Mark Twain had a lingering attack of the dramatic fever that winter.  He made a play of the Prince and Pauper, which Howells pronounced “too thin and slight and not half long enough.”  He made another of Tom Sawyer, and probably destroyed it, for no trace of the Ms. exists to-day.  Howells could not join in these ventures, for he was otherwise occupied and had sickness in his household.

To W. D. Howells, in Boston: 

Jan. 7, ’84.  My dear Howells,—­“O my goodn’s”, as Jean says.  You have now encountered at last the heaviest calamity that can befall an author.  The scarlet fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family.  Money may desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick and thin, till you be all saved or damned, down to the last one.  I say these things to cheer you.

The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me.

You folks have our most sincere sympathy.  Oh, the intrusion of this hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.

My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich Islands:  the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with notes drawn from them.  I have saturated myself with knowledge of that unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating people.  And I have begun a story.  Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-little considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly you are born in you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler religious folly may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and abolished and obliterated it.  I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age, and the heroine at 4, in the midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque and amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months before the arrival of the missionaries and the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of the old paganism.  Then these two will become educated Christians, and highly civilized.

And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale’s leper business.  When we
came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all ready
to our hand. 
                    Yrs Ever
                              Mark.

He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells were to dramatize later.  His head filled up with other projects, such as publishing plans, reading-tours, and the like.  The type-setting machine does not appear in the letters of this period, but it was an important factor, nevertheless.  It was costing several thousand dollars a month for construction and becoming a heavy drain on Mark Twain’s finances.  It was necessary to recuperate, and the anxiety for a profitable play, or some other adventure that would bring a quick