Oh, dear me, you don’t have to excuse yourself for neglecting me; you are entitled to the highest praise for being so limitlessly patient and good in bothering with my confused affairs, and pulling me out of a hole every little while.

It makes me lazy, the way that Steel stock is rising.  If I were lazier—­like Rice—­nothing could keep me from retiring.  But I work right along, like a poor person.  I shall figure up the rise, as the figures come in, and push up my literary prices accordingly, till I get my literature up to where nobody can afford it but the family.  (N.  B.—­Look here, are you charging storage?  I am not going to stand that, you know.) Meantime, I note those encouraging illogical words of yours about my not worrying because I am to be rich when I am 68; why didn’t you have Cheiro make it 90, so that I could have plenty of room?

It would be jolly good if some one should succeed in making a play out of “Is He Dead?”—­[Clemens himself had attempted to make a play out of his story “Is He Dead?” and had forwarded the Ms. to Rogers.  Later he wrote:  “Put ‘Is He Dead?’ in the fire.  God will bless you.  I too.  I started to convince myself that I could write a play, or couldn’t.  I’m convinced.  Nothing can disturb that conviction.”] —­From what I gather from dramatists, he will have his hands something more than full—­but let him struggle, let him struggle.

Is there some way, honest or otherwise, by which you can get a copy of Mayo’s play, “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” for me?  There is a capable young Austrian here who saw it in New York and wants to translate it and see if he can stage it here.  I don’t think these people here would understand it or take to it, but he thinks it will pay us to try.

    A couple of London dramatists want to bargain with me for the right
    to make a high comedy out of the “Million-Pound Note.”  Barkis is
    willing.

This is but one of the briefer letters.  Most of them were much longer and of more elaborate requirements.  Also they overflowed with the gaiety of good-fortune and with gratitude.  From Vienna in 1899 Clemens wrote: 

Why, it is just splendid!  I have nothing to do but sit around and watch you set the hen and hatch out those big broods and make my living for me.  Don’t you wish you had somebody to do the same for you?—­a magician who can turn steel add copper and Brooklyn gas into gold.  I mean to raise your wages again—­I begin to feel that I can afford it.

I think the hen ought to have a name; she must be called Unberufen.  That is a German word which is equivalent to it “sh! hush’ don’t let the spirits hear you!” The superstition is that if you happen to let fall any grateful jubilation over good luck that you’ve had or are hoping to have you must shut square off and say “Unberufen!” and knock wood.  The word drives the evil spirits away; otherwise