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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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