Mark Twain's Letters 1876-1885, by Mark Twain

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

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

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

Truly Yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.

     The reader may remember Mark Twain's Whittier dinner speech of 1877,
     and its disastrous effects. Now, in 1879, there was to be another
     Atlantic gathering: a breakfast to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to
     which Clemens was invited. He was not eager to accept; it would
     naturally recall memories of two years before, but being urged by
     both Howells and Warner, he agreed to attend if they would permit
     him to speak. Mark Twain never lacked courage and he wanted to
     redeem himself. To Howells he wrote:

HARTFORD, Nov. 28, 1879.

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

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

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

Yrs ever,
S. L. CLEMENS.

     The matter turned out well. Clemens, once more introduced by
     Howells—this time conservatively, it may be said—delivered a
     delicate and fitting tribute to Doctor Holmes, full of graceful
     humor and grateful acknowledgment, the kind of speech he should have
     given at the Whittier dinner of two years before. No reference was
     made to his former disaster, and this time he came away covered with
     glory, and fully restored in his self-respect.

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

     The book of travel,—[A Tramp Abroad.]—which Mark Twain had
     hoped to finish in Paris, and later in Elmira, for some
     reason would not come to an end. In December, in Hartford,
     he was still working on it, and he would seem to have
     finished it, at last, rather by a decree than by any natural
     process of authorship. This was early in January, 1880. To
     Howells he reports his difficulties, and his drastic method
     of ending them.

HARTFORD, Jan. 8, '80.

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

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

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

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

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

     In a letter which Mark Twain wrote to his brother Orion at this
     period we get the first hint of a venture which was to play an
     increasingly important part in the Hartford home and fortunes during
     the next ten or a dozen years. This was the type-setting machine
     investment, which, in the end, all but wrecked Mark Twain's
     finances. There is but a brief mention of it in the letter to
     Orion, and the letter itself is not worth preserving, but as
     references to the “machine” appear with increasing frequency, it
     seems proper to record here its first mention. In the same letter
     he suggests to his brother that he undertake an absolutely truthful
     autobiography, a confession in which nothing is to be withheld. He
     cites the value of Casanova's memories, and the confessions of
     Rousseau. Of course, any literary suggestion from “Brother Sam” was
     gospel to Orion, who began at once piling up manuscript at a great
     rate.

     Meantime, Mark Twain himself, having got 'A Tramp Abroad' on the
     presses, was at work with enthusiasm on a story begun nearly three
     years before at Quarry Farm-a story for children-its name, as he
     called it then, “The Little Prince and The Little Pauper.” He was
     presently writing to Howells his delight in the new work.

HARTFORD, Mch. 11, '80.

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

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

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

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

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

     The play, “Yorick's Love,” mentioned in this letter, was one which
     Howells had done for Lawrence Barrett.

     Onion Clemens, meantime, was forwarding his manuscript, and for once
     seems to have won his brother's approval, so much so that Mark Twain
     was willing, indeed anxious, that Howells should run the
     “autobiography” in the Atlantic. We may imagine how Onion prized
     the words of commendation which follow:

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

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

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

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

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

     But Howells could not bring himself to print so frank a confession
     as Orion had been willing to make. “It wrung my heart,” he said,
     “and I felt haggard after I had finished it. The writer's soul is
     laid bare; it is shocking.” Howells added that the best touches in
     it were those which made one acquainted with the writer's brother;
     that is to say, Mark Twain, and that these would prove valuable
     material hereafter—a true prophecy, for Mark Twain's early
     biography would have lacked most of its vital incident, and at least
     half of its background, without those faithful chapters, fortunately
     preserved. Had Onion continued, as he began, the work might have
     proved an important contribution to literature, but he went trailing
     off into by-paths of theology and discussion where the interest was
     lost. There were, perhaps, as many as two thousand pages of it,
     which few could undertake to read.

     Mark Twain's mind was always busy with plans and inventions, many of
     them of serious intent, some semi-serious, others of a purely
     whimsical character. Once he proposed a “Modest Club,” of which the
     first and main qualification for membership was modesty. “At
     present,” he wrote, “I am the only member; and as the modesty
     required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprise did seem
     for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of
     further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion
     that you are eligible. Therefore, I have held a meeting and voted
     to offer you the distinction of membership. I do not know that we
     can find any others, though I have had some thought of Hay, Warner,
     Twichell, Aldrich, Osgood, Fields, Higginson, and a few more
     —together with Mrs. Howells, Mrs. Clemens, and certain others
     of the sex.”

     Howells replied that the only reason he had for not joining the
     Modest Club was that he was too modest—too modest to confess his
     modesty. “If I could get over this difficulty I should like to
     join, for I approve highly of the Club and its object.... It ought
     to be given an annual dinner at the public expense. If you think I
     am not too modest you may put my name down and I will try to think
     the same of you. Mrs. Howells applauded the notion of the club from
     the very first. She said that she knew one thing: that she was
     modest enough, anyway. Her manner of saying it implied that the
     other persons you had named were not, and created a painful
     impression in my mind. I have sent your letter and the rules to
     Hay, but I doubt his modesty. He will think he has a right to
     belong to it as much as you or I; whereas, other people ought only
     to be admitted on sufferance.”

     Our next letter to Howells is, in the main, pure foolery, but we get
     in it a hint what was to become in time one of Mask Twain's
     strongest interests, the matter of copyright. He had both a
     personal and general interest in the subject. His own books were
     constantly pirated in Canada, and the rights of foreign authors were
     not respected in America. We have already seen how he had drawn a
     petition which Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and others were to sign,
     and while nothing had come of this plan he had never ceased to
     formulate others. Yet he hesitated when he found that the proposed
     protection was likely to work a hardship to readers of the poorer
     class. Once he wrote: “My notions have mightily changed lately....
     I can buy a lot of the copyright classics, in paper, at from three
     to thirty cents apiece. These things must find their way into the
     very kitchens and hovels of the country..... And even if the treaty
     will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me an average of $5,000 a
     year, I am down on it anyway, and I'd like cussed well to write an
     article opposing the treaty.”

Thursday, June 6th, 1880.

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

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

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

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

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

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

     It was always dangerous to send strangers with letters of
     introduction to Mark Twain. They were so apt to arrive at the wrong
     time, or to find him in the wrong mood. Howells was willing to risk
     it, and that the result was only amusing instead of tragic is the
     best proof of their friendship.

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

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

     “I did not expect you to ask that man to live with you,” Howells
     answered. “What I was afraid of was that you would turn him out of
     doors, on sight, and so I tried to put in a good word for him.
     After this when I want you to board people, I'll ask you. I am
     sorry for your suffering. I suppose I have mostly lost my smell for
     bores; but yours is preternaturally keen. I shall begin to be
     afraid I bore you. (How does that make you feel?)”

     In a letter to Twichell—a remarkable letter—when baby Jean Clemens
     was about a month old, we get a happy hint of conditions at Quarry
     Farm, and in the background a glimpse of Mark Twain's unfailing
     tragic reflection.

QUARRY FARM, Aug. 29 ['80].

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

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

                    Jean
                    Mamma
                    Motley [a cat]
                    Fraulein [another]
                    Papa

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

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

“Tis said that abscess conquers love,
But O believe it not.”

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

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

     At the Farm that year Mark Twain was working on The Prince and the
     Pauper, and, according to a letter to Aldrich, brought it to an end
     September 19th. It is a pleasant letter, worth preserving. The
     book by Aldrich here mentioned was 'The Stillwater Tragedy.'

ELMIRA, Sept. 15, '80.

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

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

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

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

     While Mark Twain was a journalist in San Francisco, there was a
     middle-aged man named Soule, who had a desk near him on the Morning
     Call. Soule was in those days highly considered as a poet by his
     associates, most of whom were younger and less gracefully poetic.
     But Soule's gift had never been an important one. Now, in his old
     age, he found his fame still local, and he yearned for wider
     recognition. He wished to have a volume of poems issued by a
     publisher of recognized standing. Because Mark Twain had been one
     of Soule's admirers and a warm friend in the old days, it was
     natural that Soule should turn to him now, and equally natural that
     Clemens should turn to Howells.

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

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

                                             Yrs ever
                                                  MARK.

     One wishes that Howells might have found value enough in the verses
     of Frank Soule to recommend them to Osgood. To Clemens he wrote:
     “You have touched me in regard to him, and I will deal gently with
     his poetry. Poor old fellow! I can imagine him, and how he must
     have to struggle not to be hard or sour.”

     The verdict, however, was inevitable. Soule's graceful verses
     proved to be not poetry at all. No publisher of standing could
     afford to give them his imprint.

     The “Encyclopedical Scotchman” mentioned in the preceding letter was
     the publisher Gebbie, who had a plan to engage Howells and Clemens
     to prepare some sort of anthology of the world's literature. The
     idea came to nothing, though the other plan mentioned—for a library
     of humor—in time grew into a book.

     Mark Twain's contracts with Bliss for the publication of his books
     on the subscription plan had been made on a royalty basis, beginning
     with 5 per cent. on 'The Innocents Abroad' increasing to 7 per
     cent. on 'Roughing It,' and to 10 per cent. on later books. Bliss
     had held that these later percentages fairly represented one half
     the profits. Clemens, however, had never been fully satisfied, and
     his brother Onion had more than once urged him to demand a specific
     contract on the half-profit basis. The agreement for the
     publication of 'A Tramp Abroad' was made on these terms. Bliss died
     before Clemens received his first statement of sales. Whatever may
     have been the facts under earlier conditions, the statement proved
     to Mark Twain's satisfaction; at least, that the half-profit
     arrangement was to his advantage. It produced another result; it
     gave Samuel Clemens an excuse to place his brother Onion in a
     position of independence.

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

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

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

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

                         With love from us
                                        Y aff
                                             SAM
$25 enclosed.

     On the completion of The Prince and Pauper story, Clemens had
     naturally sent it to Howells for consideration. Howells wrote:
     “I have read the two P's and I like it immensely, it begins well and
     it ends well.” He pointed out some things that might be changed or
     omitted, and added: “It is such a book as I would expect from you,
     knowing what a bottom of fury there is to your fun.” Clemens had
     thought somewhat of publishing the story anonymously, in the fear
     that it would not be accepted seriously over his own signature.

     The “bull story” referred to in the next letter is the one later
     used in the Joan of Arc book, the story told Joan by “Uncle Laxart,”
      how he rode a bull to a funeral.

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

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

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

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

     The Chinese Educational Mission, mentioned in the foregoing, was a
     thriving Hartford institution, projected eight years before by a
     Yale graduate named Yung Wing. The mission was now threatened, and
     Yung Wing, knowing the high honor in which General Grant was held in
     China, believed that through him it might be saved. Twichell, of
     course, was deeply concerned and naturally overjoyed at Grant's
     interest. A day or two following the return to Hartford, Clemens
     received a letter from General Grant, in which he wrote: “Li Hung
     Chang is the most powerful and most influential Chinaman in his
     country. He professed great friendship for me when I was there, and
     I have had assurances of the same thing since. I hope, if he is
     strong enough with his government, that the decision to withdraw the
     Chinese students from this country may be changed.”

     But perhaps Li Hung Chang was experiencing one of his partial
     eclipses just then, or possibly he was not interested, for the
     Hartford Mission did not survive.

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

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