Beard replied that he had already read it twice.

“Very good,” Clemens said; “but I wasn’t led to suppose that that was the usual custom among illustrators, judging from some results I have seen.  You know,” he went on, “this Yankee of mine has neither the refinement nor the weakness of a college education; he is a perfect ignoramus; he is boss of a machine shop; he can build a locomotive or a Colt’s revolver, he can put up and run a telegraph line, but he’s an ignoramus, nevertheless.  I am not going to tell you what to draw.  If a man comes to me and says, ‘Mr. Clemens, I want you to write me a story,’ I’ll write it for him; but if he undertakes to tell me what to write I’ll say, ’Go hire a typewriter.’”

To Hall a few days later he wrote: 

Tell Beard to obey his own inspirations, and when he sees a picture in his mind put that picture on paper, be it humorous or be it serious.  I want his genius to be wholly unhampered.  I sha’n’t have any fear as to results.

Without going further it is proper to say here that the pictures in the first edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court justified the author’s faith in the artist of his selection.  They are far and away Dan Beard’s best work.  The socialism of the text strongly appealed to him.  Beard himself had socialistic tendencies, and the work inspired him to his highest flights of fancy and to the acme of his technic.  Clemens examined the pictures from time to time, and once was moved to write: 

My pleasure in them is as strong and as fresh as ever.  I do not know of any quality they lack.  Grace, dignity, poetry, spirit, imagination, these enrich them and make them charming and beautiful; and wherever humor appears it is high and fine—­easy, unforced, kept under, masterly, and delicious.

He went on to describe his appreciation in detail, and when the drawings were complete he wrote again: 

Hold me under permanent obligations.  What luck it was to find you!  There are hundreds of artists who could illustrate any other book of mine, but there was only one who could illustrate this one.  Yes, it was a fortunate hour that I went netting for lightning-bugs and caught a meteor.  Live forever!

This was not too much praise.  Beard realized the last shade of the author’s allegorical intent and portrayed it with a hundred accents which the average reader would otherwise be likely to miss.

Clemens submitted his manuscript to Howells and to Stedman, and he read portions of it, at least, to Mrs. Clemens, whose eyes were troubling her so that she could not read for herself.  Stedman suggested certain eliminations, but, on the whole, would seem to have approved of the book.  Howells was enthusiastic.  It appealed to him as it had appealed to Beard.  Its sociology and its socialism seemed to him the final word that could be said on those subjects.  When he had partly finished it he wrote: