In one of her comments Mrs. Clemens wrote: 

    Page 597.  I hate to say it, but it seems to me that you go too
    minutely into particulars in describing the feats of the
    aboriginals.  I felt it in the boomerang-throwing.

And Clemens just below has written: 

    Boomerang has been furnished with a special train—­that is, I’ve
    turned it into “Appendix.”  Will that answer?

    Page 1002.  I don’t like the “shady-principled cat that has a family
    in every port.”

    Then I’ll modify him just a little.

    Page 1020. 9th line from the top.  I think some other word would be
    better than “stench.”  You have used that pretty often.

    But can’t I get it in anywhere?  You’ve knocked it out every time. 
    Out it goes again.  And yet “stench” is a noble, good word.

    Page 1038.  I hate to have your father pictured as lashing a slave
    boy.

    It’s out, and my father is whitewashed.

    Page 1050. 2d line from the bottom.  Change breech-clout.  It’s a
    word that you love and I abominate.  I would take that and “offal”
    out of the language.

    You are steadily weakening the English tongue, Livy.

Page 1095.  Perhaps you don’t care, but whoever told you that the Prince’s green stones were rubies told an untruth.  They were superb emeralds.  Those strings of pearls and emeralds were famous all over Bombay.

    All right, I’ll make them emeralds, but it loses force.  Green
    rubies is a fresh thing.  And besides it was one of the Prince’s own
    staff liars that told me.

That the book was not quite done, even after the triumphant entry of April 13th, is shown by another note which followed something more than a month later: 

    May 18, 1897.  Finished the book again—­addition of 30,000 words.

And to MacAlister he wrote: 

    I have finished the book at last—­and finished it for good this
    time.  Now I am ready for dissipation with a good conscience.  What
    night will you come down & smoke?

His book finished, Clemens went out rather more freely, and one evening allowed MacAlister to take him around to the Savage Club.  There happened to be a majority of the club committee present, and on motion Mark Twain was elected an honorary life member.  There were but three others on whom this distinction had been conferred—­Stanley, Nansen, and the Prince of Wales.  When they told Mark Twain this he said: 

“Well, it must make the Prince feel mighty fine.”—­[In a volume of Savage Club anecdotes the date of Mark Twain’s election to honorary membership is given as 1899.  Clemens’s notebook gives it in 1897.]

He did not intend to rest; in another entry we find: 

    May 23, 1897.  Wrote first chapter of above story to-day.