9.
+P. S.--In the article I sent the figures are wrong--"350 million" ought
+to be 450 million; "349,982,000" ought to be 449,982,000, and the remark
+about the sum being a little more than the present number of males on the
+planet--that is wrong, of course; it represents really one and a half the
+existing males.
+
+
+     Now and then one of Mark Twain's old comrades still reached out to
+     him across the years.  He always welcomed such letters--they came as
+     from a lost land of romance, recalled always with tenderness.  He
+     sent light, chaffing replies, but they were never without an
+     undercurrent of affection.
+
+
+              To Major "Jack" Downing, in Middleport, Ohio:
+
+                              HOTEL KRANTZ, WEIN, I, NEUER MART 6,
+                                                  Feb.  26, 1899.
+DEAR MAJOR,--No: it was to Bixby that I was apprenticed.  He was to teach
+me the river for a certain specified sum.  I have forgotten what it was,
+but I paid it.  I steered a trip for Bart Bowen, of Keokuk, on the A. T.
+Lacy, and I was partner with Will Bowen on the A. B. Chambers (one trip),
+and with Sam Bowen a whole summer on a small Memphis packet.
+
+The newspaper report you sent me is incorrect.  Bixby is not 67: he is
+97.  I am 63 myself, and I couldn't talk plain and had just begun to walk
+when I apprenticed myself to Bixby who was then passing himself off for
+57 and successfully too, for he always looked 60 or 70 years younger than
+he really was.  At that time he was piloting the Mississippi on a Potomac
+commission granted him by George Washington who was a personal friend of
+his before the Revolution.  He has piloted every important river in
+America, on that commission, he has also used it as a passport in Russia.
+I have never revealed these facts before.  I notice, too, that you are
+deceiving the people concerning your age.  The printed portrait which you
+have enclosed is not a portrait of you, but a portrait of me when I was
+19.  I remember very well when it was common for people to mistake Bixby
+for your grandson.  Is it spreading, I wonder--this disposition of pilots
+to renew their youth by doubtful methods?  Beck Jolly and Joe Bryan--they
+probably go to Sunday school now--but it will not deceive.
+
+Yes, it is as you say.  All of the procession but a fraction has passed.
+It is time for us all to fall in.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                   HOTEL KRANTZ, WIEN I.  NEUER MARKT 6
+                                                  April 2, '99.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--I am waiting for the April Harper, which is about due now;
+waiting, and strongly interested.  You are old enough to be a weary man,
+with paling interests, but you do not show it.  You do your work in the
+same old delicate and delicious and forceful and searching and perfect
+way.  I don't know how you can--but I suspect.  I suspect that to you
+there is still dignity in human life, and that Man is not a joke--a poor
+joke--the poorest that was ever contrived.  Since I wrote my Bible, (last
+year)--["What Is Man."]--which Mrs. Clemens loathes, and shudders over,
+and will not listen to the last half nor allow me to print any part of
+it, Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; and so I
+have lost my pride in him, and can't write gaily nor praisefully about
+him any more.  And I don't intend to try.  I mean to go on writing, for
+that is my best amusement, but I shan't print much.  (for I don't wish to
+be scalped, any more than another.)
+
+April 5.  The Harper has come.  I have been in Leipzig with your party,
+and then went on to Karlsbad and saw Mrs. Marsh's encounter with the
+swine with the toothpick and the other manners--["Their Silver Wedding
+Journey."]--At this point Jean carried the magazine away.
+
+Is it imagination, or--Anyway I seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses
+which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to
+sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which
+used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the
+public smile, the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for!
+
+But maybe that is your art.  Maybe that is what you intend the reader to
+detect and think he has made a Columbus-discovery.  Then it is well done,
+perfectly done.  I wrote my last travel book--[Following the Equator.]--
+in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion through
+heaven.  Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness fools me,
+then I shall believe it fooled the reader.  How I did loathe that journey
+around the world!--except the sea-part and India.
+
+Evening.  My tail hangs low.  I thought I was a financier--and I bragged
+to you.  I am not bragging, now.  The stock which I sold at such a fine
+profit early in January, has never ceased to advance, and is now worth
+$60,000 more than I sold it for.  I feel just as if I had been spending
+$20,000 a month, and I feel reproached for this showy and unbecoming
+extravagance.
+
+Last week I was going down with the family to Budapest to lecture, and to
+make a speech at a banquet.  Just as I was leaving here I got a telegram
+from London asking for the speech for a New York paper.  I (this is
+strictly private) sent it.  And then I didn't make that speech, but
+another of a quite different character--a speech born of something
+which the introducer said.  If that said speech got cabled and printed,
+you needn't let on that it was never uttered.
+
+That was a darling night, and those Hungarians were lively people.  We
+were there a week and had a great time.  At the banquet I heard their
+chief orator make a most graceful and easy and beautiful and delicious
+speech--I never heard one that enchanted me more--although I did not
+understand a word of it, since it was in Hungarian.  But the art of it!-
+it was superlative.
+
+They are wonderful English scholars, these people; my lecture audience--
+all Hungarians--understood me perfectly--to judge by the effects.  The
+English clergyman told me that in his congregation are 150 young English
+women who earn their living teaching their language; and that there are.
+others besides these.
+
+For 60 cents a week the telephone reads the morning news to you at home;
+gives you the stocks and markets at noon; gives you lessons in 3 foreign
+languages during 3 hours; gives you the afternoon telegrams; and at night
+the concerts and operas.  Of course even the clerks and seamstresses and
+bootblacks and everybody else are subscribers.
+
+(Correction.  Mrs. Clemens says it is 60 cents a month.)
+
+I am renewing my youth.  I made 4 speeches at one banquet here last
+Saturday night.  And I've been to a lot of football matches.
+
+Jean has been in here examining the poll for the Immortals ("Literature,"
+March 24,) in the hope, I think, that at last she should find me at the
+top and you in second place; and if that is her ambition she has suffered
+disappointment for the third time--and will never fare any better, I
+hope, for you are where you belong, by every right.  She wanted to know
+who it is that does the voting, but I was not able to tell her.  Nor when
+the election will be completed and decided.
+
+Next Morning.  I have been reading the morning paper.  I do it every
+morning--well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and
+basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and
+cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the
+human race.  I cannot seem to get my prayers answered, yet I do not
+despair.
+
+(Escaped from) 5 o'clock tea.  ('sh!) Oh, the American girl in Europe!
+Often she is creditable, but sometimes she is just shocking.  This one,
+a minute ago--19, fat-face, raspy voice, pert ways, the self-complacency
+of God; and with it all a silly laugh (embarrassed) which kept breaking
+out through her chatter all along, whereas there was no call for it, for
+she said nothing that was funny.  "Spose so many 've told y' how they
+'njoyed y'r chapt'r on the Germ' tongue it's bringin' coals to Newcastle
+Kehe!  say anything 'bout it Ke-hehe!  Spent m' vacation 'n Russia, 'n
+saw Tolstoi; he said--" It made me shudder.
+
+April 12.  Jean has been in here with a copy of Literature, complaining
+that I am again behind you in the election of the 10 consecrated members;
+and seems troubled about it and not quite able to understand it.  But I
+have explained to her that you are right there on the ground, inside the
+pool-booth, keeping game--and that that makes a large difference in these
+things.
+
+13th.  I have been to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens.  The office
+of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and
+that and the other damned breed of priests.
+                                   Yrs ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     Howells and Clemens were corresponding regularly again, though not
+     with the frequency of former years.  Perhaps neither of them was
+     bubbling over with things to say; perhaps it was becoming yearly
+     less attractive to pick up a pen and write, and then, of course,
+     there was always the discouragement of distance.  Once Howells
+     wrote: "I know this will find you in Austria before I can well turn
+     round, but I must make believe you are in Kennebunkport before I can
+     begin it."  And in another letter: "It ought to be as pleasant to
+     sit down and write to you as to sit down and talk to you, but it
+     isn't.....  The only reason why I write is that I want another
+     letter from you, and because I have a whole afternoon for the job.
+     I have the whole of every afternoon, for I cannot work later than
+     lunch.  I am fagged by that time, and Sunday is the only day that
+     brings unbearable leisure.  I hope you will be in New York another
+     winter; then I shall know what to do with these foretastes of
+     eternity."
+
+     Clemens usually wrote at considerable length, for he had a good deal
+     to report of his life in the Austrian capital, now drawing to a
+     close.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                                       May 12, 1899.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--7.15 p.  m.  Tea (for Mr. and Mrs. Tower, who are leaving
+for Russia) just over; nice people and rather creditable to the human
+race: Mr. and Mrs. Tower; the new Minister and his wife; the Secretary of
+Legation; the Naval (and Military) Attach; several English ladies; an
+Irish lady; a Scotch lady; a particularly nice young Austrian baron who
+wasn't invited but came and went supposing it was the usual thing and
+wondered at the unusually large gathering; two other Austrians and
+several Americans who were also in his fix; the old Baronin Langeman,
+the only Austrian invited; the rest were Americans.  It made just a
+comfortable crowd in our parlor, with an overflow into Clara's through
+the folding doors.  I don't enjoy teas, and am daily spared them by Mrs.
+Clemens, but this was a pleasant one.  I had only one accident.  The old
+Baronin Langeman is a person I have a strong fondness for, for we
+violently disagree on some subjects and as violently agree on others--
+for instance, she is temperance and I am not: she has religious beliefs
+and feelings and I have none; (she's a Methodist!) she is a democrat and
+so am I; she is woman's rights and so am I; she is laborers' rights and
+approves trades unions and strikes, and that is me.  And so on.  After
+she was gone an English lady whom I greatly like, began to talk sharply
+against her for contributing money, time, labor, and public expression of
+favor to a strike that is on (for an 11-hour day) in the silk factories
+of Bohemia--and she caught me unprepared and betrayed me into over-warm
+argument.  I am sorry: for she didn't know anything about the subject,
+and I did; and one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the
+chosen of God.
+
+(The new Minister is a good man, but out of place.  The Sec. of Legation
+is a good man, but out of place.  The Attache is a good man, but out of
+place.  Our government for displacement beats the new White Star ship;
+and her possible is 17,200 tons.)
+
+May 13, 4 p. m.  A beautiful English girl and her handsome English
+husband came up and spent the evening, and she certainly is a bird.
+English parents--she was born and reared in Roumania and couldn't talk
+English till she was 8 or 10.  She came up clothed like the sunset, and
+was a delight to look at.  (Roumanian costume.).....
+
+Twenty-four young people have gone out to the Semmering to-day (and to-
+morrow) and Mrs. Clemens and an English lady and old Leschetitzky and his
+wife have gone to chaperon them.  They gave me a chance to go, but there
+are no snow mountains that I want to look at.  Three hours out, three
+hours back, and sit up all night watching the young people dance; yelling
+conversationally and being yelled at, conversationally, by new
+acquaintances, through the deafening music, about how I like Vienna, and
+if it's my first visit, and how long we expect to stay, and did I see the
+foot-washing, and am I writing a book about Vienna, and so on.  The terms
+seemed too severe.  Snow mountains are too dear at the price ....
+
+For several years I have been intending to stop writing for print as soon
+as I could afford it.  At last I can afford it, and have put the pot-
+boiler pen away.  What I have been wanting is a chance to write a book
+without reserves--a book which should take account of no one's feelings,
+and no one's prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions, delusions;
+a book which should say my say, right out of my heart, in the plainest
+language and without a limitation of any sort.  I judged that that would
+be an unimaginable luxury, heaven on earth.
+
+It is under way, now, and it is a luxury! an intellectual drunk: Twice I
+didn't start it right; and got pretty far in, both times, before I found
+it out.  But I am sure it is started right this time.  It is in tale-
+form.  I believe I can make it tell what I think of Man, and how he is
+constructed, and what a shabby poor ridiculous thing he is, and how
+mistaken he is in his estimate of his character and powers and qualities
+and his place among the animals.
+
+So far, I think I am succeeding.  I let the madam into the secret day
+before yesterday, and locked the doors and read to her the opening
+chapters.  She said--
+
+"It is perfectly horrible--and perfectly beautiful!"
+
+"Within the due limits of modesty, that is what I think."
+
+I hope it will take me a year or two to write it, and that it will turn
+out to be the right vessel to contain all the abuse I am planning to dump
+into it.
+                         Yours ever
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     The story mentioned in the foregoing, in which Mark Twain was to
+     give his opinion of man, was The Mysterious Stranger.  It was not
+     finished at the time, and its closing chapter was not found until
+     after his death.  Six years later (1916) it was published serially
+     in Harper's Magazine, and in book form.
+
+     The end of May found the Clemens party in London, where they were
+     received and entertained with all the hospitality they had known in
+     earlier years.  Clemens was too busy for letter-writing, but in the
+     midst of things he took time to report to Howells an amusing
+     incident of one of their entertainments.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                                  LONDON, July 3, '99
+DEAR HOWELLS,--..... I've a lot of things to write you, but it's no use--
+I can't get time for anything these days.  I must break off and write a
+postscript to Canon Wilberforce before I go to bed.  This afternoon he
+left a luncheon-party half an hour ahead of the rest, and carried off my
+hat (which has Mark Twain in a big hand written in it.) When the rest of
+us came out there was but one hat that would go on my head--it fitted
+exactly, too.  So wore it away.  It had no name in it, but the Canon was
+the only man who was absent.  I wrote him a note at 8 p.m.; saying that
+for four hours I had not been able to take anything that did not belong
+to me, nor stretch a fact beyond the frontiers of truth, and my family
+were getting alarmed.  Could he explain my trouble?  And now at 8.30 p.m.
+comes a note from him to say that all the afternoon he has been
+exhibiting a wonder-compelling mental vivacity and grace of expression,
+etc., etc., and have I missed a hat?  Our letters have crossed.
+                              Yours ever
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     News came of the death of Robert Ingersoll.  Clemens had been always
+     one of his most ardent admirers, and a warm personal friend.  To
+     Ingersoll's niece he sent a word of heartfelt sympathy.
+
+
+                    To Miss Eva Farrell, in New York:
+
+                                   30 WELLINGTON COURT, ALBERT GATE.
+DEAR MISS FARRELL,--Except my daughter's, I have not grieved for any
+death as I have grieved for his.  His was a great and beautiful spirit,
+he was a man--all man from his crown to his foot soles.  My reverence for
+him was deep and genuine; I prized his affection for me and returned it
+with usury.
+                    Sincerely Yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Clemens and family decided to spend the summer in Sweden, at Sauna,
+     in order to avail themselves of osteopathic treatment as practised
+     by Heinrick Kellgren.  Kellgren's method, known as the "Swedish
+     movements," seemed to Mark Twain a wonderful cure for all ailments,
+     and he heralded the discovery far and wide.  He wrote to friends far
+     and near advising them to try Kellgren for anything they might
+     happen to have.  Whatever its beginning, any letter was likely to
+     close with some mention of the new panacea.
+
+
+               To Rev. J. H. Twichell, traveling in Europe:
+
+                                             SANNA, Sept. 6, '99.
+DEAR JOE,--I've no business in here--I ought to be outside.  I shall
+never see another sunset to begin with it this side of heaven.  Venice?
+land, what a poor interest that is!  This is the place to be.  I have
+seen about 60 sunsets here; and a good 40 of them were clear and away
+beyond anything I had ever imagined before for dainty and exquisite and
+marvellous beauty and infinite change and variety.  America?  Italy?  The
+tropics?  They have no notion of what a sunset ought to be.  And this
+one--this unspeakable wonder!  It discounts all the rest.  It brings the
+tears, it is so unutterably beautiful.
+
+If I had time, I would say a word about this curative system here.  The
+people actually do several of the great things the Christian Scientists
+pretend to do.  You wish to advise with a physician about it?  Certainly.
+There is no objection.  He knows next to something about his own trade,
+but that will not embarrass him in framing a verdict about this one.
+I respect your superstitions--we all have them.  It would be quite
+natural for the cautious Chinaman to ask his native priest to instruct
+him as to the value of the new religious specialty which the Western
+missionary is trying to put on the market, before investing in it.  (He
+would get a verdict.)
+                         Love to you all!
+                                   Always Yours
+                                                  MARK.
+
+     Howells wrote that he was going on a reading-tour-dreading it, of
+     course-and asking for any advice that Clemens felt qualified to
+     give.  Naturally, Clemens gave him the latest he had in stock,
+     without realizing, perhaps, that he was recommending an individual
+     practice which few would be likely to imitate.  Nevertheless, what
+     he says is interesting.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in America:
+
+                                        SANNA, SWEDEN, Sept. 26, '99.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--Get your lecture by heart--it will pay you.  I learned a
+trick in Vienna--by accident--which I wish I had learned years ago.  I
+meant to read from a Tauchnitz, because I knew I hadn't well memorized
+the pieces; and I came on with the book and read a few sentences, then
+remembered that the sketch needed a few words of explanatory
+introduction; and so, lowering the book and now and then unconsciously
+using it to gesture with, I talked the introduction, and it happened to
+carry me into the sketch itself, and then I went on, pretending that I
+was merely talking extraneous matter and would come to the sketch
+presently.  It was a beautiful success.  I knew the substance of the
+sketch and the telling phrases of it; and so, the throwing of the rest of
+it into informal talk as I went along limbered it up and gave it the snap
+and go and freshness of an impromptu.  I was to read several pieces, and
+I played the same game with all of them, and always the audience thought
+I was being reminded of outside things and throwing them in, and was
+going to hold up the book and begin on the sketch presently--and so I
+always got through the sketch before they were entirely sure that it had
+begun.  I did the same thing in Budapest and had the same good time over
+again.  It's a new dodge, and the best one that was ever invented.  Try
+it.  You'll never lose your audience--not even for a moment.  Their
+attention is fixed, and never wavers.  And that is not the case where one
+reads from book or MS., or where he stands up without a note and frankly
+exposes the fact, by his confident manner and smooth phrasing, that he is
+not improvising, but reciting from memory.  And in the heat of telling a
+thing that is memorised in substance only, one flashes out the happiest
+suddenly-begotten phrases every now and then!  Try it.  Such a phrase has
+a life and sparkle about it that twice as good a one could not exhibit if
+prepared beforehand, and it "fetches" an audience in such an enthusing
+and inspiring and uplifting way that that lucky phrase breeds another
+one, sure.
+
+Your September instalment--["Their Silver Wedding journey."]--was
+delicious--every word of it.  You haven't lost any of your splendid art.
+Callers have arrived.
+                              With love
+                                        MARK.
+
+
+     "Yes," wrote Howells, "if I were a great histrionic artist like you
+     I would get my poor essays by heart, and recite them, but being what
+     I am I should do the thing so lifelessly that I had better recognise
+     their deadness frankly and read them."
+
+     From Vienna Clemens had contributed to the Cosmopolitan, then owned
+     by John Brisben Walker, his first article on Christian Science.  It
+     was a delicious bit of humor and found such enthusiastic
+     appreciation that Walker was moved to send an additional $200 check
+     in payment for it.  This brought prompt acknowledgment.
+
+
+               To John Brisben Walker, in Irvington, N. Y.:
+
+                                             LONDON, Oct. 19, '99
+DEAR MR. WALKER,--By gracious but you have a talent for making a man feel
+proud and good!  To say a compliment well is a high art--and few possess
+it.  You know how to do it, and when you confirm its sincerity with a
+handsome cheque the limit is reached and compliment can no higher go.
+I like to work for you: when you don't approve an article you say so,
+recognizing that I am not a child and can stand it; and when you approve
+an article I don't have to dicker with you as if I raised peanuts and you
+kept a stand; I know I shall get every penny the article is worth.
+
+You have given me very great pleasure, and I thank you for it.
+                         Sincerely Yours
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     On the same day he sent word to Howells of the good luck which now
+     seemed to be coming his way.  The Joan of Arc introduction was the
+     same that today appears in his collected works under the title of
+     Saint Joan of Arc.
+
+
+                      To W. D. Howells, in New York:
+
+                                             LONDON, Oct.  19, '99.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--My, it's a lucky day!--of the sort when it never rains but
+it pours.  I was to write an introduction to a nobler book--the English
+translation of the Official Record (unabridged) of the Trials and
+Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, and make a lot of footnotes.  I wrote the
+introduction in Sweden, and here a few days ago I tore loose from a tale
+I am writing, and took the MS book and went at the grind of note-making
+--a fearful job for a man not used to it.  This morning brought a note
+from my excellent friend Murray, a rich Englishman who edits the
+translation, saying, "Never mind the notes--we'll make the translators do
+them."  That was comfort and joy.
+
+The same mail brought a note from Canon Wilberforce, asking me to talk
+Joan of Arc in his drawing-room to the Dukes and Earls and M. P.'s--
+(which would fetch me out of my seclusion and into print, and I couldn't
+have that,) and so of course I must run down to the Abbey and explain--
+and lose an hour.  Just then came Murray and said "Leave that to me
+--I'll go and do the explaining and put the thing off 3 months; you write
+a note and tell him I am coming."
+
+(Which I did, later.)  Wilberforce carried off my hat from a lunch party
+last summer, and in to-day's note he said he wouldn't steal my new hat
+this time.  In my note I said I couldn't make the drawing-room talk, now
+--Murray would explain; and added a P. S.: "You mustn't think it is
+because I am afraid to trust my hat in your reach again, for I assure you
+upon honor it isn't.  I should bring my old one."
+
+I had suggested to Murray a fortnight ago, that he get some big guns to
+write introductory monographs for the book.
+
+Miss X, Joan's Voices and Prophecies.
+
+The Lord Chief Justice of England, the legal prodigies which she
+performed before her judges.
+
+Lord Roberts, her military genius.
+
+Kipling, her patriotism.
+
+And so on.  When he came this morning he said he had captured Miss X;
+that Lord Roberts and Kipling were going to take hold and see if they
+could do monographs worthy of the book.  He hadn't run the others to
+cover yet, but was on their track.  Very good news.  It is a grand book,
+and is entitled to the best efforts of the best people.  As for me, I
+took pains with my Introduction, and I admit that it is no slouch of a
+performance.
+
+Then I came down to Chatto's, and found your all too beautiful letter,
+and was lifted higher than ever.  Next came letters from America properly
+glorifying my Christian Science article in the Cosmopolitan (and one
+roundly abusing it,) and a letter from John Brisben Walker enclosing $200
+additional pay for the article (he had already paid enough, but I didn't
+mention that--which wasn't right of me, for this is the second time he
+has done such a thing, whereas Gilder has done it only once and no one
+else ever.) I make no prices with Walker and Gilder--I can trust them.
+
+And last of all came a letter from M-.  How I do wish that man was in
+hell.  Even-the briefest line from that idiot puts me in a rage.
+
+But on the whole it has been a delightful day, and with M----in hell it
+would have been perfect.  But that will happen, and I can wait.
+
+Ah, if I could look into the inside of people as you do, and put it on
+paper, and invent things for them to do and say, and tell how they said
+it, I could writs a fine and readable book now, for I've got a prime
+subject.  I've written 30,000 words of it and satisfied myself that the
+stuff is there; so I am going to discard that MS and begin all over again
+and have a good time with it.
+
+Oh, I know how you feel!  I've been in hell myself.  You are there
+tonight.  By difference in time you are at luncheon, now--and not eating
+it.  Nothing is so lonesome as gadding around platforming.  I have
+declined 45 lectures to-day-England and Scotland.  I wanted the money,
+but not the torture: Good luck to you!--and repentance.
+                         With love to all of you
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS OF 1900, MAINLY TO TWICHELL.  THE BOER WAR.  BOXER TROUBLES.
+THE RETURN TO AMERICA
+
+The New Year found Clemens still in London, chiefly interested in
+osteopathy and characteristically glorifying the practice at the expense
+of other healing methods.
+
+
+                  To Rev. J.  H.  Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan.  8, 1900.
+DEAR JOE,--Mental Telepathy has scored another.  Mental Telegraphy will
+be greatly respected a century hence.
+
+By the accident of writing my sister and describing to her the remarkable
+cures made by Kellgren with his hands and without drugs, I brought upon
+myself a quite stunning surprise; for she wrote to me that she had been
+taking this very treatment in Buffalo--and that it was an American
+invention.
+
+Well, it does really turn out that Dr. Still, in the middle of Kansas, in
+a village, began to experiment in 1874, only five years after Kellgren
+began the same work obscurely in the village of Gotha, in Germany.  Dr.
+Still seems to be an honest man; therefore I am persuaded that Kellgren
+moved him to his experiments by Mental Telegraphy across six hours of
+longitude, without need of a wire.  By the time Still began to
+experiment, Kellgren had completed his development of the principles of
+his system and established himself in a good practice in London--1874
+--and was in good shape to convey his discovery to Kansas, Mental
+Telegraphically.
+
+Yes, I was greatly surprised to find that my mare's nest was much in
+arrears: that this new science was well known in America under the name
+of Osteopathy.  Since then, I find that in the past 3 years it has got
+itself legalized in 14 States in spite of the opposition of the
+physicians; that it has established 20 Osteopathic schools and colleges;
+that among its students are 75 allopathic physicians; that there is a
+school in Boston and another in Philadelphia, that there are about 100
+students in the parent college (Dr. Still's at Kirksville, Missouri,) and
+that there are about 2,000 graduates practicing in America.  Dear me,
+there are not 30 in Europe.  Europe is so sunk in superstitions and
+prejudices that it is an almost impossible thing to get her to do
+anything but scoff at a new thing--unless it come from abroad; as witness
+the telegraph, dentistry, &c.
+
+Presently the Osteopath will come over here from America and will soon
+make himself a power that must be recognized and reckoned with; and then,
+25 years from now, England will begin to claim the invention and tell all
+about its origin, in the Cyclopedia B-----as in the case of the
+telegraph, applied anaesthetics and the other benefactions which she
+heaped her abuse upon when her inventors first offered them to her.
+
+I cannot help feeling rather inordinately proud of America for the gay
+and hearty way in which she takes hold of any new thing that comes along
+and gives it a first rate trial.  Many an ass in America, is getting a
+deal of benefit out of X-Science's new exploitation of an age-old healing
+principle--faith, combined with the patient's imagination--let it boom
+along!  I have no objection.  Let them call it by what name they choose,
+so long as it does helpful work among the class which is numerically
+vastly the largest bulk of the human race, i.e.  the fools, the idiots,
+the pudd'nheads.
+
+We do not guess, we know that 9 in 10 of the species are pudd'nheads.
+We know it by various evidences; and one of them is, that for ages the
+race has respected (and almost venerated) the physician's grotesque
+system--the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's
+stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach
+at all; in many cases could reach and help, but only at cost of damage to
+some other part of the man; and in the remainder of the cases the drug
+either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of
+the nostrums.  The doctor's insane system has not only been permitted to
+continue its follies for ages, but has been protected by the State and
+made a close monopoly--an infamous thing, a crime against a free-man's
+proper right to choose his own assassin or his own method of defending
+his body against disease and death.
+
+And yet at the same time, with curious and senile inconsistency, the
+State has allowed the man to choose his own assassin--in one detail--the
+patent-medicine detail--making itself the protector of that perilous
+business, collecting money out of it, and appointing no committee of
+experts to examine the medicines and forbid them when extra dangerous.
+Really, when a man can prove that he is not a jackass, I think he is in
+the way to prove that he is no legitimate member of the race.
+
+I have by me a list of 52 human ailments--common ones--and in this list I
+count 19 which the physician's art cannot cure.  But there isn't one
+which Osteopathy or Kellgren cannot cure, if the patient comes early.
+
+Fifteen years ago I had a deep reverence for the physician and the
+surgeon.  But 6 months of closely watching the Kellgren business has
+revolutionized all that, and now I have neither reverence nor respect for
+the physician's trade, and scarcely any for the surgeon's,--I am
+convinced that of all quackeries, the physician's is the grotesquest and
+the silliest.  And they know they are shams and humbugs.  They have taken
+the place of those augurs who couldn't look each other in the face
+without laughing.
+
+See what a powerful hold our ancient superstitions have upon us: two
+weeks ago, when Livy committed an incredible imprudence and by
+consequence was promptly stricken down with a heavy triple attack--
+influenza, bronchitis, and a lung affected--she recognized the gravity of
+the situation, and her old superstitions rose: she thought she ought to
+send for a doctor--Think of it--the last man in the world I should want
+around at such a time.  Of course I did not say no--not that I was
+indisposed to take the responsibility, for I was not, my notion of a
+dangerous responsibility being quite the other way--but because it is
+unsafe to distress a sick person; I only said we knew no good doctor,
+and it could not be good policy to choose at hazard; so she allowed me to
+send for Kellgren.  To-day she is up and around-Lured.  It is safe to say
+that persons hit in the same way at the same time are in bed yet, and
+booked to stay there a good while, and to be in a shackly condition and
+afraid of their shadows for a couple of years or more to come.
+
+It will be seen by the foregoing that Mark Twain's interest in the
+Kellgren system was still an ardent one.  Indeed, for a time he gave most
+of his thought to it, and wrote several long appreciations, perhaps with
+little idea of publication, but merely to get his enthusiasm physically
+expressed.  War, however, presently supplanted medicine--the Boer
+troubles in South Africa and the Boxer insurrection in China.  It was a
+disturbing, exciting year.
+
+
+                       To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
+
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, KNIGHTSBRIDGE,
+                                                  Jan. 25, 1900.
+DEAR HOWELLS,--If you got half as much as Pond prophesied, be content and
+praise God--it has not happened to another.  But I am sorry he didn't go
+with you; for it is marvelous to hear him yarn.  He is good company,
+cheery and hearty, and his mill is never idle.  Your doing a lecture tour
+was heroic.  It was the highest order of grit, and you have a right to be
+proud of yourself.  No mount of applause or money or both could save it
+from being a hell to a man constituted as you are.  It is that even to
+me, who am made of coarser stuff.
+
+I knew the audiences would come forward and shake hands with you--that
+one infallible sign of sincere approval.  In all my life, wherever it
+failed me I left the hall sick and ashamed, knowing what it meant.
+
+Privately speaking, this is a sordid and criminal war, and in every way
+shameful and excuseless.  Every day I write (in my head) bitter magazine
+articles about it, but I have to stop with that.  For England must not
+fall; it would mean an inundation of Russian and German political
+degradations which would envelop the globe and steep it in a sort of
+Middle-Age night and slavery which would last till Christ comes again.
+Even wrong--and she is wrong--England must be upheld.  He is an enemy of
+the human race who shall speak against her now.  Why was the human race
+created?  Or at least why wasn't something creditable created in place of
+it.  God had his opportunity.  He could have made a reputation.  But no,
+He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him a
+regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.  For a
+giddy and unbecoming caprice there has been nothing like it till this
+war.  I talk the war with both sides--always waiting until the other man
+introduces the topic.  Then I say "My head is with the Briton, but my
+heart and such rags of morals as I have are with the Boer--now we will
+talk, unembarrassed and without prejudice."  And so we discuss, and have
+no trouble.
+
+                                                       Jan.  26.
+It was my intention to make some disparaging remarks about the human
+race; and so I kept this letter open for that purpose, and for the
+purpose of telling my dream, wherein the Trinity were trying to guess a
+conundrum, but I can do better--for I can snip out of the "Times" various
+samples and side-lights which bring the race down to date, and expose it
+as of yesterday.  If you will notice, there is seldom a telegram in a
+paper which fails to show up one or more members and beneficiaries of our
+Civilization as promenading in his shirt-tail, with the rest of his
+regalia in the wash.
+
+I love to see the holy ones air their smug pieties and admire them and
+smirk over them, and at the same moment frankly and publicly show their
+contempt for the pieties of the Boer--confidently expecting the approval
+of the country and the pulpit, and getting it.
+
+I notice that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats
+itself.  But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here
+thinks He is playing the game for this side, and for this side only.
+
+               With great love to you all
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     One cannot help wondering what Mark Twain would have thought of
+     human nature had he lived to see the great World War, fought mainly
+     by the Christian nations who for nearly two thousand years had been
+     preaching peace on earth and goodwill toward men.  But his opinion
+     of the race could hardly have been worse than it was.  And nothing
+     that human beings could do would have surprised him.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                             LONDON, Jan. 27, 1900.
+DEAR JOE,--Apparently we are not proposing to set the Filipinos free and
+give their islands to them; and apparently we are not proposing to hang
+the priests and confiscate their property.  If these things are so, the
+war out there has no interest for me.
+
+I have just been examining chapter LXX of "Following the Equator," to see
+if the Boer's old military effectiveness is holding out.  It reads
+curiously as if it had been written about the present war.
+
+I believe that in the next chapter my notion of the Boer was rightly
+conceived.  He is popularly called uncivilized, I do not know why.
+Happiness, food, shelter, clothing, wholesale labor, modest and rational
+ambitions, honesty, kindliness, hospitality, love of freedom and
+limitless courage to fight for it, composure and fortitude in time of
+disaster, patience in time of hardship and privation, absence of noise
+and brag in time of victory, contentment with a humble and peaceful life
+void of insane excitements--if there is a higher and better form of
+civilization than this, I am not aware of it and do not know where to
+look for it.  I suppose we have the habit of imagining that a lot of
+artistic, intellectual and other artificialities must be added, or it
+isn't complete.  We and the English have these latter; but as we lack the
+great bulk of these others, I think the Boer civilization is the best of
+the two.  My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing
+and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogancies, meannesses, and
+hypocrisies.  As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a
+lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it
+belongs.
+
+Provided we could get something better in the place of it.  But that is
+not possible, perhaps.  Poor as it is, it is better than real savagery,
+therefore we must stand by it, extend it, and (in public) praise it.
+And so we must not utter any hateful word about England in these days,
+nor fail to hope that she will win in this war, for her defeat and fall
+would be an irremediable disaster for the mangy human race.... Naturally,
+then, I am for England; but she is profoundly in the wrong, Joe, and no
+(instructed) Englishman doubts it.  At least that is my belief.
+
+Maybe I managed to make myself misunderstood, as to the Osteopathists.
+I wanted to know how the men impress you.  As to their Art, I know fairly
+well about that, and should not value Hartford's opinion of it; nor a
+physician's; nor that of another who proposed to enlighten me out of his
+ignorance.  Opinions based upon theory, superstition and ignorance are
+not very precious.
+
+Livy and the others are off for the country for a day or two.
+               Love to you all
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     The next letter affords a pleasant variation.  Without doubt it was
+     written on realizing that good nature and enthusiasm had led him
+     into indiscretion.  This was always happening to him, and letters
+     like this are not infrequent, though generally less entertaining.
+
+
+                          To Mr. Ann, in London:
+
+                                        WELLINGTON COURT, Feb. 23, '00.
+DEAR MR. ANN,--Upon sober second thought, it won't do!--I withdraw that
+letter.  Not because I said anything in it which is not true, for I
+didn't; but because when I allow my name to be used in forwarding a
+stock-scheme I am assuming a certain degree of responsibility as toward
+the investor, and I am not willing to do that.  I have another objection,
+a purely selfish one: trading upon my name, whether the enterprise scored
+a success or a failure would damage me.  I can't afford that; even the
+Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't afford it, and he has more character to
+spare than I have.  (Ah, a happy thought!  If he would sign the letter
+with me that would change the whole complexion of the thing, of course.
+I do not know him, yet I would sign any commercial scheme that he would
+sign.  As he does not know me, it follows that he would sign anything
+that I would sign.  This is unassailable logic--but really that is all
+that can be said for it.)
+
+No, I withdraw the letter.  This virgin is pure up to date, and is going
+to remain so.
+                         Ys sincerely,
+                                        S. L. C.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                                  WELLINGTON COURT,
+                                             KNIGHTSBRIDGE, Mch. 4, '00.
+DEAR JOE,--Henry Robinson's death is a sharp wound to me, and it goes
+very deep.  I had a strong affection for him, and I think he had for me.
+Every Friday, three-fourths of the year for 16 years he was of the
+billiard-party in our house.  When we come home, how shall we have
+billiard-nights again--with no Ned Bunce and no Henry Robinson?
+I believe I could not endure that.  We must find another use for that
+room.  Susy is gone, George is gone, Libby Hamersley, Ned Bunce, Henry
+Robinson.  The friends are passing, one by one; our house, where such
+warm blood and such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery.
+But not in any repellent sense.  Our dead are welcome there; their life
+made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with
+us always, and there will be no parting.
+
+It was a moving address you made over Ward Cheney--that fortunate, youth!
+Like Susy, he got out of life all that was worth the living, and got his
+great reward before he had crossed the tropic frontier of dreams and
+entered the Sahara of fact.  The deep consciousness of Susy's good
+fortune is a constant comfort to me.
+
+London is happy-hearted at last.  The British victories have swept the
+clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces.  For three months the
+private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of
+Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley
+and animated again.  Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish
+lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady?  These are darlings,
+every one.  Night before last it was all Irish--24.  One would have to
+travel far to match their ease and sociability and animation and sparkle
+and absence of shyness and self-consciousness.
+
+It was American in these fine qualities.  This was at Mr. Lecky's.  He is
+Irish, you know.  Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's.  Lord
+Roberts is Irish; and Sir William Butler; and Kitchener, I think; and a
+disproportion of the other prominent Generals are of Irish and Scotch
+breed-keeping up the traditions of Wellington, and Sir Colin Campbell of
+the Mutiny.  You will have noticed that in S. A. as in the Mutiny, it is
+usually the Irish and the Scotch that are placed in the fore-front of the
+battle.  An Irish friend of mine says this is because the Kelts are
+idealists, and enthusiasts, with age-old heroisms to emulate and keep
+bright before the world; but that the low-class Englishman is dull and
+without ideals, fighting bull-doggishly while he has a leader, but losing
+his head and going to pieces when his leader falls--not so with the Kelt.
+Sir Wm. Butler said "the Kelt is the spear-head of the British lance."
+                         Love to you all.
+                                             MARK.
+
+
+     The Henry Robinson mentioned in the foregoing letter was Henry C.
+     Robinson, one-time Governor of Connecticut, long a dear and intimate
+     friend of the Clemens household.  "Lecky" was W. E. H. Lecky, the
+     Irish historian whose History of European Morals had been, for many
+     years, one of Mark Twain's favorite books:
+
+     In July the Clemenses left the small apartment at 30 Wellington
+     Court and established a summer household a little way out of London,
+     at Dollis Hill.  To-day the place has been given to the public under
+     the name of Gladstone Park, so called for the reason that in an
+     earlier time Gladstone had frequently visited there.  It was a
+     beautiful spot, a place of green grass and spreading oaks.  In a
+     letter in which Mrs. Clemens wrote to her sister she said: "It is
+     simply divinely beautiful and peaceful; the great, old trees are
+     beyond everything.  I believe nowhere in the world do you find such
+     trees as in England."  Clemens wrote to Twichell:  "From the house
+     you can see little but spacious stretches of hay-fields and green
+     turf.....  Yet the massed, brick blocks of London are reachable in
+     three minutes on a horse.  By rail we can be in the heart of London,
+     in Baker Street, in seventeen minutes--by a smart train in five."
+
+     Mail, however, would seem to have been less prompt.
+
+
+                  To the Editor of the Times, in London:
+
+SIR,--It has often been claimed that the London postal service was
+swifter than that of New York, and I have always believed that the claim
+was justified.  But a doubt has lately sprung up in my mind.  I live
+eight miles from Printing House Square; the Times leaves that point at 4
+o'clock in the morning, by mail, and reaches me at 5 in the afternoon,
+thus making the trip in thirteen hours.
+
+It is my conviction that in New York we should do it in eleven.
+
+                              C.
+DOLLIS HILL, N.  W.
+
+
+                   To Rev. J. H. Twichell, in Hartford:
+
+                                   DOLLIS HILL HOUSE, KILBURN, N. W.
+                                             LONDON, Aug.  12, '00.
+DEAR JOE,--The Sages Prof. Fiske and Brander Matthews were out here to
+tea a week ago and it was a breath of American air to see them.  We
+furnished them a bright day and comfortable weather--and they used it all
+up, in their extravagant American way.  Since then we have sat by coal
+fires, evenings.
+
+We shall sail for home sometime in October, but shall winter in New York
+where we can have an osteopath of good repute to continue the work of
+putting this family in proper condition.
+
+Livy and I dined with the Chief justice a month ago and he was as well-
+conditioned as an athlete.
+
+It is all China, now, and my sympathies are with the Chinese.  They have
+been villainously dealt with by the sceptred thieves of Europe, and I
+hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good.
+I only wish it; of course I don't really expect it.
+
+Why, hang it, it occurs to me that by the time we reach New York you
+Twichells will be invading Europe and once more we shall miss the
+connection.  This is thoroughly exasperating.  Aren't we ever going to
+meet again?
+                    With no end of love from all of us,
+                                        MARK.
+
+P. S.  Aug. 18.
+DEAR JOE,--It is 7.30 a. m.  I have been waking very early, lately.  If
+it occurs once more, it will be habit; then I will submit and adopt it.
+
+This is our day of mourning.  It is four years since Susy died; it is
+five years and a month that I saw her alive for the last time-throwing
+kisses at us from the railway platform when we started West around the
+world.
+
+Sometimes it is a century; sometimes it was yesterday.
+                    With love
+                                   MARK.
+
+
+     We discover in the foregoing letter that the long European residence
+     was drawing to an end.  More than nine years had passed since the
+     closing of the Hartford house--eventful years that had seen failure,
+     bereavement, battle with debt, and rehabilitated fortunes.  All the
+     family were anxious to get home--Mark Twain most anxious of all.
+
+     They closed Dollis Hill House near the end of September, and put up
+     for a brief period at a family hotel, an amusing picture of which
+     follows.
+
+
+                   To J. Y. M.  MacAlister, in London:
+
+                                                            Sep.  1900.
+MY DEAR MACALISTER,--We do really start next Saturday.  I meant to sail
+earlier, but waited to finish some studies of what are called Family
+Hotels.  They are a London specialty, God has not permitted them to exist
+elsewhere; they are ramshackle clubs which were dwellings at the time of
+the Heptarchy.  Dover and Albemarle Streets are filled with them.  The
+once spacious rooms are split up into coops which afford as much
+discomfort as can be had anywhere out of jail for any money.  All the
+modern inconveniences are furnished, and some that have been obsolete for
+a century.  The prices are astonishingly high for what you get.  The
+bedrooms are hospitals for incurable furniture.  I find it so in this
+one.  They exist upon a tradition; they represent the vanishing home-like
+inn of fifty years ago, and are mistaken by foreigners for it.  Some
+quite respectable Englishmen still frequent them through inherited habit
+and arrested development; many Americans also, through ignorance and
+superstition.  The rooms are as interesting as the Tower of London, but
+older I think.  Older and dearer.  The lift was a gift of William the
+Conqueror, some of the beds are prehistoric.  They represent geological
+periods.  Mine is the oldest.  It is formed in strata of Old Red
+Sandstone, volcanic tufa, ignis fatuus, and bicarbonate of hornblende,
+superimposed upon argillaceous shale, and contains the prints of
+prehistoric man.  It is in No. 149.  Thousands of scientists come to see
+it.  They consider it holy.  They want to blast out the prints but
+cannot.  Dynamite rebounds from it.
+
+Finished studies and sail Saturday in Minnehaha.
+                    Yours ever affectionately,
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+     They sailed for New York October 6th, and something more than a week
+     later America gave them a royal welcome.  The press, far and wide,
+     sounded Mark Twain's praises once more; dinners and receptions were
+     offered on every hand; editors and lecture agents clamored for him.
+
+     The family settled in the Earlington Hotel during a period of house-
+     hunting.  They hoped eventually to return to Hartford, but after a
+     brief visit paid by Clemens alone to the old place he wrote:
+
+
+                     To Sylvester Baxter, in Boston:
+
+                                             NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 1900.
+DEAR MR. BAXTER,--It was a great pleasure to me to renew the other days
+with you, and there was a pathetic pleasure in seeing Hartford and the
+house again; but I realize that if we ever enter the house again to live,
+our hearts will break.  I am not sure that we shall ever be strong enough
+to endure that strain.
+                         Sincerely yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+     Mr. and Mrs. Rogers wished to have them in their neighborhood, but
+     the houses there were not suitable, or were too expensive.  Through
+     Mr. Frank Doubleday they eventually found, at 14 West Tenth Street,
+     a large residence handsomely furnished, and this they engaged for
+     the winter.  "We were lucky to get this big house furnished," he
+     wrote MacAlister in London.  "There was not another one in town
+     procurable that would answer us, but this one is all right--space
+     enough in it for several families, the rooms all old-fashioned,
+     great size."
+
+     The little note that follows shows that Mark Twain had not entirely
+     forgotten the days of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
+
+
+              To a Neighbor on West Tenth Street, New York:
+
+                                                       Nov. 30.
+DEAR MADAM,--I know I ought to respect my duty and perform it, but I am
+weak and faithless where boys are concerned, and I can't help secretly
+approving pretty bad and noisy ones, though I do object to the kind that
+ring door-bells.  My family try to get me to stop the boys from holding
+conventions on the front steps, but I basely shirk out of it, because I
+think the boys enjoy it.
+
+My wife has been complaining to me this evening about the boys on the
+front steps and under compulsion I have made some promises.  But I am
+very forgetful, now that I am old, and my sense of duty is getting
+spongy.
+                    Very truly yours,
+                                   S. L. CLEMENS.
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters Vol. 4, by Mark Twain
+
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