The "fat" is old pigeon-holed things, of the years gone by, which I or editors didn't das't to print.For instance, I am dumping in the little old book which I read to you in Hartford about 30 years ago and which you said "publish--and ask Dean Stanley to furnish an introduction; he'll do it." ("Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.") It reads quite to suit me, without altering a word, now that it isn't to see print until I am dead.
To-morrow I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs and assigns burnt alive if they venture to print it this side of 2006 A.D.--which Ijudge they won't.There'll be lots of such chapters if I live 3 or 4years longer.The edition of A.D.2006 will make a stir when it comes out.I shall be hovering around taking notice, along with other dead pals.You are invited.
MARK.
His tendency to estimate the measure of the work he was doing, and had completed, must have clung to him from his old printer days.
The chapter which was to get his heirs and assigns burned alive was on the orthodox God, and there was more than one such chapter.In the next letter he refers to two exquisite poems by Howells, and the writer of these notes recalls his wonderful reading of them aloud.
'In Our Town' was a collection of short stories then recently issued by William Allen White.Howells had recommended them.
To W.D.Howells, in Maine:
21 FIFTH AVE., Tuesday Eve.
DEAR HOWELLS,--It is lovely of you to say those beautiful things--I don't know how to thank you enough.But I love you, that I know.
I read "After the Wedding" aloud and we felt all the pain of it and the truth.It was very moving and very beautiful--would have been over-comingly moving, at times, but for the haltings and pauses compelled by the difficulties of MS--these were a protection, in that they furnished me time to brace up my voice, and get a new start.Jean wanted to keep the MS for another reading-aloud, and for "keeps," too, I suspected, but I said it would be safest to write you about it.
I like "In Our Town," particularly that Colonel, of the Lookout Mountain Oration, and very particularly pages 212-16.I wrote and told White so.
After "After the Wedding" I read "The Mother" aloud and sounded its human deeps with your deep-sea lead.I had not read it before, since it was first published.
I have been dictating some fearful things, for 4 successive mornings--for no eye but yours to see until I have been dead a century--if then.But I got them out of my system, where they had been festering for years--and that was the main thing.I feel better, now.
I came down today on business--from house to house in 12 ?hours, and expected to arrive dead, but am neither tired nor sleepy.
Yours as always MARK.
To William Allen White, in Emporia, Kans.:
DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, June 24, 1906.
DEAR MR.WHITE,--Howells told me that "In Our Town" was a charming book, and indeed it is.All of it is delightful when read one's self, parts of it can score finely when subjected to the most exacting of tests--the reading aloud.Pages 197 and 216 are of that grade.I have tried them a couple of times on the family, and pages 212 and 216 are qualified to fetch any house of any country, caste or color, endowed with those riches which are denied to no nation on the planet--humor and feeling.
Talk again--the country is listening.
Sincerely yours, S.L.CLEMENS.
Witter Bynner, the poet, was one of the editors of McClure's Magazine at this time, but was trying to muster the courage to give up routine work for verse-making and the possibility of poverty.
Clemens was fond of Bynner and believed in his work.He did not advise him, however, to break away entirely from a salaried position--at least not immediately; but one day Bynner did so, and reported the step he had taken, with some doubt as to the answer he would receive.
To Witter Bynner, in New York:
DUBLIN, Oct.5, 1906.
DEAR POET,--You have certainly done right for several good reasons; at least, of them, I can name two:
1.With your reputation you can have your freedom and yet earn your living.2.if you fall short of succeeding to your wish, your reputation will provide you another job.And so in high approval Isuppress the scolding and give you the saintly and fatherly pat instead.
MARK TWAIN.
On another occasion, when Bynner had written a poem to Clara Clemens, her father pretended great indignation that the first poem written by Bynner to any one in his household should not be to him, and threatened revenge.At dinner shortly after he produced from his pocket a slip of paper on which he had set down what he said was "his only poem." He read the lines that follow:
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been.
Ah, say not so! as life grows longer, leaner, thinner, We recognize, O God, it might have Bynner!"He returned to New York in October and soon after was presented by Mrs.H.H.Rogers with a handsome billiard-table.
He had a passion for the game, but had played comparatively little since the old Hartford days of fifteen years before, when a group of his friends used to assemble on Friday nights in the room at the top of the house for long, strenuous games and much hilarity.Now the old fever all came back; the fascinations of the game superseded even his interest in the daily dictations.
To Mrs.H.H.Rogers, in New York:
21 FIFTH AVENUE, Monday, Nov., 1906.
DEAR MRS.ROGERS,--The billiard table is better than the doctors.It is driving out the heartburn in a most promising way.I have a billiardist on the premises, and I walk not less than ten miles every day with the cue in my hand.And the walking is not the whole of the exercise, nor the most health-giving part of it, I think.Through the multitude of the positions and attitudes it brings into play every muscle in the body and exercises them all.
The games begin right after luncheon, daily, and continue until midnight, with 2 hours' intermission for dinner and music.And so it is 9 hours'