Mrs. Clemens has diligently persecuted me day by day with urgings to go to work and do that something, but it’s no use.  I find I can’t.  We are in such a state of worry and endless confusion that my head won’t go.

Two hours later he sent another hasty line: 

I take back the remark that I can’t write for the January number, for Twichell and I have had a long walk in the woods, and I got to telling him about old Mississippi days of steam-boating glory and grandeur as I saw them (during four years) from the pilot-house.  He said, “What a virgin subject to hurl into a magazine!” I hadn’t thought of that before.  Would you like a series of papers to run through three months or six or nine—­or about four months, say?

Howells welcomed this offer as an echo of his own thought.  He had come from a piloting family himself, and knew the interest that Mark Twain could put into such a series.

Acting promptly under the new inspiration, Clemens forthwith sent the first chapter of that monumental, that absolutely unique, series of papers on Mississippi River life, which to-day constitutes one of his chief claims to immortality.

His first number was in the nature of an experiment.  Perhaps, after all, the idea would not suit the Atlantic readers.

“Cut it, scarify it, reject it, handle it with entire freedom,” he wrote, and awaited the result.

The “result” was that Howells expressed his delight: 

The piece about the Mississippi is capital.  It almost made the water in our ice-pitcher muddy as I read it.  I don’t think I shall meddle much with it, even in the way of suggestion.  The sketch of the low-lived little town was so good that I could have wished there was more of it.  I want the sketches, if you can make them, every month.

Mark Twain was now really interested in this new literary venture.  He was fairly saturated with memories.  He was writing on the theme that lay nearest to his heart.  Within ten days he reported that he had finished three of the papers, and had begun the fourth.

And yet I have spoken of nothing but piloting as a science so far, and I doubt if I ever get beyond that portion of my subject.  And I don’t care to.  Any Muggins can write about old days on the Mississippi of five hundred different kinds, but I am the only man alive that can scribble about the piloting of that day, and no man has ever tried to scribble about it yet.  Its newness pleases me all the time, and it is about the only new subject I know of.

He became so enthusiastic presently that he wanted to take Howells with him on a trip down the Mississippi, with their wives for company, to go over the old ground again and obtain added material enough for a book.  Howells was willing enough—­agreed to go, in fact—­but found it hard to get away.  He began to temporize and finally backed out.  Clemens tried to inveigle Osgood into the trip, but without success; also John Hay, but Hay had a new baby at his house just then—­“three days old, and with a voice beyond price,” he said, offering it as an excuse for non-acceptance.  So the plan for revisiting the river and the conclusion of the book were held in abeyance for nearly seven years.