Mark Twain's Letters 1867-1875, by Mark Twain

     Howells was editor of the Atlantic by this time, and had been urging
     Clemens to write something suitable for that magazine. He had done
     nothing, however, until this summer at Quarry Farm. There, one
     night in the moonlight, Mrs. Crane's colored cook, who had been a
     slave, was induced to tell him her story. It was exactly the story
     to appeal to Mark Twain, and the kind of thing he could write. He
     set it down next morning, as nearly in her own words and manner as
     possible, without departing too far from literary requirements.

     He decided to send this to Howells. He did not regard it very
     highly, but he would take the chance. An earlier offering to the
     magazine had been returned. He sent the “True Story,” with a brief
     note:

                                             ELMIRA, Sept. 2, '74.
MY DEAR HOWELLS,—.....I enclose also a “True Story” which has no humor
in it. You can pay as lightly as you choose for that, if you want it,
for it is rather out of my line. I have not altered the old colored
woman's story except to begin at the beginning, instead of the middle,
as she did—and traveled both ways....

                                   Yrs Ever
                                             MARK.

     But Howells was delighted with it. He referred to its “realest kind
     of black talk,” and in another place added, “This little story
     delights me more and more. I wish you had about forty of them.”

     Along with the “True Story” Mark Twain had sent the “Fable for Good
     Old Boys and Girls”; but this Howells returned, not, as he said,
     because he didn't like it, but because the Atlantic on matters of
     religion was just in that “Good Lord, Good Devil condition when a
     little fable like yours wouldn't leave it a single Presbyterian,
     Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying
     subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it
     in the denominational newspapers!”

     But the shorter MS. had been only a brief diversion. Mark Twain was
     bowling along at a book and a play. The book was Tom Sawyer, as
     already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age.
     Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel
     Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from
     California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his
     character in a play written for John T. Raymond. Clemens had taken
     out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the
     performance by telegraph. A correspondence between the author and
     the dramatist followed, leading to a friendly arrangement by which
     the latter agreed to dispose of his version to Mark Twain. A good
     deal of discussion from time to time having arisen over the
     authorship of the Sellers play, as presented by Raymond, certain
     among the letters that follow may be found of special interest.
     Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh,
     on these matters and events in general. The book MS., which he
     mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a
     year.

QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N. Y.

Sept. 4, 1874.

DEAR FRIEND,—I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequently have been so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that I have fallen mighty short in letter-writing. But night before last I discovered that that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moral truth to nature, and execution—enough blemish to impair the excellence of almost any chapter—and so I must burn up the day's work and do it all over again. It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself dry. So I knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change. I haven't had an idea or a fancy for two days, now—an excellent time to write to friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, and so will prefer the offerings of the heart before those of the head. Day after to-morrow I go to a neighboring city to see a five-act-drama of mine brought out, and suggest amendments in it, and would about as soon spend a night in the Spanish Inquisition as sit there and be tortured with all the adverse criticisms I can contrive to imagine the audience is indulging in. But whether the play be successful or not, I hope I shall never feel obliged to see it performed a second time. My interest in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.

I have invented and patented a pretty good sort of scrap-book (I think) but I have backed down from letting it be known as mine just at present—for I can't stand being under discussion on a play and a scrap-book at the same time!

I shall be away two days, and then return to take our tribe to New York, where we shall remain five days buying furniture for the new house, and then go to Hartford and settle solidly down for the winter. After all that fallow time I ought to be able to go to work again on the book. We shall reach Hartford about the middle of September, I judge.

We have spent the past four months up here on top of a breezy hill, six hundred feet high, some few miles from Elmira, N. Y., and overlooking that town; (Elmira is my wife's birthplace and that of Susie and the new baby). This little summer house on the hill-top (named Quarry Farm because there's a quarry on it,) belongs to my wife's sister, Mrs. Crane.

A photographer came up the other day and wanted to make some views, and I shall send you the result per this mail.

My study is a snug little octagonal den, with a coal-grate, 6 big windows, one little one, and a wide doorway (the latter opening upon the distant town.) On hot days I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down with brickbats and write in the midst of the hurricanes, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of. The study is nearly on the peak of the hill; it is right in front of the little perpendicular wall of rock left where they used to quarry stones. On the peak of the hill is an old arbor roofed with bark and covered with the vine you call the “American Creeper”—its green is almost bloodied with red. The Study is 30 yards below the old arbor and 200 yards above the dwelling-house-it is remote from all noises.....

In the picture of me in the study you glimpse (through the left-hand window) the little rock bluff that rises behind the pond, and the bases of the little trees on top of it. The small square window is over the fireplace; the chimney divides to make room for it. Without the stereoscope it looks like a framed picture. All the study windows have Venetian blinds; they long ago went out of fashion in America but they have not been replaced with anything half as good yet.

The study is built on top of a tumbled rock-heap that has morning-glories climbing about it and a stone stairway leading down through and dividing it.

There now—if you have not time to read all this, turn it over to “Jock” and drag in the judge to help.

Mrs. Clemens must put in a late picture of Susie—a picture which she maintains is good, but which I think is slander on the child.

We revisit the Rutland Street home many a time in fancy, for we hold every individual in it in happy and grateful memory.

                              Goodbye,
                                   Your friend,
                                        SAML. L. CLEMENS.

P. S.—I gave the P.O. Department a blast in the papers about sending misdirected letters of mine back to the writers for reshipment, and got a blast in return, through a New York daily, from the New York postmaster. But I notice that misdirected letters find me, now, without any unnecessary fooling around.

     The new house in Hartford was now ready to be occupied, and in a
     letter to Howells, written a little more than a fortnight after the
     foregoing, we find them located in “part” of it. But what seems
     more interesting is that paragraph of the letter which speaks of
     close friendly relations still existing with the Warners, in that it
     refutes a report current at this time that there was a break between
     Clemens and Warner over the rights in the Sellers play. There was,
     in fact, no such rupture. Warner, realizing that he had no hand in
     the character of Sellers, and no share in the work of dramatization,
     generously yielded all claim to any part of the returns.

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, Sept. 20, 1876.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—All right, my boy, send proof sheets here. I amend dialect stuff by talking and talking and talking it till it sounds right—and I had difficulty with this negro talk because a negro sometimes (rarely) says “goin” and sometimes “gwyne,” and they make just such discrepancies in other words—and when you come to reproduce them on paper they look as if the variation resulted from the writer's carelessness. But I want to work at the proofs and get the dialect as nearly right as possible.

We are in part of the new house. Goodness knows when we'll get in the rest of it—full of workmen yet.

I worked a month at my play, and launched it in New York last Wednesday. I believe it will go. The newspapers have been complimentary. It is simply a setting for the one character, Col. Sellers—as a play I guess it will not bear a critical assault in force.

The Warners are as charming as ever. They go shortly to the devil for a year—(which is but a poetical way of saying they are going to afflict themselves with the unsurpassable—(bad word) of travel for a spell.) I believe they mean to go and see you, first-so they mean to start from heaven to the other place; not from earth. How is that?

I think that is no slouch of a compliment—kind of a dim religious light about it. I enjoy that sort of thing.

     Raymond, in a letter to the Sun, stated that not “one line” of the
     California dramatization had been used by Mark Twain, “except that
     which was taken bodily from The Gilded Age.” Clemens himself, in a
     statement that he wrote for the Hartford Post, but suppressed,
     probably at the request of his wife, gave a full history of the
     play's origin, a matter of slight interest to-day.

     Sellers on the stage proved a great success. The play had no
     special merit as a literary composition, but the character of
     Sellers delighted the public, and both author and actor were richly
     repaid for their entertainment.

XIV. LETTERS 1874. MISSISSIPPI CHAPTERS. VISITS TO BOSTON. A JOKE ON ALDRICH.

     “Couldn't you send me some such story as that colored one
     for our January number—that is, within a month?” wrote
     Howells, at the end of September, and during the week
     following Mark Twain struggled hard to comply, but without
     result. When the month was nearly up he wrote:

HARTFORD, Oct. 23, 1874.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I have delayed thus long, hoping I might do something for the January number and Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day by day with urgings to go to work and do that something, but it's no use—I find I can't. We are in such a state of weary and endless confusion that my head won't go. So I give it up.....

     But two hours later, when he had returned from one of the long walks
     which he and Twichell so frequently took together, he told a
     different story.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I take back the remark that I can't write for the Jan. number. For Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods and I got to telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and grandeur as I saw them (during 5 years) from the pilothouse. He said “What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!” I hadn't thought of that before. Would you like a series of papers to run through 3 months or 6 or 9?—or about 4 months, say?

     Howells himself had come from a family of pilots, and rejoiced in
     the idea. A few days later Mark Twain forwarded the first
     instalment of the new series—those wonderful chapters that begin,
     now, with chapter four in the Mississippi book. Apparently he was
     not without doubt concerning the manuscript, and accompanied it with
     a brief line.

     But Howells had no doubts as to the quality of the new find. He
     declared that the “piece” about the Mississippi was capital, that it
     almost made the water in their ice-pitcher turn muddy as he read it.
     “The sketch of the low-lived little town was so good that I could
     have wished that there was more of it. I want the sketches, if you
     can make them, every month.”

     The “low-lived little town” was Hannibal, and the reader can turn to
     the vivid description of it in the chapter already mentioned.

     In the same letter Howells refers to a “letter from Limerick,” which
     he declares he shall keep until he has shown it around—especially
     to Aldrich and Osgood.

     The “letter from Limerick” has to do with a special episode.
     Mention has just been made of Mark Twain's walk with Twichell.
     Frequently their walks were extended tramps, and once in a daring
     moment one or the other of them proposed to walk to Boston. The
     time was November, and the bracing air made the proposition seem
     attractive. They were off one morning early, Twichell carrying a
     little bag, and Clemens a basket of luncheon. A few days before,
     Clemens had written Redpath that the Rev. J. H. Twichell and he
     expected to start at eight o'clock Thursday morning “to walk to
     Boston in twenty-four hours—or more. We shall telegraph Young's
     Hotel for rooms Saturday night, in order to allow for a low average
     of pedestrianism.”

     They did not get quite to Boston. In fact, they got only a little
     farther than the twenty-eight miles they made the first day.
     Clemens could hardly walk next morning, but they managed to get to
     North Ashford, where they took a carriage for the nearest railway
     station. There they telegraphed to Redpath and Howells that they
     would be in Boston that evening. Howells, of course, had a good
     supper and good company awaiting them at his home, and the
     pedestrians spent two happy days visiting and recounting their
     adventures.

     It was one morning, at his hotel, that Mark Twain wrote the Limerick
     letter. It was addressed to Mrs. Clemens, but was really intended
     for Howells and Twichell and the others whom it mentions. It was an
     amusing fancy, rather than a letter, but it deserves place here.

BOSTON, Nov. 16, 1874

DEAR LIVY, You observe I still call this beloved old place by the name it had when I was young. Limerick! It is enough to make a body sick.

The gentlemen-in-waiting stare to see me sit here telegraphing this letter to you, and no doubt they are smiling in their sleeves. But let them! The slow old fashions are good enough for me, thank God, and I will none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed, holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it, it makes me frantic with rage; and then am I more implacably fixed and resolved than ever, to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you what I communicate in ten sends by the new way if I would so debase myself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads “communing,” I tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the blessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering talked pure drivel and “rot,” mostly, but better that, a thousand times, than these dreary conversational funerals that oppress our spirits in this mad generation.

It is sixty years since I was here before. I walked hither, then, with my precious old friend. It seems incredible, now, that we did it in two days, but such is my recollection. I no longer mention that we walked back in a single day, it makes me so furious to see doubt in the face of the hearer. Men were men in those old times. Think of one of the puerile organisms in this effeminate age attempting such a feat.

My air-ship was delayed by a collision with a fellow from China loaded with the usual cargo of jabbering, copper-colored missionaries, and so I was nearly an hour on my journey. But by the goodness of God thirteen of the missionaries were crippled and several killed, so I was content to lose the time. I love to lose time, anyway, because it brings soothing reminiscences of the creeping railroad days of old, now lost to us forever.

Our game was neatly played, and successfully.—None expected us, of course. You should have seen the guards at the ducal palace stare when I said, “Announce his grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Hartford.” Arrived within, we were all eyes to see the Duke of Cambridge and his Duchess, wondering if we might remember their faces, and they ours. In a moment, they came tottering in; he, bent and withered and bald; she blooming with wholesome old age. He peered through his glasses a moment, then screeched in a reedy voice: “Come to my arms! Away with titles—I'll know ye by no names but Twain and Twichell! Then fell he on our necks and jammed his trumpet in his ear, the which we filled with shoutings to this effect: God bless you, old Howells what is left of you!”

We talked late that night—none of your silent idiot “communings” for us—of the olden time. We rolled a stream of ancient anecdotes over our tongues and drank till the lord Archbishop grew so mellow in the mellow past that Dublin ceased to be Dublin to him and resumed its sweeter forgotten name of New York. In truth he almost got back into his ancient religion, too, good Jesuit, as he has always been since O'Mulligan the First established that faith in the Empire.

And we canvassed everybody. Bailey Aldrich, Marquis of Ponkapog, came in, got nobly drunk, and told us all about how poor Osgood lost his earldom and was hanged for conspiring against the second Emperor—but he didn't mention how near he himself came to being hanged, too, for engaging in the same enterprise. He was as chaffy as he was sixty years ago, too, and swore the Archbishop and I never walked to Boston—but there was never a day that Ponkapog wouldn't lie, so be it by the grace of God he got the opportunity.

The Lord High Admiral came in, a hale gentleman close upon seventy and bronzed by the suns and storms of many climes and scarred with the wounds got in many battles, and I told him how I had seen him sit in a high chair and eat fruit and cakes and answer to the name of Johnny. His granddaughter (the eldest) is but lately warned to the youngest of the Grand Dukes, and so who knows but a day may come when the blood of the Howells's may reign in the land? I must not forget to say, while I think of it, that your new false teeth are done, my dear, and your wig. Keep your head well bundled with a shawl till the latter comes, and so cheat your persecuting neuralgias and rheumatisms. Would you believe it?—the Duchess of Cambridge is deafer than you—deafer than her husband. They call her to breakfast with a salvo of artillery; and usually when it thunders she looks up expectantly and says “come in.....”

The monument to the author of “Gloverson and His Silent partners” is finished. It is the stateliest and the costliest ever erected to the memory of any man. This noble classic has now been translated into all the languages of the earth and is adored by all nations and known to all creatures. Yet I have conversed as familiarly with the author of it as I do with my own great-grandchildren.

I wish you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots. It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps his best effort of late years is this:

               “O soul, soul, soul of mine:
               Soul, soul, soul of thine!
               Thy soul, my soul, two souls entwine,
               And sing thy lauds in crystal wine!”

This he goes about repeating to everybody, daily and nightly, insomuch that he is become a sore affliction to all that know him.

But I must desist. There are drafts here, everywhere and my gout is something frightful. My left foot hath resemblance to a snuff-bladder.

God be with you.
HARTFORD.

These to Lady Hartford, in the earldom of Hartford, in the upper portion of the city of Dublin.

     One may imagine the joy of Howells and the others in this ludicrous
     extravaganza, which could have been written by no one but Mark
     Twain. It will hardly take rank as prophecy, though certainly true
     forecast in it is not wholly lacking.

     Clemens was now pretty well satisfied with his piloting story, but
     he began to have doubts as to its title, “Old Times on the
     Mississippi.” It seemed to commit him to too large an undertaking.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—Let us change the heading to “Piloting on the Miss in the Old Times”—or to “Steamboating on the M. in Old Times”—or to “Personal Old Times on the Miss.”—We could change it for Feb. if now too late for Jan.—I suggest it because the present heading is too pretentious, too broad and general. It seems to command me to deliver a Second Book of Revelation to the world, and cover all the Old Times the Mississippi (dang that word, it is worse than “type” or “Egypt “) ever saw—whereas here I have finished Article No. III and am about to start on No. 4. and yet I have spoken of nothing but of Piloting as a science so far; and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject. And I don't care to. Any muggins can write about Old Times on the Miss. of 500 different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day—and no man ever has tried to scribble about it yet. Its newness pleases me all the time—and it is about the only new subject I know of. If I were to write fifty articles they would all be about pilots and piloting—therefore let's get the word Piloting into the heading. There's a sort of freshness about that, too.

     But Howells thought the title satisfactory, and indeed it was the
     best that could have been selected for the series. He wrote every
     few days of his delight in the papers, and cautioned the author not
     to make an attempt to please any “supposed Atlantic audience,”
      adding, “Yarn it off into my sympathetic ear.” Clemens replied:

H't'f'd. Dec. 8, 1874.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—It isn't the Atlantic audience that distresses me; for it is the only audience that I sit down before in perfect serenity (for the simple reason that it doesn't require a “humorist” to paint himself striped and stand on his head every fifteen minutes.) The trouble was, that I was only bent on “working up an atmosphere” and that is to me a most fidgety and irksome thing, sometimes. I avoid it, usually, but in this case it was absolutely necessary, else every reader would be applying the atmosphere of his own or sea experiences, and that shirt wouldn't fit, you know.

I could have sent this Article II a week ago, or more, but I couldn't bring myself to the drudgery of revising and correcting it. I have been at that tedious work 3 hours, now, and by George but I am glad it is over.

Say—I am as prompt as a clock, if I only know the day a thing is wanted—otherwise I am a natural procrastinaturalist. Tell me what day and date you want Nos. 3 and 4, and I will tackle and revise them and they'll be there to the minute.

I could wind up with No. 4., but there are some things more which I am powerfully moved to write. Which is natural enough, since I am a person who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madam would stand it. I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time.

My wife was afraid to write you—so I said with simplicity, “I will give you the language—and ideas.” Through the infinite grace of God there has not been such another insurrection in the family before as followed this. However, the letter was written, and promptly, too—whereas, heretofore she has remained afraid to do such things.

     The “Old Times” papers appeared each month in the Atlantic until
     July, 1875, and take rank to-day with Mark Twain's best work. When
     the first number appeared, John Hay wrote: “It is perfect; no more
     nor less. I don't see how you do it.” Which was reported to
     Howells, who said: “What business has Hay, I should like to know,
     praising a favorite of mine? It's interfering.”

     These were the days when the typewriter was new. Clemens and
     Twichell, during their stay in Boston, had seen the marvel in
     operation, and Clemens had been unable to resist owning one. It was
     far from being the perfect machine of to-day; the letters were all
     capitals, and one was never quite certain, even of those. Mark
     Twain, however, began with enthusiasm and practised faithfully. On
     the day of its arrival he wrote two letters that have survived, the
     first to his brother, the other to Howells.

HARTFORD, Dec. 9, 1874.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I want to add a short paragraph to article No. 1, when the proof comes. Merely a line or two, however.

I don't know whether I am going to make this typewriting machine go or nto: that last word was intended for n-not; but I guess I shall make some sort of a succss of it before I run it very long. I am so thick-fingered that I miss the keys.

You needn't a swer this; I am only practicing to get three; another slip-up there; only practici?ng to get the hang of the thing. I notice I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters and punctuation marks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at. Blame my cats but this thing requires genius in order to work it just right.

     Knowing Mark Twain, Howells wrote: “When you get tired of the
     machine send it to me.” Clemens naturally did get tired of the
     machine; it was ruining his morals, he said. He presently offered
     it to Howells, who by this time hesitated, but eventually yielded
     and accepted it. If he was blasted by its influence the fact has
     not been recorded.

     One of the famous Atlantic dinners came along in December. “Don't
     you dare to refuse that invitation,” wrote Howells, “to meet
     Emerson, Aldrich, and all those boys at the Parker House, at six
     o'clock, Tuesday, December 15th. Come!”

     Clemens had no desire to refuse; he sent word that he would come,
     and followed it with a characteristic line.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I want you to ask Mrs. Howells to let you stay all night at the Parker House and tell lies and have an improving time, and take breakfast with me in the morning. I will have a good room for you, and a fire. Can't you tell her it always makes you sick to go home late at night, or something like that? That sort of thing rouses Mrs. Clemens's sympathies, easily; the only trouble is to keep them up. Twichell and I talked till 2 or 3 in the morning, the night we supped at your house and it restored his health, on account of his being drooping for some time and made him much more robuster than what he was before. Will Mrs. Howells let you?

                              Yrs ever,
                                        S. L. C.

     Aldrich had issued that year a volume of poems, and he presented
     Clemens with a copy of it during this Boston visit. The letter of
     appreciation which follows contains also reference to an amusing
     incident; but we shall come to that presently.

FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD.

Dec. 18, 1874.

MY DEAR ALDRICH,—I read the “Cloth of Gold” through, coming down in the cars, and it is just lightning poetry—a thing which it gravels me to say because my own efforts in that line have remained so persistently unrecognized, in consequence of the envy and jealousy of this generation. “Baby Bell” always seemed perfection, before, but now that I have children it has got even beyond that. About the hour that I was reading it in the cars, Twichell was reading it at home and forthwith fell upon me with a burst of enthusiasm about it when I saw him. This was pleasant, because he has long been a lover of it.

“Thos. Bailey Aldrich responded” etc., “in one of the brightest speeches of the evening.”

That is what the Tribune correspondent says. And that is what everybody that heard it said. Therefore, you keep still. Don't ever be so unwise as to go on trying to unconvince those people.

I've been skating around the place all day with some girls, with Mrs. Clemens in the window to do the applause. There would be a power of fun in skating if you could do it with somebody else's muscles.—There are about twenty boys booming by the house, now, and it is mighty good to look at.

I'm keeping you in mind, you see, in the matter of photographs. I have a couple to enclose in this letter and I want you to say you got them, and then I shall know I have been a good truthful child.

I am going to send more as I ferret them out, about the place.—And I won't forget that you are a “subscriber.”

Yrs ever,
S. L. CLEMENS.

     A letter bearing the same date as the above went back to Howells, we
     find, in reference to still another incident, which perhaps should
     come first.

     Mark Twain up to this time had worn the black “string” necktie of
     the West—a decoration which disturbed Mrs. Clemens, and invited
     remarks from his friends. He had persisted in it, however, up to
     the date of the Atlantic dinner, when Howells and Aldrich decided
     that something must be done about it.

HARTFORD, Dec. 18, 1874.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I left No. 3, (Miss. chapter) in my eldest's reach, and it may have gone to the postman and it likewise may have gone into the fire. I confess to a dread that the latter is the case and that that stack of MS will have to be written over again. If so, O for the return of the lamented Herod!

You and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful—Mrs. Clemens. For months—I may even say years—she had shown unaccountable animosity toward my neck-tie, even getting up in the night to take it with the tongs and blackguard it—sometimes also going so far as to threaten it.

When I said you and Aldrich had given me two new neck-ties, and that they were in a paper in my overcoat pocket, she was in a fever of happiness until she found I was going to frame them; then all the venom in her nature gathered itself together,—insomuch that I, being near to a door, went without, perceiving danger.

Now I wear one of the new neck-ties, nothing being sacred in Mrs. Clemens's eyes that can be perverted to a gaud that shall make the person of her husband more alluring than it was aforetime.

Jo Twichell was the delightedest old boy I ever saw, when he read the words you had written in that book. He and I went to the Concert of the Yale students last night and had a good time.

Mrs. Clemens dreads our going to New Orleans, but I tell her she'll have to give her consent this time.

Yrs ever,
S. L. CLEMENS.

     The reference to New Orleans at the end of this letter grew
     naturally out of the enthusiasm aroused by the Mississippi papers.
     The more Clemens wrote about the river the more he wished to revisit
     it and take Howells with him. Howells was willing enough to go and
     they eventually arranged to take their wives on the excursion. This
     seemed all very well and possible, so long as the time was set for
     some date in the future still unfixed. But Howells was a busy
     editor, and it was much more easy for him to promise good-naturedly
     than to agree on a definite time of departure. He explained at
     length why he could not make the journey, and added: “Forgive me
     having led you on to fix a time; I never thought it would come to
     that; I supposed you would die, or something. I am really more
     sorry and ashamed than I can make it appear.” So the beautiful plan
     was put aside, though it was not entirely abandoned for a long time.

     We now come to the incident mentioned in Mark Twain's letter to
     Aldrich, of December the 18th. It had its beginning at the Atlantic
     dinner, where Aldrich had abused Clemens for never sending him any
     photographs of himself. It was suggested by one or the other that
     his name be put down as a “regular subscriber” for all Mark Twain
     photographs as they “came out.” Clemens returned home and hunted up
     fifty-two different specimens, put each into an envelope, and began
     mailing them to him, one each morning. When a few of them had
     arrived Aldrich wrote, protesting.

     “The police,” he said, “have a way of swooping down on that kind of
     publication. The other day they gobbled up an entire edition of
     'The Life in New York.'”

     Whereupon Clemens bundled up the remaining collection—forty-five
     envelopes of photographs and prints-and mailed them together.

     Aldrich wrote, now, violently declaring the perpetrator of the
     outrage to be known to the police; that a sprawling yellow figure
     against a green background had been recognized as an admirable
     likeness of Mark Twain, alias the jumping Frog, a well-known
     Californian desperado, formerly the chief of Henry Plummer's band of
     road agents in Montana. The letter was signed, “T. Bayleigh, Chief
     of Police.” On the back of the envelope “T. Bayleigh” had also
     written that it was “no use for the person to send any more letters,
     as the post-office at that point was to be blown up. Forty-eight
     hogs-head of nitroglycerine had been syrupticiously introduced into
     the cellar of the building, and more was expected. R.W.E. H.W.L.
     O.W.H., and other conspirators in masks have been seen flitting
     about the town for some days past. The greatest excitement combined
     with the most intense quietness reigns at Ponkapog.”

XV. LETTERS FROM HARTFORD, 1875. MUCH CORRESPONDENCE WITH HOWELLS.

Orion Clemens had kept his job with Bliss only a short time. His mental make-up was such that it was difficult for him to hold any position long. He meant to do well, but he was unfortunate in his efforts. His ideas were seldom practical, his nature was yielding and fickle. He had returned to Keokuk presently, and being convinced there was a fortune in chickens, had prevailed upon his brother to purchase for him a little farm not far from the town. But the chicken business was not lively and Orion kept the mail hot with manuscripts and propositions of every sort, which he wanted his brother to take under advisement.

Certainly, to Mark Twain Orion Clemens was a trial. The letters of the latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there is a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Such depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new enthusiasm, and with a new letter inviting his “brother Sam's” interest and investment. Yet, his fear of incurring his brother's displeasure was pitiful, regardless of the fact that he constantly employed the very means to insure that result. At one time Clemens made him sign a sworn agreement that he would not suggest any plan or scheme of investment for the period of twelve months. Orion must have kept this agreement. He would have gone to the stake before he would have violated an oath, but the stake would have probably been no greater punishment than his sufferings that year.

On the whole, Samuel Clemens was surprisingly patient and considerate with Orion, and there was never a time that he was not willing to help. Yet there were bound to be moments of exasperation; and once, when his mother, or sister, had written, suggesting that he encourage his brother's efforts, he felt moved to write at considerable freedom.