at them.  The next paragraph ends with a slur at the French, but I have reasons for thinking you mistook it for a compliment.  It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours.  You ought to get it out & dance on it.

    That would take some of the rigidity out of it.  And you ought to
    use it sometimes; that would help.  If you had done this every now &
    then along through life it would not have petrified.

    Fifth Paragraph.  Thus far I regard this as your masterpiece!  You
    are really perfect in the great art of reducing simple & dignified
    speech to clumsy & vapid commonplace.

Sixth Paragraph.  You have a singularly fine & aristocratic disrespect for homely & unpretending English.  Every time I use “go back” you get out your polisher & slick it up to “return.”  “Return” is suited only to the drawing-room—­it is ducal, & says itself with a simper & a smirk.

Seventh Paragraph.  “Permission” is ducal.  Ducal and affected.  “Her” great days were not “over,” they were only half over.  Didn’t you know that?  Haven’t you read anything at all about Joan of Arc?  The truth is you do not pay any attention; I told you on my very first page that the public part of her career lasted two years, & you have forgotten it already.  You really must get your mind out and have it repaired; you see yourself that it is all caked together.

Eighth Paragraph.  She “rode away to assault & capture a stronghold.”  Very well; but you do not tell us whether she succeeded or not.  You should not worry the reader with uncertainties like that.  I will remind you once more that clarity is a good thing in literature.  An apprentice cannot do better than keep this useful rule in mind.

    Ninth Paragraph.  “Known” history.  That word has a polish which is
    too indelicate for me; there doesn’t seem to be any sense in it. 
    This would have surprised me last week.

. . .  “Breaking a lance” is a knightly & sumptuous phrase, & I honor it for its hoary age & for the faithful service it has done in the prize-composition of the school-girl, but I have ceased from employing it since I got my puberty, & must solemnly object to fathering it here.  And, besides, it makes me hint that I have broken one of those things before in honor of the Maid, an intimation not justified by the facts.  I did not break any lances or other furniture; I only wrote a book about her.

                         Truly yours,
                                mark twain.

It cost me something to restrain myself and say these smooth & half- flattering things of this immeasurable idiot, but I did it, & have never regretted it.  For it is higher & nobler to be kind to even a shad like him than just . . . .  I could have said hundreds of unpleasant things about this tadpole, but I did not even feel them.

Yet, in the end, he seems not to have sent the letter.  Writing it had served every purpose.