Let us not deceive any one, nor allow any one to deceive himself, if it can be prevented.  This is not to be comic magazine.  It is to be simply a good, clean, wholesome collection of well-written & enticing literary products, like the other magazines of its class; not setting itself to please but one of man’s moods, but all of them.  It will not play but one kind of music, but all kinds.  I should not be able to edit a comic periodical satisfactorily, for lack of interest in the work.  I value humor highly, & am constitutionally fond of it, but I should not like it as a steady diet.  For its own best interests, humor should take its outings in grave company; its cheerful dress gets heightened color from the proximity of sober hues.  For me to edit a comic magazine would be an incongruity & out of character, for of the twenty-three books which I have written eighteen do not deal in humor as their chiefs feature, but are half & half admixtures of fun & seriousness.  I think I have seldom deliberately set out to be humorous, but have nearly always allowed the humor to drop in or stay out, according to its fancy.  Although I have many times been asked to write something humorous for an editor or a publisher I have had wisdom enough to decline; a person could hardly be humorous with the other man watching him like that.  I have never tried to write a humorous lecture; I have only tried to write serious ones—­it is the only way not to succeed.

I shall write for this magazine every time the spirit moves me; but I look for my largest entertainment in editing.  I have been edited by all kinds of people for more than thirty-eight years; there has always been somebody in authority over my manuscript & privileged to improve it; this has fatigued me a good deal, & I have often longed to move up from the dock to the bench & rest myself and fatigue others.  My opportunity is come, but I hope I shall not abuse it overmuch.  I mean to do my best to make a good magazine; I mean to do my whole duty, & not shirk any part of it.  There are plenty of distinguished artists, novelists, poets, story-tellers, philosophers, scientists, explorers, fighters, hunters, followers of the sea, & seekers of adventure; & with these to do the hard & the valuable part of the work with the pen & the pencil it will be comfort & joy to me to walk the quarter-deck & superintend.

Meanwhile McClure’s enthusiasm had had time to adjust itself to certain existing facts.  Something more than a month later he wrote from America at considerable length, setting forth the various editorial duties and laying stress upon the feature of intimate physical contact with the magazine.  He went into the matter of the printing schedule, the various kinds of paper used, the advertising pages, illustrations—­into all the detail, indeed, which a practical managing editor must compass in his daily rounds.  It was pretty evident that Clemens would not be able to go sailing about on Mr. Rogers’s yacht or live at will in London or New York or Vienna or Elmira, but that he would be more or less harnessed to a revolving chair at an editorial desk, the thing which of all fates he would be most likely to dread The scheme appears to have died there—­the correspondence to have closed.